Uncategorized – Grow Mindfulness

Sustaining a Daily Practice of Tai Chi

While my focus here is on Tai Chi practice, some of the principles I will discuss have relevance to other forms of mindfulness practice. For some time now, I have been practising Tai Chi on and off, with a few periods of sustained daily practice over several months. In my current sustained effort at daily practice, I have changed a number of strategies to help me maintain the momentum of practice – and often it is about developing a momentum like I have been able to achieve with my blog (over 500 posts).

I am acutely aware of the research that establishes the benefits of Tai Chi for my physical and mental health and overall sporting fitness. I devoured Dr. Peter Wayne’s research into the active ingredients of Tai Chi. So, intellectually, I know about the many benefits of Tai Chi. However, sustained daily practice requires a commitment – an exercise of both mind and heart, incorporating an emotional attachment to the end goal(s).

Strategies you could adopt to sustain a daily practice

Commitment to a daily practice also involves flexibility, adaptability and adjusting your thinking. The strategies identified in the following list are based on what is working for me at the moment:

Flexible timing – most of what you read about habit forming advises you to adopt a set time each day for your practice. However, some days it is not possible to achieve a set time owing to other commitments of work or family (or writing a blog). The tendency then is to drop the practice for the day, rather than adopt a more flexible approach and work out a time when you can fit in the practice despite other commitments taking up your allocated time slot. Being flexible about timing and location enables you to sustain your daily practice.
Prioritising – as you build up awareness of how important your daily practice is to your overall life, you can tell yourself to give your practice a priority in your daily schedule – in other words, no matter what else you have to do, somehow you have to fit in your daily practice. It becomes a “must do” rather than a “nice-to-do”.
Establishing a personal mnemonic – capture the benefits of your practice in the form of a mnemonic so that you can quickly recall the benefits as an added motivator. This requires you to research the benefits of your daily practice and to keep them uppermost in your mind.
Mentally linking the benefits to a recent or forthcoming event – relevancy aids motivation, so if you can think about something that has happened or is about to happen and focus on what benefits your practice would bring, you are adding to your motivation. For example, if you have recently heard about the impact of Alzheimer’s disease on a relative, you are reminded of the benefit of Tai Chi for improving your mind and body and developing your mind-body connection. If you are about to play a game of tennis, you could think about the benefits that Tai Chi would bring to your tennis playing, e.g., timing, coordination, balance, flexibility, and concentration.
Being adaptable as circumstances change – the need to work from home as a result of enforced isolation brought on by the pandemic, has necessitated a lot of adjustments, especially when both partners work from home. As part of your negotiations about how things will operate in this home/work environment, you can negotiate time(s) and location for your daily practice. Instead of putting off your practice, you could choose to close the door of your practice room for the required period so as not to disturb, or be disturbed by, your partner. Negotiating arrangements with your partner is an essential aspect of maintaining positive mental health when forced to work from home.

Reflection

Over time circumstances change, so to maintain a daily practice requires flexibility, adaptability, and strategies to keep the benefits of your practice at the forefront of your mind (so that you will have the motivation to overcome obstacles as they arise). As you grow in mindfulness through Tai Chi, meditation, yoga or other mindfulness practices, you can become more self-aware about what causes you to procrastinate or put off your practice. You can also strengthen your motivation through the reinforcement that comes with practice and the development of unconscious competence in your practice activity.

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Image by MichaelRaab from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Barriers to Silence: Discomfort of Others

In a previous post, I discussed the challenges Christine Jackman experienced in attempting to find silence as a retreat from the busyness of her life. I explained then that she encountered a number of barriers early on in her quest – her own negative self-stories, her worry about the perceived expectations and thoughts of others and her own habituated behaviours. She found silence in participating in a number of retreats at Benedictine monasteries but the challenge then was how to sustain the practice of silence once she returned to her normal life as an investigative journalist. In her book, Turning Down the Noise: The Quiet Power of Silence in a Busy World, Christine identifies another barrier – the discomfort experienced by others when she mentioned her pursuit of silence.

Discomfort of others as a barrier

Christine writes about her experience when invited by a friend to join a book club meeting. As usually happens at such an event, people started sharing what they were doing. When Christine’s turn came to speak, she debated with herself whether or not to mention her silent retreat but decided to go ahead. The responses she received confirmed her expectations and the reason for her initial reticence.

Christine was met by a stunned silence when she mentioned her pursuit of a silence of a different kind. The other participants were somewhat speechless – despite being intelligent and well-informed. Her admission about seeking silence in her life was considered too left-field. As Christine commented in her book, her pursuit of silence was unfamiliar and too challenging to those in “a world where being busy is considered a virtue”, or a sign of productivity.

This discomfort of people with being silent and “doing nothing” was brought home again to me in a recent conversation with a friend who has been a lifetime sailor, making extended sailing trips during her life such as from Australia to America. In a discussion with friends, she mentioned that she had just returned (by boat) from a 3-months sailing trip from Brisbane to the Whitsunday Islands in the Great Barrier Reef (around 1,000 kilometres).

