Tami Simon: Welcome to Insights at the Edge, produced by Sounds True. My name’s Tami Simon. I’m the founder of Sounds True, and I’d love to take a moment to introduce you to the new Sounds True Foundation. The Sounds True Foundation is dedicated to creating a wiser and kinder world, by making transformational education widely available. We want everyone to have access to transformational tools, such as mindfulness, emotional awareness, and self-compassion, regardless of financial, social, or physical challenges. The Sounds True Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to providing these transformational tools to communities in need, including at-risk youth, prisoners, veterans, and those in developing countries. If you’d like to learn more or feel inspired to become a supporter, please visit SoundsTrueFoundation.org.
You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today, my guest is Richard Strozzi-Heckler. Richard is the founder of the Strozzi Institute, in which he teaches somatics to business leaders, executive managers, teams from Fortune 500 companies, and the US government and military. He was named one of the top 50 executive coaches in The Art and Practice of Leadership Coaching and in Profiles in Coaching. And he’s the author of eight books, including The Leadership Dojo and The Art of Somatic Coaching.
Richard and I spoke about the change process, or what he calls somatic transformation, a body-based approach to change, in which we attune to the core energy of the body and release the core energy of the body. In this conversation, we talked about how working with the body is such a key element if you’re interested in being present, open, and authentic at work. Here’s my conversation that I think really inspires us to go deeper into that core energy, our felt sense of being, with Richard Strozzi-Heckler.
To begin with, Richard, I just want to say that I’m so honored and happy to have this chance to talk with you. The whole journey of embodiment is something that has been of supreme importance to me personally, and I’m so happy to be able to bring your work to the Sounds True audience. So, thank you for making the time for this.
Richard Strozzi-Heckler: My pleasure, Tami.
TS: You are a true pioneer in the field. For 20 years, you’ve been training and certifying somatic coaches. So, to begin here at the beginning of our conversation, if you could help our listeners get up to speed on what’s a somatic coach, in comparison to just a regular coach who goes in and helps organizations?
RSH: Good. Well, I would like to say, it’s actually more than 20 years. And it’s really been a life’s work, and exceptionally pleasurable and enjoyable. A somatic coach really, I think, in the most accessible, conversational sense, means that we’re taking in the body. We’re starting to pay attention to looking at breath patterns, how we hold ourselves—Is what we’re saying coherent with how we presence ourselves? It comes from, really, the claim that the body and the self are intimately linked together, and one of the ways to cultivate the self, in terms of insight, understanding, knowledge, being informed about what we’re doing.
It also gets us much closer to how we are cultivating and generating the kind of self that can make commitments that will produce the future we want, build trust with others, build contact. We do that through a model of awareness, so we’re aware of the body. We do that through a model of practices, of giving people practices. We do that through a model of somatic opening, which means that there are practices of touch, and movement, and breath, and gesturing, and sounds. Let’s say, if somebody’s shoulders are really pinned up against their ears, that that shape, those kind of activities would change would change that shape.
TS: Now, you started by mentioning breath patterns. And I don’t even know how many people are aware of, “How am I breathing right now? What is my breath pattern?” So, just let’s just start there for a moment. Can you talk a little bit about what breath patterns you’ve identified as common—common to people—and how they relate to how we’re manifesting at work or are holding ourselves back at work?
RSH: Yes, well, what we’ve seen, what’s been revealed to me over all these years, is that when people are in a position where there’s real or perceived threat, they’ll hold the breath. And in holding their breath, that affects the organs—our heart, our lungs, liver, and so forth—because there’s not enough oxygen being transported. And that holding the breath sets in a rigidity or contraction throughout the body that will affect how we speak, that will affect how we act, it will affect certain behaviors—whether we are open or defensive, or contactable or resistant, etc.
Another example would be that, we know that the system, the biological system, is designed so the breath is a vacuum phenomena. That means that we are built so that our breath is lower in our abdomen. And when we breathe, our abdomen will go out a little bit and come in a little bit. If we breathe high in our chest and we breathe rapidly in our chest, that will increase our anxiety. So, what that means is just that simple pattern of breathing high and rapidly—not taking in a lot of oxygen and distributing it—can increase our anxiety. And that, as a manager or a leader, we begin to understand that anxiety is one of the most infectious of all moods. So, if you’re a manager, leader, or if you are breathing in that way, what you’re doing is, you’re communicating anxiety. And those kinds of breath patterns, for example, will affect how we are.
A third one I might mention is that in a perceived threat or a real threat, often people will begin to breathe really … They won’t hold their breath, but they’ll breathe very fast and very deeply. And they start to go into a state of what is called tetany. And tetany means that you’re too oxygenated. You’re not letting the carbon dioxide out of your body. And all of a sudden, your limbs began to stiffen, your eyes become fixed and have no flexibility, the mouth begins to pucker, and you begin to really narrow yourself.
TS: Is there a way that you recommend for people who want to be present, grounded, not communicating a posture of anxiety and kind of, “Aaa!” but they really want to be … You want someone who’s running a meeting to be present, grounded. How do you recommend such a person relates to their breathing?
