Monday, January 26, 2009

Relational Presence - Lee Glickstein

Lee Glickstein teaches a way of standing powerfully and authentically before groups.

Fear of public speaking is rumored to be what people in our country are most fearful of above all other things, including death.

In one of his workshops, Lee leads people through a series of exercises.

People start first in pairs, where both get comfortable holding a sustained, listening and appreciative gaze into one another's eyes. After a silent round, one person in each pair is given the option to speak words that might arise from out of this experience of relating; then roles are switched.

Lee then asks individuals to do the same standing in front of a small group. The group trains an appreciative, impassive gaze at the person standing at the front. Now, instead of it being 1:1, it's more like 1:5. The person in the front of the room trains him or herself to look in the eyes of people in the group, one individual at a time, feeling into a one-to-one rapport at every moment. Again, the person at the front has the option simply to stand there and feel the appreciation, or to speak some words, or both.

Next, each participant stands in front of the larger group, i.e. everyone in the workshop (about a dozen people in all in my case). Along the way, at their own pace and with varying levels of success, each participant learns, first, to appreciate whatever energy they are feeling in the moment, and to use that to their advantage, recognizing within that energy the relational power from which to speak; one learns to discover relaxation, presence and composure, an ability to be oneself, and be with whatever feelings one has in the moment, there in front of a small sea of faces.

The journey from anxiety to relaxed presence is an instructive one.

What happens for many of us, when we stand in front of a group, is that we feel fear or anxiety. All those eyes are trained upon us. Our heart beats, palms sweat. We might want to run. One thing is for sure, we get a rise of energy. What Lee is trying to teach is how to turn that energy from a source of fear into a source of power -- for thinking, imagining, loving and speaking.

The fear we feel is a heightened self awareness. And beneath the heightened fear is a heightened hope, an excitement, a deep desire. We want to shine, to be loved, to feel accepted and connected. We fear being seen and found wanting. We fear ourselves. How can we feel safe in this public gaze and protected from danger?

One option -- the one taught by most schools of public speaking -- is to devise a performance. The option Lee teaches and recommends is different: it is to be yourself and to connect with others in the audience through our shared humanness, our shared connection to the earth, to existence and all that is around us. We learn to look for an connect to "the voice in the middle," to feel our connection coming from down deep beneath the earth and running up through each of our feet and into our bodies. The skill consists in finding the sense and feeling of "we," and in luxuriating in that.

Typically, though, we come from separation. We try to imagine others looking at ourselves.

One thing that Lee's workshop helped me to see is one of the reasons that being in groups is so important for human beings. I don't just mean being in a crowd of people, say for instance, in the moving mass on a sidewalk or part of the crowd in a large sports stadium, although those, too, are ways of being together worth thinking about. I mean being the focus of a group's attention: being acknowledged, seen, beheld.

Why do we get nervous in front of groups? One reason is because all of those eyes, being the focus of attention, makes us acutely, exquisitely, possibly excruciatingly aware of ourselves. But is this good or bad? "Self-awareness" sounds like a good thing, no? Shouldn't the self awareness provided by the opportunity to stand before a crowd, then, also be a good thing? It turns out that it very much can be a good thing, a way of getting us more deeply in touch with our own aliveness, our thoughts, our clarity, our passion. It turns out that one of the best forms of personal meditation, if we can get the opportunity, is to stand as who you are, and stay there, resting there, in front of a group.

We are afraid that we will not be part of the we. By assuming the we, we do our necessary part to create it. Running from it, we fail to demonstrate the commitment and the trust that, alone, sustains the we in being. In showing my vulnerability, I show my trust in you; in receiving me with respect, you earn my trust. It is a circle.

In acting from trust, even when the consequences cannot be predicted, we show courage and a kind of leadership.

The group, the many eyes looking at us, heightens our sense of vulnerability. It helps us to see perceive what we want and what we fear.

In front of the group we get larger. The more we can relax our fears, the more we can use the energy of the group in the moment to help us explore deeply what means most in the moment.

REFERENCES

Lee Glickstein. Be Heard Now. 1998.
Speaking Circles: http://www.speakingcircles.com