The Craft of Being Present

I'm starting a new podcast called "The Craft of Being Present" which actually has a paradox in it because you can't do a craft unless you're present. In fact, presence is so much part of us as human beings, it is us actually. And our presence is housed in our body, fuelled by our breath. Let's just think about what we can't do if we're not present. We can't make a community, a team, a group, an ensemble, a community cannot exist until everyone turns up at some point in their presence and with their presence. We can't negotiate with each other until we are present with each other. And something that is incredibly important to remember is that presence is a two-way street. We cannot have consent until we are both present, or a group is present. We cannot negotiate, we cannot have intimacy, it is a place of being engaged and connected. And when we show up with our presence, we show up with care, focus, attention and a sense of connection to the world. It is the start of everything, and very early in my teaching career I realised that until I taught people to be present, I couldn't teach anything. We transform when we're present. We survive when we're present. And of course today I have to talk about the incredible erosion of our presence. It's getting to a point of such a critical moment that until we dare to show up, we haven't got any chance really to survive on the planet, that is what I believe. What has been created in order to awaken our presence? Every great play, every great piece of music, every great painting, I remember as a child seeing my first Rembrandt. And all I felt was this enormous rush of energy in me as the painting engaged me and I became present with it. And I suppose this journey I'm going to describe to you is a very personal journey, because later on I'm going to do a series on being present and that will include being present with nature, being present in community, being present in leadership and in the end being present with Shakespeare. My personal journey is because I was brought up in a family when my father wasn't present and that's a big issue. In fact, every conversation you had with him which mattered to you, and of course presence is a place of something mattering in you, was done with his financial times over his face. So this journey has been a long one for me and a very personal one. Let's go back to this idea of a two-way street. When a baby is born it reaches out and hopefully it is met by a parent who's also reaching out to it. It is a returning of energy, it is a sharing of energy and as that baby grows it is introduced to more presence and group presence and of course this is so obvious that we can't argue with it. But over the last fifty years of teaching I'm very aware of watching presence disappear from people. I'm sure it was disappearing long before I was born but this erosion is so rapid now that it becomes a very poignant critical thing and actually part of my career has been because people have come to find their presence. And in this podcast I'll be looking at your body and your breath systems and introduce you to something that I've been working on for about fifty years called the Three Circles of Energy which is about a focus on how you become present. You know teaching is very humbling because I suddenly realised years ago that I don't teach anything that you don't know. We know presence so well that I haven't invented it. What I have tried to do is to formulate exercises that will help you engage with your presence in the world, to show up, to show up with nature. Nature brings us into our presence. An actor was reminding me the other day that in 1992, I don't remember saying this, but he said that I said in a keynote that the erosion of our presence is continually linked to the erosion of nature. Not only does nature bring us to our presence but as we lose nature it is harder for us to be present. We cannot save nature by destroying nature but we also have to save our human presence and nature is one of the great givers of presence, the generosity of nature and now we have to be a bit more generous to nature. My other thought before we start talking about the work is that maybe it is a political act to be present. I've met all sorts of people in my life and as I said people have come to me to learn presence and that includes elite athletes, the military, judges, barristers, doctors but I've also met people, particularly powerful leaders who have quite openly admitted. It is better to have a group of workers who are not present because they are easier to control. That sounds shocking but I do remember in the 80s doing a job for a company and the CEO said to me afterwards I don't want them to be transformed or educated just entertain them and that was a shock but also in the early 90s I worked with a top CEO on Wall Street I think he was in charge of 140,000 people and the first thing he said to me because we were travelling in a lift at lunch time on Wall Street and if you've ever been on Wall Street at lunch time everyone is queuing for lifts and he had his own lift and I said why have you got your own lift? He said I don't want to be present with anyone and I thought there we are, that's the problem but eventually I had to watch him do a keynote, a town hall to about 140,000 people and HR said to me he's dreadful, he's absolutely dreadful and he was and I was working with him and I risked my job by saying to him you know you might as well give them all an hour off because it's so boring and he laughed at me and he said exactly if I bore them they don't challenge me so this idea of present is huge but it may be very important now to realise that it serves certain people, maybe it is a political act to remain present. Let's go back to the beginning of my teaching 50 years ago and I had an epiphany and actually maybe you can't have epiphany until you're present but I started to see that everything in a human body is connected, now that sounds so obvious but nobody had taught me that, I was taught just voice but I made the connection that