RSH: Number one is that you start to attend to your breaths and pay attention to your breaths. And that is really, probably something nobody has ever said to you or this person, “Pay attention to your breath.” Now, it’s nothing that has just been discovered in the first part of the 21st century, because human beings in many other cultures say our breath is spirit. It is really our life force. And by paying attention to our breath, we begin to notice how we hold it, where we hold it, and what it is that makes us hold our breath or narrow our breath.
So, the first step is one of somatic awareness. And it doesn’t mean breathing more deeply, it doesn’t mean breathing in a certain way. It means just starting without changing anything. You can do this right now, is to attend to your breath pattern and just notice what part of the body moves, what part of the body doesn’t move. And notice what it’s like when you began to attend to your breath. Does that shift your mood? Does it shift your emotional state, for example? So, in a brief word, it means breath awareness.
TS: That’s helpful.
RSH: Yes. And then from there, one will say, “Oh, I noticed that the breath, it’s only my upper chest that’s moving,” or, “Really, my whole midsection doesn’t move at all.” So, at that point where one, if you’re not working with somebody is just go ahead and practice while you’re sitting there, or even standing. And you can do it lying down, take five of the deepest breaths that you can. And as you do that, focus on bringing the breath into the bottom third of the lungs. So, you’re breathing rhythmically and you’re breathing deeply. Then when you let it out, you don’t push it out, nor do you measure it out. It’s really like you rolled this ball from the top of the hill, and then you let the ball go. So, it’s like a balloon that you’ve blown up, you release where the mouthpiece is, and you just let it go. That would be a next step.
TS: There’s so much I want to talk to you about, Richard, but I’m just going to take our time here, step by step. When I introduced you and I said that you’d been training and certifying somatic coaches for 20 years, it’s really that actual, just that certification part that I was referencing by the two decades. And you said, “I’ve been at this for a really long time.” Tell our listeners a little bit about how and why you began in your career, focusing on the soma, focusing on the body, and then the step that happened that moved your work into organizations.
RSH: Yes. Thank you. That’s a great question. Well, first, I’ll go way back and say that in many ways, I come from the bodily arts. In other words, I started martial arts when I was about 12 or 13. One of my first teachers would have us start class by paying attention to our breath. I had no idea what that meant, or what it meant, or if it was going to improve my technique, but I did the practice. And it was kind of my, at 13 years old, it was my first introduction to meditation or mindfulness. I went to university on a track scholarship. I ran at an international level for the American team in the pre-Olympic meet in Central American games.
And so, this was a place of great learning for me, in the sense of, if you practice, you’ll get better. If you have a good coach, you’ll get better. If you have teammates that support you and actually help you reach a higher level, it’s possible in working through the body. The problem was for me, Tami, is that after all that was over and I was together with all these men, I was not satisfied with the conversations. They seemed kind of, revolving around people’s cars, or the kind of beer they’re drinking, or girlfriends.
So, I got a degree in literature. And I saw these people who had these ideas that actually— there was a history of people thinking about what they’re doing and how they could do those things to cultivate themselves through practices and art. But there’s two things, there were no practices that they gave you. And number two, and this was big, everybody smoked, and they were kind of hunched over. I mean, we’re talking back in the 60s, right? And it was kind of like, that was not satisfying to me, either. Wonderful world to talk about the ideas and philosophy, literature, and history. But nobody really seemed to embody it.
So, what I did is basically, my commute was between dojos or gyms, and psychology and philosophy. And when I got my PhD in psychology and became entered into therapy, it became very clear to me that psychology could take people to a level of insight like, “Oh, I see why I do this.” But it didn’t take them into new actions. And this is where the body came in. And I was fortunate enough to connect with a man named Robert Hall, a psychiatrist. And he and his wife, Alyssa, and me and my wife, Catherine, we started what was called the Lomi School. And the idea was: How do we bring the body into psychology?
And a lot of that had to do with body work. It was training that we had in structural integration, or rolfing, the practices that I started to bring in or tried to innovate through the martial arts that I was doing. And that was really the start. So, probably for about, going on maybe, 12, 13 years, really engaged in private practice and body-oriented psychotherapy, and then teaching other drug counselors, therapists, social workers, psychiatrists the importance of working with the body, and then certifying them inside of that.
And then, in 1984, the Army approached me and said basically, the short story is, they were trying to build a holistic soldier.
TS: Hmm.
Yes, I think it was amending from Vietnam. And the people that they were asking … There was a group of us. They came to me through a man named George Leonard, who is a social philosopher. You probably know his work. He was a very good friend, and we started a dojo together in Northern California, aikido dojo.
But, the short story is that we did a six-month project in which the promises of the project were physical enhancements, mental enhancements, and team cohesion. So, we did meditation every day, we did aikido every day, we did biofeedback every day, we redesigned their physical fitness program, their diets. We worked with their family systems. And it was extraordinarily challenging. And these were two Green Beret A-teams, the most highly-developed … They would call themselves Million-Dollar Men, it took them to be at the peak, here. And we began to see that. And then, how can you improve on these things?
