Love is Listening with Simon d’Orsogna & Bruce Nayowith

Love is Listening

SPEAKERS
Beth Tener
Simon d’Orsogna
Bruce Nayowith

Beth Tener
Welcome back to Episode Four. This episode is called Love is Listening. And as you might recall, Season Two here is all about how kinship can serve us through life transitions. I share stories that spark  some rich conversations. The stories are from a memoir that I’ve written about a 10 year journey through some major life transitions for me. Our stories hold so much and they are a great way to connect in  conversation and learn together.

So to recap that storyline, to prepare us for what happens next in today’s episode…The first episode was about answering the call to change. In my late 20s, I was called to leave a pretty intense traveling corporate job and live more connected in my community and co-found a sustainability non-profit. In the second episode, we explored how does community help us through burnout? Pretty quickly, I got into a pattern of overwork that I had already been in. I was cycling through trying to find a way out of that overwork. How do you hold the weight of all the work you’re doing in the world? And how can kinship and community help, as well as  rethinking the way we work to have more shared leadership?

The third episode discussed sources of connected strength. I learned that I needed to balance Yin and Yang and not  be overworking and out in the world. I discovered the inner life, meditation, and working with healers, guides, and people who could help me reconnect to the pace of the earth. I discovered there’s a huge resource in solitude, silence, and the inner life. In conversation with Greta Bro, I shared about a week-long silent meditation retreat that was a profound experience of moving from my head to my heart and back into my body. I realized thatI could work with the emotions that would come and go, I didn’t have to run from them. It was a profound heart opening experience.

In this episode, we’ll be exploring what happened next, I essentially came home from that retreat and a month later, I fell in love. One month later! Today I will share stories of what happens when you fall in love and what does love really look like. We’ll talk about the power of listening and how profoundly important it is to the ability to actually fall in love and not hold yourself back from falling.

I’m happy today to have two guests with me, Simon and Bruce. These two are good friends of mine. We ourselves have a wonderful circle that meets pretty much weekly. We met weekly all through COVID. We all share an interest in how to create spaces where people can experience healthy social connection. I’ll invite each of them to introduce themselves and how they’re drawn to this question.

Simon d’Orsogna
Thanks, Beth. It’s a real pleasure to kind of have the opportunity to be here, a slightly more formal circle than we often have. To introduce myself, I guess I’m primarily a creative person who has found my expression in different ways throughout my life. People mainly know me as a therapist, and a trainer, and an organizer of training and learning experiences. The things that I’ve found really meaningful are a process-oriented way in groups where we can explore ourselves as like fragments of a larger soul. It’s not like it’s one person, one soul.

I have this idea that we’re all part of one larger thing. When we come together in a group, we create a larger satellite dish, a bigger bowl that can contain a kind of delicious punch or some kind of thing. Taken altogether, but actually, on our own, we’re just a fragment of it, we can’t really contain so very much. That is a way to picture my idea of what happens when we come together. I do that formally in these organized trainings for mental health professionals primarily.

I live in Melbourne, Australia, and I tend to work across Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia. The organization that I operate out of is called The Mind Beyond Institute. The website is mindbeyond.com.au. We’ve kind of offered various trainings and events in this part of the world, the dark side of the planet from where most of your listeners are in the US.

Bruce Nayowith
I’m Bruce Nayowith. I’m presently in upstate New York a couple hours away from Beth and about 12,000 miles away from Simon. I spent about 40 years working as a physician, mostly emergency medicine, though I think my real love has been helping things come to life, or how does life work, especially combining different elements of time and talking about this big dish? As I call it, like multicellularity? How do we create larger harmonics, in large or small groups? What are the differences that make a difference? There’s so many cool things out there. I’m studying things that really make a difference, connecting different processes. I don’t have a professional website. I tend to fly a little bit under the radar, at least for now. It feels about the right place for me.

Beth Tener
Thank you. I’ve found in my friendship with both Bruce and Simon that they’re both really curious people who are always finding different processes and fields of practice in this space of: How do humans connect and relate. So it’s been such a rich learning community with the three of us.

