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Wringing Out an Old Sponge by Tom Lutes Steve sits in the back, in fact so far back he's almost out the door. His large white arms fold across a huge extended belly. Baseball cap tugged down firmly in place. He's real big and he's got a real attitude. His tightened jaw accentuates the glowering eyes staring out at me from deep inside his skull. He's mad. Damn mad. In fact terminally mad, it's just a matter of degrees, and today he's definitely in no mood to talk about it, especially not in our "little communication workshop" he was "forced" to come to. Steve's so disgusted and been that way for so long he can barely utter any words about it, except to spit out disdain for "them". He's worked thirty-two years in the coal-fired power plants of Detroit pumping out power so half the state of Michigan can keep running. His father, his brother, and two sons used to work here too.
Steve, at least in his own mind, has been consistent, reliable, dependable, and put in a good day’s work most every day of those thirty-two years. He did it the right way, the way he'd learned from his father and the others. Each day they taught him to do an honest job, use good values, look after people, and follow the rules. He'd be taken care of if he did. He never wanted a career, that was for those "college types". All he wanted was a job. Just do a good job and go home. Doing the same thing for 30 years was just fine. He didn't need to improve every day, just do a good job and go home. Didn't need to be everyone's boss, just to be treated " fair" for a good day's work. And that's how it was for quite a while. Then somehow the rules changed. Suddenly it wasn't just show up on time and do what was expected, now you had to learn to "communicate", "diversify" and "do sissy stuff like this class". For guys like Steve it's all so upside down now. Aging white men ("dinosaurs" as they call themselves) whose privilege has disappeared, minorities having immense power with the boss; women who never worked your job a day in their life now decide your fate; Wall Street dictating what productivity is; share holder value being all that management cares about; people getting rich doing nothing. "Got to be the lowest scum on the earth these days to actually go to work everyday and do a real job. You know, actually DO something, not just push paper around, talk a lot of shit and jerk people off. Seems like everyone's just trying to work a couple hours at home and scam big money off the stock price of some Internet company that's done nothing yet in the real world. Who's actually working these days and what kind of respect do they get?" His eyes burn the last sentence into mine.
A surly tough survivor in a corporate culture built to reward first at the top and last at the bottom, he views the world entrenched behind an angry, aggressive exterior. For so long he stayed rigid in his hatred of management that he is now literally frozen in place. Through the years of aging this rigidity hardened and the person who was once so young and strong has now become almost brittle. Hiding behind the need for structure, certainty and routine, vulnerability is the last thing people like Steve will ever admit or want anyone to see. Instead they cling to the stability of their anger, bonding around a common disgust for "them" and put-down jokes of how soft each other used to be. "Lies and covering their ass, that's all their good for. Why should I care, they don't. All they care about is their 'career' and making sure they look good. The threat of a suit is all they understand. 'Efficiency'? That's the biggest load of crap I ever heard. All efficiency means to management is cutting out jobs at the bottom and making us work harder with less safety. It never means cutting out layers of stupid managers sitting around on their butt. Only three more years and I'm outta here. Sooner if they give me half a chance." I'm leading a one-day communication workshop. Steve is one of approximately 6000 people who will do the program in the coming four months. It's part of a multi-phase, multi-year effort to begin to heal immense communication gaps between the upper and lower echelons of the company. Born out of a desire by upper management to begin some kind of healing process, this phase of the program is for groups of union employees from the power plants. They are ordered to come, like it or not. As a result easily 80% have an attitude when they walk in the door and make no bones about not wanting to be there. Speaking with similar degrees of intensity and bitterness many have the same stories of management's cutthroat deceit and looking out only for themselves. Steve is just one out of a huge group of people within this company, and around our nation, who feel that way. We have a ten-person facilitator team representing a diverse balance of both race and gender. Each week we meet and discuss how we can work more effectively, have more impact, and better deal with the anger we face. About half way through our 16 week run, our team begins to give voice to the following politically touchy observation: always the difficulty of our day as facilitators comes down to one major factor - How many "baseball caps" do we have? With slight variations in shape, size and attitude it's always the same: glowering eyes, baseball cap pulled down tight, arms folded - always folded - across the chest, older, strong, male, white. We know the day will go relatively easy when we look out at our audience and see at least one-third minorities or women, these days our groups consist of very few and we know we're in for a battle. What happened to these apparently once happy and content people? It takes constant effort over a long period of time to turn a positive experience into such a deeply ingrained sense of betrayal and rejection. Can we lay it at the feet of executives and managers who made long strings of self-promotional, inept, and in some cases unconscionable decisions? Can we point to the people at the top for rewarding the wrong behavior, taking the easy way out, and avoided responsibility for a dysfunctional culture set more firmly in place each step of the way? Certainly we can. No question about it to me.
