You're at the Coaching Inn, 3D Coaching's virtual pub where we enjoy conversations with people who engage in the world of coaching. Hello, it's Claire with a warm welcome to this Friday Book Group where we're going to be listening to Becky Hall talking about chapter three in her book, The Art of Enough, Enough Presence. Really interesting because we've been talking about doing an event on presence in July, which will be on the website next week.
So it's absolutely delightful to introduce Becky now to talk to us about chapter three of The Art of Enough. Over to you, Becky. Hello there and welcome to the conversation about chapter three, which is all about enough presence. Thanks again for those of you who are journeying with me on this book club. It's great to know that you're reading the book and delving into it. And it's wonderful to get the comments and questions that I get. So thank you for those.
As before, what I'll do is read each question or comment and speak to that and then move on to the next one. So the first question, I'll read it as it was written and then respond, was this. I really enjoyed the connection between our biology and our state of mind, reaching the enough, sorry, reaching the place of enough presence. I'm interested in your thoughts about what enough presence looks like in scenarios that are legitimately stressful or tough when we're in these moments.
What does enough presence look like? Well, that is an absolutely great question. And of course, it's those moments when we really need to draw on enough presence. It reminds me of what we often do, and maybe I do it a lot in my work when I'm working with teams, for example. We talk about what we're like when we're at our best. and how we can work together and what we bring and all of those things.
And actually it's when we're not at our best or when we're knocked off balance that we need to really draw on our awareness and some of the things that I'm talking about in this chapter. A friend of mine, when COVID first hit, a friend of mine who also works in the space of resilience and wellbeing and and this sort of stuff, said to me, it's as if we've all been learning how to swim all this time and now we're suddenly chucked into the river.
And it's when we're metaphorically chucked into the river that we need to know how to swim, as it were.
And that's what we're talking about in this chapter, which is understanding our physiology and our nervous system and being really aware and conscious of how much that affects our reaction to things and our response to things is really the nuts and bolts, if you like, so that when we are in periods or times of legitimate stress or when things are really tough, it's those times that we need to draw on these techniques. So there are two things I want to say about that.
The first one is that it depends on the art of noticing, the art of noticing. So what we are trying to do, what it can really help us to do is to get really, really good at noticing all the information that we have in our bodies. So not just what we think or not just a what's going on cognitively, but noticing what's happening to the rest of our bodies and garnering information from that.
For example, I talk a lot in this chapter, I talk a bit in this chapter about the amygdala and having an amygdala hijack or what's sometimes known as a fight-flight-freeze response. Now, one way of knowing that we're having a fight-flight-freeze response is that we want to fight somebody, have an aggressive response reaction or want to run away or we lose our words, we get stuck. That's one way of knowing it.
But another way of knowing it is that our hands might go sweaty or our mouth might go really dry or our heart might start to palpitate or we might notice that we're shaking or that we've gone red or any of those cues. And it's those cues that can actually tell us, gosh, my hands are sweating. Maybe I'm having an amygdala hijack. okay. So it doesn't always happen from the brain down, is what I'm trying to say.
There are lots and lots of things that happen to our physiology when we're in moments of pressure. And of course, the fight, flight, freeze response is really just the immediate response. It's the reaction to pressure. It's not necessarily the longer term stuff. But nonetheless, it's what happens and it makes us be reactive unless and until we notice. So the first thing is notice, notice, notice.
Just get used to noticing how you feel and asking yourself the question, where else is this affecting me? Where am I feeling this in my body? And the answer to pretty much anything when it comes to regulating our nervous system is good breathing. So just as in the chapter I talk about coherent breathing, which is putting your hand on your belly, taking some really good deep breaths in so that they expand your belly so that you're breathing into your abdomen and breathing out.
I use the count of five. So you breathe in to the count of five and out to the count of five and calm your nervous system down that way. That's really important when you're having an in-the-moment reaction and a fight, flight, freeze response, it calms your nervous system. But in any of our work of presence, we want to have a calm nervous system. And the reason we breathe into the count of five and out to the count of five is because it brings us to a state of active alert.
