Relational Presence Journal Archives

By Lee Glickstein

In April 2005, the phrase Relational Presence arose to describe our “Be With” approach in a way specific to Speaking Circles and accessible to the world at large.

Below are selected articles from our monthly newsletter, the Relational Presence Journal, which teaches different aspects of this approach.

To receive a free subscription to the Relational Presence Journal,

Introduction to Relational Presence

In the realms of Acting, Spirituality, Leadership, and Image, “Presence” is defined simply, but the paths to achieving it are quite complex, with many moving parts. So what is it about the Speaking Circle approach that delivers immediate access to Presence and a clear path for its expansion?

Well, while others are teaching Presence as a capacity one incubates independent of other people, Speaking Circles build on what we call Relational Presence.

Relational Presence does not require confidence, grounding, centering, or attention to attitude, posture or breathing. It simply taps into what naturally arises between me and the other when I put my priority on softly and neutrally noticing the space between us.

So while other systems may ask us to breathe deeply (among a list of bullet points), we go directly to Relational Presence and notice that our breathing deepens naturally without special attention.

Other systems are built on the assumption that "Only when I am present for myself can I then be present to others." Relational Presence turns this conventional wisdom on its head, simplifying the process by demonstrating that "When I am present with others I can then be present to myself."

If this sounds counter-intuitive, remember that our sense of presence developed through being mirrored by others. If our mom didn't fully reflect our goodness and beauty back to us through her eyes, therapists got rich.

So I'd say Relationship comes before Presence. Perhaps it's a chicken and egg argument that can't be won. But I do know that for practical purposes, Relational Presence is a radical path to personal power that keeps things simple every step of the way.

Speaking from the Place of Not Trying

I begin one- and two-day Speaking Circle programs by asking participants to let their eyes close and find a place inside of not trying. Nowhere to go, nothing to do; no efforting to relax or even let go of thoughts. People usually find that place easily. From there I ask them to gently open their eyes and join me in that place of not trying together.

Thus begins the practice of Relational Presence, gateway to everything wonderful that can happen between human beings: in work, in play, and in love.

Next step is to allow words to arise without compromising the underlying Relational Presence. Then, the practice is to allow words to arise to a group while in distinct Relational Presence always and only with one person at a time.

When this habit is locked in, you can face every group situation with absolute quiet confidence in your capacity to choose the possibility of relationship at every moment and allow the best for the group to happen through you. Specific results will always be unexpected because you cannot know how the best that you naturally facilitate in others will inspire you to new heights of lucid, precise, and uplifting transmission.

Relational Presence Embodied

Since I originally framed the practice as an eye-to-eye gaze, it has become apparent that Relational Presence can readily be sensed in the chest or heart. I began suggesting that participants notice this and allow Relational Presence to flow heart-to-heart with another, using the eyes as a neutral portal rather than the starting point.

From there, it is easy to allow that sense of Relational Presence to flow down the arms and legs and into the earth, and to notice that with another, Relational Presence naturally wants to flow body to body, being to being, with the eyes and neutral face simply not blocking the flow. (If your face feels stern or deadpan, you can allow a gentle natural sense of mutual respect or positive regard to enliven it, without resorting to overt social signals like smiles and nods.)

From this grounding of mutual being, connection arises naturally without the slightest effort. The practice then is to allow words, should they arise, to flow through that connection without compromising Relational Presence in the slightest.

From this place, the sense I get in front of a group now is that my listeners and I are as blades of grass, connected beneath the earth in unity. And rather than projecting outward, my voice seems to resonate down my body into the earth and come up through the souls of their feet.

Not Trying Starts in the Eyes

When I ask individuals what challenges they face speaking to groups, they report physical symptoms ranging from tightness in the chest to shallow breathing, trembling or thin voice, anxious mind, red face, pounding heart, shaky knees, or floating body.

My experience is that all these symptoms quickly dissolve when we practice keeping our eyes open to one listener at a time without trying to do anything else.

As discussed in a previous article, Not Trying is the radical heart of Relational Presence mastery, and not trying starts in the eyes. We bring lifetime habits of grasping, signaling, pleasing, controlling, or deferring with our eyes.

