"Now the Ears of My Ears are Open"

I mentioned in my last post Lend Me Your Ear that I would talk about my experience practicing mindful listening. My fiance' kindly agreed to give it a try with me. We started by facing each other. I was the listener the first time around. Being mindful while listening without interrupting the other person or saying anything at all for five minutes was a new experience. It was different than I expected and it made me feel more connected with what he was saying. When he was the listener, he also felt like it was a different sort of experience. I have found that practicing it (when I remember to) has yielded interesting results, particularly when dealing with people who are angry and stressed. I have found that mindfully listening to agitated people allows them to get it all out and they eventually lose the energy of the emotion and end the conversation either apologizing or at least being more rational. It is definitely a tool I will continue to use!  Let me know how it has worked for you.

(The title is taken from one of my favorite poets, e.e.cummings.  I highly recommend his collected works for the poet enthusiasts out there!)

Lend me your Ear: The Power of Mindful Listening

One of my favorite quotes is from Plato: "Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." I love this quote because kindness is often under rated and we often dehumanize each other (by we, I mean humans in general).

The other night, I was watching SNL (because Paul McCartney was the musical guest and he is one of my favorites!) and they had a skit that made fun of the fact that we sometimes don't know the names of people we see and interact with every day. We see them as their function instead of a full human being with depth and a story.

For me, this highlights another great feature of mindfulness in that it can be applied to relationships. So, I have a challenge for anyone reading this post. I challenge you to take notice of someone in your life and really pay attention to them for at least one conversation. Practice really listening to what they are saying, how they are saying it, and their motivation for saying it. While doing that, check in with yourself, attend to your own reactions to it and body sensations, really strive to be in that moment. If you do that, I'd love to know your experience! I will talk about my experience with it in another post soon!