Space, Silence + Stillness.

I arrived back in Sicily on Sunday night. It was cold, dark, and super windy. I left my apartment three months ago thinking I would be gone for two weeks, max. Luckily I’m fairly predictable and whenever I leave the house, even just for a weekend, I make sure it looks the way I’d like it to when I come home: clean house, clean sheets, clean(ish) fridge. I also left thinking I might need to quarantine on return, so I seem to have stocked the kitchen with a mix of things: some frozen chicken soup (practical), nine cans of tuna (exaggerated), saltine crackers (boring but kind of useful), homemade carrot bread in the freezer (life-saving) and frozen peas (intended to be eaten frozen…don’t knock it til you try it.) 

Even having left things in relatively good conditions, yesterday was a blur of trying to figure out how to best warm up the house, doing laundry, organizing my calendar, throwing away the rotting lemons I discovered, and wiping a thin layer of accumulated dust from all surfaces. My mind was racing through to-do tasks and the wind was whipping at the windows. Everything, especially my brain, was in motion. People moved below on the streets to take out the trash, to do their shopping, to enjoy coffee at the local bar. They stopped to chat and I heard their greetings from my little nook as I moved around my house. 

Then I watched the sunset from my window. The sky lit up and the wind died down. I live in the historic center of a summer seaside village and while there is a year-round community, after the sun sets things quiet down. Nothing is open (partly on account of COVID, partly due to the seasonality of things). I didn’t hear one car pass, just the occasional pigeon scratching at the roof and seagull cawing in the distance. 

Silence. Stillness. 

I could see the horizon in the distance, agitated waves harassing the shore. I could feel and hear my heartbeat clearly. With the stillness all around me, I noticed all the noise in my head. With each breath, I could feel where I was holding tension in my neck, my jaw, my shoulders. I needed that stillness outside to notice all the commotion inside. And once I recognized the commotion, I was able to step back and listen to it more carefully. All those words, thoughts, worries, tasks in my head, what were they really trying to tell me? What was underneath? At that moment it was the sensation of being home. Of having arrived. Of trust, in myself. Things I had lost hold of with so much noise around me. 

Most of us (I include myself here) aren’t used to this stillness and silence. We have our phones, our companions, our families, our mental and physical to-do lists. We have the street cleaners, the neighbors, the vegetable vendors that go around in tiny trucks (mostly applicable in Italy), and podcasts, TV, Spotify… all the sounds that keep us company. Our environments are full of movement, noise, and stimulation. 

Coaching is a conversation. It’s a partnership. It can be noisy and it can be messy. It’s a dialogue and questions are a powerful tool. I am an enthusiastic and innately curious person. I like asking. I like challenging. I also admit, I like telling people what to do. (But that last bit, that’s not part of coaching.)

What is part of coaching is silence. It's a challenge too. I get excited, I get curious, I am ready always to step in and ask more. But I'm learning to be that distant horizon for my clients. I'm learning to be the stillness at sunset and the silence of winter in a coastal town. I start by taking a breath as they finish talking. By listening for the pause in the conversation. Intuiting what is not being said, just as much as what is being said.

I am practicing creating space with silence. 

When we create those moments of stillness for ourselves, or when we are offered them through our environments, in our relationships, or with coaching, it’s amazing to see what comes out. We dig beyond the to-do lists and anxious thoughts and dive into that pool of knowledge each of us holds inside. We discover what we know inherently, but we can’t hear through all the distractions. 

My favorite part of coaching is this dance. The question. The answer. The silence. The realization. 

I had a client the other day who was on a roll from the start. Without much more of a prompt then, “So, how have things been?” they started in. They talked. First was the noise. They talked more. It was messy. They paused. I waited. The silence. Finally the answer. They say, “Now, actually that we’re talking about it, I realize I need to....” 

I’m so grateful to be allowed into that “we,” but really it is all “you” (and my silence). 

Sending blue skies and looking forward to talking (or just sitting),

Henna