My friend was met with a stunned silence and then the inveterate questioning, “But what did you do all that time? “How did you occupy yourself?” They could not fathom spending anywhere near that amount of time being still and doing nothing. My friend, being a very experienced long-distance sailor, was able to respond, “I was just being – taking in the water, the whales, the sunrises and sunsets, the fish, the horizon” – she had been experiencing the unfathomable benefits of silence and “natural awareness”.

Neither Christine nor my sailing friend were put off by the stunned silences or interminable questioning of others. Christine noted that she was more perturbed by her inability to articulate why she was engaged in what was considered an “unusual thing” – the pursuit of silence. She found that she could not muster a “compelling , rational argument” for something that “defies conventional description”. So, someone lacking the deep experience of silence and/or having a limited conviction of the benefits of silence, can be easily put off by the discomfort of others who actually begin to wonder about your sanity – because your behaviour and commitment are so counter-cultural.

Reflection

The expectations of others and the associated discomfort can play on our mind whether they are expressed covertly (by looks or silence) or overtly (by words and actions). To maintain our commitment to silence as with any other attempt to reduce the busyness of our life, we need to have the conviction, resilience, and courage to persist despite the discomfort of others who want us to “be like them” and not “stand out from the crowd”.

I recall working with a group of managers as part of our managerial mindfulness training program. One of the participants, a nurse unit manager, indicated that she worked from 7am to 7pm every working day. When undertaking a reflective exercise on what messages she was conveying by her behaviour, she realised that her own habit of working very long hours was contributing to an unhealthy work environment – she was conveying that “busyness and extended working hours are viewed as signs of productivity” and therefore desirable.

However, as soon as she implemented a plan to reduce her working hours, her staff were uncomfortable and questioned her about “why she had lost her motivation?” In their view, if you were not continually busy and working long hours, you lacked commitment. Fortunately, the positive benefits in terms of work-life balance and her unerring conviction of the benefits for her staff of reducing her working hours were enough to enable her to sustain her new practice of working reasonable hours.

The evidence is mounting that as we grow in mindfulness through stillness and silence, we begin to experience wide-ranging benefits such as clarity, calmness, and resilience. The dilemma, however, is that thinking about silence will not realise the benefits – we have to experience being still and silent in our daily lives to achieve its benefits. Without the reinforcement of the benefits, it is difficult to sustain the practice and commitment in the face of the incessant discomfort of others. Meditation practice, incorporating stillness and silence, builds positive habits and sustained practice brings enduring benefits.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Developing Compassionate Action through Mindfulness and Listening to Personal Stories

Tara Brach recently spoke to Jon Kabat-Zinn on the theme of How Mindfulness Can Heal the World. This discussion took place as part of the online Radical Compassion Challenge held over ten days in January 2020. Jon’s central theme was that that it is not enough “to sit on the cushion” and meditate at a time when the world is experiencing such suffering, injustice, racial divisions and hatred; the challenge is to take compassionate action, activated by our growing awareness of our own reality and that of the world around us developed through mindfulness.

Many doors to one room

Jon argued that there are “many doors to the one room” – not only in terms of how we deal with the “agitation” we experience in today’s world but also in terms of how we individually respond by taking action. Mindfulness can help us deal with our fear and anxiety either through experiencing that fear at a fully emotional and bodily level or by examining the fear conceptually to see its origins and its manifestation in our behaviour e.g. by blaming or judging. The compassionate action we take will depend on our circumstances, our abilities and our self-awareness. Jon, for example, stated that the Mindfulness- Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program he developed was a political and compassionate action designed to relieve suffering at a time when professors at his institution, MIT, were developing weapons of mass destruction for the Vietnam War. Tara, too, has taken compassionate action in many ways, including the establishment of Sounds True, a multimedia publishing company with a mission “To Wake Up the World”.

The role of personal stories and mindful listening

Both Jon and Tara highlighted the need to hear the stories of people who are less privileged than ourselves (e.g. in terms of their race, education, background, mental health, intellectual and physical abilities, careers, opportunities and overall wellness). While they acknowledge that mindfulness is necessary to develop awareness of ourselves and the world around us, it is insufficient by itself to stimulate compassionate action. Personal stories of suffering in its many forms can help us identify how we can take action and provide the emotional stimulus to act. Stories in the mental health arena, such as What It’s Like to Survive Depression … Again and Again, can stimulate compassionate action.

Mindfulness can help us to develop our life purpose, build resilience and develop creativity but the real challenge is to channel these into compassionate action. We are sure to encounter blockages such as our unrealistic expectations, biased assumptions, fear of failure and mistakes, but our growing awareness can help to overcome these. The challenge is to find the momentum to begin and to revisit our motivation to sustain our effort and have a real impact on some aspect of the suffering of others.

