Life is not a Rehearsal: Each Moment is the Performance

Practicing, whether a musical instrument, painting, asana or other activity of mind and body, is a process of building stamina, skill, pattern, awareness, and technique. Yoga is not different in many ways from any of these other pursuits. A spiritual practice or a modality of scientific inquiry both benefit from repeating the walk along the pathways of the mind, in some ways codifying these movements into a chosen range of adaptations. We shape the way we think, our thoughts shape the way we react, act, feel. It is in this inquiry that we discover our selves and the world again and again.

Even in the practicing, though there are imperfections and sometimes struggles, it is not a rehearsal in order to get it right. The practicing is in itself the performance, but with a different audience or outcome. It is the self that performs, and the self who is transformed by the performance.

There is no moment when you are not your self. Even in moments when you might say, "I am not myself today," you are present only in that moment as the self you actually are, feeling off kilter. Our idea can shift about who we think we are, and we construct the ways in which we imagine we are seen by others.  As with playing music, it sounds beautiful to one person, boring to another, intriguing to someone and intolerable to someone else.  It exists only in the moment that you create it, and though you might record it, it lives then as a recording, played in a moment, reacted to in that moment. It is no longer your life, but a product of your life.

So with this in mind, it doesn't take much to see that what you say, the face you make, the food you put in your mouth, the way you touch another, the place you rest your eyes, all make up the life you actually live. There is no moment out-of-mind, even in the flow of ecstatic creativity that might bring out the music or the art, the breath or the dance, this is your moment. It is in this context that I contemplate the principles of right action and right speech.

Once I was in my dad's painting studio looking at some new work and he said, "Oil painting is like a rehearsal where you can keep going back and redo, or undo, or rethink, and remake; where watercolor is a performance with every stroke of the brush, this is it."

Being present in each moment is like living a watercolor, where each movement of the breath is the performance of life.  Is there pressure in this? I don't feel it that way. I see this spreads out any pressure into a general sense of upholding personal responsibility in all things, including sharing responsibilities with everyone else for the world we are making together, and accepting responsibility for the range of feelings that arise. This is not about perfection, or blocking out the "bad," but rather giving up the idea of "good" and "bad" and being here, in it right now as it is.

Deconstructing a Flood of Words: Using the Yamas

Imagine meeting a friend and as you are standing there, the friend begins handing you one thing after another. The first thing you take with one hand and keep making eye contact with your friend. You can hold this thing easily in one hand. The friend immediately hands you something else, a handful of small things. You put the other object in the crook of your elbow and take the handful carefully in one hand. The friend then hands you a large awkward object and places it across your outstretched forearms. Another object follows immediately that is sloshing in a container. You stand still while your friend continues to pack every possible crack and balance point with one after another thing.

How many times have you had a "conversation" that felt like this?

Words are mental objects. They represent ideas, carry the kernel of reactive emotions. Words can literally transform the inner landscape with visual information, and can reconfigure a thought process by eliminating or adding elements.

Speech is a powerful way to communicate, yet words are often used without any idea of their actual impact.

There are moments when each of us suddenly feels the weight of our words. Awareness is intense in those moments when the call for clarity is great, or when the emotional impact of each word is evident. We feel it when each word is painful; we feel it when words reassure. Words can bring fear, excitement, calm, joy, anger, confusion, clarity.

Teaching yoga requires specificity in language when directing other bodies, when inviting the minds of others to focus, when suggesting visual or emotional constructs. It is one sided, directive-suggestive-instructive talk. This is a collectively agreed upon inequality. When this kind of inequality occurs among people in typical conversations, it implies the same tacit agreement, and can be very uncomfortable for the listener, and sometimes leaves an unpleasant feeling afterward for the talker too. For some, this kind of one-sided hand-over-the-stuff talking is a challenge to compete, or sets up a verbal jousting match. The listener might make an effort to break the cycle or show equal fortitude, or feel a need to claim some equal worthiness for attention. The deep need to be "right" or "have the last word" can easily arise.

The person who storms you with object after object probably does not realize that you cannot hold on to all of it. It is likely they cannot see that this transfer doesn't afford you any opportunity to make any use of the objects. It may be that the intent is not to gain your understanding, but simply a desire that you take all this stuff to lighten their load. The odd part is that the objects actually remain in the custody of the person who gave them, even as they weigh you down. It seems those same objects can be handed over again and again. Perhaps they are not the actual load, but simply represent the burden being felt.