With that, I’m going to jump into the first story, as a way to kind of ground our conversation. As I mentioned, a month after a silent meditation retreat, I went to a local Insight Meditation Center in Cambridge and ran into someone named Joel, who had been at my retreat. We went and grabbed some dinner after and got into conversation. It was one of those moments “Oh, you’re single, who do I know who is single?” He said, “I just saw my friend, Rick Bell, the nicest guy I know. He and I were talking about how I could set him up with someone.”

So it was just one of those simple random things. I gave Joel my number to share with Rick and and a few weeks later, he called.

It was love at the first phone call. In that first conversation on the phone, it was just so easy to talk to him. He was really good at asking questions and listening, and I was asking questions. The next morning my roommate asked out it went. I said – he listened! Often after a date, we had a joke and I would say “He didn’t blow my hair back.” Most of those dates were when the guy would talk about themselves the whole time, and hardly asked me any questions.You’d ask how it went, and you’d say, well, he didn’t blow my hair back.

Rick had all these talents. He was a scientist, he played the piano, and he was doing glassblowing. And he was into nutrition. And there was just so many dimensions to him. So our second call actually went on for four hours, with a bathroom break in the middle. We talked till 1:30 in the morning. He would be asking questions, just wanting to know, like, what was your family like? And what was that like for you? I could tell he wasn’t afraid to get to the personal emotional levels.

After the second phone call,  I was already feeling kind of swooning for him because of the level of chemistry and connection. I took the risk the next morning and sent an email entitled, “wow” and I wrote something about how moving it was. Then I was feeling really vulnerable, wondering, “Oh, should I have sent that?” And then I got an email back from him that said “Equally wow.”

I wrote a poem in one sitting. It was an image of -what if my love was met with this unconditional love in return, where it was “wow — equally wow” at every step. where it didn’t feel like I, or my partner, had one foot out the door, where we both had our feet planted, willing to be in the relationship. I could already feel that this connection could have that solid ground.

In my previous relationship, we would both be into it. And then when I was really into it, he would be unsure. After a while, I’d try and try, and pull back and be more independent, and then he’d be really attracted to me. And then,  I turned back towards him.

We were in that pattern for a very long time. I was in my 20s. I couldn’t even see it as a pattern, I was just in it for so long.  I could tell that there is this sort of fear of rejection nipping at our heels. My sense of security in the relationship… I never felt like I could fully open my heart and trust it, because you were in that dance that it might be there.

After three long phone calls with Rick, I already could feel that it was very different. We were planning to meet. And I still hadn’t didn’t even know what he looked like! So I will continue that story later.

What happens when we connect with a person where we feel a sense of safety, that our hearts can open versus kind of being a bit guarded?

Bruce Nayowith
I’m gonna go backwards for a second, actually. I’m realizing this is about listening. So I thought, why don’t we just take a minute and listen to you? I’d like to say back some of the pieces that I heard and maybe Simon can do the same. You had this heart opening experience, you’re trying to tracking yourself through this. You had this synchronous meeting with a friend who said, by the way, I know someone for you, which was kind of sweet. Then there was this connection, which felt very fluid, very easy, very alive. And it was different from this approach/avoidance thing that was your norm before, that you thought was normal.

Beth Tener
You listened. Yes. You got it.

Simon d’Orsogna
Yes, I have my own kind of sense of that, that you’re a girl with a fringe, and you’re just wanting it to be blown back.

Beth Tener
Fringe meaning bangs? I’ll translate.

Simon d’Orsogna
When that happened, it was kind of a shock. But a good shock. You know, like, there’s a healthy crisis, to use the phrase.

Beth Tener
Right. My stomach was in knots.

Simon d’Orsogna
That’s a magnetic sense of something’s flowing, is just unarguable. That’s what I hear in what you’d say. Just Oh, four hours on the phone. Your body couldn’t keep up you. I love that you didn’t know what he looked like, or he didn’t know what you looked like. That wasn’t the connection primarily. It was a listening connection.

Beth Tener
Yes.

Simon d’Orsogna
He didn’t even know your had bangs!

Beth Tener
No, he didn’t.

Simon d’Orsogna
It’s touching to me and takes me back to moments in my life where I’ve had that connection. That’s super sweet and unpredictable and not able to be constructed by our effort, our logic or manipulating. It’s just a beautiful gift that drops from somewhere. Sweet.

