Audience

Who would have guessed that the most educational part of my week would take place at my cousin's wedding? It was a gorgeous and decadent affair with orchid's flowing over the rims of silver bowls, pink feather bouquets, Cava everywhere and a dessert feast that would tempt even the stricktest of dieters.

For me, however, the heart of any celebration is revealed in the speeches. The groom's father, known in our family as "Uncle Bruce" is the most accomplished of speakers. A career as a Chartered Accountant, and a longstanding President of numerous boards, his experience shows with the ease in which he presents. His speeches are by the book and yet they transend rules. The result is personal, touching, and revealing. My professional ear was keenly attuned to the nuances, while my heart was open and moved by the weight of such an important speech.

What can we steal from Uncle Bruce? The key to this particular speech was his use of audience. He began speaking to the wider group that consisted of strangers and family alike, bringing us all into a common understanding of his relationship with his son and daughter-in-law. Then he gradually transitioned into speaking to the groomsmen, many of whom he had known for thirty years. This transition allowed him to reveal a different side of his son's character, he even referred to a pivotal event in their lives that he could not describe in detail. Naming this "secret" honoured the many parts of our lives we do not discuss in public that have an important impact on the development of our character. The groomsmen were visibly affected by this reference and we, as an audience, were invited in to a more intimate relationship.

His final transition was perhaps the closest to his heart, as he addressed the parents of his new daugther-in-law. He recalled his own experience watching his daughter get married over ten years ago. He spoke with great empathy and specificity recalling his own feelings of joy, trepidation, and hope. It was with great care and sensitivity that he welcomed this couple into his family and vowed to care for their daughter, as he would his own.

Uncle Bruce's daughter, Leanne, unused to speaking in public, also got up to deliver a wonderful speech. As I complimented her at the end of the night, she resisted accepting such words. I wanted to say, "To me anything heartfelt, meaningful, brave and personal is better than all the well-polished words of a well-crafted speech."

So go ahead, be brave and speak from your heart. If you need help knowing where to start, begin with your audience and trust that knowing who you are talking to will also reveal what it is you want to say.

The Benefits of Being Silly

Linking my week's activities and observations is at times a daunting task. However, as disparate as my experiences were this past week, a definite theme emerged as I quickly scribbled some of the highlights from this past week on a piece of scratch paper.

Scene one: I'm sitting with one of my private students in a board room at the university. For the past several weeks we have been observing his tendency to de-voice at the end of his phrases. As we intone and speak/sing funny phrases together he finds a full vibration all the way to the end of his sound and the tone is clear. Unfortunately, as soon as we move back into spoken words the de-voicing kicks back in. "Why are you doing this?" I ask cheekily. We both giggle and then are quiet. A moment of silence as he ponders what to say next. "I think it has to do with giving myself permission to be silly."

Scene two: A sunny (finally) summer Saturday morning in my living room. A student and I are rolling on the floor shaking our feet and making silly sounds. This student has done this type of exercise several times before, but today she feels uncomfortable, the sound is muted and when we sit up to reflect on the experience, she doesn't want to make eye contact. "I felt intimidated by the fact that you could express things so freely. I don't like the way I sound."

Scene three: Tuesday night at the Vancouver Public Library. A room in the basement is brimming with three hundred eager listeners as Dr. Gabor Mate makes his way to the podium to speak about his recent best-seller on addiction. He speaks about the hidden causes of addiction: the need to overcome pain, to experience pleasure, to fill a void or emptiness inside of us and finally the desire to feel exquisitely alive, to stimulate our endorphins.

Final scene: Two two year old boys are rolling on the grass, as the butterflies hover above their heads. They giggle and laugh and then jump up and down screaming at the top of their lungs. "You're so silly!" I tell them, laughing and envious of their freedom and joy.

As Dr. Mate introduced his work on addiction he described the process of inquiry as being akin to looking into a kaleidoscope. In his opinion, assessing the causes for addiction must take into consideration the physical, mental, emotional, and social history of an individual. Once these elements have been observed, the observer must shake the kaleidoscope over and over again to look at all these components in a variety of different ways. The ability to be silly is like our kaleidoscope as we investigate our sound. We let go of the physical, mental, emotional and social constraints we have placed on our expression.

Try it, make some silly sounds and observe how it feels, what thoughts are evoked and how it sounds.

Fearless Speaking

As the summer months hit, hopefully you have a little more time to pick up a book or, if all else fails, pop an audio recording into the car CD player as you journey off to some exotic sunny location. There are two books that I would highly recommend. The first is "Seven Steps to Fearless Speaking" by Lilyan Wilder. I was excited to find an honest and helpful resource for people who become either mildly worked up or absoluted debilitated when speaking in front of a group. The plan she creates for facing these challenges is clear, detailed and realistic. While she wisely refrains from offering a quick fix, the countless stories she provides remind the reader that with careful and conscious work we can all achieve more comfort and pleasure presenting our ideas in public.

My second suggestion is a book called "Crucial Conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are high" by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler and Stephen R. Covey. Reading this book was an extremely humbling experience for me. I recongnized the myriad of ways I impede clear communication. If I can ever begin to implement the communication skills they advocate, life in my household alone will definitely become easier and more enjoyable.

Pick them both up if you get a chance and enjoy the exotic summer vacation!

