In my last post I introduced the concept that the mind is much more than just the brain, with recent research indicating real neural connections between the brain, heart and gut. I also talked about the long recognised notion that most of us only use a very small proportion of our consciousness. There are implications – and opportunity – in this for leaders in a highly complex world.
This time I want to explore a few ways of accessing the ‘other 90%’ of our minds.
Fundamentally what we are talking about here is deepening our connection with our inner experience: the ‘below the waterline’, internal individual component of the Integral Model that underpins our work.
However, if this all sounds a bit mystical, it needn’t. The reality is that there are some straightforward ways we can bring more of our subconscious and unconscious treasures to the surface:
Connection with our personal values
When we realise that something feels uncomfortable to us, our body will tell us that it is out of alignment with what our personal values. We literally have a physical response. It might be tightness in the chest, our voice getting higher as we speak, or even saying words that are incongruent with what is important to us. We might feel sick in the gut. Tune into these bodily responses and what is causing them. You can check in on your personal values here.
Connection with feeling and sensation
A good way to start this is to consciously connect with your breath. Try this 6 minute counted breath experience that I recorded to help you to begin to notice what’s happening in your body. During this experience, I invite you to float the following questions, ‘What’s alive in me?’. What thoughts? What feelings? What sensations? This will increase your capacity to observe your self. You may like to take a moment at the end to write down in paper what you noticed.
Quieten the mental chatter
It is estimated that something like 80 per cent of our daily thoughts do not serve us. They are just like the ‘white noise’ on an out-of-tune radio. These thoughts get in the way of us making good decisions and choices and instead feed reactive behaviour. Learning techniques such as mindfulness or Yoga Nidra meditation helps to quieten the mind. They give us a break from our stress-producing thoughts and create the space and stillness for us to connect with our body sensations. And they allow us to hear our inner voice, our ‘wise knowing self’ beyond the mind.
New experiences that temporarily bypass the left side of the brain
I mentioned last time that most of us tend to think predominantly with the left, logical, side of the brain. We can access the right side of the brain – the creative, intuitive side – through experiences that encourage this. One example of this is the experience of art therapy. Such experiences work well provided we are prepared to be open to the experience and trust the process.
Physical practices that bring us into our body
Walking, being in nature, yoga, riding, swimming. In fact any physical experience in which we can be fully present, taking quiet time during or afterwards to connect with the sensations in our bodies. (If you have experienced yoga, you may be familiar with the meditation or shavasana at the end of a yoga practice that encourages this post-activity connection.) Sensation is the only way that our bodies have to communicate with us. Unfortunately, many of us walk around in life either numbing sensation with the use of alcohol, other drugs or pain killers, or not listening to it. When we make a conscious choice to begin to listen to what our bodies are telling us, more of our inner resources become available to us.
Time in nature
Related to the notion of physical practices is the idea of simply building into your day, your week or even your month time to ‘be’ in nature. No phone, no one else. Just you and your breath and your step. (I expand on this idea in this previous post.)
Major life experiences
This is not as straightforward as my other suggestions but it is something to be aware of. Sometimes to open to something beyond the mind – to begin the journey to ‘wake up’ – takes a major life event. It might be the death of a loved one, a serious illness, an accident or other tragedy. The significance of such events makes us feel the experience deeply, and the feeling of the experience allows something deep and previously hidden to reveal itself. Our hearts open up and find available to us inner resources not previously available to us.
With the exception of the last, which is really beyond our control, the other six approaches above should be readily accessible to anyone – even the busy leader.
The key here is for you – the individual leader – to recognise that something needs to change and deliberately and intentionally making the choice to integrate one or more of these suggestions into your daily or weekly rhythm.
From an organisational perspective, incorporating feeling and being practices into shared learning experiences for teams – for example sponsoring employees to participate in Mindful in May or taking your team offsite for a day to participate in an Urban Retreat for Teams, can be wonderful catalysts to create a shared ‘feeling and being’ language and experience that can then, with the energy and desire of the group, take on a life of its own in the workplace.