They went out … I documented this in a journal. And I always keep journals. It was a classified project. When it was declassified, a publisher came to me and said, “Would you like to publish your journal?” So I said, “Sure.” And that was called In Search of the Warrior Spirit. And when they went back—to answer your question—when they went back to their units, everybody said how they were much better leaders. And what was intriguing to me: that was not the promise of the project. Mental enhancements, physical enhancements, team cohesion.
Now, I think there are many people listening to me who would say, “Well, it just makes sense they would be better leaders.” It was to me, too, but it was at that moment I thought, “Oh, how can this then be taken to leaders and a multiplicity of organizations that could increase their skillful action, their compassion, and their wisdom?” And that’s how that happened. And that started to happen about the late 80s.
TS: Makes a lot of sense. Now, Richard, one of the things I’d like to pick up on, you mentioned that in your psychological training, you saw that if the body wasn’t involved in some direct way, that real transformation didn’t seem to happen—that insight was one thing, and transformation is another. And I’d like to understand more how you see transformation happening, and the ways that you work as a coach to help somebody go from how they are to a new way of being. You call it somatic transformation. And so, give me the arc of somatic transformation.
RSH: Yes, the foundations of it go like this: somebody comes to see you in the current shape they are. When I say somebody, this could be an individual, it could be a team, it could be an organization. And that is their current historical shape. And that particular shape, which means their behaviors, their actions, how they have moods or not, their emotions, their worldview, how they relate to others. And they say, “This has taken me this far, but where I want to go now, I can see it won’t take me there.”
Here’s a good example. The really exemplary computer designer, or a person that does data work on the computer, is suddenly promoted to manage people. And he or she really has no idea how to do that, because it’s not like just zeros and ones, it’s like bringing a team together, building trust, having right communication, and so forth. So, what you see is that historical body or some other shape won’t get the job done. And then, what is required is that a very close look at how the body is shaped in a way that doesn’t allow this person to move toward a higher order of management and leadership.
So, for example, there is a person whose—I’ll use again—the person whose ears are up around their shoulders or up around their ears. And we know that when human beings are afraid, what happens is that they try to protect the jugular vein. The shoulders will go up. It might be a centimeter, it might be an inch. If you do that long enough, if you do that long enough, those shoulders will get rigidified there. You just can’t let your shoulders down, because all that energy and that tension is running through these neural pathways, these synapses, and dendrites, and so forth. And there’s a rigidity in the shoulders.
And so, when somebody moves with that person, they’ll either sense unconsciously, or they’ll look more keenly in going, “Why are their shoulders up so far? Are they afraid? Are they defending?” You ask the person, and they may go, “No, I’m not afraid at all.” But that shape predisposes them to fear, and then it also builds an identity for the person. So, that means you go into a set of practices where they become more somatically aware of themselves. And how they’ll enter conversations and out of conversations are connected to the shape of the body, breath, the actions, modes, the emotions. And then, you get into a set of practices about changing those. That goes all the way from awareness to [doing] hands-on body work with somebody. You teach them to do a new breath pattern, ask them to do that consciously twice a day for 10 minutes. And all of the sudden, the shape begins to change.
And then inside of that arc, what usually happens there is what we call a somatic opening. In other words, the shape or how we are in our body, is shifted in a particular way so that we begin to have a different worldview. And the old practices that we’ve been doing begin to drop off. The way that we relate to others begins to shift, where all of the sudden, spontaneously, the same things that we’ve held back for so long are coming out of our mouth. And two things happen, then. Many things happen then, let me say that. But the polarity is this: on one end, some people go, “This is fabulous. This is a feeling of possibility, of openness. I feel warm. I feel alive. I’ve really been wanting this my whole life.”
When we worked with those Green Berets, that’s what a third of them said, “I’ve been waiting for you my whole life, to learn how to do this.” Another third said, “Let’s wait and see.” And the third third is the other polarity, and they said, “You’re my worst nightmare, because I’m changing. I’m left in what we call an unbounded state. And I’m not sure how to navigate through it. The usual markers about what I know about what’s real, what’s not, how I move in the world, they are gone.”
And so, it really requires that the somatic coach be able to shepherd that person from one shore to another shore. That other shore is the new shape. They’re able to relate to people differently. They’re not so defensive. They’re also able to make boundaries. Some people who had never made boundaries before now can make boundaries. You can now say, “No, I won’t do that.” Or, “I’m open to that possibility.” All of those things are inside of that. That requires a new set of practices. So that, not only do those just start to happen spontaneously, but you then go, “What is it that I want to actually embody for the new shape?” That’s called embodiment. And that’s when you go through that somatic arc of transformation, and you come out as a different actor in the world. So, what we mean by transformation is that you can now take actions that you previously couldn’t take. And you can take them when you’re under pressure or under threat, too.