All manner of self-consciousness is felt through the eyes, and all those physical symptoms above result from energy blocks in our seeing reality.

So for many, maintaining a neutral gaze may at first feel stern and harsh. In Speaking Circles even the listeners are asked to keep a neutral gaze, abstaining from the encouraging smiles and nods so common among us people pleasers.

Depending on those blatant social signals to feel okay when we are center of attention blocks us from seeing the more subtle signs of positive regard that are available to us in abundance when we maintain our undemanding gaze.

For in the neutrality and non-attachment of easy eyes we find our deeper breathing, our natural glow of positive regard, our flow of words as they arise through the rich connection that results when trying to connect is not the point.

The Underground Connection

Sometimes students ask why I place so much emphasis on the eyes when teaching Relational Presence, since it may seem like I am saying that Presence resides in or right behind the eyes. But in fact, the soft focus of our eyes on another's is merely how we direct the presence of our heart in that moment.

The heart connection is the shortcut out of anxiety and into ease with groups.

When we breathe from our heart with another, we can imagine our Presence flowing down our arms and legs to the center of the earth. From here we can sense Being to Being Presence with another across the room, with absolutely no pressure on our facial muscles to smile or give other social signals.

Self-consciousness--even serious stage fright--falls away as we breathe deeply in front of a group, and it becomes easy to imagine that with each listener we are as two ends of a blade of grass in a field, connected underground.

The miracle of Relational Presence is that when words naturally arise from this shared place, instead of needing to be projected out across the room, they seem to resonate down into the earth and up through our listener's being. Our voices deepen. We flow. We do not rush, and as a result we are naturally clear and often eloquent. After we make a point, we breathe and watch the words land before moving on to another listener.

Being Still for Another

My lifelong resistance to being still has made me a squirmy meditator. But through practicing Relational Presence in Speaking Circles I have developed a capacity to effortlessly be with one person at a time. This key to finding natural ease and power with groups allows me to be still for another, any time, any place.

The notion of being still for one another is the simple core of the Relational Presence exercise. Being still for another does not require inner calmness (though it leads to it). It does not require that we stop spinning our mental wheels (though it leads to that). All it asks is that we be there for the other in neutral receptivity and positive regard no matter what else is going on with us. It is a relational meditation. Relational stillness.

At first the practice may make us feel rigid, as if we were being asked to contract our mind and body. But as we soften our eyes and breathe luxuriously into the communion, we find a spacious universe of flow within the stillness.

As we be still for one another, we find full freedom in the space between; we access the ecstasy of mutual being.

Welcome to Relational Presence, the gift that keeps on giving.

The Magic is in the Stillness

Classical pianist Artur Schnabel said: "The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes--ah, that is where the art resides!"

Similarly, what separates talkers from communicators is the micro-space between words, the pause between sentences, the breath between thoughts, and the full stop after a big idea. As in music, the quality of these pauses that makes the difference is the inner stillness from which expression arises.

In communicating from Relational Presence as practiced in Speaking Circles, the essential stillness is the one we cultivate while moving our "laser soft" focus from one listener to another. When we develop the habit of coming to a full stop and lingering for an instant with the person before moving on, and remain silent until we sense the receptivity of the new person upon whom we alight, we are dividing public speaking into distinct one-on-one relational events.

This approach dissolves anxiety in ourself and in them, brings out our powerful best, and naturally facilitates rapt attention and lucid listening.

This Relational Presence imperative of pausing between listeners may at first take a few awkward seconds each time to lock the practice in (very much like a beginner musician stretching for a new chord). But it eventually comes so fluidly that the pause is sometimes barely noticeable. And like a master musician's audiences, your listeners do not necessarily see the source of the magic--they just feel so nourished being engaged with you.

The Heartbeat of Presence

I suffered "deer-in-the-headlights" stage fright until I was nearly 50. The shame and desperation ran deep. All I wanted was to manage the terror, but nothing helped until Speaking Circle practice allowed me to cope.

But I didn’t realize this work was moving me into realms of ease beyond my wildest dreams until an amazing day ten years ago.