Reflection

As we grow in mindfulness, we become more aware of the suffering and pain of people in the world around us. This awareness can translate into compassionate action if we listen mindfully to the stories of people who are less privileged than ourselves. Self-awareness can heighten our acknowledgement of how much we are privileged in so many ways and help us to identify both an arena for personal action and a point of intervention. This will demand overcoming procrastination and the fears that hold our inaction in place.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

“Transformative Pyramid” Applied to Meeting the Needs of Customers

Chip Conley developed the “transformative pyramid” as a reflective framework for his leadership philosophy and approach. He had created it by adapting the work of Viktor Frankl and Abraham Maslow who focused on the hierarchy of human needs. Applied to employees, the Transformative Pyramid translates into leadership action to meet basic security needs (such as adequate and fair pay), recognition for contribution to the organisation and providing clarity around the meaningfulness of their work. Chip was very focused on enabling leaders to grow and develop through reflection and to develop a growth mindset in their transition to midlife. Associated with this mindset change is the need for leaders in midlife to learn through curiosity from millennials in their organisation.

Chip not only applied his Transformative Pyramid to employees but also to investors and customers. He suggested that in relation to customers, businesses too often benchmarked against the lowest common denominator which in his model represents the security needs of customers. His pyramid, however, suggests that great companies can move up the pyramid of need and really engage customers to the point where they become intensely loyal and market the company themselves by their word-of-mouth “advertising – sharing their great experience with others in their family and social networks.

Transformative Pyramid applied to customer needs

Chip explained in a podcast interview with Tami Simon that the Transformative Pyramid when applied to customers, involved the same three levels as when the pyramid is applied to employees – survival, success and transformation. However, each of the levels has a different meaning when applied to customers. “Survival” relates to meeting customers’ expectations (a basic need also for business survival); “success” in this context involves meeting the desires of customers; and at the highest level, “transformation”, means to differentiate and expand through meeting an “unrecognised need of the customer”.

Identifying and meeting a need of customers that has been unrecognised and unmet is the basis of Chip’s approach to marketing as explained in his book, Marketing That Matters. Chip gives the example of one of his boutique hotels, Hotel Vitale, that developed a yoga studio on its top-level floor and provided free morning yoga classes. This met an unexpressed and unrecognised need of travelling businesswomen who wanted to maintain their health to counteract the wear and tear of business travelling. The convenience of being able to do yoga before work without leaving the hotel premises was a real selling point. Up until this point, boutique hotels were very much designed as “men’s clubs”- meeting the needs of male business travellers.

Innovation and transformation

Chip drew on his experience as owner and CEO of 52 boutique hotels to put forward what he described as The Three Key Rules Around Innovation and Disruption. He spoke about (1) foreshadowing that occurs before an innovation (some companies begin to move in the direction of the innovation but their early efforts are incomplete or inadequate); (2) innovators fulfill “an underlying human need that has not been met” adequately or comprehensively; and (3) established companies eventually catch up and adopt the innovation (and we can see this happening daily in the growth of “gluten-free” and “vegan” products in our major supermarkets, previously the province of specialist (organic) stores).

However, being innovative and creative by departing from established practice takes courage and bravery. An Australian example is Karen Quinlan who introduced fashion as a key differentiating theme of the Bendigo Art Gallery. Karen recognised that over 80% of visitors to art galleries were women and they were very interested in fashion and its history. She set about meeting this “unrecognised need” – a need that art galleries around the world had not met because they were almost exclusively managed by male Art Directors who were blind to this need of their predominant customer base. Bendigo Art gallery now enjoys global recognition for its innovative approach and theme-based fashion exhibitions.

Chip points out that deep listening to customers can lead to identifying needs that have not been met. He suggests that what is important in innovation is understanding customer psychographics – their interests, passions, values and who/what they identify with. He suggests that the great companies develop the capacity to effectively “mind-read” their customers. To do this their leaders have to be fully present to customers and notice their inclinations, behaviours and self-expression.

Reflection

As we grow in mindfulness, we can develop curiosity, creativity and innovation and begin to understand our own needs and those of our customers/clients. We can progressively move from trying to make ourselves appear interesting to being genuinely interested in our customers and their unmet needs. This requires mindful listening, an openness to new ideas (from whatever source) and the courage to act on our insights and avoid procrastination through fear of departing from the established norm.

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Image by Angelo Esslinger from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

A Framework for Reflection for Organisation Leaders

Chip Conley, author and hospitality entrepreneur, emphasised the importance of reflection, wisdom and lifelong learning for leaders. He created the Modern Elder Academy to further that end. He was especially interested in making the workplace a place for fullment, inspiration and self-actualization for employees – which he maintained was the means to achieve a sustainably successful organisation. Chip acknowledged that his leadership philosophy was heavily influenced by the writing of two men Viktor Frankl and Abraham Maslow.

Viktor Frankl through his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, impressed on Chip the importance and power of a meaningful life for leaders and the critical role of leaders in providing an environment that is conducive to employees developing a “sense of purpose and meaning”. Research has confirmed that a meaningful life is foundational to a person’s health, happiness and overall well-being.

Abraham Maslow and his work on developing a Hierarchy of Needs had a very profound effect on Chip and his approach to leadership, both as an owner/entrepreneur and a mentor to other leaders, especially the young founders of Airbnb. Maslow’s work gave Chip an insight into how to develop a reflective framework to guide his own role as a leader and to assist other leaders to create meaningful work for employees.