Beth Tener
Could one of you speak to the part of the story when I spoke about cycling with the previous relationship? I’ve learned more recently about attachment theory and how that works between people. I wish I had that language when I was in it. Anything you might add about that kind of safety in relationship and how we connect or don’t?

Simon d’Orsogna
In relation to one other person there’s a kind of thing when you approach and he distances or he approaches, because you’ve distanced. That is what I heard. You’ve got this: I’m coming because you’re less available, and if you’re more available, oh, that might be too much. You’re kind of stuck in the doughnut. I don’t want to get outside too far. But you can’t go right into the middle, where you could both arrive. (To say it in a fast food kind of way.)

There’s a kind of avoidance that says I’m safest if I’m at a place where I’m not fully available and present, but I don’t want to be so distant that I’m disconnected. When you’re both together like that,  you’re really just alternating, you’re on shift work together. It’s like there’s one bed and you’re never both in it. It’s like the bed is warm someone’s been there.

Beth Tener
Yes, so well put. I think for me, not even having met Rick in person, but experiencing what the phone calls felt like, it was something completely different and I hadn’t found it in that earlier relationship. I eventually left that earlier relationship with the faith that I wanted something different, but I couldn’t even know what it felt like. It was so moving, just to feel it. It felt like a solid ground that I hadn’t felt before.

Bruce Nayowith
I feel like there’s attractors and there are repellers. And they’re separate. Sometimes the attractors are there, and then you hit the repellers. And it sounds like that wasn’t there in this case. There was enough harmony, that there weren’t weird cues. Sometimes people are just afraid of getting too close. But other times you can feel like that’s great, I wish you were right, maybe if I stay right here, it could be it. It’s nice to realize there’s an alternative and you experienced it.

Beth Tener
I feel blessed that I did. I’ll unfold a little more of the story, so you can understand how that could happened.

It was finally time to actually meet in person. So we cooked up a plan. I was saying how first dates can be so tense and there’s that stress of “what do you wear?”  It’s awkward. So Rick suggested that we just wear sweatpants and meet and kick around a soccer ball in a park. So then the day that this finally happens, I’m so stirred up and nervous, and worrying, “Oh, God, what sweatpants should I wear?” Mine all look ratty.  So anyway, I get my sweat pads on and go meet him. And, it actually was incredible, both the chemistry in person and on the phone. I’m not going to go into all the details of that. He said after our  first date, a friend asked him how it was on a scale of 1 to 10. He said 11.

We ended up having three dates in the first week. I got to experience so many aspects of him. He was a singer songwriter. He’s playing the piano and singing Billy Joel and cooking me meals. I definitely fell fast. But it was a different experience. It didn’t have that achy longing. It was such a sense of contentment, that he was in the world. It felt like we’d been in past lives together, the quickness and the solidity of how it went, how it came together. Literally within a month, we sensed we’d be together for our lives. It was really remarkable. I don’t think this happens very often.

What I noticed with Rick was that he was really intentional about how to be in a relationship. He told me that he grew up with a family where his parents were very self absorbed and fought a lot of the time. They weren’t focused fully on seeing the kids. In his previous relationships before he met me (he met me in his late 30s) he had done a lot caretaking. He focused on the woman’s needs and didn’t look out for his own needs. With all of that, he got into therapy. He had done seven years of therapy before I met him. He told me he felt it was his life’s greatest accomplishment to change these deep family patterns.

I had grown up experiencing a pretty healthy family, with the love consistent support of my parents. And i had just come through the meditation and yoga and all that inner work. I think there was a way we just met at the right time. In a way, I got to benefit from all that therapy, both in how we were in relationship but also in what he learned how to be healthy in himself. That was a model for me to see how that worked and see how he treated and interacted with me. He was really intentional in our relationship and setting these patterns that created a lot of trust and safety and consistency.

He would constantly tell me I was beautiful. He would often ask, “what do you need?” at the level of  what do you want to eat? and also the deeper level of what do you need today? He also asked “how’s your heart?”  Those are the questions he would ask me and all his good friends, regularly, in this way that it wasn’t just small talk. One friend called him a delver. He wanted to know how you really were. And, for me, as someone who’s a people pleaser, and very oriented out, when he asked me “what do you need?” I responded, I don’t know what I need. I didn’t even ask myself that question. I was sort of at a loss. By my partner asking me that over and over, I got better at tuning in to “what is it I need?” And I would ask him, What do you need?