I was being introduced by the president of the National Speakers Association to give my first presentation at our national convention. Hundreds of my peers--professional speakers and other speaking coaches among them--were sitting in wait out there.

As I’m being introduced, my heart is pounding big time. THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! Each crash a seismic event. But every beat feels like ecstasy, an electrical surge of pleasure!

It was then I fully understood that symptoms of stage fright are exactly the same as those of intense excitement. Red face, weak knees, even clammy hands and a blank mind--without negative interpretation, these are no problem at all.

Since then I haven’t had one moment of trepidation in front of groups. What a miracle in my life, and what joy to facilitate this transformation for others.

Why Performance Anxiety is Natural

The biggest obstacle to effective communication with groups is trepidation about messing up in public. From white-knuckle terror to a simple case of "the yips," performance anxiety in all its forms is epidemic in our society.

Such stress--and the embarrassment around it--has led many an otherwise straightforward person to adopt elaborate coping strategies to mask or conquer the anxiety. With such solutions, both peace of mind and quality of communication suffers.

The way out of this unhappy cycle is to first understand that performance anxiety is normal, even healthy. Humans are herd animals. Our brains are hard-wired that if separated from the herd we'll get killed. When facing a group, our primitive brain assumes we will be eaten alive.

The neocortex--the rational part of the brain that knows we are not in danger--shuts down while the limbic system (mammalian brain) takes over to flee or fight or freeze. Feel familiar?

Many speakers have taught themselves how to cope with or control or defend against the herd with fancy footwork and performance strategies, along with, perhaps, elements of intimidation or charm.

Those who seek remedial help to get through the block may avail themselves of speech trainings that teach such survival techniques, with varying results.

Then there are those of us who have discovered the path of communicating to groups from within the herd. Separation dissolves and communication mastery begins when we practice Relational Presence with one person at a time.

When I wrote Be Heard Now! several years ago I had no idea that it could also have been titled Be Herd Now!

Choosing Presence

Several years ago I worked with a young woman to develop a talk. What a story she had! -- at 16 surviving a death-defying escape from occupied Czechoslovakia; emigrating to Canada and surviving a suicide attempt after having her heart broken by a boy; going on to become a lawyer and feeling suffocated in that profession before breaking free to find fulfillment as a life coach.

Exciting, but what’s the thread and the point?

Here’s what we worked out: She fought for physical and political freedom; she fought for psychological and financial freedom. She fought for creative and vocational freedom. Now she is free free free and speaking to audiences who were born into freedom but feel imprisoned in their ruts.

So what is the secret to achieving the holy grail of freedom that so many never do achieve? Her conclusion [Drum roll]: You have to consciously choose freedom. Over and over again. Or you can’t have it. That’s her transformational message, and she goes on to discuss exactly how one might make that choice at every moment of truth in every day. Compelling, yes?

I have come to realize that choosing presence is a similar dynamic. In front of a group it’s a choice to make every moment until it becomes such a habit that presence chooses you and the struggle to be fullly engaged in front of groups is over.
The only way I know to choose presence at any moment is to find a listener to “be with” and breathe with in what we call Relational Presence.

How to Create Instant Community in Front of the Room

Indigenous peoples maintain continuous physical contact with infants until they begin crawling on their own impulse, usually at six to eight months. As a result, these children grow up without self-consciousness, feeling absolutely at home in their bodies and in their tribe. Belonging is the assumption.

In modern Western childbirth by contrast, we are often traumatically separated from mom, sleep alone and isolated, and are subjected to parenting techniques and controls that undermine our natural, exquisite learning process. As a result, in the West the sense of alienation and not belonging is epidemic, and so pervasive we are hardly aware of it.

This profound sense of not belonging kicks in big time when we face a group, which is why we are beset, sometimes terrorized, by performance anxiety -- whether in the boardroom or a living room.

The great news is that when we become aware of this dynamic, and realize that most of our listeners are essentially starving to belong even though it is not visible in their outward appearance, we have the power to place our first and ongoing priority on allowing them to belong. This takes all the focus off our self and onto serving them. By allowing them to belong, we belong.