A framework for reflection for organisational leaders – the transformative pyramid

Chip explained his reflection framework in a TED Talk© given in 2010 titled, Measuring What Makes Life Worthwhile. He elaborated further on the evolution of the framework and how to put it into practice in a podcast interview with Tami Simon of Sounds True. He was particularly concerned about the challenge of applying Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to business and the management of employees.

What Chip realised is that, for employees, meaning provided inspiration which in turn developed intrinsic motivation. He came up with the idea of a framework which he called the “transformative pyramid” – built on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which was illustrated as a five-level pyramid with physiological needs at the bottom of the pyramid and self-actualization at the top.

To simplify things and make his framework easy to implement, Chip developed his transformative pyramid as a three-level pyramid with “survival” at the bottom, “success” in the middle and “transformation” at the top. He pointed out that many leaders focus only on the bottom of the pyramid, the survival needs, by using all their energy to create non-sustainable, extrinsic motivation in the form of pay, bonuses and financial rewards while ignoring what truly influences and shapes employee motivation.

In Chip’s model, “success” relates to recognition that an employee is achieving their role and contributing to the organisation. He understood that positive feedback was a powerful motivator and that people often left their jobs because of the way they were treated, including feeling a sense that they had been “taken for granted” and their efforts were unrecognised. Chip explained, by way of example, that during the dot-com crash, he introduced a process of recognition at his weekly managers’ meetings that not only provided some positive element to what was a relatively sober discussion but also helped to spread recognition and positivity throughout the organisation.

The initiating process for giving recognition was simple – he introduced a ten-minute period at the end of each meeting where a manager would mention someone in one of the teams who “deserved recognition” for something they had done in the workplace or in the field. This recognition was communicated personally to the individual involved who felt that they were “noticed” and respected, and their contribution was appreciated. Chip suggested that great companies are differentiated by the fact that they are “first-class noticers”.

At the highest level of the transformation pyramid is personal reframing of work from “just a job” to something that is meaningful and worthwhile. Chip suggested that this can be achieved by helping employees to understand the higher purpose of the organisation – the inspirational “why”, and to find meaning in what they do by understanding the connection between their daily work and something broader that makes a difference in people’s lives.

Chip indicated that he learned this lesson from a maid who had worked for a long time in one of his hotels. When he asked her why she seemed so happy doing mundane work every day (such as cleaning the toilets), she said that she was able “to create joy” for people who stayed in their hotel away from their home and often without their family or partner. She was able to mentally connect what she did every day to a “noble purpose”. This realisation and reframing were “transformative” for her – putting her mundane work in a totally different light and acting as a source of intrinsic motivation.

Chip encapsulated his “transformation pyramid” and its underlying principles in his book, PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow. He encouraged leaders to use his framework to reflect on their relationships with their employees, customers and investors. Since the first edition of the book, many organisations worldwide in different industries have used his framework to transform their businesses. In particular, they have found innovative ways to recognise the contribution of their employees.

Reflection

It is often the simplest ideas that have the greatest impact. Chip demonstrated that focusing on intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation was the way forward to transform companies and he proved this through his own roles as founder and CEO of Joie de Vivre and as mentor to the founders of Airbnb. In the process, he addressed one of the key underlying problems associated with the growth of depression – the loss of connection to meaningful work. As we grow in mindfulness, we can increase our understanding of leadership and what is meaningful in life for us and others, and notice, appreciate and provide recognition to people we encounter who contribute in whatever way to our own welfare and that of our organisations. Noticing, appreciating and giving recognition require us to be present in the moment – a key aspect of mindfulness. Being present builds awareness of our self and others.

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Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Lifelong Learning through Reflection

Ortrun Zuber-Skerritt and Richard Teare in their edited book, Lifelong Action Learning for Community Development, highlight reflection as core to action learning and lifelong learning. Hospitality entrepreneur and author, Chip Conley is an exemplar of lifelong learning through reflection. In his podcast interview with Tami Simon, he emphasised the role of reflection in his entrepreneurial career. Chip had a secret process of recording his learnings in a weekly bulleted list based on his reflections about the previous week and what he learned from each significant encounter. His reflective Wisdom Books in the form of notebooks were developed over many years and provided the ideas for his five published books on leadership, entrepreneurship, peak organisational performance, psychology and marketing.

Mutual mentoring – the Modern Elder

Chip was the founder and CEO of a chain of boutique hotels, Joie de Vivre. He sold them after 24 years following a near-death experience a few years earlier. This “flatlining” experience was the catalyst for him to think about what he wanted to do with the rest of his life and also changed his orientation from an efficiency-driven “to do list” person to a “to be list” person who was prepared to slow down and appreciate beauty and aesthetics.