Too many stories of corporate injustice end with fingers pointed at someone. If the inquiry stops there we end up with yet another typical victim story perpetrated by those decision makers at the top, who are certainly contributing. But that is only half the truth. What about the people themselves - the workers? Are they really the innocent victims of management? Not hardly. Equally workers play their part by selling out to the convenience of appearing to go along with everything while at the same time perpetuating an environment of blame. An unaccountable culture breeds people at all levels willing to accept a reality where everyone blames someone else for what they feel and experience. The finger points up if you are down and down if you are up. Trapped in a collective mindset too sanctioned to avoid, the tail-chasing, finger-pointing, merry-go-round entrenches itself deeper and deeper into the minds of everyone involved. Most workers I met totally accept the notion that you can separate your life from your work. "No problem!" says Steve. "You just walk out that door at the end of the day and leave it all behind. Every day. Every single day I just walk away from it." Turning off feeling, closing off caring, and compartmentalizing it all, certainly can't be called an optimal response. While this is all many people know how to do, it hardly fosters a deeply satisfying relationship to oneself, others and life in general. Seduced by the opiate of health insurance benefits and a retirement income, workers often stay with their job many years after desiring to leave and just resentfully ride out their remaining time. Dangling on that hook, Steve swallowed the notion he was protecting himself in the future by living a life in the present he hates. Steve is obsessed by the feeling that he got screwed. And it's true he did, but not only by someone else. Buried too deep to talk about is the knowledge that behind all that anger about "them", and all those extra pounds of bluster, hides a seething awareness that freedom is not being set out to pasture after a lifetime of avoiding thinking for yourself. For Steve the illusion of future security has thickened into remarkably clear walls of his own personal prison - way too clear to talk about in some "little communication workshop" they forced him to come to. Steve's real hunger is to be deeply related to work he cares about and which cares about him. The company he joined 32 years ago was all about relationship. Now it's all about control. Earlier he played the game of excellence. Now he plays the game of ‘how little can I do and how much can I get’. Before he was happy, now he is not. Certainly he is justified to feel as he does. But now what? Choices of personal integrity come in the quiet of one's own conscience, except he is so filled with resentment there is no quiet. After class I pulled Steve aside and asked if he would like to meet privately. He said he guessed it "wouldn't hurt". When we met I asked if in his own estimation he held resentment toward the company. He nodded to the obvious. I explained how such emotions are actually stored in the muscles, organs and joints of the body and that in this way the body serves as a living, breathing mirror of one's relationship to life. I asked if he wanted to carry this around with him for the rest of his days. Looking away from me in a bored disgust he shook his head "no". Sensitive to the limits of his listening, I asked if he wanted to hear more. He seemed to almost imperceptibly soften and quietly nodded "yes". I proceeded to say that it looked to me like he had a lot of power and strength, but he was also quite burdened. This heavy emotional weight was going to limit his expression in life until he intentionally made up his mind to let it go. If he wanted a satisfying and fulfilling retirement he should not go into it carrying this burden of resentment. I explained how the dysfunction of the workplace worked over the years to increase his own. In continually hiding behind his justifications about management he never directly faced himself and his own contribution to the mess. This would now have to be done if he expected to be free of it in retirement. He looked directly, and somewhat defiantly, at me while I said all this. Suddenly he looked away and let out a short breath. I paused with him. The moment grew into a very long moment. Clearly something was building within him. I let the discomfort grow. Finally in a very small voice, with eyes moistening, he looked straight at me and said, "Ok Boss, how do I do that?"
