Finding Center in Turbulent Times
Centering isn’t magic.
It’s biology.
The source of our unease is the unfulfillable longing for a lasting certainty and security, for something solid to hold on to. When something unexpected or not to our liking happens, we think something has gone wrong. We are never encouraged to experience the ebb and flow of our moods, of our health, of the weather, of outer events – pleasant and unpleasant – in their fullness. Instead we stay caught in a fearful, narrow holding pattern of avoiding any pain and continually seeking comfort. This is a universal dilemma.
Pema Chodron, Taking the Leap
The Moment We Are In
The world around us can feel overwhelming. Events both near and far are constantly challenging us, often disrupting our nervous systems and, at times engendering fear and anxiety. Navigating a post-pandemic world as well as global political and economic volatility (which are often intertwined) has us oftentimes at a loss. Climate change looms over us, technological advances are both wondrous and frightening. These days I am trying to understand and absorb what is happening with AI, for example—and even people I know to be mild-mannered and measured are sounding the alarm. And then there are, of course, the regular ups and downs in our personal and professional lives—amplified by the context that we are operating in.
Over the past years I’ve become absorbed with the study of complexity. If you’ve been reading my posts, I’m sure you’ve noticed this. One of the most important things I’ve learned is that in the complex domain things are unpredictable and unknowable. Only in retrospect can we see cause and effect. Our capacity to navigate through complexity requires different capacities from what was required in simpler times or in response to more predictable challenges. Leading (ourselves or others) in complexity requires that we be present–and from being present respond in a creative, reflective and non-reactive manner.
With this in mind, I offer a practice that is, I believe, critical in this moment—centering. Learning to center—and then centering regularly—builds the capacity to be open, present, and connected in the midst of complexity. From center, we can regain choice—recognizing that we are not entirely at the effect of what is happening around us. Centering affords us a critical pause to reorient and remind ourselves that perhaps the most important choice we can make in this moment is who we choose to be—even more than what we choose to do.
The Practice of Centering
In 2013 I left the job that I’d had from 1998, and for the first time in my adult life had neither a job nor a salary. My intention was to use this transition, which included a generous severance package, as a launchpad for creating my own leadership development practice. I had zero experience with not having a paycheck and the unpredictability that came with that. My parents were civil servants—I grew up with the stability and predictability that this afforded and never saw them struggle financially—though they lived frugally. I was excited and terrified.
My first investment in this new direction was to study. (No surprise there!) I had read a wonderful book called The Mindful Coach by Doug Silsbee, learned that he taught a program called Presence-Based Coaching, and signed up for a series of retreats in Asheville, North Carolina to extend my coach training.
On our first morning together, we gathered in a beautiful retreat center in the Smoky Mountains. Doug, who was to become one of the most important teachers in my life, led us in a Centering practice. We stood in a circle and Doug asked us to pay attention–first to our length, then to our width, and finally to our depth. Each dimension was associated with a different quality–length with dignity, width with connection, and depth with sufficiency. After spending five, maybe ten minutes experiencing these different dimensions, Doug asked us to “drop in” to our center and ask ourselves what mattered most–to sense this rather than think it. (Instructions for the practice are provided at the end of this post.)
As we debriefed the practice, Doug shared that this wasn’t “just” a guided meditation but a specific somatic practice. By attuning to our bodies (our somas) in this way, we were finding where and how we could be better resourced—better equipped to be present and to access that feeling of being centered when we needed it. The practice was scalable. If we had one minute, that was sufficient. If we had ten seconds we could take three breaths–one into each dimension. Doug asked us to commit to practicing multiple (10, 15, 25!) times a day. He promised that doing this regularly would change us.
Being the good student, I did what Doug asked of us. I practiced frequently between retreats. Multiple times a day I would breathe into these three dimensions. And, as Doug had promised, I did notice changes. In a moment when life had become less predictable, when I was noticing just how scary it was to lose the certainty of a paycheck, I had this practice to draw on. It allowed me to ground myself, to remind myself that I was enough. It didn’t change everything–my fears were strong and the discomfort was enormous–that didn’t go away–and it felt somehow more manageable.
My first experience with centering was enough for me to realize that there was something to this! I saw the value of a practice that I could access whenever I needed it, that allowed me to feel all that I was feeling—not override it—and then find my center. The practice allowed me to be a little bit more confident, and a little bit more present in conversations that mattered—continuously surprised that this simple practice could do that much.
Evolution of a Practice
As I built my coaching clientele, I would tentatively offer this Centering practice to my clients at the start of a session. When I did it was usually well-received–but I wasn’t always comfortable suggesting it or leading it. I loved being guided, but being the guide was new territory for me–leading a centering practice was not yet in my comfort zone and I was nervous about trying it with people who didn’t seem like this would be their kind of thing–even though my assessments were almost always inaccurate.
For the next few years, I would sometimes center and often forget. I meditated daily and figured that was enough. If I was speaking publicly, I’d center before I spoke but not much more.