He came to a clearer understanding of the difference between intelligence and wisdom and began to repurpose his life around sharing his insights and encouraging people to develop wisdom. Reg Revans, the father of action learning, had also highlighted the difference between cleverness and wisdom and pointed out that wisdom, not cleverness, is necessary when confronted with unfamiliar conditions or situations. For Reg, admitting what we do not know is the starting point for the development of true wisdom.

Acknowledging what he did not know became a critical component of Chip’s new career move after the sale of his boutique hotel chain. He had been approached by the three founders of Airbnb to work fulltime in the company as a mentor and strategic adviser. He found himself as someone in his fifties mentoring people in their twenties. This led to a mutual mentoring arrangement where he shared his knowledge and experience re strategy and marketing in the hospitality industry and gained knowledge from the founders about the digital world and its impact on business management and growth.

Chip wrote his book Wisdom at Work: The Making of a Modern Elder to “share his experience of being both a mentor and an intern”. Jack Welch, when CEO of General Electrics (an action learning-based company), also employed the concept of “mutual mentoring” between senior executives and young technological experts within the company.

The Modern Elder Academy

This experience of mutual mentoring led Chip to establish The Modern Elder Academy to enable people to make the midlife transition in a way that was enriching for themselves and others. Through his personal experience and insight, he recognised that there was an unmet need to help people in midlife to transition to their new reality (whether that be impending retirement, role as a carer, transitioning to a new career or experiencing the onset of chronic illness). He maintained that rituals, training and tools existed for other transitions in life (such as puberty, graduation from school or university or marriage) but not exist for those who were transitioning to the midlife stage (35-70).

The Modern Elder Academy is designed as a “place where people cultivate and harvest their wisdom” and “reset, restore and repurpose” their life. Chip’s academy, described in a Forbes article as a “Cool School for Midlifers”, is very different to any other academy and incorporates learning entirely new skills such as surfing and bread making and incorporates the development of mindfulness through a “silent contemplation park” and periods devoted to meditation, reflection, yoga, “wisdom circles”, appreciating the beauty of nature, and a desert-based vision quest (in the extended version only).

One of the core challenges people experience at the Elder Academy is what Chip terms “midlife edit” – letting go of old beliefs and patterns and acquiring a “growth mindset” where the emphasis is on getting rid of baggage, developing a flexible mindset and focusing on self-improvement and personal growth. Cliff explains that his experience of mutual mentoring led him to adjust his mindset from that of a CEO and industry leader to an “Intern”, to acknowledge that he needed to learn about the digital world of business from millennials and to shift from “being interesting to being interested” – a transition that requires deep listening. Participants who complete the one-week “curriculum” receive a “Certificate in Mindset Management”.

Reflection

We can grow in mindfulness at any stage of our life. However, what Chip offers through the Modern Elder Academy is a structured way of developing mindfulness, processes for changing fixed mindsets and an opportunity to repurpose our midlife in this transition period. The added advantage is the community dimension – making this journey with others and developing a deep sense of connectedness to nature and others (by sharing our common humanity, midlife challenges and growing wisdom).

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Image by Benjamin Balazs from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Deepening the Mind-Body Connection through Tai Chi

In the very early stages of this blog I discussed Tai Chi as a pathway to mindfulness. I also highlighted the challenges I experienced in maintaining daily practice of Tai Chi along with meditation and writing this blog, when I still had a range of professional and personal commitments to fulfill on a regular basis. I concluded then that keeping the benefits of Tai Chi at the forefront of my mind, aligning my Tai Chi practice with the timing of my highest energy levels (I’m a morning person) and continuously reading and writing about Tai Chi would build my motivation for daily practice.

In 2018, I explored the benefits of Tai Chi for the mind-body connection based mainly on research that had been conducted at various centres of research at UCLA such as those focused on psychoneuroimmunology and East-West Medicine. This current post highlights the work of Dr. Peter Wayne who is associated with the Harvard Medical School.

Peter Wayne, who has spent decades practising, studying and researching Tai Chi, stresses the power of Tai Chi to deepen the mind-body connection. Peter is the Research Director for the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine and the founder of The Tree of Life Tai Chi Center.

The eight active ingredients of Tai Chi

In 2013, Peter published a book, The Harvard Medical School Guide to Tai Chi, summarizing the research around Tai Chi and highlighting what he calls the “eight active ingredients of Tai Chi” which he had developed through his own research and the teaching of Tai Chi Masters. These ingredients focus on the “biological mechanisms” that contribute to the wide-ranging benefits of Tai Chi including those related to cognition, breathing and neuromuscular control. Peter points out that this focus on active ingredients helps him in multiple ways – in shaping a curriculum for teaching Tai Chi, in communicating with members of the medical profession and in establishing clinical trials.

In an interview with Dan Kleiman about his research and teaching, Peter explained that his early study of evolutionary biology and ecological modelling helped him to develop a systems perspective that is holistic in orientation and strongly akin to Chinese Medicine. His orientation to integrative medicine and his mind-body perspective on Tai Chi flow from this early academic training and related research experience. In a technical presentation Neuroscience in the Body: Perspectives at the Periphery, Peter highlights the downside of having multiple medical specialisations that contribute to “reductionist thinking” and blind us to the whole-body benefits of interventions such as Tai Chi.