We're not necessarily trying to slow down. We're still wanting to be at our best in that moment. So the first thing, notice. The second thing I want to say about this is practice. And this is where the analogy of learning how to swim and being thrown into the river happens because until and unless we have got really good practices around for example, calming our breath and doing really good coherent breathing. It's very hard to access it in the moments that matter.
So if I'm just about to go, I'll use an example of things that I do. So if I'm about to facilitate a day or I'm in the middle of giving a talk about something like this, for example, and something ticked me off balance, I get. a judgmental voice in my head or I see someone yawn or I get distracted or I'm just nervous about whoever's in the audience. I can easily have an amygdala hijack. And if I notice myself having one, say for example I freeze, I don't know what to do.
If I haven't got a regular breathing practice that will immediately kick in, then what might happen is that I'll start to panic and go, this is the time when I need to do that breathing. gosh, well, what is it I have to do again? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you can hear the sort of voices mount. And of course, that just exacerbates the state of stress or tension.
So when I was taught this stuff and I did the training with Heartmath, who I mentioned in the book, the guy who taught me, guy called Gavin, said, practice the breathing every time. you wash your hands in the day. And then that way you have a regular trigger to remind you to practise. take each time you wash your hands in the day, you take three or four or five really good regulating breaths. And it means that you start to integrate that into your normal life.
washing your hands is something we all do a lot of the time each day. And so if you practice it each time you do that, and I really do, I mean, it really did connect to that, now it's like Pavlov's dog, now each time I wash my hands, I practice my breathing. It means that in those moments that matter, I've got that practice available to hand. It almost automatically kicks in. just an awareness of my body, connects me to my abdomen, so my gut.
Immediately taking a deep, good breath in connects me to my gut and then back to my heart and then to my head. So it's a very integrating thing to do, as well as knowing that of course it's going to be... making my heartbeat more coherently and will therefore affect my brain. So that my amygdala is not taking all the attention out of my, in my brain and I can, my brain can repurpose itself if you like, resend the energy back to my prefrontal cortex so where I can do the best of my thinking.
Now of course I don't think all of that logically in those moments, but what I do automatically do. And what we want to be able to get to a state of automatically doing is breathing to calm our nervous system. I'm conscious that I'm talking about a very immediate reactive in the moment thing. And that sometimes stress and pressure and when times are tough, it's a longer term thing.
But so it's not necessarily about calming the amygdala, it's more about re-regulating or being conscious of other things like mood. And then that's where we bring in the hormonal data and information or thinking about how we think, how we respond, what we're conscious of. So the bringing into mind positive thoughts. training our brains to, or training ourselves to think about positive things and adding that to a breathing practice. It can be really, really useful of course.
So enough presence is in essence, of course, about being able to inhabit each moment fully and with the channeling or harvesting or aligning the best of our energy, our energy well, so that we're able to respond and be who we want to be in any given circumstance. And of course, the way to do that is to have well-regulated nervous systems.
So noticing, practicing, and and breathing, practicing breathing particularly, and just breaking it down so that we focus as much as possible on the present moment. Often when things are legitimately stressful or tough, we are... back into the recent past, that was really tough. So today's gonna be really tough because I'm having a tough time. It becomes a continuation of the narrative. And then we project into the future. We anticipate that it's going to continue to be tough.
So we're bringing in the past and the future. And in the chapter I mentioned, Eckhart Tolle, who talks a lot about the present moment and practices about how we can be in the present moment. And that of course is what we're after. So another thing that we can really think about and consider is how we can distract ourselves away from thinking about the past and into the future and into the present moment. It's a funny way of putting it, I think, but making our focus be on the present moment.
And of course that's where breath can also really help because breath... as any of you know who work, who've done any sort of breathing practice, whether it's mindfulness or prayer or yoga, any of those great practices, what it does is anchor you into the present moment because it's very visceral and it's very present. So I would say that the practice gives us the skills and awareness of what we can do for the moments of legitimate stress.