You can allow them an instant doorway into belonging by simply taking a full, luxurious breath into your own being before saying a word. Speak to one person at a time as you regard them with human-to-human respect and continue to take breaths between spoken paragraphs.

This is a challenge because our own discomfort with silence and need to do something kicks in precisely when we are the center of attention. But until we know in our bones how to make our audience feel at home in their bodies and in the room their attention will wander, their listening will diminish, and our anxiety will flourish.

Relational Presence practice is a way out of that loop, a path to mastering your natural capacity to be with a group of any size one person at a time as if they were the only person in the world. This is how the masterful communicators facilitate instant belonging in a world of separation.

The Root of Self-Consciousness

A passage from Jane Fonda's autobiography pinpoints the root of self-consciousness. She writes about her first child at 9 months:

"It is late at night; I can't get Vanessa to sleep; I am despondent. I am lying on my back on the floor, with Vanessa lying on my chest. She lifts her head and looks straight into my eyes for what seems like an eternity. I feel she is looking into my soul, that she knows me, that she is my conscience. I get scared and have to look away. I don't want to be known."

This rings like a common recurring scenario for those of us who grew up with self-consciousness. Some of us had the other extreme: our gaze was returned aggressively. Likely we had some of both. Imagine reliving such a scene over and over again until the pain of not being met (or having our eye space invaded to meet the need of another) brings us to a hiding place deep behind our eyes.

Whether survival depended on shying away from attention or performing to meet expectations, our automatic behavior mechanisms kick in most extremely when all eyes are on us. As a result, some are too terrified to cope at all in front of groups, while others have developed a passable act, even a great act. Though coming from different directions, neither state allows authentic presence or expansive expression, so the way back to ourselves is fundamentally the same.

To gauge the nature and extent of your authenticity challenge, go to a mirror and simply meet your eyes for a minute. Just breathe and be with yourself. Do you need to smile? Wink? Grimace? Look away? Are you judgmental? Are you counting the seconds for the time to end? If doing this exercise in absolute peace with yourself is a challenge, you are not alone, and real authenticity with groups is not possible until you can be at ease with yourself.

If you take at least a minute each day to explore this exercise, and stay with it, you will eventually access self-ease. The next step is to allow words to arise and be spoken into your eyes in the mirror without compromising the ease. Then, do the silent gaze with a partner, followed by one minute turns as you allow words to arise easily with your partner.

This path of Relational Presence is all about naturally reversing our earliest experiences of not being met and honored eye to eye. The good news is that it's all we need to get the ball rolling toward accessing our inherent ease and power with groups and in the world.

Breathing Easy with Strangers

I opened a recent Speaking Circle with 15 seconds of simply breathing with a partner in shared gentle awareness and positive regard, followed by group discussion and then another 15 second silent dyad.

Doing the exercise on one side of the room were a couple in their late 80’s who’d been married 65 years and attending Speaking Circles for seven. He’d been a symphony musician, she a pioneering childbirth nurse. On the other side of the room were two men in their 30’s, a software engineer attending his first Circle, and a life coach attending his second.

What struck me in observing the two dyads was that once the two young men were able to drop into what we call “a neutrally open place of not trying” in the second 15-second exercise, the quality and texture of their shared presence was the same as for the long-married couple.

Relational Presence supports one’s natural capacity to be instantly at ease with another—whether stranger or friend—without effort or judgment. Accessing this capacity may strike you as challenging enough in everyday interactions, and especially daunting when speaking to a group, but we have found that in a safe environment it doesn’t take long for most people to recognize and welcome this easy place as an old friend.

And once you develop the habit of breathing easy with your listeners without jumping out of your own skin, strangers instantly become friends and speaking in public becomes a softer, gentler game.

How To Attract Ease in Front of Groups

There has been a lot of buzz lately around the DVD "The Secret," which posits that our thought and language patterns determine exactly what we attract into our lives. Some see the movie as gospel, while others find it hypey and overly simplistic. While I found elements of the latter, there was enough substance to inspire me to research the original source materials on the topic.