The eight active ingredients of Tai Chi identified in his book highlight his integrative, systems perspective:

Mindfulness
Intention
Structural integration
Relaxation (of the mind and body)
Strengthening and building flexibility
Freer breathing
Social interaction and community (if done in a group)
Embodied philosophy and ritual.

Deepening the mind-body connection through Tai Chi

Peter explained in his interview with Dan Kleiman that the integrative nature of Tai Chi and its capacity to deepen the mind-body connection is demonstrated in the focus on mindful breathing (which is common to all martial arts). He pointed out that mindful breathing requires improved posture; positively impacts your nervous system, cardiovascular system and mood; and stills what Seth Godin calls the “Lizard Brain” through enhancing the power of focus. In Peter’s view, an ecological perspective on health recognises that all these processes of body and mind are intertwined and mutually interdependent.

In his neuroscience presentation mentioned above, Peter described Tai Chi as a “multi-component mind-body exercise”. He stressed the interaction of mind-body through Tai Chi by stating that it “integrates slow intentional movement with breathing and multiple cognitive skills”. The cognitive skills he refers to include body awareness, focus and visioning using imagery.

He illustrated the benefits of the mind-body connection involved in Tai Chi by mentioning several research studies that show two key outcomes (1) the primary risk factor in falls of people over 65 is “fear of falling” and (2) Tai Chi has been shown to reduce the fear of falling by 35%. Tai Chi achieves this result not only by strengthening muscles and improving coordination and sensation (especially in the feet), but also by reducing falling anxiety, increasing exercise self-efficacy and improving the “executive function” of the brain. Peter suggests that Tai Chi is a “gateway exercise” – increasing people’s confidence to try other things that lead to overall wellbeing.

Reflection

Research into the impacts of Tai Chi reinforce its power to improve our mind and body and the mind-body connection that is so critical for daily functioning, quality of life and longevity. I have already identified the personal benefits that motivate me to practise Tai Chi. However, Peter’s research and presentation has increased my desire to improve the frequency of my Tai Chi practice.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation, research and reflection, we gain a better understanding of the mind-body connection, the impacts of our thinking and self-stories on our intentions and the blockages that impede putting our resolutions into effect, particularly at this time of the year (with the start of 2020). I can look forward to improved Tai Chi practice and the multiple personal benefits that can accrue (not the least of these being to improve my tennis game!).

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Image by Antonika Chanel from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

How to Build Leadership Agility

Ginny Whitelaw maintains that there are four energy patterns that leaders can adopt that enable them to achieve organisational change and influence outcomes. She explains that the four patterns operate not just at a behavioural level but are reflected in thoughts, emotions, movement and the nervous system. While the patterns identified reflect the four key factors in other forms of psychometric assessment, what is different in this approach is a whole-body orientation that acknowledges the mind-body connection and moves beyond self-awareness to self-regulation. Ginny has jointly developed an instrument, the FEBI (Focus Energy Balance Indicator), which enables a leader to assess their preferred pattern of behaviour. She offers a free mini-FEBI survey on her website as well as in her book.

The four energy patterns

The four energy patterns described in her book The Zen Leader are identified as Driver, Organizer, Collaborator and Visionary. The Driver is characterised by intensity and an unerring focus on outcomes; the Organizer is contained, orderly and disciplined; the Collaborator emphasises connection, fun and free movement; and the Visionary is the big picture person who readily sees patterns and takes quantum leaps in imagination. Ginny provides a detailed explanation of each pattern in her book and gives examples of how they operate in practice for a leader.

Ginny maintains that we each have a preferred energy pattern that reflects our personality and that represents our comfort zone, an energy pattern in which we have acquired a level of unconscious competence. Therein lies the problem – much of this patterned thinking, feeling, movement and behaviour operate at a sub-conscious level. Our strengths can become our “derailers” in times of stress or new role demands. Ginny maintains that to achieve leadership effectiveness and to lead fearlessly, we need to develop agility in our capacity to choose an energy pattern that is appropriate to the situation, e.g. in a CEO role we need to be able to adopt the energy pattern of the visionary.

How to build leadership agility

Ginny argues in her book that as a leader you need to flip “from playing to your strengths to strengthening your play”. She uses the analogy of a team to represent the agility involved and suggests that you need to “build your bench” – have the full range of skill sets at your disposal so that you can lead effectively in any situation. This means progressively developing energy patterns that are different to your preferred pattern. She provides a simple exercise to help you identify your strengths as well as “one thing that you often wish you were better at” – a potential starting point for building a new energy pattern beyond your preferred mode (p.110).