And the noticing really helps us to become fully aware of what is going on. So we're sort of as conscious as we can be about not just what we want to say or whatever is in our brains, but also how our bodies are connected and aligned to support us. So thanks for that question. I think it goes to the very nub of why this stuff's so important, so great. I'm going to read out the second comment. Actually, it's more a comment than a question, and thank you for it, whoever wrote it. It says this.
This is possibly one of my favourite chapters. For me, this is really at the heart of enough. No pun intended. I'll read that again, because I think I might have missed the For me, this is really at the heart of the art of enough. There we got the pun, thank you. We are unlikely to achieve profound and sustainable change by using our brains and our cognitive abilities alone. Reconnecting with our bodies is really essential.
Many people know this on a subliminal level, but by bringing it more consciously to the forefront, as this chapter so beautifully does. can help people work towards lasting change. Sometimes a relatively small bodily shift, noticing the shape of our body when we triggered or during periods of stress, and consciously shifting it to a more expansive or open shape can shift how we are thinking at these moments.
Well firstly, thank you for appreciating the chapter and thank you for adding your thoughts to it because it's really important. I love the idea, of course, that reconnecting with our bodies and I love this suggestion that noticing the shape of our bodies, I love the way you put that because It's sometimes known as body language, but you know, it can be simply rolling your shoulders back or standing up a bit taller or, you know, there's all that those practices
of Wonder Woman where you stand with your hands on your hips or you open your arms out wide and just allowing yourself to be expansive and taking up space can really change how you feel. can really, it changes the hormonal structure. It gives us more access to. to things like dopamine and it reduces cortisol levels and things like that. But more maybe for me that's really interesting. I like to know the sort of biology of it but actually it just feels better.
I mean try it if you sit with your shoulders back and your arms open wide it opens up your chest, it opens up your heart area and it's more expansive, it's more confident. The other thing I want to pick up on in that comment was that many people know this on a subliminal level, but by bringing it more consciously to the forefront, it can help people create lasting change. And do you know, that is so important, isn't it?
I often, when I'm teaching this stuff or working with people one-to-one, talking about this stuff, or indeed when I'm... learning it myself in classes that I do. It's often people, I'm often slightly, not quite embarrassed, but slightly, you know, it's surprisingly simple, isn't it, that really it comes down to our breathing, something that we do automatically second by second, minute by minute. It seems like such an alarmingly simple. solution to such complex internal systems that we have.
And yet it is that. it makes me smile sometimes when to think that back in 2006, I think it was, sent out, me and my then business partner, Rebecca, sent out a Christmas message to all the people on our mailing lists, which was a, a PowerPoint that we'd done with a breathing meditation and we sent it out instead of Christmas cards. The response that people gave to us was really interesting.
Quite a lot of people thought we had just gone a bit potty and that we had just gone, being completely woo-woo, I think we were told. And that it was sort of, why are you doing that? And now, of course, 15, 20 years later, 15 years later, we are, people are much more open and much more understanding of not just why it's so important, but also how useful it can be. The sort of credibility of it has changed and I think that's so brilliant.
And yet, often when I'm still working with people, the, the idea that breath can make such a material difference isn't so common. reminding us all and reminding people that this isn't just a sort of nice practice that we do on Saturday mornings when we do yoga, but actually something that can help us minute by minute, moment by moment, and especially during those moments that count, really, really is powerful and useful. So thank you for that. I hope it's been useful.
I would encourage you, if you're listening right now, to take three breaths in and three breaths out. And I'm going to count those so that we can just regulate ourselves before moving on to the next thing that we're going on to do. So invite you to take a deep breath in if you want to put your hand on.
your tummy you can feel the breath coming in to the count of five four three two one and out two three four five in five four three two one out two three four five in two three four five out two three four five Have a great day. I look forward to hearing your questions the next time and go well. Bye. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today, we'd love you to share the podcast with a friend or leave a comment on social media.
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