What I discovered was how the path of Relational Presence as practiced in Speaking Circles is a prime example of the power of the Law of Attraction. Instead of putting our attention on ways to "get over" stage fright or "cover up" anxiety in front of groups--ways of focusing that just attract more of what we don't want--we focus on the pleasure of being natural in front of the room and let ourselves receive positive appreciation for our unique essence.

We let the anxiety breathe, take its sweet time, expand, be witnessed, become transparent, have words if they arise. In short, we have a positive experience with what we had presumed to be "the problem."

The real problem was that we thought the nervous energy was wrong and we focused on getting rid of it for us to have relief. No, that stuck nervous energy is simply our vital life force compressed by past unhappy or unsatisfying experiences as the center of attention.

As soon as you have a good experience, or even a neutral experience in front of an understanding group that holds a gentle space for you to let yourself be, a chunk of that underlying anxiety iceberg is melted off, forever. (Remember, it's only a thought-form in the first place.)

Subsequent turns dissolve more and more of the un-ease until there is nothing left of it. It seems as magic because the less we try up there the more rapid the progress. This is difficult for some because they think that nothing real can happen without efforting.

What's happening is that by practicing and learning how to invite more of your natural essential self in this moment; by no longer struggling to overcome or vanquish what you think you don't want, you attract ease in front of groups beyond your wildest imagination.

Public Speaking as Energy Transformation

What looks like "an audience" is really a powerful energy field ready to align with a speaker whose priority is to notice and honor that energy field.

Groups do not respond as well to presenters who place a higher priority on performing, persuading, or delivering a lot of information, than to those who truly be with them.

Anxiety in front of groups-from minor unease to terror--is the inevitable result of the unexamined assumption that public speaking is "me trying to get through to them," or "me against them," which is how it is conventionally practiced and taught.

For a glimpse into the model of public speaking as energy transformation, imagine an acupuncturist, chiropractor, and psychotherapist who have each built good practices and find themselves suddenly presented with golden opportunities to speak at association and educational meetings. Ill at ease with groups, they attend conventional trainings where the assumption is that public speaking is a skill unrelated to the one-on-one transformational capacity they already have. So they practice and polish techniques that may help them cope on the surface with anxiety in front of groups.

But the model of public speaking as energy transformation reflects the reality that one-on-one proficiency in any field can be transferred with ease to groups without learning new technique. The key is to regard an audience as an integrated energy body, breathe with it and align with it. Just as your work (or pleasure) with an individual flows effortlessly and intuitively from presence and breath, your words to a group are meant to flow without tying. Once you access this group-aligned place within you, public speaking is immediately a new universe.

From here, you get to be in the comfort zone of your mastery instead of just talk about it. The acupuncturist penetrates points in the group energy body as precisely with words as with needles. The chiropractor opens and adjusts that body. The therapist "listens a group into existence" with the same expansive a client is provided. This model extends to any practice founded on one-on-one proficiency, and to individuals in any field who have good one-on-one rapport.

Developing your innate capacity to transform the energy in a room requires, rather than new technique, that you avail yourself of support to fully experience your anxiety with groups in whatever form it shows up, thus allowing it to lose its power.

Facilitating a Field of Belonging in a Room

Anxiety and contraction in front of groups is a consequence of the illusion of separation, which is epidemic in our modern world.

Performance technique, guile, and over-preparation is commonly required to cope with groups when one assumes a me/them polarity, and most of us just don't have it in us to "put on a show."

The path of least resistance starts with realizing that just about everyone out there, no matter how they appear to have it together, is also laboring under the illusion of separation. Most anyone not raised in an ideal family has deep yearning for community.

Once you shift focus from your own separation up front to facilitating a "field of belonging" for them, anxiety begins to release and life naturally expresses through you with ease and flow. This is so even if by nature you are not a performer or an extrovert, and whether you have severe stage fright or are a professional communicator who simply wants to have more authenticity and fire up there.

By providing them a field of belonging through the practice of Relational Presence, you dissolve the illusion of separation for yourself. You bring out the best in them, and they evoke the best in you. The paradox is that the false sense of separation inhibits our unique expression and unfolding as individuals.