Knowing, for instance, that I am supported – by family, friends, a colleague, a mentor – is comforting, but it can remain an abstract idea. Having a tangible, bodily sense that I am supported is different: it helps me to experience what support or safety feels like. Knowing, for instance, that I am supported – by family, friends, a colleague, a mentor – is comforting, but it can remain an abstract idea.
Recently, on my way to a school where I am mentoring a teacher, I was feeling weighed down by concerns about my own struggles. Driving along the highway, I recognised that my unsettled inner condition would certainly hinder me from being fully present to the situation I was about to enter: meeting the teacher, witnessing his progress, hearing his questions, and observing the groups of children in his care. How would I manage to gain inner coherence in the 15 minutes left before entering the school grounds, I wondered.
I took a few deep breaths. Unexpectedly, I had a faint but clear sense of my own right hand on my left shoulder, although both my hands were on the steering wheel. I recognised the feeling: it was the moment of touch I felt earlier in the day when I did the Social Presencing Theatre (SPT) Stuck* practice and came to a gesture of holding myself in the Sculpture 2** position.
I then felt a second sense of touch, this time on my back. I recognised it from a moment I’d experienced two months prior when, in an SPT Village practice, another participant and I had ended up sitting back to back. The overall sense that had washed over me in that moment was one of being strongly supported. Now I felt that strong support again.
My sense of self and calm re-asserted itself as I turned into the school grounds. I parked the car and, in the pause before I got out, felt a sense of relief. Images of people who have supported me in the past, and those who are supporting me in the current phase of my life, played in front of my mind’s eye. In fact, I distinctly felt them around me, behind me, in front of me – the ever-present ‘social body’.
Three hours later, having observed two lessons of the teacher and spending time in a conversation that felt empathic and generative, I was grateful for the sense of calm support I could lend someone else. Fully in my body, I was able to respond to each moment and what it required.
Having felt a physical sense of what support feels like, I realised on reflection, I was able to settle inwardly and hold a space where the judgements or criticisms that so easily arrive when I feel tired, challenged, or insecure, could abate.
This warm feeling of support lingered and stayed with me long after I had left the school. Towards the end of the day it dissipated. But now I knew: the support – from others, and from the Earth body – was and is always there if I chose to be aware of it.
‘Feeling is the language of the body,’ Arawana Hayashi, founder of SPT with Otto Scharmer, reminds us. Having once felt what support feels like, my body did not forget the sensation. When I pause and take a few deep breaths, or let go of self-judgement, it can surface and I feel and sense it anew. It never leaves me; I take leave of it. I can find it again when I lean into the unease I may be experiencing.
Why does this matter? Restoring inner stability and mind-body coherence, and being mindful to what is unfolding in each moment help us to behave with openness and a little more courage than we thought we had. It fosters accessing a deeper presence, acting from a deeper source, so that we can participate in life in a more whole way.
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Picture: Elijah Hiett