TS: I want to talk more about that somatic opening, and the person who finds themselves in that one-third part of, it may not necessarily be, “You and the Strozzi Institute are my worst nightmare,” but it could be, “Wow, this is really uncomfortable.” And perhaps I feel just working with the shoulder example that you offered, by not bringing my shoulders up to my ear, perhaps I just feel vulnerable in a way that I never have before. And I feel a kind of tenderness that exposes me to pain and sorrow in a way that I defended myself against for good reason. And I’m really, really uncomfortable now. And I’m at sea a bit. There’s a type of … I know in your work you refer to it as a disassemblage. And that phrase, disassemblage, we assemble ourselves in all these ways. And when we are getting disassembled, it can be very tender, vulnerable. What would you say to someone who’s in a state like that, and they’re a little bit like, “Transformation isn’t everything I thought it was going to be”?
RSH: Exactly.
TS: It’s tough.
RSH: Exactly, yeah. Where are the cherubs, and the angels, and the hymns singing from the heavens? This is really the place where, as we disassemble that way and we don’t have those markers anymore, and we go, “Oh, I’m actually walking through the barnyard.” In other words, this is kind of sticky, it’s kind of smelly, and as you said pretty elegantly, that, “I feel vulnerable. I feel helpless.” And there’s a couple of things that are critical at that point. The practitioner, somatic practitioner, has to have gone through that space, has to have gone through the space between what we might metaphorically call “between the cup and the cord.”
I hold the cup of who I am. I know what that is. But I have this feeling it’s not enough. I read a book, I see a person, I see it actually lived in the world, that there’s actually more. And that produces a longing in me. What I have to do is, I have to let go of much of that cup, and reach for the cord, so that unbounded opening space is where our hand has left where we’ve come from, and not arrived at who we are becoming.
TS: Ouch.
RSH: Yes, terrifying.
TS: Very.
RSH: So, it’s really a requirement that what is presenced through the somatic coach is, “I get it. I empathize with it, with you. And I’ve been through this myself. And in order to build a raft that takes us to this new shore, these are the things that are required. Stay with these practices. The practices will help you move through. Stay with your guide, your coach, your mentor, your therapist who has also gone through this same place, and can tell you, ‘Slow down, go left, you can speed up, I’m right here with you.’ That you connect with a group of people, a community of learners who are also on a path of transformation.” And then, that helps you go, “Oh, I’m actually not alone here. What I’m experiencing—there are actually other people that have experienced that also.”
And then, there’s a place in which … I will take, if you read the biography of Einstein, where he said he developed the theory of relativity because he felt it in his muscles. That was a time in his life when he was in that unbounded space. He was between the cup and the cord. So, without trying to put a smiley face on it, we also know this is a place of tremendous creativity, because all of the sudden the usual guidelines, curbs, and railways that we’ve had are gone. And we see this whole other way of being in the world.
TS: You’ve mentioned a couple of times, Richard, the practices that people can do. And in this short conversation, you’ve introduced us to the very beginning practice of becoming aware of our breathing, and starting to become aware of how we hold our body in different ways, potentially to defend or not to be defended. What are some of the other kind of, key … These are some of the basic practices that help people move through somatic transformation in the method that you teach.
RSH: Here’s some that, and I say this, that we can all do together. If you bring your attention, for example, to your eyes and let that band—if you think of it as a band around your eyes that goes all the way around your head, kind of like one of those sweat bands, but it’s really at the level of your eyes, the tissues above and below—and you let that relax.
And so, sometimes I think people have these times, they’re talking to somebody else. They look in their eyes and they go, “Oh, they’re really not here.” They’re off thinking someplace else, or their eyes are hardened in such a way that they’re really unable to listen to me or to let me in.
The other thing is that if we keep our eyes stiff—our eyes are connected to the brain through the optic nerve—that rigidity or stiffness in the eyes, at a very subtle level, will have the brain contract. So, if you imagine we are doing that 24/7, that contraction will, at some point, begin to precipitate through the central nervous system. So, just by being in our heads a lot, not seeing the world, not letting our vision open, relaxing those bands, relaxing the optic nerve, that would begin a contraction that will start to flow through our whole body. Subtle, but present.
Here’s another one. The system is designed that the teeth never have to touch. So, if you find yourself chomping down on your teeth, grinding your molars, or you’re on a sales team, and you’re walking to the sales presentation and you see that in your partner, it should provoke the question of, “What is it that you’re chewing on? What is it that you’re biting down on?” The other thing is that you can let the tongue relax. The system is designed, the tongue is relaxed.
Here’s another place to look. Go ahead and consciously bring your shoulders up to your ears. Take a deep breath. Let’s do this together. Exhale, and just let them drop. And we can do it again. Deep inhale, lift your shoulders up, pull it in, up, up, up. Breath, and let it go. So, the muscles in the shoulders, the arms, and the upper back begin to rest on the shoulder frame. They begin to rest on the skeleton. The system is designed so the muscular system can rest on the skeletal system. That means it’s not mass holding up mass.