There became an ease of being aware of what we each needed and finding how we’d work it out. We also really took an interest in each other’s work and our creative pursuits. Rick had this level of excitement, asking “how did it go?” He was into what I was into and encouraging that. At one point, he said to me, “I see my role in this lifetime as helping you be as Beth as you can be.”

I contrast that with how I was with my previous boyfriend. I was trying to be like that, but it was often coming from this place of me seeing all these ways he could change and grow. Things would be better if he were this or that. I would point them out and suggest articles.  I remember, at one point, he said with dismay, “I feel like whatever I do to try and change or improve won’t be enough for you, it will never be good enough for you.”

It was like I was seeing his potential with enough judgment that it just made him feel bad. The way Rick did it that felt so different. There was a sense of appreciation and absolute acceptance of who I was now. He didn’t impose his critique on me with judgment.

What do you hear in that story? How can two people be in a relationship in that way where we help each other grow and become more ourselves? We know there’s plenty of examples of people becoming suppressed and less themselves in a relationship. What are the qualities in a relationship that allow that growth for each person?

Bruce Nayowith
I will say back some of what I heard. Clearly, there was a lot of chemistry, that’s probably an understatement. And there was a lot of ease because there wasn’t the “but but but” – I’m not hearing any “but but but.” It was “go go go.” And you experienced Rick as having a lot of interest in caring, and not just in you, especially for you, but this is how he was with other people too. This was who he was. And in his asking, it was clear he cared about the response. It raised both of your self awareness as well. It bore fruit that way, with a lot of appreciation talked about. It was not a fault-finding relationship.

Beth Tener
You heard me.

Bruce Nayowith
I’ll add one more thing I hear. You both had what’s called a growth mindset. It wasn’t about stability. I mean, you wanted to be together, but it wasn’t a “no, promise me, you’ll never change” kind of relationship. I fell in love with that and you better not change that. It was the opposite of that.

Beth Tener
He was into musical theater. And I remember him mentioning a song and a musical that was about that. I think the lyric was – will you love who I am drawn to become? Will you love her too? I think that right there is often one of the sad things in a relationship, when we can’t love each other through our growth. I’m in love who you are, but not who you’re becoming.

Simon d’Orsogna
Each of you had already kind of been on your path, without knowing that you’re going to meet obviously, but there was primarily a commitment to yourself. That means that actually, you’re not glomming on to each other because of a sense of deficit. The word is codependence. You’re not arriving like that. His sense of who he is on the other side of doing his therapy and having whatever relationships and you’re arriving on the other side of these big experiences of what opened for you in the meditation retreat. And also clarity that is growing in you from being kind of dropped into the corporate life, the business world. “Oh, I went to university, I have a job in a big organization. Many of the things that “tick the box” of what  success or the pathway of a brochure life is. But actually, you were already taking that bicycle off, instead of staying in the foot race.

Beth Tener
Yes

Simon d’Orsogna
That was your dream?

Beth Tener
Yes

Beth Tener
Yes to have a rich life.

Simon d’Orsogna
You are approaching each other as already evolving. It’s a kind of spiral nebulae. If you know that picture from the galaxies. It’s like a big figure eight, a kind of nebula that can move around each other. You’re not collapsing into each other. This is a very sweet way to be human together. It’s both rare and it’s always available somewhere in our relationships to keep becoming.

I really hear that it’s like you both arrived. And maybe him more expressly or overtly with this desire to positively affect others. And you, as the primary focus of his attention and him and you growing into, like, you say, Oh, we had three dates in a week. You know, that’s a lot. You guys are really catching up. It’s like a sacred intent. When you arrive, it’s like, “oh, this is what I feel. I want to be here. This is bigger than me, flowing through me, toward you and beyond you to something bigger than you. And feeling that reciprocate, feeling that flowing back, it’s a very powerful charge, a wonderful field to be in.

