Akshay and I recently had a conversation about how we support folks who don’t reach out for coaching or facilitation. How can we support those we’re not currently reaching?
What emerged was a shift from “fixing” to “respecting”. From working “on them” to working “on us”.
Our conversation went like this:
Akshay:
I’ve been thinking about how we work with folks who aren’t reaching out. This podcast sparked something for me. Start at 31:58 – about our nervous system’s readiness to release information we can handle:
Kirsten:
Whew what a podcast 😅
Responding specifically to the piece you related to people we can’t / haven’t reached:
Whatever I can do to see more I will do. And what’s hidden stays hidden out of a reason.
Our nervous system won’t release information unless it feels safe.
We haven’t found the right circumstances for healing.
When I think of unreached people in this light, once again the shift is from seeing them as ‘broken’ to seeing them as already whole and every action being wise. We can be both already whole and always moving towards greater wholeness.
And the reminder for me there is to stay in this curious open space when I’m with someone who feels challenging, because only from that stance will we have the possibility of creating the conditions necessary for them to possibly feel safe enough one day to try a different action/release information from the nervous system in order to see more.
Akshay:
to stay in this curious open space when I’m with someone because only from that stance will we have the possibility of creating the conditions necessary for them to possibly feel safe enough one day to try a different action/release information from the nervous system in order to see more.
💯
In fact, our work is to cultivate a safe and open nervous system within us, because it’s the energy that gets transmitted to someone else in the form of an invitation. Not to want to be like that person, but to get curious about what’s hidden and be willing to explore it.
Kirsten:
I wonder if there’s an L&C post from this conversation thread?
We’re still having this conversation. And you’re welcome to join it!
Thanks for sharing the podcast and the exact location you were referencing. Words that stuck for me:
* healing environment
* support from the past, the ancestral, and the current network
I love this conversation so much and how it continues to provide viewpoints and instances where our role as coaches starts to lean into an emancipatory place.
How are we creating containers to allow our clients to find emancipation/freedom to explore new thoughts, feelings, and new ways of being?
A great quote that continues to inspire me, “the success of the intervention relies heavily on the internal condition of the intervenor”. What are we doing to cultivate our own safe and open nervous system so that we can create space where others feel safe enough to find their own safe and open nervous systems?
Such a good word! “emancipation” Walter Brueggemann talks about the “juice of emancipation” which I’ve always thought of as just brilliant. There’s something good tasting on the tongue after the hard work of emancipation. (Which is often difficult by virtue of the fact that it doesn’t feel enough like “work”)
>> “the success of the intervention relies heavily on the internal condition of the intervenor”
Mac, I love that quote! Thomas Hubl describes this as the difference in “speaking about” vs. “speaking from”.
We feel a difference when someone is speaking from something, the internal condition can’t be performed.
And as you say Steve, in that sense it feels less like work because it’s more like just being.
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Steve
So much of your conversation and the podcast resonates deeply with recent experience!
I’ve been finding my way around the “transition design” movement, which is a response to multiple crises facing us on a planetary scale. I’ve found I’m uncomfortable with the word “design,” as I think it implies more agency than we actually have. In response to my discomfort with “How might we design our way to a flourishing future for all?” I recently wondered “How might we heal our way to a flourishing future for all?”
I think your conversation, and the podcast captures these (generative) tensions so well.
I recently read Sue Monk Kidd quoting Annie Dillard which also captures all this in a rather beautiful way:
“In her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard wrote that she could not cause light, but she could put herself in its path. The same may be true of healing. Maybe in the end we cannot make healing happen; perhaps it is, after all, a grace. But we can put ourselves in its path. We can create a healing refuge for ourselves.”
>> “I’ve found I’m uncomfortable with the word “design” ”
Mm healing feels much more open, maybe less clear where we’ll go, but more present to what unfolds.
>> “Maybe in the end we cannot make healing happen; perhaps it is, after all, a grace. But we can put ourselves in its path. We can create a healing refuge for ourselves.”
SO beautiful! And as we create that healing refuge for ourselves, it becomes possible to create it for others.
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