In a previous post we discussed the importance of leadership agility on one dimension, namely emotional agility. Ginny’s whole-body approach, reflected in the four energy patterns and measured by the FEBI instrument, offers a multi-faceted way to develop leadership agility. In her book (pp.122-123), she offers many examples of three key areas that can be worked on to develop any of the four energy patterns:

Work Behaviours – recognises that energy patterns are manifested in workplace behaviours; examples for developing a particular energy pattern include identify top 3 priorities (Driver); set aside time for planning (Organizer); build your network (Collaborator); make time for reflection (Visionary).
Physical Activities – the four energy patterns also have physical manifestations that can be cultivated as a way to develop patterns other than your preferred pattern, e.g. using the pushing motion and focus of “hard and fast” bicycling (Driver); adopting the movement of shaping and structuring through organizing a space (Organizer); using the rhythmic movement of ballroom dancing (Collaborator); engaging the expansive movement of Tai Chi (Visionary). Ginny contends that different physical behaviours can lead to “different patterns of energy” and she illustrates this in her video explanation of the FEBI assessment.
Sensory Support – the energy patterns find expression in the things that we value, that create a positive feeling in us and that build our energy; examples of ways to develop a particular pattern using sensory support can involve office design – stark and sparse (Driver); neat and tidy (Organizer); fun and colourful (Collaborator); harmonious with nature (Visionary). It is relatively easy to conceive how pictures or images could help to develop sensory support for an energy pattern that you are attempting to develop to increase your leadership agility.

Ginny also suggests that another way to reinforce the development of a new energy pattern is to use a symbol that could be placed on your desk. For example, she used a playdoh figure to remind her to move beyond her preferred Driver orientation to the playful energy of the Collaborator. Others have used crystals, pictures, sculptures or a poem to serve as a reminder of a focus for personal development.

Reflection

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation and reflection, we can increase our self-awareness by understanding our preferred energy pattern and its many manifestations in our daily life. We can also adopt Ginny’s suggestions re self-regulation through the development of new energy patterns.

I completed the min-FEBI survey in her book and found that my dominant energy pattern was “Visionary” which was supported by three less-developed (but relatively equal) patterns of Driver, Organizer and Collaborator. This result aligned with my personal knowledge and experience. I have frequently chosen leadership roles requiring visionary energy over other roles. I have also been able to partially develop the other three energy patterns through the variety of roles, physical activities and workplace behaviours I have undertaken over the many years of my working life.

On reflection, I realised too that I am developing my Driver energy pattern by maintaining my focus when writing and by setting myself the task of completing three or four blog posts per week. However, I have come to realise that pursuing this relentlessly to a set time deadline (a Driver pattern) has limited my time for other physical activities that build alternative energy patterns (Tai Chi for my visionary energy; meditation and walking for my Organizer energy). The key seems to be to find the right balance between these energy patterns as well as to be able to use the right pattern at the right time (or to adjust if a pattern is not working in a leadership situation).

I have also realised that my lack of Organizer energy is reflected in my untidy and messy office. While this office “design” (many stacks of paper making it difficult to find things) manifests my Visionary energy orientation, it makes it difficult for me to function efficiently. So, this is an area that I must work on for this year (it will take that long to get organised!!). I will also need to seriously adopt the Bullet Diary Method (of course, I have the resources for this already). I can console myself that I am building towards increased Organizer energy by listening to Mozart while I write this blog (as it helps me to organise my thoughts and writing). P.S. I have not been able to readily see my reminder symbol, a symmetrical crystal, because of my messy office – there is a lesson here!

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Image by mediamonk from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Your Brain: A Source of Wonder in the Game of Life

The brain is amazing when you think about how much information it processes and how that influences our emotional and bodily response. We have deeply embedded neural pathways that serve as short-cuts for determining an appropriate response. However, our self-stories shaped by early childhood experiences can distort our perception and lead to inappropriate responses to situations that serve as triggers.

I am always amazed at the functioning of the brain when I play tennis. When you think about it, the brain is taking in so many variables when a person serves or hits to you (all absorbed at an exceptional speed):

wind speed and direction
level of lighting
ambient sounds
sound of the ball on the racquet of the server
speed of the ball
nature of the spin on the ball (e.g. top-spin, slice, backspin)
relational information (where you are in the court and where your opponents are positioned)
attention level and readiness of your opponents
elevation of the ball (impacting the landing and bounce)
expected landing point of the ball
the nature and height of the bounce of the ball.

When you are receiving the tennis ball and returning your shot, your brain is determining how to respond to the information absorbed when the ball is hit by your opponent. Again, your self-stories come into play here. The inner game of tennis is critical as your self-belief impacts the choices you make re shot selection.

When you think about it, you must make an instant decision about how you are going to respond to the serve/shot by your opponent:

the nature of your shot (e.g. forehand or backhand)
direction of your shot
speed and spin of your shot
positioning of your body for your returning shot.

How is it that your body responds unconsciously in some situations and does the perfect shot? For example, when the ball is hit deep to your backhand side and your opponents are at the net, you automatically do a backhand, half-volley lob into the open court. Some key influences here are your level of tennis competence (e.g. unconsciously competent as in the example situation) and memory embedded in your body. Body memory is itself a complex process involving different elements such as proprioception (e.g. the capacity to know where a part of the body is such as the hand when you cannot see it).