Taking stock of the deeper layer of communication can help slow this flood and might actually help shift that burden through awareness. If the friend (or you) are lonely, it may be a desire to feel a shared experience of life that provokes the stream of words in one direction. Perhaps a sense of isolation creates an urgency in having another person confirm the stream of experiences or reactions. Perhaps it is uncertainty that pushes a person (or you) to such an effort to be convincing, taking each point and covering every detail of the subject just to be sure and reinforce this version of them. Sometimes it is a deep need to be appreciated, or acknowledged, that prompts a person to disclose too much of what they know, or how they feel or how they arrived at their conclusion.

Kindness and respect can stem this flood. Allowing the undercurrent to rise to the top can be as simple as saying, "It must be hard to go through all this on your own," or "It is interesting to hear how you think about this, and I can tell you have thought a lot about it;" "There are many who would react the way you reacted." This stops the flow of details and returns to the core of the communication. It is also sometimes useful to simply say,"I am interested in what you are saying, but cannot absorb all these details. Can you tell me the part you really want me to know?" You can even ask, "Do you want me to respond to this, or are you simply telling me so that I will know about this too?"

These kinds of responses come directly from an investigation of the yogic principles of the Yamas (one of the eight limbs of yoga as outlined by Patanjali from centuries ago).

The Yamas are yogic principles of outward and inward behaviors. Each of the outward principles relate to the concepts of how we function, and interact. Taking on any one of these will lead to the others. Ahimsa - non-violence - applies to being kind, refraining from the domination games, being patient with yourself and others, and practicing compassion in speech as well as action. Satya - truth - again relates to the deepest awareness rather than the surface feedback. Being kind in the truth you express will enliven and enrich, rather than dominate and degrade others. Asteya - non-stealing - is a practice of respecting the energy and time of others as well as your own, not simply refraining from taking objects, but also making unnecessary demands of others. Brahmacharya - restraint - the source of celibacy practices and also of relinquishing overindulgence and repression, embracing moderation and respecting the divine in all beings. Aparigraha - non-possessiveness - is the cultivation of non-attachment, honoring of the many strands that weave the fabric of life without dictating or grasping, making space for the self and others to simplify rather than vie for control.

Starting with any one of the Yamas as an investigation is like having a walking stick for uneven terrain. Everywhere you go, whatever you may do or experience, let the Yama you choose help you feel the structure below that supports you on the path.

Exploring Respect: Right Speech, Right Action

How to have respect, and show respect without judgment is a serious part of my yoga explorations. I can feel my urge to "inform" others of my point of view. It has been difficult at times to live through the effects of what feels to others like "telling them what to do." I have come to accept that my observations are totally tainted by my own experiences and that can put me off the mark in assessing what is happening.

It is especially important in my yoga teaching to truly treat the student as the expert in their own body experience. Though I may have useful insights to give them, it is their own integration of this that makes any sense or has any purpose. As I recently mentioned to a friend, my first experience in a yoga class of being instructed to "relax in child's pose" was such a case in reverse. I know that this pose is not relaxing for many people in a physical sense, but for me it was not physically obvious...it was the reference to my childhood that brought discomfort. That began a very serious inquiry for me, not necessarily a bad thing, but not the teacher's intentions. So in this, I am learning to ask, to observe, to suggest, to invite the modifications. My role as a teacher is to make the space safe for students to explore, and to offer as judgment free instruction as I can, and THEN offer what I know as a possible option, not a directive.

Respect may, in this way, also require figuring out deep hidden attachments to patterns or judgments. Enjoying a conversation with someone who holds different views is possible in a non competitive, non-proselytizing way if there is an open space in which to speak and listen. Respect can make it possible for people to share deep feelings about things without feeling that there must be agreement. Word choice goes way beyond political correctness, but that concept is similar. If we speak in the language of inclusion, using non-inflammatory words, in other words speaking non-judgmentally, it feels respectful. Really meaning what we say changes the tone as well. Verbal interactions in relationships can cause pain or give joy. Sometimes it is not speaking that will do the most good, making the space for another person to do something their own way without commentary, to feel accepted, make a discovery, or explore in their own way the relevant cause and effect of their words or actions.