voice starts in the body, tension in the body stops the breath, if you can't breathe you've got no power and that connection was very critical because I think it came after sitting in a staff room with staff who were mocking the students, I can't bear staff rooms where the teachers mock their students, it's just disgusting really but they were mocking and I was the junior member of staff and the conversations were going like this, oh he's got it, oh she hasn't, rows of laughter and I thought what are they talking about the it, what is the it-ness of it and it occurred to me, they were talking about human presence and at that moment I knew that what I had to teach was presence not in a mystical way but in a very practical embodied way and 50 years ago what I saw in a classroom was the beginning of a physical deterioration of presence and that connects to the breath but let's be very clear what I saw 50 years ago wasn't as bad as what I see now, what I started to see was that if somebody had a spine that was slumped then they withdrew from the world with their presence and then the knock on effect went into their breath and their voice so their voice disappeared, if they had shoulder tension that created a push in the voice and a generalised presence and because I'm slow of study I just worked on these things very simply, very patiently trying to find out how to help them and I started to realise that presence of course is connected to something that matters, you've got to care about something and you have to give your full attention, so there was the beginning of being cool which is about not being present and as I started to work with people I realised that if we didn't get certain things right nothing was going to happen, so the first thing I realised was the connection to the floor was critical, nobody ever in my training spoke about feet, it just so happened at that time I'd been working in opera and I witnessed Pavarotti not wanting to sing on a set because there was a carpet and he couldn't feel his voice, equally I met an amazing woman called Alec Nandra Samarth who turned out to be one of my greatest dearest friends and she had trained at Rada but had been a Hindu classical actor before and at the RSC very early in the days that I was connected to the RSC she was the first actor I saw really take off her shoes to work, to feel the floor, so now let's start talking about connections in your body, you see if I'm not standing on the floor I start not being on my legs, now this sounds mad but it's a dancer's term to be on your legs but the joke is that until I feel the floor correctly I lock my knees, I didn't see anybody when I started teaching 50 years ago locking their knees that's a new thing, that's relatively new and as I started to trace these things through the body I started to realise that if I wasn't standing on my feet and locking my knees I couldn't get my breath down, if I couldn't get my breath down my spine started to slump, if I couldn't get my breath down I might pull my energy up into my chest and a jigsaw puzzle started to appear and I started to devise exercises to try and reconnect the human being to their full physical power and their full physical breath power and gradually I realised that these things were very simple to do if I could isolate where the tension started and that's fundamentally what I do in life, I try and find out where the tension stops our presence, our breath and eventually our voice, the erosion of this has been rapidly accelerating, of course we saw the profound effect after covid that young people could no longer even look at each other but it was happening long before, let's just be absolutely clear this has been happening and maybe back to my CEO on Wall Street it's easier to control us when we're not present, I remember a very famous director who's now passed but he used to talk to his actors so much that they started to fall asleep and eventually he looked at me and said it's great when I talk like that and they get bored because then they don't answer me back so these are things that we have to understand about our presence and about our body and about ourselves and that to show up with our presence requires attention and care and something has to matter but it's also incredibly difficult because then you are revealed and let me just say at this moment there's no blame to anyone, you know when I started to see in the early 80s young people's bodies collapsing, you know we blamed the idea that all the playing fields had been taken away from children so they didn't have anywhere to run that they weren't able to walk on rough ground, some of my students I think I'm insane but it's always occurred to me that when we walk in nature we become present partly because we're designed to walk on rough ground that urban pounding of hard flat surfaces is actually entering our body and taking away our breath and our presence and eventually our voice and this again my teaching career I was teaching the Bedouin and they talked about walking in the desert and walking on sand and hard rock and very jagged rocks but the first time they walked into a urban setting i.e. pavings within 20 minutes of pounding they could feel their knees, their pelvic area, their shoulders, their spine beginning to get so disturbed and painful that they were yelping in pain so this idea of walking with our freedom on rough ground and just as a political little point here you know we're hearing everyone talk about how important nature is but we have to preserve nature we can't just take nature away from people and think that they're going to stay present maybe that's not important to say at this moment because we'll do a whole podcast on it so after a while of looking at bodies and seeing where tension was gathering really and the gathering of that tension stops the pure thing that we all have to do which is to fully breathe in and gather and then give out our energy which is all presence is I started to try and formulate something that people young people could understand and over that period of time