What people say
I can honestly say that, for the first time in 50 years, I’m learning how to just be. How to relish the present moment, which, magically and mysteriously, unlocks the door to the treasure house that is the rest of my life.
- Jennifer Green, Salem, Oregon
From the moment Jon and I connected, I had this deep experience of loving presence and complete trust. Something bypassed my mind and my ability to figure things out, and communicated directly to my heart and soul that I was safe and in the right place. There was a creation of power in our relationship that he honored and witnessed as being mine. It was my power. I had the experience of being wonderfully, beautifully powerful, in the most loving, energized way.
- Laura Lind-Blum, The Idea Midwife, Waterbury Center, Vermont
Jon can help you recognize where you are, and become more clear. My work with him has not been about plotting out my future, it has been about helping me come into deeper relationship with myself so that next steps unfold easily and effortlessly.
He creates a safe, spacious container for you to go as deep or wide or high as you’re capable of in any given moment. It’s a matter of him being able to see the facets and help me make them real in me.
- Sandra Leader, Carmel, CA
My feelings changed from, “Quick, fix me, I can’t stand how I feel, make it better, hurry,” to, it’s not about hurry, and it’s not about fixing, it’s about staying where you are and getting more and more and deeper and deeper sensations that this is okay. You’re fine, this is okay.
It helps me reframe experience. I don’t see anything that’s happening quite the same as I’ve ever seen it before, because my viewpoint has been enlarged. There’s more, there’s peace, there’s joy, there’s love, there’s health, there’s everything.
- Layne Young, artist, Salem, Oregon
Open-Hearted Doesn’t Mean Defenseless
July 12 2011
My clients speak to me of their deep desire to be more open-hearted. At the same time — sometimes in the same breath — many of them tell me how anxious the idea makes them feel. They describe fear: fear of vulnerability, fear of being taken advantage of, fear of being exposed to the emotional impact of everyone around them.
Most people’s experience of open-heartedness has been in moments of profound intimacy. They’ve felt a sense of merging with another person, with a situation or an experience, with a natural setting, or with a sense of the Divine.
But while those moments of complete vulnerability, intimacy, and defenselessness are often very beautiful, this deeply intimate sense of merging is not what it means to be open-hearted in the midst of all life’s experiences. It would hardly be appropriate, after all, to feel such intimacy when negotiating a raise with your boss, confronting the person who just dented your car in the parking lot, or dealing with someone else’s anger or frustration.
In considering situations such as those, not to mention getting through the simple day-to-day demands of work and life, it’s hardly surprising that people tend to flinch from such a deep level of intimacy and vulnerability.
But there’s another experience of open-heartedness. It’s an open-heartedness that’s very different from the intimacy of merging. Instead, it allows you to be powerfully engaged in everything that arises, experiencing the full richness and depth of life, while at the same time remaining distinctly yourself, disentangled from your experience even as you’re immersed in it. You participate fully in what is happening, but there’s no sense of being overwhelmed or threatened — and so there’s no need to barricade yourself against your experience or against other people.
It’s hard to describe — and hard to imagine if you’ve never experienced it. Here are a few ways to look at it, from my perspective and from some of my clients.
Return to your body
Most people tend to project themselves outward into their experience. Whether it’s through trying to understand someone else’s actions, wanting to empathize with a friend who’s struggling, or feeling deeply moved by a spectacular sunset, we tend to move out of being in direct contact with our bodies. It’s as if we’re living on the surface of our bodies — or even several inches (or more) in front of them.
Come back into your body.
Sit for a moment with your eyes closed. Experience yourself as being fully within your body. Feel that you have a front, a back, and sides. Experience the interior of your own physical space.
What does it feel like to be grounded in your own body?
You may feel as if you’re gathering parts of yourself together. One client described a sense of becoming less diffuse and more concentrated, “but in a good way,” she added quickly. “It’s not a contraction at all. It’s as if I’m becoming more solidly myself.”
And as she also noted in talking with me, it doesn’t diminish her experiences of understanding, empathy, or the beauty of the natural world. In fact, quite the opposite: it enriches and deepens these perceptions.
Receive sight and sound
“I never realized,” a client told me the other day, “how much effort I put into just looking at something.”
She was describing what had happened when she allowed herself to receive what she saw and heard, instead of going forward to intercept it.
“When I stop looking, and just allow seeing to happen,” she said, “what I see becomes more real and vivid. The colors are brighter and clearer. It may not make sense, but it’s as if I’ve been projecting myself out onto what I was looking at.”
Return to your body, as described in the previous exercise. When you feel solidly connected with yourself, open your eyes and simply receive what’s within your view — and allow your ears to receive whatever sounds are present.
Receive the texture and detail of what you see; receive the nuances and tones of what you hear. There’s no effort necessary.
Connecting from within yourself
In connecting with others — a stranger on the street, our life partners, and everyone in between — we can realize a profound joy of being open-hearted.
And it’s in those connections that people tend to experience the most fear and anxiety. Simply looking someone in the eye can feel overwhelming and weirdly intrusive.
If that’s been your experience, it’s probably because — once again — you’re moving outside of yourself. Instead of being here, grounded within your body and your experience of yourself, you look in someone’s eyes and suddenly you’re over there, feeling a very real sense of disorientation and disconnection from yourself.
Come back into your body. Experience being fully present within your physical self. Stay within that physical space as you look at another person, simply allowing yourself to receive his or her gaze just as you received what you saw in the previous exercise.
“I’ve always hated those eye-contact exercises they make you do in teambuilding workshops,” a client told me. “But when I feel myself grounded in my own body, there’s a much more open yet much less threatening connection. It’s as if I’m really seeing that person — without having to defend myself against them, or shield myself from their eyes. It feels honest and authentic, instead of weird and vulnerable.”
One of my clients has spent her lifetime believing that in order to be loved, she had to acquiesce to the desires and dictates of everyone around her. Needless to say, when we began working together she was deeply defended, and often felt victimized by circumstances beyond her control.
Now, she says, “When I meet life with an open heart, just as it is, instead of trying to avoid it or manipulate it, then I don’t need to defend myself from what’s happening. But that’s not the same as being a doormat for other people to kick around. I’m far more able to speak my own truth, to do what I need to do to take care of myself, than I was before I opened my heart to life.” She paused for a moment. “In those moments when I’m open-hearted, I’m undefended, and I’m not anyone’s victim!”
“Go to your bosom. Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.” William Shakespeare, 1564-1616, English playwright and poet, from Measure for Measure.
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