Bodily Listening

Deep listening is bodily listening. When it is hard to empathize with or understand what someone is telling you, listen not with the head but with the body. Absorb their words, gestures, and expressions with your cells and pay attention to how your body feels. Their troubles or joy will no longer feel foreign because the body knows and can always connect to another human body when the mind cannot. When your body listens, you will not feel any desire to interrupt or assert how you feel or what you think about what you are hearing. Our bodies recognize kinship before the mind can.