Beyond words, respect is embedded in action. Choosing where to meet someone, weeding in the garden, catching a chipmunk trapped in the house, or deciding how to travel or what to eat are all actions where our choices have embedded assumptions, and values are subtly or not so subtly assigned to other lives, to others' feelings, to the conditions we create or within which we live. Staying in someone else's home, or visitng another country can high light these inner threads of behaviors with which we tie ourselves to unintended outcomes. Bringing this to consciousness, observing our own way of acting, making the first step one of seeing the pattern leads to understanding that there are choices to be made that might have very different results. Respecting our own need for freedom can lead to authentic respect for others in our actions towards others as well.

I remember reading a conversation with the Dalai Lama about Ghandi, in which he was asked about acting to stop a violent act or being passive. His response included the concept that first, passivity is not the same as peace, and then went on to say that if one is able to see that another person is about to act against their karmic best interests, it is right action to prevent that act... not simply allowing oneself to be attacked, for example, since that would also bring harm to oneself and the other person. This really struck me as interpreting active resistance in that case as an act of deep respect. Imagine thinking of oneself as part of the other, or the other as part of oneself in that context! Yet that is an underlying concept, that we are not separate from the results of our own choices, nor from the conditions that impact on others.

Words & Wordless

In Savasana today there was a pool of light in the back of my ribcage, at least those are the words that might describe what felt like a shape shifting coagulation of energy and peace, pooling below my floating heart. My shoulder blades finally melted away and allowed my breath to soften my brain. There were no words. None.

Funny that when I teach yoga I seem to embody my language and words come out for my students to use. These words often drift out of my own muscles or from deep behind someplace where they rise up in my breath. Sometimes when I take class as a student, the words are nearly inaudible to me, as though they represent an energy transfer that is taking place through the sequence of events and my own breath in the space with the breath of others. When my teacher mind is present, I might think “oh that was a lovely word,” but by the time I release into the asana, that mind is gone and so is that word.

And then there are times when my mind is full of language. Words are not objects, not the thoughts themselves, not the feelings. Symbols, icons, scratchings on the stones, my words sometimes are drool, sometimes are the momentary fragrance of a ripe strawberry, sometimes just mud on my shovel.

I suppose I will live my whole life in a tug-of-war between words and wordlessness. I am grateful that I continue to find myself on all sides of that. Each part of the tug has its possibilities.

“I” and the Universal Self

In the course of my life I've been trained in a concept of speaking about feelings or interpretations of fact or observations in terms of "I" statements. This can help prevent many upsetting and hurtful conversations. Clearly, things can get complicated quite fast when starting a phrase with "you." Something directive, anticipatory, projecting, assumptive, dismissive, and plain wrong can so easily slip in when one person begins to say something directly related to another person's identity or self. "YOU" is a one word descriptive of "OTHER" in some ways. If I say, "I see your shoulders are hunching" it is different in feeling than if I say, "You are hunching your shoulders." What is different? One is my observation, and implies that I am responsible for what I notice. The other is a statement about you, implying that there is consciousness and responsibility on your part and potentially judgment on mine. The later statement is much more likely to set up distance between us.

At the very same moment that I am trying to frame things from my own perspective without stepping on your identity, I am also able to see the construction of my own framing and content. In a way, I can observe myself seeing your hunched shoulders and in doing so I can become aware of a series of choices I can make, both about my reactions and about my actions, including what I do or don’t say and my choice of words. Of course, if I take enough time noticing all this, I might find that I need not really say anything at all, and that simply relaxing my own shoulders is enough, unless I am teaching a student to notice their own condition.

Watching, or witnessing, my own way of interacting leads me to a distinct feeling of being more than just the reaction I might be having. I am more than the urge to speak, more than the impulse to interact with others or produce a result. This sense of being feels much larger than “I” do. Being is a fluid awareness, not set within boundaries of conditional thought or circumstance.

My sense of being an alive, breathing entity can easily be limited and defined by my patterns of behavior or thought, my judgments, feelings, and mental constructions. I can choose to see others in these terms and stay in a dualistic world of "me-you," "here-there," "right-wrong," etc. Some of this is conceptually necessary for figuring out what's going on around us – for example, is the car at the intersection moving or still? (In terms of physics we might explain that nothing is still, since every cell has moving parts, each atom has movement between the neutrons, electrons and protons.) And yet, even while using this ability to understand duality, I do not have to make myself miserable and separate from others by constant judgment, filling up with self-limiting ideas that do not reflect the essentially limitless aspects of being.

