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Coaching | Art | Supervision | Therapy
COACHING STORIES: TWIST STORY
When we do not know the answer, more knowing gets revealed.
The twist principle is a pathway to access spontaneous, implicit information resulting in a more authentic and connected speaking voice and set of actions.
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The twist offered its treasure when my brain cells were fidgeting in an attempt to find what to say when I was asked about something I felt I should know.
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As I was getting more uncomfortable about not knowing what to reply, Shea Adelson, my wonderful coach at that time, asked me: “If you know what to say, what would happen to the knowing?” I took that question to heart and some time to reflect. As I stayed with that question, I felt like there was a twist in that sentence, its meaning twisting my mind back and forth. A week later I was moving, using a practice form called Authentic Movement, and a twisting impulse emerged. Authentic Movement, in addition to acting as a source of inspiration, is a practice that keeps me in touch with the wisdom in my body. Here the moving body becomes a source of knowing for finding new direction, next step, embodiment and being moved.
So what about the emerging twist?
I used to love that dance - the twist! When that dance was in vogue I was a child and loved to twist up and down and sideways, and twist and twist and twist. That is still my favorite dance move.
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Bringing awareness into the body through moving with my eyes closed, and with a witness, opened me to a range of sensations and revealed impulses that lead me into a deeper connection to myself. I twisted and twisted and squeezed some other kind of knowing in response to the question. It was as if my brain was twisting some ‘knowing juice.’ I then accessed that body knowledge and shared from that place.
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The body carries our life experiences and there are several ways we can listen to that ‘body knowing’ to get more information. As I was moving with and from the twist impulse, I became aware of ‘the more’ about not knowing what to say, rather than the lack of knowing. That twist impulse showed me the way to access more information.
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From a place of knowing what to say, I talk about what I already know, what’s conscious, what I have planned and prepared to share.
When we do not know what to say, there is more knowing.
Even though we get uncomfortable when we don’t know what to say, we can drop into the space that gets created by a moment of silence and drop into the wisdom of the body. Therefore, when we do not know what to say, or cannot think how to respond, more gets revealed by attuning to other sources. Among those sources are the body, our intuition, the unknown and larger field of energy from the Universe. Then there is more to say! That knowing includes our conscious knowledge, a more implicit kind of knowing embracing our experiences, and all that we know from what is available to us in that moment.
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One does not have to practice Authentic Movement to access a body kind of knowledge, but to trust the moment of nothing, the silence that can make space to hear some other kind of knowing. There are many kinds of practices that help us access this larger comprehension.
Focusing is another way to approach that kind of body-oriented knowledge; twist postures in Yoga, among other benefits, is a way to detox by squeezing stalled energies and toxins from our internal organs; other types of movements help us to let go, shaking the old to access insights and make changes.
Sometimes when we cannot think what to say, there is even more to say.