Body memory is reinforced when you go to sit in the driver’s seat of your car and land with a thud (after your 6 feet 3 inches son has lowered the seat to suit his driving position). Another example is when you are trying to put the forks away after dishwashing and someone has changed the positioning of the forks in the cutlery drawer (the other forks are not where you unconsciously attempt to place the clean ones). The role of body memory in relation to trauma is well researched and documented which is why somatic meditation often plays a key role in recovery from trauma.

Reflection

The brain is a source of wonder and yet we take it for granted so much of the time. As we grow in mindfulness and awareness through meditation, mindfulness practices and reflection, we can better appreciate the complexity and ingenuity of our brain, its role in our daily living and sporting activities and express gratitude for the wonder of it. We are also better able to manage mistakes we make when playing tennis or undertaking other activities requiring complex information processing.

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Image by John Hain from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Developing Our Inner Life as a Leader

As we grow in mindfulness, we develop our inner life – realising a deeper self-awareness, developing increased understanding of the nature and strength of our personal triggers and building a greater understanding of, and tolerance for, other people’s differences. This enriched inner life builds our capacity for insight, resilience, creativity and integration of our words and actions with our life purpose – all essential traits of effective leadership. Ginny Whitelaw, in her book The Zen Leader, describes this reframing and reorientation of a leader as a flip from “Out There” to “In Here”.

We create our world “out there”

Ginny explains that what we consider to be “out there” (external reality) is, in fact, a projection of our inner world. Drawing on her study of biophysics, martial arts and Zen philosophy, Ginny marshals her arguments to demonstrate that our external world as we perceive and experience it, is mostly of our own making. Her argument revolves around several key insights:

Limited perception – Ginny points out that our human capacity is to perceive external reality in two or three dimensions (the latter achieved mainly by artists and architects). She maintains that our external world exists in ten dimensions, most of which are outside our awareness.
Cultural filters – our national culture, the world we are raised in, creates filters that shape our perceptions, beliefs, words and actions. Naomi Osaka (Japanese tennis star), for example, explained in an interview for the Brisbane International that she was bemused by the enthusiasm, boisterousness and naturalness of Australian tennis spectators – which she pleasantly experienced as a sharp contrast to the “politeness” of Japanese tennis spectators.
Personal triggers – what we experience individually and differentially as negative triggers is shaped by our early life experiences which heighten our sensitivity to different interactions – a sensitivity that can be reflected in a constant need for control, an overwhelming drive to prove that we are “better than”, an obsessive need to please so that we are liked, or the continuous perception of criticism of ourselves by others. These negative triggers are often the result of distorted perception of our external world – for example, we see criticism where none is intended or where the opposite is intended.
Expectations – our expectations reflect our self-image and influence how we experience others’ interactions with us. Ginny maintains that through our expectations “we’ve pre-tuned our senses to notice only certain things and to place certain interpretations on them”. Our expectations that reside “in here” create the world we experience as “out there”.

So, what we experience as “out there” is highly subjective and is of our own creation – we are constantly making our own world. There are inherent deficiencies and dangers for leaders in assuming that what we perceive and experience, is “real” and is the only reality. Reg Revans, the father of the action learning approach to leadership development, warns us that if we assume that we know what is real we are going to cause trouble for ourselves and others. Politicians frequently attempt to shape our perceptions of reality by stating unequivocally that “the reality is…” (invariably something of their own making that serves their purpose).

Developing our inner life (as a leader)

In her book on Zen leadership, Ginny offers some penetrating exercises that address our individual distortions of “out there” and enrich our inner life (what is “in here”) thus empowering us to “lead fearlessly” but attuned to others’ reality and own purpose. These reflective exercises fall into several categories:

What World do You Make? – this exercise built around personal skills and traits as well as values that you hold strongly, develops an insight into how you shape your world in a typical week. (p.86)
Turning a Difficult Relationship – involves reflecting on an interaction with curiosity and openness to ascertain what you personally brought to the interaction (in terms of perceptions and triggers). It entails looking into the mirror, discovering the fear at the root of your perception and behaviour and “claiming your power” by naming and facing your fear. (p.97)
Sitting Meditation as a Core Practice – Ginny offers a guided meditation based on sitting and grounding that releases tension, develops deep body-mind relaxation and provides the opportunity to gain greater awareness of what is “in here” and “out there” for you. (p.101)

Ginny’s book is rich with insights and personal exercises and reflections to deepen self-awareness, enhance self-regulation and develop ways to empower yourself to take your place fully in the world (not constrained by distorted perceptions, unfounded assumptions and projections or unexposed fears).

Reflection

Our life experience and our personal responses provide a rich store for reflection and insight. Developing our inner life is not a luxury for a leader – it is an imperative because leaders are able to influence others and to enrich their lives. The starting point is acknowledging and accepting that the world we experience is something of our own making and that we can remake our world (and help others to do likewise) by growing in mindfulness through meditation (such as the sitting meditation proposed by Ginny), by reflection (such as focusing on what we brough to a difficult interaction) and by open exploration (seeking with curiosity to identify our personal “imprint” of our world).

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Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.