Strangely, the more I learn to see the “I,” the clearer it seems that beyond the “I” is something very much more universal that is shared with all living beings. Through my practice, it seems that the “being” is what makes life worth living and so I remain curious about the human structure within which “I” live.

Finding Right Speech: Traps of Blame & Shame

Recently subjected to verbal rants disguised as opinions or information, passionate distortions and hurtful jokes, I have felt terribly trapped and upset. I suffered for days from reverberations and dissonances. I hung my head in sorrow, coming to know that as offensive as it all sounded to me, as painful as it was to hear "a nice person" speak so mean, so blind, so destructive; the same was also in me. I, too, have spoken without thinking that I was forcing someone else to swallow my words. I, too, have been passionate in my opinions, pushing others into silence about their own experiences or feelings. I, too, have assumed too much without grounding, have sought an object upon which to blame a frightening outcome, have wanted to make others feel responsible for a set of conditions resulting from behaviors or choices. Being human and verbal, I, too, have felt and done these things.

I know that I live in a world that makes some human beings into property. I know that I live in a world where people believe they can own land, displacing natural habitats and tolerating that others are homeless. I live in a world where essential resources are being bought and sold all the time for profit. The truth is that these are all conditions, not finite, not infinite, just conditional. Speech also reflects the conditional moment. It is here that I can cultivate Right Speech, one of the aspects of the Eight-fold path of yoga practice.

Patterns of behavior can be recognized and understood. Opinions and blame, hate and disrespect, aggression and fear are all conditional. It is this, in part, that unifies all of us human beings -- with specific conditions, we have specific reactions or responses. Once seen, these conditions can be recognized, and reactions can be seen for what they are -- reactions. Once seen, these reactions can also be understood and the root causes can be seen and recognized too. Not everything can be changed, but much can be, and sometimes simply seeing things as they are is enough to change the conditions and enable a choice of reaction.

Listening is part of speaking. I heard my neighbor speak of so many others as flawed and wrong and stupid and mean. I heard my neighbor separate himself from others as though he plays no part in decisions and choices, relationships and actions around him. I hear him sounding helpless, in a way reviling this helplessness, fearing for the future and bemoaning his inability to solve the problems he sees -- just as he blames others for this. This is what I hear when he faults the inequity of a nearby neighbor's action, or the greed of a business or ineffectiveness of a government, or the beliefs of people in another land. It is his pain I hear when he makes a derogatory joke about people he does not know; he is ill at ease in the world in which he sees himself.

It is suffering I hear, and it is this suffering that I feel for days. I think now that this suffering is mine because, in fact, we are not separate, my neighbor and I. The urge I felt to respond as he spoke, the deep desire to shout louder than he, to drown out his suffering, to say it is not so: this is my own human condition. To be inflammatory or dismissive is so easy. To denigrate the way others live and think, to find ways to blame and fault are all coping mechanisms inside each of us, as if it protects us from feeling helpless in the face of fear and pain and uncertainty. I can do it too. The insults come out when we see ourselves as separate from "the other," or perhaps we turn hatefully towards ourselves. Jokes prompt that uncomfortable laughter to hide how offensive a remark really is.

To stop it I acknowledge the pain, though this is where I sometimes get stuck - in the pain. Being open to the infinite imperfections in all of us, this is where I begin to feel the true laughter. No one knows the way, no matter how strident they are. There is no path. Just walk and see how it is and is not. The path is under my own foot! I can let words haunt me, or see them as shells in the sand. The ocean and the wind hear nothing separate.

Right speech acknowledges the fullness of silence, seems inclusive of the pain and the laughter, lets the words be like rain falling into a pond -- already the words are the breath. Perhaps right speech is simply allowing the words to be breath, that energy and release shared with all living beings, not something we wish was finite. I cannot stop the pain my neighbor feels, but I can take the precaution of doing no harm. It does not stop by asking him not to speak to me this way or of these things. He will simply carry his pain elsewhere. What I can do is be present, and truly see him there too, knowing and acknowledging that we are not separate. That world that he paints is a world where I also live. I am continuously choosing to water different seeds in myself and my experience, perhaps making a space possible where he can hear his own voice and recognize himself. I cannot avoid myself much as I might like to run away (think of the idea of gaining strength to stay within the context of meditation), and by being present, perhaps I encourage right speech in others as I do in myself.