Here’s another example of that. Let’s all do this together. Lift your eyebrows, like in surprise, and your forehead is wrinkled. That’s mass holding up mass. Now, let that go. Bite down on your jaw, your teeth, and let those jaw muscles ripple. That’s mass holding up mass. Lift your shoulders an eighth-of-an-inch. That’s mass holding mass. Squeeze your butt cheeks, your sitting bones, your sit bones. That’s mass holding up mass. What we are doing then is actually fighting gravity, which is the energy field of the planet. And that you note it’s winning. It’s happening 24/7. And if you don’t believe it, look at a picture of yourself 10 years ago. So, by just letting ourselves drop and come into harmony with gravity, we begin to really cease a fight with something that is much, much bigger than us and much, much more powerful than us, and much more influential than us.
TS: Now, Richard, you mentioned your experience in dojos. And I know that you have a sixth-degree black belt in aikido. And I’m curious, as you’re talking about getting into gravity and some of these other practices, how much of the practices that you teach in somatic coaching actually are derived or relate to your practice of aikido in some way?
RSH: Yeah, it’s actually a seventh-degree black belt. But the further I do it, the more I realize I’m a beginner. So, I have the very first black belt that I earned, and that happened a long time ago, 45 years ago or more. And it’s starting to turn white, so that really is very appropriate to my learning here. Yes, I’ve embodied something, and just the wonder … There’s always still more to learn. And to answer your question, aikido, the way of being in harmony with energy, the way of really embodying the notion of our interdependence, our interconnectedness, our mutuality, informs everything that I do. It just informs everything that I do.
So, have I gained some competency at the techniques and the skills, etc.? Yes, I have. But more than that, it’s really a worldview. It’s a way of life. It’s a way of conducting yourself so that when you’re either in conflict with yourself, conflict with gravity, conflict with another, that you have the practices to be able to come back to a centered place. And by that, I mean present, open, and connected. So, yes, it really informs everything that I do.
TS: Okay. Now, I want to ask you a question that comes from my personal experience with organizational life. Because here you are, you’re bringing really very deep work, in my opinion, into businesses, into organizations. And one thing that I’ve noticed is, sometimes when I’m working with other organizational leaders and introduce certain self-awareness ideas, people can mouth the right words: “Yes, I’m interested in being more authentic, speaking from my feelings,” things like that. But the amount of deep work that’s required for them to go from where they are to really embodying that, I don’t think I, when the conversation started, had any idea, or they had any idea what would really be required.
And it’s almost like, can the organization ask that of people? I mean, people have to have a real willingness to go through, as you were describing, somatic transformation, and the dis-assemblage process. I’m curious if you encounter in the workplace, people who are, “God, that sounds like a decade of therapy. I’m not sure up for it.” Or their actions portray that they’re not really up for it.
RSH: Yes. When I first started doing this, Tami, and then I would lay out a conversation of why this is relevant and why we would be doing it. “And so now, let’s do a practice.” And I would ask them to stand, move outside of the board place, or out of their chairs. And everybody looked at me like I was nuts.
TS: Just by asking them to stand?
RSH: Right, just—
TS: Because you asked them to stand up?
RSH: Just to stand up, and then to begin to sense and feel themselves.
TS: Yes.
RSH: And yes, it really is like even though what I was doing previously was building relevance, or paying attention in this kind of way, it just felt like I had suddenly migrated from a totally different galaxy. Now, over time, what’s begun to happen is that we get innumerable calls that, because of the reputation or because of what our website says or my books. And people say … You know, people will do trainings. They come back, they’re very excited about it and inspired. They have a big book that they put on their shelf. And a week later, nothing’s changed.
And what we are looking for is something that is more sustainable. Now, I say that because history is rolling along, that’s shifting culture, and a lot of people say these trainings are good in kind of a short-term level for mood, but nobody looks at their books again. And then nobody can do anything differently. And our promise is that if people engage in the practices and they do it as a collective, they will not only be more fulfilled in themselves, they’ll be more successful at work.
We also tell the person that is really hiring us, we say, “One of the things you can anticipate is, once people started to really drop into themselves, they may go, ‘Wow, this is not the place for me.’ And you may lose them. And if that happens, that’ll be good for you and it’ll be good for them. But we want to prepare you for that.” That doesn’t happen a big percentage, but it will, that people will go, “This is really not my calling,” or, “It’s not my purpose,” or, “Not my fulfillment.”
So, it really requires this notion that you will actually be a better performer at work, and that will increase how you want to build careers, how you want to build any kind of sense of wealth, for example, how you want to build a certain kind of culture. And also, it will bring a sense of fulfillment. So, one of the things that I learned in The Trojan Warrior Project, there were men in there who … First of all, we said, “We have to have everybody sign up for it. We don’t want military volunteers,” which means they’ll say, “I’ll do it because I’ll get out of something else,” or, “I’ll do it because if I don’t, I’ll be sent to motor pool.”
It didn’t really happen. So a third of these guys that kind of, I’m going to go ahead and use the word “grin-fucked” us for six months, like, “Oh, that’s great, that’s great,” but really were in resistance. But—and check this out—but they did the practices. They did all the practices, because it was a chain-of-command thing. And guess what? They changed. It was such an opening for me. The people that went in and said, “Oh, this will make me a better husband, father, officer, or I’m going to civilian life now,” whatever, they changed more rapidly.