Beth Tener
With each of your responses. I feel like this illustrates what deep listening can be. Because it’s not like, “Oh, good, thanks, are you done? I’m gonna talk now.” I think both of you received that story, and then reflected it back to me in many different ways and words and understandings. You did it in a way that I could see it more fully. To me, that’s the beauty of the kind of listening that’s grounded in love, the kind of listening where we really can feel held and seen, and deepen our own understanding or recognition of what’s happening in our lives.

In these times, where we’re so bombarded with reading and taking in information, as opposed to actually connecting with each other, I want to name what just happened. It is the heart of I think what we need so much more of, if we want more love and connection to flow. We need more of that quality of listening and sense making together. So thank you.

Beth Tener
I would like to delve a little more into the listening. One theme you hear in how Rick was with me and his friends was about asking good questions and truly listening. And I’m curious, in your experience, what have you learned about listening? How do you listen so that people feel safe, so that they feel seen, and feel understood?

Bruce Nayowith
There’s a couple of pieces. I keep hearing this, as you’re talking. Gordon Neufeld says that the qualities of another person that most bring things to life are delighting in someone’s presence, and the invitation to exist in the other person’s presence. So the short version is inviting in and delighting in. I hear that with Rick. It wasn’t just listening. It was also “Wow, I really want to know what’s right for you. And not just I want to know it. When I hear it, it’s like, “Yay!”

Right there, he was embodying this inviting in and delighting in and as Simon says, that way of being is like a growth promoter – it extends us.

Beth Tener
So true, Bruce. I remember a friend of mine who met Rick for a short time. My friend had created a new software program. I had told Rick about it. When they met Rick said “Hey, I heard all about this. And he was going on and on about how great he thought it was. My friend said, Rick was more excited about it than I am, and I’m the one who invented it! Yes, that is that growth-promoting delight. I like that, Bruce.

Simon d’Orsogna
I really love that word to delight. I want to point at something of that reciprocal, mutual quality, to be able to sense the delight of someone taking delight. And then for you to delight in their delight. Not just of delight of you, but delight in life, that which you are its expression in this moment.

I’m making an infinity sign here with my finger. You’re just floating in the air and it’s like you’re feeding each other. It’s an amplifying mutuality, that delighting in the delight of the other and the other delighting in you. It’s like we’re feeding each other. It is just expanding an exponential sense of energy flowing. It’s a way of appreciating that allows for trust, imagination, insight, connection and care. And we’re so far beyond worrying about the boundary conditions for safety.

Beth Tener
You’re right. Yes, it’s true.

Simon d’Orsogna
They are so far behind in the rearview mirror. We’re not even looking back there. We’ve just zoomed past that. Because most of the time, I think we’re looking at that, like, we’re looking at how do I get over this barbed wire fence?

Beth Tener
Can I trust this person?

Simon d’Orsogna
Should I close? Should I open up or not? But in fact, like, this is well past that.  I want to say, that seems to me to be the field of possibility. We’re not seeking to control it in either way. It’s really being very present. That’s what I’m hearing.

So what’s that got to do with listening? Well, listening is a gateway toward that. Listening without waiting for your turn to talk, or listening without making up my arguments to differentiate or knock down or making it a contesting space. Rather, it is a convivial space that is more like a potluck than a formal meal, where we do this and then we do that, we eat with this fork and not that one.

Beth Tener
Back to the delight, in those times, we got in the habit of saying “I love you” a lot. It became like the steady constant reassurance –  back to the feeling of safety. I wasn’t doubting that. Early on in our relationship I realized, I wasn’t filling up journals, like I had in previous relationships. I had journals of analysis: what about this? Do I feel this? A few months in, I realized I hadn’t written much in my journal. because it’s just sailing.

And about presence, in the conversations the three of us have regularly, we spend a lot of time trying to be in the moment with each other, like that idea of co-presence. When we’re talking about how we feel emotionally, or what’s happening in our bodies, we are genuinely curious about another’s experience. I think that is partly what makes our bodies relax, to be connected with another in a way that we’re not on edge, hence, over-talking and in our heads.

Simon d’Orsogna
We either seek safety through movement, like moving away, or moving toward fight and flight, or we seek safety through collapse, and stillness, like playing dead. If I lie down, the big animal won’t eat me, because eating something that’s already dead is not good.

Beth Tener
We just close down and become less ourselves.