Words About Words

Perhaps where there is ego there is conflict. As I write my blog, if I speak from a state of separateness – that of ego – it is bound to cause some of my readers to feel I am preaching to or at them. It may cause some of my students to grasp for something they think I have, when in fact the state of being is something that only comes as it is. It is nothing in and of itself. So speaking of conditions, or of my discoveries about practice, I am not meaning to instruct others what to do or how to be or even to value this over that.

How then to express what I am discovering without the ego that creates attachment, grasping, judgment and suffering for me or my readers? Becoming sensitive to the use of words that sound like goals or achievements might be one way. Sharing the moment, the process, without a statement of revelation or value would be another. Perhaps, after thinking through what it is for me, I can turn it around and see if I can still see it without my self in it.

How would Lao Tzu phrase it? Ego-less and time-less, place-less and mind-less? For me at times his writing is so clear, other times so obscure that I taste but cannot identify the flavors. My blog is a continuous journey into finding out who I am as a yoga practitioner, teacher and student. Using words to explain or express, to reveal or explore, is also part of my practice and teaching. With this in mind, I will try to keep the instructional tone to a limit, this is not Me telling You, yet I still use personal pronouns and live a first-person life. My explorations are, quite honestly, about me and my yoga experiences. This blog is a way of sharing this so that others might see what is going on with me, thereby dispelling any illusions about me, while being encouraging in the active seeking of a deeper practice. I am in no way holding up my experiences as a road or a destination.

This life can be an endless experience of being with no specific outcome other than this moment. Perhaps this blog will follow me in this to an eventual state of silence, where there is no ego and are no words to describe that state. Somehow, given the way my entire life has evolved with language and poetry, music and the rhythm of breath at its core, I doubt that silence of that kind is around the corner, yet if it is, so be it! Meanwhile, I will struggle with ego and explore how to integrate, illuminate and expand without being preachy.

Dementia Reveals the Swirling of Real and Unreal

I've just been spending time with a dear old friend who has dementia. Her condition is reflected in significant memory losses, some anxiety and paranoia, with some deeply emotional and personality magnifications, and occasional confusions about words. One of the aspects of her behavior that is startling and evocative, is her way of asking the simplest questions, the answers to which reveal the substrate of human relationships. She asks, "Whose house is this?" as she walks up the stairs in the house in which she has lived for many decades. She looks around her, discovering everything with delight and pleasure, but when told "This is your house," her face darkens in confusion. She meets my gaze and asks, "Really? How can that be?" Of course I can tell her the story of how this house came to be hers, but her questions ask something so much deeper. She often simply asks, "Where am I?" and for that the answer is also simple and deeply complex.

Much of the time she seeks a sense of safety, some reassurance within the boundaries she feels and sees, that she is protected and secure. This can be physical but is often much more than that. She seeks protection for her heart, and of the transitional spaces in which she now functions. Beautifully dressed for an occasion honoring her partner, surrounded by guests she has known for years, she will engage each person with charm and standing quite close, offer sotto voce intimations of shared secrets. "Only you know exactly how that happened!" she might say with an endearing smile and light touch on the arm, without giving any more of a reference. Each guest receives her gift of intimacy with grace and honor, to be brought in close, and treated with such trust. Substance has receded into the most essential materials with which we connect and sustain each other.

When tired or anxious, she grasps at a defense and holds firm, while some around her try to distract her and others speak directly to the underlying causes of the fear or anxiety. There are no more corrections, when people say, "No, you were not there that time," or "I didn't say that," "You never did learn to do that," or any other denials of her momentary realities. She will move on, taking each moment fully as it is, creating the network of supporting evidence she needs to convince her self, or others, in that moment. The purity with which she asks, "Would you like my cup?" or "Are you staying?" makes each moment so full of grace.

I can't help but wonder why we spend so much time trying to convince ourselves and others to agree about data and facts between us that may well be simply illusion. We put way too much meaning and false value in controlling and manipulating this fluid surface and its meanings. It seems so clear to me now that when my friend joyfully exclaims "That's my son!" there is really no longer any need for him to ask her, "So what's my name?" as if that is a test of her memory. She clasps his middle-aged face in her hands and says with a voice saturated with love and longing, "You were a beautiful baby boy." What more is there to say about anything, other than "I love you?"