But the other ones, that even though they resisted mentally and had negative assessments about what was happening, the practices changed them. And their spouses and partners at home said that. And their children said that. And their colleagues said that. Their leaders said that, too. And that was a major opening for me, Tami, that if you actually begin to do the practices, you’ll shift. And if you do it within intent, “I’m doing this for the sake of being this kind of a person,” it happens even deeper and faster.
TS: Okay. So, Richard, you’ve given me a couple of examples of how people come with a certain somatic shape that’s, I would use my language now, compromised in some way. Their shoulders are up to their ears, so they are defending themselves. And they look hunched over, whatever. What would you describe as the shape of someone who is present, has good boundaries, grounded? What does someone like that look like to you? You could say after a lot of somatic coaching and successfully going through the program, what is that shape like?
RSH: I would say these things, that they are able to really be present in a balanced way, both physically, emotionally, and mentally. That doesn’t mean they are lukewarm, or milquetoast, or anything. But even if they have to raise their voice or make a complaint, you can feel it done in a balanced way. They will not be concerned with, “I have to be the speaker all the time,” but there’s a tremendous power in actually being a listener. Number two, they are willing to face into difficult conversations. They’re willing to look at, even if somebody gives them a constructive assessment that may be hard to see, they’re willing to look at it. Not even necessarily to assimilate it or to own it right away, but they’re willing to look. There’s a sense of being able to face.
They’re able to … What you see in them is, they’re able to manage their own attention. I’ll use the word control. It’s a little bit difficult, because it’s not like controlling something. But they’re in authorship of their attention, their agency. So, you can feel that person … If energy follows attention, which it does, and they’re listening to you, and you’re open to it, you can feel how that person is feeling you and opening to you. Because where their attention is flowing out and toward the world and toward others, and not necessarily to their cognitive capacity of going, the rattling on, they’re going, “How am I doing?” or, “What are they doing?” or any of that. That there’s a certain kind of quietness in them, and at the same time, a certain kind of potential and strength and power in them.
I would say that then, they’re able to make very clear requests, make very clear declarations about life, make assessments that are grounded, and help people move forward in a particular way. They are able to make promises and execute on their promises. And they’re able to, say, make declines: “No, I can’t promise to do that in that amount of time.” They have an openness, but also a very clear set of boundaries about how we work together. And then finally, I would say that they have the civility to blend. That’s what we call it in aikido, blend. Or in Japanese, musubi. Musubi means that you’re actually able to tie in with your partner.
What that means is that when you’re in a conversation with another or others, you feel acknowledged by them. And now, we as humans have known this for millennia, but with the technology of neuroscience, we can go “Oh, that releases a certain kind of hormone in us that produces a sense of well-being. And it produces a sense of health.” So, I would say those things.
TS: Well, that sounds pretty gosh darn good, I have to say. Now, Richard, I’m curious. In your own journey of somatic transformation, what has been a really tough passage for you? And if you could describe how you made the passage. Because as you talk about this end product, I think to myself, “I mean, I wish I met more people who were like that, just in my life as a whole.” And I wish I was more like that, to be honest, as I heard you describing it. And maybe our listeners had the same response. I mean, that’s not an easy journey, getting to the place you just described, at least not in my experience.
RSH: Yeah, you know, one of the reasons that I take a stand for this work is because of how much it affected me. I grew up in a violent family, through my father. My mother was somewhat complicit, because she really didn’t intervene. And when I had to intervene for her, it had all of those things of living in fear—living in fear. And there would be emotional abuse and physical abuse. And I learned that the only emotion that would be possible for me inside of that would be anger, because that’s what was modeled. But I couldn’t be angry at home.
And so, I grew up being angry. I grew up feeling defensive. I grew up hurting people emotionally. I mean, after I got over my notion of fighting with others, of hurting people emotionally and recognizing that, “Oh, I was not giving people even the minimum sense of trust, not authorizing them with even a minimum sense of trust.” And it created a distance in intimacy, in contact, that … I was around enough good people that gave me that feedback and said that it was hurting them. And then, I realized, “Oh, I’m actually turning into my father,” which was horrifying, absolutely horrifying to me.
And then, having children, what came out of me was, “I can’t pass this on. I can’t pass it on.” So, I went through years of bodywork. I went through years of therapy. I still have teachers that I learn from that I ask for their feedback. I still work with a coach. But basically, it was that place that’s kind of a mystery, in a sense. For me, it was, “Oh, this is unacceptable”—it was unacceptable—”and I’m going to have to dig in there and actually make this change. Because even if I say I’m willing to do it, there’s this thing that’s running me, that doesn’t show up in that particular way.” Very painful, very painful.