and it took me I think a probably about 10 years to formulate what I now call the three circles of energy and the three circles of energy is a way of understanding how you lock off your presence in circle is our full aligned physical and breath presence the place that we start in and the place we have to reset in if I can teach you how to reset when somebody is taking your presence away you have a chance you have a chance to survive you know in my teaching career I've worked as I said with the military the special forces said to me once if we have one person in our group that is in present we're all at risk and for whatever reason over the years I've gathered a lot of great martial artists that come and work with me because of this simple idea that you have to be fully present in your body centred aligned and aware in order to survive we cannot survive without drawing on our presence and how many of us have felt under threat suddenly feeling our presence realizing there is a danger outside us and that we have to connect to it but equally in that presence we have intimacy we have connection with somebody we have presence instead of absence a woman said to me recently do you know you can be alone in a room with somebody for 20 years and if I talk about myself personally the battle because of my father has always been to show up how to show up I often ponder that we often teach a thing we can't do very well and that is being present so this idea of three circles of energy and the second is when we're fully aligned in our full economic efficient power and in that power we allow our body to be at its highest level of engagement and in that way engage with the world and as the body becomes present we can find the presence of our breath the placement of our breath which is what we're going to be working on later second circle and for most people that I teach today that is a distant memory oh they say to me oh yes I've come back to myself and sometimes it's as simple as looking at a photograph of yourself as a child and seeing that you were present and then looking at the photograph when you stop being present in your body and that connection as I said this is a jigsaw puzzle second circle a balanced body a full breath and a full giving out of your breath to the world and when the word circle is used there is a circle of energy around you you don't have to look to be present you sometimes feel presence I don't know most people have had the experience of knowing somebody's looking at them and turning around because if we're alert we can feel those things if we're tight and held we can't feel those things so second circle is going to be the study the practice the physicality that you're going to learn how to do and by the way because it's of us everybody can do this work it depends on how much you want to work on it and how dangerous it is because without any doubt our presence and our withdrawal from presence is often to do with trauma fear or being ignored retreating but second circle would be the study of the rest of the podcasts around presence and nature presence and leadership presence and community and presence in Shakespeare but let's really think about the two other circles the things that I started to look at 50 years ago with groups of students who wanted to show up but couldn't and then the ones that showed up the other staff were so pleased because they had it and me having to say to young people of course you're present of course you've got it of course you can show up and be connected to the world and by the way if actors aren't present on stage there is no awakening of the artist you can have craft and not care to do it you can know how to make a table but not care to do it so the presence has to exist and be married to our craft let's talk and maybe even begin to experience what first circle is like when I talk about first circle I often just pull my hands in people will often talk to me and they'll put their hand on their sternum and pull themselves in in a way first circle is energy falling into us by the way all these things can be choice all education is is choice you can do what you want but you must have the choice sometimes in life we have to go into first circle but it's not our natural presence it's a habit first circle pulling energy in so the first thing I started to notice with people in first circle was their spines being slumped I was lucky enough I've been very lucky in my life I've just worked with amazing people who've been so generous to me and of course part of being present is generosity you know to give out is a generous act to be clear to an audience is a generous act but I worked in the 70s with an amazing osteopath called Dr Gerald James who had been a surgeon that had gone into osteopathy and he used to say as soon as your spine goes you age now I thought that was quite funny he was also moaning about platform shoes saying those shoes will destroy everything about your body but that's another story but I started to see that from behind a young person their body looked like an eight year old they were so reduced through the spine and of course if my spine collapses I can't breathe fully the breath doesn't go deeply into the body the head is then pulled forward so you're looking down into the floor often then the feet come together rather than balanced under the hips and then slowly realising that people in first circle were back on their heels pulling away from the world and of course that's been a survival technique to pull away from the world first circle body leading into first circle breath leading into first circle voice which is the voice pulling back you know the problem with actors using microphones in theatres often is that they don't bother to even get their voice out so again it's just loud mumbling that everything is falling in looking down and then it occurred to me that if I go to the theatre long before you speak we know whether we are going to listen to you and we get messages from your body if the curtain lifts up and there's an act of standing there in first circle a