Words, Meanings & Silence - Pause Mode/Talk Mode

I grew up in a place where there was a lot of masterful verbal jousting that was all tangled up with identity and self worth. Being smart meant being verbal, and proficient at defending a point of view. Sometimes it even seemed that defending a point of view meant more than the point of view itself. It was deemed of some value to interject a challenge point, just for the sake of argument. I recognize this now, after years of feeling inadequate to the task, and then slowly realizing that even my clumsy forays into this behavior were felt by others to be aggressive, or insensitive, even self-aggrandizing with a hurtful net result all around. Even in a court of law where stringent argument is the norm, it is intensely important to listen, to know the larger purpose of what you argue, and to register and monitor the impact of your words.

One of the first tactics to turn this behavior around might be to pause even a few seconds before responding to what someone else says, or, perhaps more importantly, before saying what occurs to you. Give yourself time to remember that every time you speak, you are asking someone else to turn their attention to you. This comes up a lot in my daily life now that everyone has laptops and ipods, whose ubiquitous qualities can make it seem that people are sitting around and available when in fact, they cannot hear you without specifically attending to you. It is a bit like being around people who are hard of hearing; it seems they are present but their attention is actually elsewhere. They must be focused on the interaction or they remain out of the communicating loop. Every comment can have the irritating impact of an interruption unless the receiver is already attentive. It is unrealistic to expect others to be in a constant state of readiness to listen to you.

There is a technique of listening that can help each of us be more sensitive to our own verbal behaviors and our own and the emotional needs of others. This is a form of what is known as "co-listening." It can be quite revealing to take turns listening between friends or lovers without constant reactions. Why do we say "uh hunh" or "word" or "hmmm" in response to another person? Do they need us agreeing, encouraging, sympathizing, corroborating? What if we simply listen reserving our opinion, our assurance, our involvement until we listen to the whole thing they want to say? What if we ask them to clarify if we didn't quite understand what they meant? What if we give our self the time to understand their meanings?

One way of making sure you are actually communicating is to agree that you will interrupt after a couple minutes and say, "Let me see if I am understanding you. I hear you saying...." and repeat to them what you have actually understood them to say. Let them agree that you got it, or correct your understanding, either because they did not say what they meant to say (helping them to clarify their own thoughts), or because you are not quite understanding what they meant (helping you hear them more fully). Then they can proceed. Set a limit, like 10 minutes each. And after listening and getting the message from one side, change roles. You may find that you subtly or dramatically begin to shift towards clarity, simplicity, and purposefulness, internally and externally!


Another amazing way to experience the meaning and value of words, and the emotional load we associate with verbal interaction, is to experiment with silence. It is important to understand that you are trying this in order to be more open and aware of your own inner voice, as well as deepen your understanding of how you use your external voice to communicate to others. In order to really experience silence, pick a day when you will able to choose not to do a lot of interacting rather than simply switching to writing notes or hand gestures as a way of playing at being a mime. Let the day be a quiet one. Let all your loved ones and apartment mates know ahead of time. Choose a day when you do not have to go to work. Preparing and eating breakfast in silence, experience and savor your food. Think your way through your choices in the day, allow yourself to hear the commentary your mind will forward. Watch the parade of feelings that arise, about being silent, about your experiences, about the beauty of the world. Notice what you want to communicate, where the impulses come from, and to whom you would direct your words. Set a time limit to do some journaling, but keep that, too, within strict limits, say half an hour or so. You may find that moving the car or walking the dog, picking up a child from school, listening to music or doing laundry present totally new information.

Keep the whole experience short the first time. You might make yourself a little badge to wear that identifies you with the words "Day of Silence" or some other phrase when you go out in the world, so that others will better understand why you are not responding verbally. I recommend no longer than a 24 hour period for the first time. Silence is a deep experience. Give yourself time to absorb and integrate this before plunging in again. You may well find you hear yourself differently, and that others hear you more clearly as well. You will definitely notice how much the world expects you to interact, and much about your own impulse to jump in.

This is part of who you already are. Paying attention to your way of being in the world can deepen in stages by listening without commentary, pausing before speaking, taking the time to be clear, and learning to hear and understand your own inner voice.