And yes, that work was … It was all kinds of things. It was arduous. It just seemed like slugging it through knee-deep in the barnyard. And there were also places of exhilaration and happiness. And I was with enough awake people to say, “Yes, you’re shifting. Keep doing it.” Or, “You’ve got to dig in a little bit more here, because this isn’t shifting, too.” And for whatever reason, part of it was the work, but I think in many ways, Tami, it was like, “I can’t do this with my children.”
So, when I tell my children, “My father never touched me in an affectionate way, it was always bad,” they can’t believe that, because I’ve actually turned out to be a very huggy guy. So, that was really a passage of transformation for me. And there are times, honestly, when even at this stage in my age, where these things come up, and I can feel myself flash, and get hot, and defend. But there’s enough bandwidth now to apologize, to be accountable, to recommit to a different way of being.
TS: Now, Richard, when you were describing the somatic transformation process, and you were talking about how in your own experience, just psychological insight wasn’t enough, which is why you became so interested in these body-based approaches, I’d like to understand more. Do you think that if you just hold the body in a different way—so I stand and I feel gravity and I let it in, that by letting the body lead—that transformation will come? Or do you think it’s some kind of marriage of insight and body-based techniques that come together to create transformation? Or, just do the practices, it doesn’t matter if any lights go on. Just do the practices and the body will take care of the change?
RSH: Yeah, I’ve seen that happen. I’ve seen that happen over time. And it’s a much slower path. If it’s done with a narrative of self-cultivation, a narrative of, “Oh, I’ve been wounded in this lifetime, and this is how I’m going to heal myself,” with a narrative of, “Yes, I’m traumatized. And I have to work through that. And this is how that wound, that trauma shows up in my body.” There’s much more speed, there’s much more velocity inside of that change. So, the marriage, as you used that word, between these two, where there is a coherence between this narrative and how we are in our bodies, that is what starts to … You get momentum for this transformation.
TS: Okay. So, I was reading your book, The Art of Somatic Coaching, and here’s a sentence that I pulled out of it. “The further that we descend into the body, the less we are attached to it.” And I thought that’s so interesting, because I’ve found that in my experience. And I’ve been perplexed by it. This is so weird. The more that I feel connected, and give in to gravity, and am aware of my breath, the less attached I am to my body. That’s odd. Can you explain that paradox to me?
RSH: I cannot. I cannot. I feel very much like you do, that it’s perplexing. I asked my teacher. I said, “This is what it shows up like for me.” And he goes, “No, that’s right.” And it really remains as a mystery. I think … My speculation is that by allowing myself to feel more deeply, it eclipses this notion of an “I,” because it actually connects us to a greater field of energy. Where do I experience life? I experience life in this shape, in this soma, in this body. The more that I allow myself to experience life, what begins to happen is that the form, or the vehicle for the experience, begins to evaporate more. And what begins to show up is that it’s a connecting to a deep interconnectedness between all forms of life.
I think of the 16th century Zen monk Dogen, who said, “To be on the way, just to study the self.” So, we could say, “To be on the way is to study the soma. To study the soma is to forget the soma, forget the self. To forget the soma, or the self, is to become one with,” and the translation is, “the ten thousand things.” And maybe there were only what they thought were ten thousand things back then. I don’t know. But it’s really that notion that the deeper I get into this path of connecting with aiki, or this core energy that moves through me, that the more that the vehicle of that experience begins to evaporate until there’s more of a connection with the energy itself.
TS: Okay. And I also wanted to ask you about one of the fundamental principles of the somatic transformation work that you teach, which is to move from the thinking self to the feeling self. And I’m imagining people listening to this conversation are getting that. My question for you—you’re obviously a very brilliant person. You’ve created a whole framework for somatic transformation. You’re both a feeling self and a thinking self. I’d like to know, as your work has evolved with somatic transformation, how that leads you in relationship with yourself as a thinking self. How do the thinking self and the feeling self combine in you?
RSH: It’s combined by the feeling or sensing self now informing the thinking self. And before, it was more the distinctions, the concepts, the mental constructions of feelings that lead me into that room of feeling or sensing. And now, it’s like if I live in that space, it actually begins to influence and shift the images, the narratives, the actual—even the construction of thinking like that. I’ll give you a recent example. Coming from that sense of feeling, I have a friend, and I feel like I’m just beginning to see him in his body now. I can’t even tell you—that’s the only way that I can say that. And by feeling him in his body, he actually now becomes a stranger to me.
It feels very contradictory, but it also rings in me in a way in which it invokes the sense of an even deeper sense of connection to this person, and curiosity about this person, and actually commitment to this person, too. So, why I would say that, “Gee, if I feel myself in this new shape or this new body, it’s simply strange.” And I could say it’s like a stranger. But I then get to take that mystery of what that is, and if I have enough fuel of curiosity, then it allows me to begin a new journey of relationship, not only with myself, but with this person.
TS: Well, Richard, we are getting into some interesting paradoxical territory. And I could talk to you for a very long time, I think. But here, as we come to a close, I want to ask you to comment on how you close your book. Because I thought it was kind of funny how you complete the book, The Art of Somatic Coaching. You say, “At the Strozzi Institute, we say, ‘Take it easy, but take it.'”