Simon d’Orsogna
I’m just going to be a rock, and it’s going to lie here, and maybe the threat will pass, and I’ll be able to get up and run in the other direction. Even evolutionarily, those are the steps of moving from a reptile cold blooded, that knows how to be still and doesn’t need movement to warm blooded where we need movement. That’s more of the fight-flight reaction. And then the human, actually, the most evolved way to be safe is to be in connection in groups together, herds or tribes or townships. My place of safety is in connection. That’s a really important thing to notice – the co-regulation or co-sympathetic response. It is not so activated, but rather, puts us in connection with another or others.

We need it. We’re hardwired for connection. This is what it means to be human. It’s not just a need to be together with others, horizontally at my species level, on my social group level. on my ethnic level, but also vertical. We need the natural world beneath our feet and we need something larger than us, however we name that. What is connecting us to the sky, to the heavens, to something spiritual, to the largest, the wind that blows through all of us that we call life, or psyche, singing, or some other way to say that

Beth Tener
Kinship, in all dimensions.

For Rick, as someone who didn’t get that steady connection with a parent, the healing path was to get that regular, steady connection relationally with the a therapist. Someone he could trust relationally. We also can find that with the Earth,  as a healing path. Then you have it in your body, and you can bring it into your other relationships.

Bruce, one of the things I wanted to ask you about, as I mentioned in my introduction, you’re one of the best listeners I know. Well, you too, Simon. There’s a field of practice that you have learned called Focusing, and we’ll put this in the show notes. It was developed by Gene Gendlin. I’d love you to share a little more how you learned that and what it looks like in practice.

Bruce Nayowith
I’ll go way more basic, to share a personal story. When I left the practice of medicine in 1984-85, I basically wanted to learn more about health. I decided to teach health at a Quaker boarding school, Oakwood Friends School in Poughkeepsie. I remember reading about listening. I was reading about active listening, which as big, and a book on people skills by Thomas Gordon.  I was having a terrible time. I was really not doing very well with it. Finally, I read the Focusing book. They talked about the beginning as: just don’t say anything. There are levels of listening. If you just don’t say anything, and trust a person to find their own way, just see what happens. I thought, okay, I can start that way.

Over time, I was actually able to hear what the person’s feeling, Oh, I hear this, I hear that. But in the beginning, it was just like, there’s something there, and if we make space for it, it may show itself. That was a very basic thing. I point that out, because, for me, the first teaching was what not to do. It’s like if you look in the Western scripture, the Ten Commandments come way before the Golden Rule, like don’t mess up the space!

In the beginning, we often have to learn “oh, don’t interrupt.” And don’t say,  I know exactly how you feel. And that reminds me of my mother.” We have to stifle ourselves in that way in order to make space for somebody else. Over time, that starts to become so natural, we don’t see it. But in the beginning, sometimes that’s as long as you know, okay, that person is not going to interrupt me, they’re not going to judge me, even if they don’t understand me. At least I have a chance.

Beth Tener
I feel that way. As a facilitator, that ability to hold space, the more you practice, the more you can start to recognize, this is not a moment to say anything because there’s more underneath. I’m sure you do this with therapy as well,Simon. You sense, I don’t need to jump in, I don’t need to comment on everything.  I might say, “tell me more, help me understand.” You focus on the person and get a sense of what will help them get to the next level of their understanding and say things out loud that they had never articulated, or even understood themselves. That is what arises in the presence and support of another person really, really listening.

We are getting into the “how to’s” here. So part of good listening is avoiding doing some things so you can create a space that feels protective and safe, where people aren’t afraid of being dismissed or cut off right or shamed. What’s the next level in your learning, Bruce?

Bruce Nayowith
Over time you start to feel something.  I’m going to be very simple about it and I’ll let you all say more, but for me, this is when you start to feel something that’s alive. And then you can actually dance with it or relate to it, your body responds. And then it’s like, oh, that’s what’s there. Oh, right. And then you’re really getting the person and they feel gotten, it’s more of a dance. But in the beginning, it’s more just — we just want to clear the space. So it’s yours, and after a while, it becomes more of an ours.

Beth Tener
So you’re showing up feeling in your body, tuning into what you’re sensing in theirs.

Bruce Nayowith
Yes, there is a resonance process. One becomes more capable over time or with certain people. Simon, I’m sure you have tons to say about this.

