The Power Of Intentional Dialogue
Pru and I have just dropped Ange (her Mum) at the airport...
We have concluded four days of very special work together. It has been transformative in nature and deepened the dialogue between Pru and Ange, developing the wonderful skill of communicating always, even through the 'difficult stuff...'
This is the essence of relationship, that we can stay with one another through the 'difficult stuff...' That we stay in the space and recognise that growth is wanting to happen, even though we might not know what to do .... That with willingness and an openness to developing new skills, we can always discover more about another person, and ourselves in the process of an intentional dialogue...
We hear and read often that all that is needed in relationships is communication, or to talk through whatever is needed to be talked about....
The challenge is knowing 'how to' communicate effectively....
We are always communicating, we cannot not communicate!
But it is the quality of our interactions that matter, and all too often what we say or do is coming from a reactionary place, or even simply through the filter of our own perceptions....
A very simple but effective tool which really helps people truly connect and hear one another is 'The Imago intentional dialogue', created by Harville Hendrix author of 'Getting the love you want'....
The process is very straight forward, but it can often help to have a 'coach' there to hold the space and guide when difficult subjects are being addressed....
It is quite simply a space where one person speaks and the other listens and mirrors back what they have heard, so that they get an accurate understanding of what the other wants to say.... They then validate the piece of dialogue
'I understand you feel that way, given that....'
And empathises
'I imagine it feels/ you are feeling....'
Then the person who has listened first, responds to what has been said....
This way of having a conversation can feel slow at first, and sometimes it is difficult to remember what the other has said; which in itself indicates why there was a need to learn how to listen...!
It is also why initially practicing with a therapist or coach can keep the space safe and help unravel stuck bits or retrieve forgotten words
Over time, if really engaged with, it can be transformative....
The intentional dialogue 'holds' reactions... It slows everything down.... It allows for each person to be heard and understood, and it allows for the quality of communication to really escalate to new heights...
It can take relationships that are already good to greater depth; it can heal conflict, finding the new buds that have been wanting to grow... It can be a space for solutions and deepening of intimacy....
I have been working with, and teaching this method of communicating for fifteen years... Ever since I first discovered it, and it has never 'not worked' - if it has been practiced....!
It is quite common as humans that we get stuck in patterns and projections, and that our own wounds prevent us being willing to really speak and be heard, and to listen and understand...
But it is a powerful tool, and it has the quality of keeping us in the present... This very act allows for healing of past wounds that are so often part of 'normal conversation' colouring our ability to both really listen and speak with clarity too....
This morning I swum again in the sea...
It was so cold that I couldn't put my face in the water to front crawl without it hurting...
My entry into the water was rather swift.... I was standing on the edge feeling very brrrr... When suddenly a wave swooshed in and knocked me over, so that I was sitting in the icy blue... I embraced the shock and saw it as a cleansing 'treatment', a healing after my run to the 100 metre tartan track strip where I had run twenty times the length, jogging back to the beginning...
I would call them strides rather than sprints!
But they felt good....