{"id":32489,"date":"2023-04-20T22:49:40","date_gmt":"2023-04-21T05:49:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=32489"},"modified":"2023-04-20T22:49:40","modified_gmt":"2023-04-21T05:49:40","slug":"listening-with-breath-in-out-back-in-back-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/listening-with-breath-in-out-back-in-back-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Listening with Breath: In, Out, Back in, Back out"},"content":{"rendered":"

I suffer as a light sleeper\u2026it\u2019s rough.\u00a0 In my 20\u2019s I worked as a Residence Hall Director at a University in Chicago for 4 years.\u00a0 My bedroom was right above the front door of the hall, and I could hear everything\u2026problem was that I didn\u2019t always want to hear what was going on because it could require action from me\u2026ugh.\u00a0 Now that I am a mom, I relate to feeling the responsibility of listening, and listening when I don\u2019t want to know!\u00a0 I have been somewhat convicted by Julian Treasure\u2019s book How to be Heard: Secrets for Powerful Speaking and Listening<\/em> he hits hard with the danger of headphones.\u00a0 I get through a night\u2019s sleep by having consistent noise in my ear so I don\u2019t wake at every moment I hear a noise.\u00a0 \u201cDelivering music at high volume deep into the ear for hours is a recipe for hearing damage\u201d, [1]<\/a> Ouch.\u00a0 \u201cIn 1859, Florence Nightingale wrote: \u2018Unnecessary noise is the cruelest absence of care that can be inflicted on sick or well.\u2019\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

When reading Julian Treasure\u2019s book, I expected it to be a public speaking book, which made me very interested to read this, but alas\u2026it was not until the very end of the book that this was addressed.\u00a0 I appreciate the amount of time the author spent on listening and listening consciously, because \u201cthe greater our island of knowledge, the greater the shore of ignorance\u201d.[3]<\/a>\u00a0 If we are to be heard, we must first listen.\u00a0 To be heard we must know who our audience is, what do they care about, where is their shore of ignorance?\u00a0 All of this comes from truly listening.\u00a0 Treasure listed quite a few acronyms to listen well.\u00a0 I appreciate these, but honestly when reading his book, I found connection to breath which is the very action that brings us to the present moment and conscious listening.<\/p>\n

\n

BREATH IN\u2026preparing to listen\u2026<\/p>\n

\n

Inner Listening. Treasure goes into this detail as this being the negative inner self critic and why we listen to it.\u00a0 We all have brokenness and patterns of thinking such as David Kahneman had in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow <\/em>as Treasure quotes \u201cThe experiencing self does our living, experiencing everything in the moment\u201d [4]<\/a>. \u201cThe remembering self-summarizes all this experience, interprets it and assigns meaning: it also overstates peaks and valleys and endings in it\u2019s version of our life experience.\u201d[5]<\/a>\u00a0 Breathe in.\u00a0 However, I believe fully that we all have an inner teacher who is worth listening to, Parker Palmer states when encouraged, the listeners can facilitate one to listen to this inner teacher by asking Open and Honest questions.\u00a0 When done it can \u201cbe a revolutionary experience for someone whose cynical view of humanity had continually been reinforced by the people to whom she complained.\u201d[6]<\/a> By listening attentively, we can help others hear their own inner teacher.<\/p>\n

\n

BREATH OUT, asking good questions…<\/p>\n

\n

Outer Listening, \u201cdefined as \u2018making meaning from sound\u2019. As you filter, you also interpret and create meaning.\u201d[7]<\/a>\u00a0 While listening, we must take in information and we simultaneously are processing what is being said, and interpreting, sometimes wrongly.\u00a0 \u201cYou fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations\u2026and yet you never fail to get them wrong,\u201d[8]<\/a> As Kathryn Shulz notices in her book Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error. <\/em>\u00a0To listen consciously we must recognize our own inner biases as we listen to what others are saying.\u00a0 Breath out.<\/p>\n

\n

BREATH IN, AGAIN..process and analyze communication but also your own bias\u2026<\/p>\n

\n

Gathering more information, we start to listen communally.\u00a0 Reading of Scripture, or maybe better yet, misreading, or selective reading of scripture is a common occurrence in the Christian circle.\u00a0 We like to take bits and pieces and quote them to suit our own understanding.\u00a0 The cure, I believe, to this individualization on scripture is Lectio Devina, which is listening to the words, listening to other read from their voice, hear a phrase, listen again, hear a word, listen to what others heard.\u00a0 This communal way of reading scripture is a gift, especially if you are with a diverse group of people.\u00a0 Treasure offers a variety of ways to listen creatively as well as communally as well in Chapter Four, such as \u201cloving listening, listening to children, listening to music, listening to nature, etc.\u201d[9]<\/a>.\u00a0 I especially love that last one, listening to nature.\u00a0 Have you ever been in the middle of nowhere and listen to the absolute silence?\u00a0 Most beautiful sound in the world.<\/p>\n

\n

And finally Breathe out again\u2026Speaking<\/p>\n

\n

One of my favorite quotes and I don\u2019t know who said it originally is \u201cnobody cares what you know until they know how much you care\u201d.\u00a0 All the breathing of listening can lend us to the place where we have earned the right to be heard and we come well prepared know what our audience knows and what they don\u2019t know so that we can speak into that space\u2026.and be heard.\u00a0 Chapter 6 gives us many tools and tricks to being a vocal master.\u00a0 This is a chapter I will be coming back to.\u00a0 In seminary I avoided a Pastoral Care degree because I did not want to take preaching\u2026here I am now a decade or probably more (I don\u2019t want to do that math), and I have preached my fair share of sermons and given a number of lectures in front of diverse groups.\u00a0 If this is so, then perhaps by the end of my Doctorate I\u2019ll be a comfortable if not completely competent writer.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Treasure, Julian. How to Be Heard: Secrets for Powerful Speaking and Listening. <\/em>(Coral Gables, Florida: Mango Publishing Group, 2017), 19.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Julian Treasure, How to be Heard<\/em>, 18.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Jason Clark, weekly quote to Doctorate of Leadership students, 2023.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Treasure, Julian. How to Be Heard: Secrets for Powerful Speaking and Listening. <\/em>(Coral Gables, Florida: Mango Publishing Group, 2017), 118.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Julian Treasure, How to be Heard<\/em>, 119.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Palmer, Parker J. A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life. <\/em>(San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2004), 53.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Treasure, Julian. How to Be Heard: Secrets for Powerful Speaking and Listening. <\/em>(Coral Gables, Florida: Mango Publishing Group, 2017), 110.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Schulz, Kathryn. Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error.<\/em> (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2010), 247.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Julian Treasure, How to be Heard, ch 4.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I suffer as a light sleeper\u2026it\u2019s rough.\u00a0 In my 20\u2019s I worked as a Residence Hall Director at a University in Chicago for 4 years.\u00a0 My bedroom was right above the front door of the hall, and I could hear everything\u2026problem was that I didn\u2019t always want to hear what was going on because it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":187,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2489,2713],"class_list":["post-32489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp02","tag-treasure","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/187"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32489"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32490,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32489\/revisions\/32490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}