RSH: Yeah.
TS: And I thought, “What a funny kind of quixotic way to close a book.” What do you mean, “Take it easy, but take it”?
RSH: I recently just found out that I think that saying actually started with Pete Seeger. And he might’ve been the first one to say it, or it was Woody Guthrie. I can’t remember. I just found that out. But what it means to me is, enter into a situation in a relaxed way but also an alert way, and also in a way in which I’m suspending my expectations, but being present for what is being presented to me, which I would hold as a very receptive space. All my senses are open. [Inaudible] said that they may begin to combine what we call synesthesia, which is kind of an intuitive felt sense of the world, skin of the world.
And then, “but take it” means “and then take action.” Reach out, be involved, lend a hand, take a stand for what you care about, fight for what’s important to you. Not fight against, fight for what’s important to you. Keep your North Star in visibility. Where are you setting sail for? That’s what that means to me. I would claim that one of the reasons that we can so easily stain our waters and pollute our soil is because we are out of touch with our body. And what that means, we are out of touch with the feeling self.
And one of the reasons that most conflict can now so easily precipitate into violence is for the same reason. One of the reasons that the gap between those that have and those that don’t have, or those that are in the norm and those that aren’t the norm is increasing [is] because we are out of touch with our bodies. So, I really hold, Tami, the somatic path is one in which there’s both the possibility of individual transformation, but it also leads into the possibility of systemic transformation.
TS: Well, I think it’s really important that you talked about that, Richard. And one of the things I wanted to ask you was your vision of your work moving forward, and the impact it will have in society. And I think you’re touching on that, that the somatic path gets at the roots of our disconnection from the environment, and holds this power of change. I mean, one of the things I read, and since we are continuing the conversation here with that, is that you have a way where you can actually help people through your coaching work, take conflict and turn it into a generative force instead of a divisive force. I was curious about that. How do you do that?
RSH: Yeah, the notion that conflict can be generative, like people will often speak about resolving conflict. And I would challenge that by saying, “How do we sustain conflict?” Because most people mean resolving it by either, “I’m going to numb myself,” or, “I’m going to walk away so it doesn’t increase,” or, “I’m going to,” as Curtis LeMay said in Vietnam, “I’m gonna drop tons of bombs on them back to the Stone Age.” What does it actually mean, that we stay inside of the conversation? We stay inside of these two polarities?
I mean, just as I walk around and I push off from the earth, I’m in some kind of conflict with gravity. And I have to learn how to navigate that so I don’t get back pain, I don’t confuse my respiration with breathing deeply, etc. So the first thing is noticing that when we are in conflict, how is it that we are interpreting conflict? And our bodies will tell us that. Because the body will take a shape of, “I’m running. I’m out of here. I’m going to go into a fight. I’m going to appease.” Or, “I’m actually going to leave my body entirely.” And insight in that first step brings forward the possibility that, “I noticed that, I take practices where I can come back to a response instead of a reaction, and then begin to legitimatize or authenticate the other’s point of view.”
And I don’t mean joining it, or agreeing with it, but going, “I get why that’s why you form your reality this way. Now, let me share with you how I form my reality, and let’s look at the place where they start to bump together.” While there are many other places with that—absolutely, there’s a whole bunch of everything that has to happen. But I think that at some fundamental level, that’s what’s important.
TS: Richard, as we conclude, and before I say to you, “Take it easy, but take it,” can you tell our listeners if they’re interested in learning more about somatic coaching and bringing it into organizations, where should they go to get more information?
RSH: Yeah, go to our website: StrozziInstitute.com, S-T-R-O-Z-Z-I, StrozziInstitute.com. My book called The Leadership Dojo outlines a lot of the work, or how we work inside of organizations. That’s called The Leadership Dojo. And we spoke quite a bit here about somatic coaching. If that’s of interest to you, or you’re working with people and an advocate for people, read the book, The Art of Somatic Coaching, that you referred to.
TS: I could talk to you for a really long time, Richard. I’m so interested in the work that you’re doing. And what I’ll say at this point is, you inspired me to deepen my own commitment to encountering some of the challenges on the somatic path, really turning to feelings again, and again, and again, and giving in to them. So, thank you. Thank you so much.
RSH: Yeah, you’re very welcome, Tami. It’s been great talking to you. And it’s refreshing to be interviewed by someone that has really gone in-depth and read what I’ve said, and my viewpoint. And I think that certainly enriched the conversation for me, so thank you. When you said this place about getting into our feelings, yes, we can get into our feelings, but really it is getting into feeling that core energy that animates all living things. And that’s our common ground.
TS: Thank you for listening to Insights at the Edge. You can read a full transcript of today’s interview at SoundsTrue.com/podcast. And if you’re interested, hit the Subscribe button in your podcast app. And also, if you feel inspired, head to iTunes and leave Insights at the Edge a review. I love getting your feedback, being in connection with you, and learning how we can continue to evolve and improve our program. Working together, I believe we can create a kinder and wiser world. SoundsTrue.com: waking up the world.