Speaking from the Body

I love syncronicity! I have been experimenting with the idea of inquiry based sessions when I teach. So as I headed into the classroom yesterday morning, I organized the text and physical tasks we would explore around a set of questions. We began with the question: "What does it mean to speak from the body?" I followed that question up with three others which I hoped would focus on the participant's individual experiences. The discussion was a lively one and as I had predicted created more questions than it answered. So, fortunately, the discussion reminded me that the concept of speaking from the body could take a lifetime to explore. Lorna Marshall's "The Body Speaks" provides wonderful insight and I would highly recommend it to anyone who communicates on a regular basis. The exercises she outlines are simple enough to be done on your own.

So where does syncronicity come in? Before drifting off to sleep, I picked up Michael Gelb's "How to think like Leonarda Da Vinci". According to Gelb, the major key to Da Vinci's extraodinary ability to design, create, philosophize, analyze, scrutinize and produce lies in his ability to constantly question. Gelb's advice on raising children to think like Da Vinci is to ask them every night when they come home from school, "What did you ask today?"

Feldenkrais and Learning

As I continue to ponder Finkel's "Teaching With Your Mouth Shut", I keep returning to his initial question, "When have you learned something of value that you can apply to your life?" Contrary to his prediction, each learning experience I reflected on did actually happen in a classroom. The fact that the classroom was filled with sweaty students in leotards, sweats and bare feet might not have been his definition of a classroom, but I was nonetheless at a university pursuing my master's degree.

In Ken Bain's "What the Best College Teachers Do", he defines deep learning as "building new mental models of reality." As I was remembering a learning experience that changed the way I viewed the world, I remember being in George Pinney's movement class at Indiana University. George was leading us through a very simple Feldenkrias exercise where we 1) gauged our potential for movement, 2)repeated several small movements that allowed us to move beyond our initial physical boundaries, and 3) IMAGINED repeating the small movements on the opposite side which also allowed us to move beyond our initial physical boundaries. One of Feldenkrais' major philosophies is that our physical limitations are mental. Having seen such a tremdous shift in my physical body after having simply imagined it, opened up new posibilities for me physically and mentally.

I found a very similar exercise on-line that is very effective. Try for yourself and let me know what you think:

http://www.somatic.com/lesson.html#top

Failure II

I had several ideas for my posting today, but it has taken me until the end of my workday to make a firm decision on the topic. When all the pieces fell into place I was amused to see the title of last week's post: Failure. Little did I know when I wrote that piece that I would be confronting my own type of failure within days.

Since having my son I haven't been out auditioning as much as I had previous to his birth. Recently, I decided it was time to dive back in. So last week I balanced workshops at the university on presentation skills with auditions at several local theatre companies. Both the preparation and audition process were exhilarating, taxing, stimulating and exhausting all at once. No matter how much I reminded myself that the experience of auditioning should be the reward in itself, I found myself envisioning being offered the role I had auditioned for and having the opportunity to work with so many talented and creative people on such engrossing material. So it was no surprise that I felt a sense of failure later in the week when I was not offered the role.

I had hoped that the long break might have lessened the feelings of sadness over not being cast, but a very recognizable sense of loss was definitely apparent in my gut. I contemplated stopping there, not pursuing any more auditions. However, as the dullness dissipated my senses returned and I happened upon this quotation by Teddy Roosevelt:

"It is not the critic that counts. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marked by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasm and great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

So, come on, let's get out there and FAIL VALIANTLY!!!!

The Art of Failure

What do we fear when we get up in front of an audience? Making a fool of ourselves, embarrassing ourselves, being heckled, having rotten tomatoes thrown at our feet, losing our clothes, the list goes on and on. Sometimes the list is completely irrational, but audiences are not always as generous as we would like them to be.

This past weekend, my sister-in-law turned forty and for the event my husband, her brother, helped to organize a wonderful surprise party. Now despite the fact that he runs a busy photography business, helps care for our two year old son, plays hockey and did two years worth of taxes he also thought he could manage creating a slide show telling the story of his sister's life, organize the caterers and fly a friend in from Utah for the event. All of this he miraculously accomplished in a little over a week's time. Several hours before the event; however, he had a brainstorm, he would also give an entertaining and informative speech! As he hung decorations, let the caterers in, and secured a babysitter he was searching the internet for quirky facts about the year his sister was born and managed to compose a few words in his head. Jump ahead a few hours, the party is in full swing, the candles are lit, the gorgeous creme fraiche and smoked salmon pancakes are being gobbled up and my husband begins the entertainment.

He has a vibrant, energetic and engaging personality and loves being in front of a crowd; unfortunately, he runs into a speaker's most dreaded foe, a tough audience. A few wise-cracking friends attempt to cut his speech short and when I see his face turning a burnt red against his lovely white linen shirt my heart breaks and I want nothing more than to alleviate the embarrassment he is experiencing at the moment.

Fortunately, he handles "failure" better than I. The next day we go for a long walk and he tells me about all the discoveries he made. "It always looks so easy when people get up to give great speeches. I guess I should have actually practiced and kept it brief, focussing more on my sister or possibly even allowing for some participation from the audience."

I had told him the story of Bill Clinton getting booed off of the stage at the 1988 Democratic Convention. My husband decided that he will do his best to emulate Bill Clinton's ability to learn from past mistakes. My fortieth is coming up and I have no doubts that he will have perfected it by then!!!