very big exaggerated form of first circle would be of feet together your shoulders rounded looking down maybe hands in front of you that signals before you speak servant so first circle is a critical understanding of you reducing yourself and pulling away from the world I'm going to make huge generalisations so please forgive them but it occurred to me that first circle is the worst of female habits of pulling away no blame is attached to any of this but in first circle we might listen if you remember that two-way street and speaking in negotiation in consent in discussion is an open second circle present connection so first circle people maybe listen but we don't know what they think we don't know what they are going to say so again it might be because of survival but we don't know what you are thinking and therefore eventually in certain circumstances you will be ignored so you're maybe taking energy but not giving it and at its worst is that you are forgotten first circle if first circle is reduction and second circle is balanced between our giving and receiving third circle is an imbalance in pushing out your energy pushing out your energy so third circle people will often speak but never listen first circle people might think about themselves but never give it out third circle will give it out without thinking about someone else and by the way empathy is found in second circle exchange we're not going to change anyone that we disagree with until both of us decide to turn up in second circle and listen and be prepared to change your mind but that's for a whole other podcast that's going to be explored in detail so let's go back to third circle I would suggest that third circle is what most world leaders are at the moment I do know that most bullies I've met in the workplace our third circle people who push away the world and just pronounce there's no give or take it's just speaking without listening and you can see that in the body let's think about the body that pushes out the chest is bluff I used to call third circle before I got the numbers I used to have it in my mind that third circle was bluff that it was a bluff position I used to think in first circle that it was called denial but of course that's too limiting so third circle is a bluff it is a disconnect with the world that are pushing out on it you see it in the chest you see it often with very braced legs you see it with very tight jaws people force forcing things not the balance of power which is second circle but force and it goes with very gasping breath often very conscious taking in of breath and again without blaming people we've taken on third circle in order to cope with something I'm not going to blame people but the role of leaders at the moment is third circle and at worst it's a bullying narcissistic position that is about I'm more important than anyone else in the space so third circle that pushed out tension first circle a withdrawing and in the middle is the sweet spot in a way of second circle coming into yourself and again if you walk in nature or you're accepted in a community you often feel the tensions drop away and you find yourself present again as I said it's the function of art it's the function of community to bring people into their presence so let's just touch base with the tensions in our body as the baby is born their body is centered their breath is free that's how we come on to the planet and the tensions in the body desensitize us I often have to work with somebody who a lot of people have huge problems with maybe in a company they'll say we can't bear working concerns how and generally their third circle and generally and I believe this to be the truth the vast majority of people are decent but sometimes our tensions stop us understanding that our energy is disturbing doesn't make somebody a bad person so I had a company come to me and they had a very successful these people are often very successful third circle and he was perceived as a bully and everything I was I was talking about in third circle it was in his body he was pushing and what people and particularly the women found very difficult is that he came too close he came too close to them and they felt that he was intimidating them he was coming into their energy their circle of energy their circle of energy was being attacked by his presence and I said to the women or women that had problems with this why don't you just step back and of course that horrified them and I said well maybe we have to practice you stepping back because he might then feel that he's too close and we practice me coming in too close and them stepping back and that's what they did and then he got it and he came to me and he said do they have a problem and I said yes your energy and he was profoundly upset because he nobody had he'd been rewarded third circle people often reward it for this energy that is pushing out and desensitizes them equally we are desensitized if we in first circle we become obsessed with ourselves which is absolutely fine but if we stop seeing out of ourselves first circle third circle often we lose our curiosity because we become stuck in a tension curiosity imagination is about looking out at the world in second circle presence and second circle is the beginning of everything that we can do that is creative and caring and curious it builds groups the artist's job is to be present enough to awaken us it connects us to nature it connects us to anything outside nature the divine it is us being aware and connected a society without presence and absence is less caring more violent unable to listen to change or to fully empathize with anybody it is critical that we put presence back into education into leadership into community into the arts and into a respect for nature and the rest of the podcasts will be exploring this but the next podcast is going to be a very simple series of exercises to help you feel presence in your body and your breath and to take that presence out into the world thank you for listening and I look forward to working with you in the next podcast