Simon d’Orsogna
One of the good things about listening, Bruce, is you can know stuff and you don’t have to say it all. i think you you know that?

Beth Tener
Is there a story in your own life, or that you saw with a client or in a group about love is listening?

Simon d’Orsogna
There is a quality to listening, that I find indistinguishable from a kind of love or loving, that’s flowing. And it’s felt to be like a movement of subtle energy or invisible fluid or something, I don’t know how to say it very well. So that’s a very tangible bodily experience, like an intense experience.

Bruce pointed out something earlier about this dance. I’m aware that the more capacity we have to be with people without needing to arrive somewhere, which means we are in the present, we are not looking forward or looking back. We have much more information, call it awareness, or consciousness. Silence isn’t empty. Silence always has its characteristics. And silence can be such profound accompaniment.

Some of it’s about what is showing in your face, and some of it is actually felt, just from the neck down. We can feel this sense of being with another. We have it in the privileged space of therapy. It’s privileged in many ways. It’s such a rare and extraordinary space. But I know that people know it, just being with a kindly friend, walking on the beach, or with your dog or with another with a stranger on the bus. Sometimes you don’t say a word, you’re just sitting next to each other somehow aware, the other person is aware, too. I want to make it both lovely and grand and romantic and ethereal  and Dante and Beatrice. And I also want to sit on the bus next to someone I never say a word to, but we might just glance at each other, as one of us gets off.

Beth Tener
I’m hearing what you’re saying, listening in the way we’re talking about here, is a whole body experience. In the previous episode, I was talking with Greta Bro who is very empathic and intuitive. She was talking about how she receives people.  I remember going to her as a healer. I came from a culture that was all about “needing to get somewhere.” We’re about productivity, we’re about getting stuff done, we’re interacting for a purpose. Often, I didn’t even know how I felt because no one was asking or caring about feelings. It was just a heady kind of environment.

To talk to Greta and have her be able to resonate, and say “I’m sensing a lot of sadness” and I would say, “Oh, I guess I am sad.” That ability to have another feel, some times when we can’t even feel it. If you are open and really present and your heart is open to resonating with what’s happening, we actually resonate with each other.

Returning back to the burnout episode, partly what heals us from burnout is being able to express emotions and have them received, and not just reassured “you’re going to be fine” but rather “Oh, that sounds really heavy. That sounds exhausting. Or, that sounds really disappointing.” There’s a way that we can carry and hold it. It’s being held in a bigger field than just us alone. This refers back to the container you talked about at the beginning Simon.

Beth Tener
Well, I think we are probably at the end here. I want to thank both of you. I wonder if you have any final thoughts before we close our time,

Bruce Nayowith
I have a quote from Peter Wilberg in the book The Therapist as a Listener,  page 26. I liked this and it’s  kind of what the two of you were just talking about.

“The listening body is like a plant. Its roots grow down into the smallest cavities of our inwardly felt body. The listening body can send out subtle tendrils of intent to touch the other inwardly. And when we truly listen, it opens leaves that breathe in and absorb the embodied presence of the other, drawing out their inner light and warmth of soul.”

Beth Tener
Wow. That’s an exquisite quote to finish with.

Simon d’Orsogna
Thank you Bruce. I haven’t heard that before. But that’s delightful. I also have a quote, there was a woman, Brenda Ueland.

Beth Tener
I love her!  I love her stuff on listening.

Simon d’Orsogna
She wrote a lot about writing, as well, and she was a wonderful person. I’ve read a couple of biographies and much of her writing. She also uses that phrase “there is nothing closer to love than listening.” Here is the quote:

“We should all know this, that listening is not talking. It is the gifted and great role, and the imaginative role. And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic than the talker. And she or he is more effective and learns more and does more good. And so try listening. Listen to your wife, your husband, your father, your mother, your children, your friends, to those who love you, and those who don’t. And those who bore you to your enemies as well. It will work, a small miracle, and perhaps a great one.”

Beth Tener
Lovely. So I’ll just close with those two questions that invite listening, which is, what do you need? And how is your heart? So thank you, Bruce, and Simon for this wonderful conversation.

Bruce Nayowith
Thank you for having us. Thanks.