A few years ago, as I began to learn more about somatics (working with the body) and about complexity, I returned to the practice of Centering. I became more consistent in my practice—doing it both in response to triggers and at random points in the day. I became more comfortable bringing centering to my clients and was consistently amazed by the difference it made for them.
Centering is no longer a tool for facing the challenges of starting a business. I feel confident about my work and business—more than I ever expected to. Sure, there are ups and downs, but I know how to weather those pretty well. Today, Centering is the way that I find my ground. When I center, I am able to come back to the present moment and see more clearly, sense more clearly, and make better choices. Given that my life and work are expressed almost entirely in words, these are most often choices about what to say and what not to say.
More often than not I can catch myself when I have the urge to give a client advice and listen more. More often than not, though with greater difficulty than in the work domain, I can step back from a potential clash with my husband or daughter and recognize that the words I want to say may not be wise—and choose a different path. When I center, I can allow the words that need to be said to emerge and trust that this will happen. When I center I am more able—and this remains hard—to recognize that in this troubling moment in our world—I can make wise choices.
Centering isn’t Magic. It’s Biology.
The two people who’ve helped me most to understand Centering are Doug Silsbee, whom I mentioned earlier, and Amanda Blake.
Doug’s final book, Presence-Based Leadership: Complexity Practices for Clarity, Resilience and Results that Matter is his first book for a general audience (rather than focused on coaches.) It is also his final book—Doug died just around the time of its publication. Perhaps the highest recommendation for his work is that he embraced death consciously, remaining centered and present until the very end. He viewed dying as a “complexity challenge” and applied the tools in the book to this chapter in his life. (For more on that, see the post I wrote just after Doug’s death.)
Amanda is a coach, teacher, and author of Your Body is Your Brain. Full of powerful case studies, she shows the power of engaging our whole selves, inclusive of our bodies, in addressing the challenges we face as humans and leaders.
For both Doug and Amanda, the centering practice I’ve described here is foundational. It allows us to intervene in and manage a disrupted nervous system, tamp down our flight/fight/freeze response, and regain choice.
Amanda’s Wisdom
“Our bodies, our brains, and even our behavior take shape—quite literally—in response to our life experiences. And that biobehavioral shape ultimately affects the possibilities we see, the options we choose, and the actions we take.”
Our bodies are quite brilliant in knowing how to take care of us. The problem is that conditions change and “the brilliant way the brain puts behaviors on autopilot means that sometimes those once-useful ways of being become outdated.” When we center we can sense what is happening in the moment, to no longer be on autopilot. Centering allows us to notice sensations as sensations, to tolerate them when they are uncomfortable, and to choose not to “automatically act to make the discomfort disappear.”
Doug’s Wisdom
Doug suggests that we can learn to “de-couple” our inner states from what he calls our Context (what is happening around us.) Doug writes that “by de-coupling our inner state from the conditions of our Context, we discover freedom and resilience.”
Centering does double duty. In addition to supporting us in the moment that we center, we are training our bodies so that the next time we seek to decouple state from context, that is a little more accessible. Over time centering becomes an available response to being triggered and, ultimately, we are triggered less and less forcefully. In sharing the Centering practice, Doug writes the following about what is happening within us, at a neurobiological level:
Invite the awareness that, in this very moment, the quality of your attention tells your hippocampus that this specific state is important enough to encode for future access. The inner state of center is being telegraphed across your entire nervous system. You are actively initiating the process of neuroplastic change, creating associations between neuronal networks of this state, in order to record it in long-term memory.
Centering changes our brains and our bodies.
Last Words
There is no magic bullet. We will be thrown off center again and again. With practice, we can learn to notice that we are off-center and come back to center. From center, we can access greater wisdom so that we can be our best (or closer to it) even under pressure. When we are at our best we can make wiser choices that will support, in some small way, the creation of a world that is a better place for the people who live in it.
The Practice
Stand or sit comfortably. Make sure that your feet are making contact with the ground if you are sitting.
Take a moment and notice any sensations you’re feeling. Use this first moment to “drop into” what you are sensing, to your body.
Center in length. Sense the bottoms of your feet on the ground. Relax your shoulders. Relax your jaw. Let your gaze be soft. Now imagine that you can rise up, that your head is connected to the sky as if by a string. The dimension of length is the dimension of dignity. As you stand in your full height, you embody dignity.
Center in width. Gently rock your weight from side to side. Find the balanced place in the center of this dimension. Visualize yourself extending to each side, expanding, taking up space. This is the dimension of connection, we take up space and we share space.
Center in depth. Bring awareness to the space behind you, allow yourself to feel the support of your history, your experience, your knowledge. Rest into that. (I like the image of leaning into a soft cloud.) Bring your attention now to your front body—which can represent what’s ahead.
Finally, focus on the space just below your belly, your physical center. Ask yourself: “In this moment what matters most? What’s really important? What do I care about?”
Remember that this is scalable–and can be done in just a few seconds or for several minutes. You can focus on just one or just two dimensions.
A five-minute version of the practice is available in this video, presented by Staci Haines, one of my favorite teachers at the Strozzi Institute for Embodied Leadership.
