Exercises & Practices

Practices are central to human development. A useful perspective on this is that we are always practicing. Whatever we do, over and over, we become better at. The things that we practice most are the things that turn into our habits. These habits are literally stored in our bodies… in our physical shape, in our thought patterns, in our default behaviors and responses to life’s events, and in the ways we interpret and respond to the world. We are our habits; and, it is the nature of habits to engrave themselves deeper and deeper into our way of being in the world, such that we don’t even see the myriad of options that are always available to us.

Since we are always practicing, we can choose to practice that which makes us more alive and effective. We can commit to building our flexibility, and our capacity to recognize and choose new and more generative alternatives in life.

Presence-based coaching distinguishes between two distinct kinds of practices. Generative practices develop presence, and encourage a more resourceful way of being. Domain-specific practices are particular practices through which we develop the capabilities required for our professional and personal commitments. Either kind of practices, through repetition, build a new self, and establish new neural pathways that we directly experience as new ways of thinking, new possibilities for action, and increased energy and aliveness.

Exercises, on the other hand, are generally done once or twice with the intention of producing a certain awareness or insight.

This page offers an exercise and several generative practices. These are excerpted from Presence-Based Coaching; the explanatory material in the text will be useful in many cases for understanding and interpreting the practice.

For many more practices from Presence-Based Coaching, and links to other sites featuring collections of practices, please subscribe from any page on this site

Identity Exercise: Who Do You Hold Yourself to Be?

Spend a little time reflecting and journaling about the following questions.

• Who are you? List about four or five positive adjectives that you believe describe who you are. Think of this as a short description of your identity.
• Now describe something that you’ve done recently that, consciously or not, was designed to get recognition from others for these same qualities. What habits of yours can you identify that serve to protect and build that identity?
• Finally, choose one of your positive qualities, and consider how it limits you. How does your drive to reinforce this trait eliminate other ways of responding? What possibilities might open if you didn’t have to keep building that particular aspect of your identity?

Core Body Practice: Centering

We can learn centering by organizing ourselves in relation to the three dimensions possessed by all physical objects:

• Length. Check out your posture, and organize yourself in relation to gravity so that you are supported effortlessly. Place your feet slightly apart, knees unlocked, and pelvis rocked forward slightly to straighten the spine. Sense the bottoms of your feet, where the floor presses against them. Relax your shoulders, letting them drop. Hold your eyes open, letting your gaze be soft and your peripheral vision be available to you. Allow your jaw to relax. Imagine that the top of your head is connected to the heavens as if by a string. Drop your attention to your center of gravity, two inches below your navel.
• Width: Gently rock your weight from right to left. Find the neutral balanced place in the center of this dimension. Sense the equal weighting on each of your feet. And be aware of your width, of the space you take up. It can be helpful to sense what it is like to walk into a room and take up space, feeling an expansion in your chest that gives you more room.
• Depth: Align yourself from front to back. Again, a gentle rocking back and forth from heel to toe can help us find the balance point. We are accustomed to focusing out in front of us, but there is also space behind us. Bring awareness to this, sensing the room behind you. Imagine weight and mass behind you, as if you had a giant, massive tail extending out along the ground. Allow yourself to feel supported by this mass and to let your belly soften and open.

This is scalable. By this, I mean that you can take five minutes or more on each of the three components, or you can quickly and easily shift into the centered place. Centering is an internal state rather than a specific body position, and you will soon find that you can center yourself sitting, walking, or brushing your teeth. With practice, centering yourself will feel like a quick and effortless “coming home” and be almost an instantaneous shift in awareness.

For now, use your time to explore and sense into the experience of each of the three dimensions. Center yourself at least ten times a day. Initially do this standing up. Then practice in different circumstances, sitting down, in meetings, before conversations, and in preparation for stressful events. See how you experience yourself differently, and what happens in your relationships.

-  The centering practice is adapted from Richard Strozzi-Heckler (The Leadership Dojo; Berkeley, CA: Frog, Ltd, 2007.) It is included with permission from the author.

Finding Compassion for Others

There are a number of powerful ways of seeing how we are connected to people we resist. In fact, it has been argued that for us to see something in another that we resist or that bothers us, that same trait must be present in ourselves. Seeing this commonality moves us into compassion.

Choose a situation in which you are judging, labeling, or feeling irritated by another person. First, write down a description of what this person does that is difficult for you. Be as specific as possible about both the other person’s behavior and your reaction.

Now temporarily suspend your judgments and irritations. Write as if you were the other person. Place yourself in her awareness, describing the behavior that you find irritating and speaking to the inherent positive aspects or reasons for the behavior. Write in the first person, using “I” statements, speaking as her. As you do so, let yourself feel what it is to be her.

Finally, consider how the other person is like you. What aspirations or concerns does she have that are not so different from your own? What attachments and aversions might be driving her behaviors? What do you have in common?

Let yourself sense the commonalities. Find a place of compassion within yourself for the other person.