Usually writing these newsletters takes me about an hour; I sit down and what wants to come out just flows. But this month I sat down to write about speaking from personal experience, and a few days later I still can’t get more than a few coherent paragraphs written. And I’m starting out today all in a funk with my brain all tied in knots. Oh how I love the ironies of experiential learning!

First let me explain what I mean by speaking from personal experience. Essentially I mean speaking your truth, but it’s more than that—it’s speaking (or writing or  painting or expressing yourself in some way) from your own mental, emotional and physical experience in the moment. It’s about not crafting everything you’re going to say from your intellect, or sticking strictly to some script of what you think will make you sound smart or likable or whatever the desired effect of your brain is.

Did I mention it’s really freakin’ hard?

But why? Well, speaking from my own experience…

It’s hard because you actually have to be present to your experience to speak from it. That’s the first kicker. And I could go in to all the many, many reasons why it’s hard to be present in our culture that is so accustomed to operating from our brains only, but I’ll spare you this time.

Speaking from your own experience is also hard because it’s really vulnerable. Scripting our expressions or scheming our exchanges with others from our intellect keeps us feeling more safe. And I don’t mean to suggest that we’re scheming what we’re going to say in a malicious way, I mean that we do it in an unconscious way in an attempt to avoid being uncomfortable or feeling exposed.

Because when you speak from your own experience you are vulnerable. And that means that when someone else has a response to you from their own experience (which they will) you are inviting it without defense, regardless of whether it’s what you want to hear or not. And that’s hard.

Does this sound familiar? Take a moment and think about a situation in your life where, when you’re really present to what you’re feeling, you know it’s out of alignment with what you have (or haven’t) expressed in that situation. Maybe it’s with a boss or a family member or a friend. Imagine saying how you really feel. Kind of vulnerable, huh? Terrifying perhaps.

But before you start telling stories in your head about all the horrible things that might happen if you spoke from your experience in that situation, just take a moment and say out loud to yourself right now how you really feel about it. Aaaah. A little relief maybe? Even just speaking honestly from your own experience to yourself is healing.

It’s good to have ways like this to practice on your own where the stakes are low but the effects are still pretty high. For me, writing in my journal is one way, moving without a plan on my yoga mat or through dancing is another, and taking time to sit on my meditation cushion and let myself express my emotions to myself when I’m alone is another.

But like any practice, we do it so that we can apply it in real life. And real life is relational. Which means we have to learn to speak from our experience in the moment with other people. Gulp.

What I’m finding is that there’s ways to practice this in relationship, too, that aren’t just about having really difficult conversations. “Speaking” from our own experience isn’t just about speaking, but about expressing our self more openly and vulnerably, and about allowing for the full range of our own experience. Similar to how I practice this alone, I practice in relationship with other people through writing (like these newsletters and my blog), and through movement.

My dear friend Bob Czimbal and I get together every few weeks to move together in a unique combination of partner yoga, acro-yoga and contact improv dance that we have developed over time. A long-time dancer, yogi, and former yoga-teacher, Bob is someone with whom I feel safe to be vulnerable with in exploring unchoreographed movement.

Instead of having a plan or a set of moves we’re going to do, we just show up as we are, make a commitment to not lose physical contact with each other, and then let ourselves be guided from our own experience—which is inherently informed by and always in relationship to the other person’s experience as expressed through their movement.

This practice has been profound for me. Through our mutual trust, respect and presence I’ve learned how to do what I do on my yoga mat—tune in to what I’m feeling physically and emotionally and letting that guide my movement—with another person. Our dances at time can feel quite vulnerable and awkward. Sometimes we’re silly, sometimes aggressive. We often step on each other’s toes (or hands or stomachs) by accident, or lose our balance and come crashing down to the floor in a heap.

But we also at times surrender into such an effortless flow where we’re both present to ourselves and to each other and there is such an expansive sense of ease. Or we find ourselves in the most remarkable of shapes, or defying gravity in a way that we could have never imagined, much less choreographed. We’ll laugh and say, “How did we even get here?” And if we go back to try and find the same shape it never works the same way.

Through this practice I’m learning so much about how to express myself more fully in the dance of daily life—with friends, with co-workers, with family members. Yes, not sticking to my mind’s script or not having a whole scene with another person habitually choreographed makes for some awkwardness, as well as for more of a chance to metaphorically fall on my face. But what I’m finding is that this kind of falling hurts far less than the chronic feeling of restraining myself.

When I dare to actually express myself to another person in a way that isn’t anticipating how to control their next move, but is simply an expression of my truth in the moment, I have that same sense of expansiveness and flow that I find when I dance with Bob. And, like what happens in our dance, when I speak authentically with someone, allowing for the full expression of myself, the situation unfolds in ways that are beyond my mind’s ability to craft, and that often feel remarkable, surprising and refreshingly expansive. In fact, not letting my fears and defenses weigh me down and limit my expression of self kind of feels like defying gravity.

How can you/do you practice expressing yourself fully?

Do you remember a time when you spoke directly from your own experience to someone else? What did it feel like?

Where is there a situation in your life where you need to risk expressing yourself more authentically?

**For your entertainment (and with the intention of more fully–and vulnerably!–expressing myself) I’ve included some pictures of my dances with Bob (with his permission!) and a short clip to give you a sense of how it looks in motion…