Now, measuring each sentence, I said slowly, "Deep work facilitates the acceptance and then release of old disappointments, hurts, and feelings. Deep work means you don't keep standing pat with the same answer to life's challenges. It requires that you develop a new, more expansive vision for your future. This vision must be backed up with new practices that engrain new behaviors. The whole process will challenge you to embody a new kind of courage. The pay off will be a tangible freedom from the past." His big body had a visible quiver going to it at this point. His face flushed, but he looked at me hard and straight. I looked directly back, saying, "What do you think Steve? Are you up for it?" Walking out of the room he replied, "I'll get back to you". For the next 10 months Steve and I set up a schedule where we would talk on the phone once a week for an hour. Each week I would give him "homework" such as journaling about a particular issue, spending quiet time alone in stillness, taking on a certain physical training exercise, or doing other practices that helped to release the past and integrate his mind with his body. Each call we would review the effects of his homework from the preceding week and make adjustments. Twice during these 10 months we spent a week together on our land in the mountains of Colorado. The first stage of our journey together was setting up a foundation for the work. I had Steve answer questions like: "What is our purpose together?", "Why are we doing this?", "At this point in your life what is your real ambition?" From this information we formed up goals together that he sincerely wanted and I knew, if he worked hard, we could deliver. This process led to Steve creating a new vision for his life, something he could enthusiastically grow into, rather than just put up with and tolerate. He built a purpose for his life that set him on course to really be the man he wanted to be. I encouraged him to dream big and see himself living a life true to what he felt in his heart, one that reflected how much he obviously cared for people. It was a vision requiring him to take different actions in life, not just have new understandings. Against the backdrop of this purpose and commitment we went to work. Steve was a classic deer hunting and fishing type of guy, a man's man, at least in his own eyes. True to this image, he developed over the years the tendency to resist and subtly oppose any pressure, or expectation, he felt coming at him from someone else. Naturally then, when I would make a suggestion concerning how to handle something not working in his life he would immediately raise his voice, get defensive and push back. The combination of this attitude and his overbearing size was usually more than enough to back most people away. The more I pointed this out the more his sensitivity increased, yet so did his awareness. I did not ask him to change it, only to notice it. Each time he reacted that way I would simply ask if he was aware of it and did he really want to be like that. At this point he would make an honest choice as to how he wanted to relate to my questions. Every time he resisted I would honor his choice and just point out what he was doing. Time and again I made note of all the different ways he pushed back against new, in-coming information. We began to connect this tendency with much larger issues in his life and see it as a very basic relationship he had to his body, and in fact to almost every thing and every one. Once making this connection, and seeing the effects, he slowly began to drop his guard and voluntarily open up. One of the first orders of business was addressing his extra weight. We did so from the standpoint of referring to it as a coating of emotional protection he had layered on himself. I told him it would naturally fall away as he allowed himself to feel more deeply, speak more honestly, and listen more compassionately. I explained that as these layers of insulation fell away it would probably leave him feeling a bit raw and vulnerable. I continued saying, "Denied and suppressed emotions re-surface at these times. The trick is to move toward them, not away, and be willing to learn and grow from what you experience." It takes courage to do this, the kind of courage Steve was not used to having. He could be very brave in situations requiring a stern exterior and manly physical strength, but this deep work would require feeling his soft side, his hurt side, the part of him long since calloused over and covered up.
We talked about how one’s body naturally organizes around and reflects your experience, and that you are literally shaped by how you experience life. In other words, the shape of your physicality holds the form of your experience. Someone who is trained can see this constantly reflected in the posture, movement, breath and general shape of any person. I called this an "embodied attitude", meaning the way a habitual mood, or a particular experience, had over time embedded itself in the very shape of the person. To deepen this understanding, I asked him to stand in front of a full length mirror, look at the person he saw there and tell me and what general attitude this body reflected. At first he was very uncomfortable with the process and basically found it quite difficult to cooperate. However the longer he stood there the more he could actually talk about what he saw instead of just being embarrassed. During this time of looking in the mirror I asked him questions like: What is that body trying to feel? What is that body trying not to feel? Where is energy collected and stored? Where is energy lacking? What does that shape like to encourage? What does it like to withhold? Steve was a very physical person and, while this mirror exercise was quite challenging, he got fascinated with the study of being able to see these qualities in people. He wanted to know more and more about what I saw, how I saw, and the theory behind it all. I suggested that instead of talking about the theory he actually experience it for himself. I motioned him to lie comfortably on his back while I sat at his side. I asked him just to lie there quietly and tell me what ever he was feeling. The first stage had to do with getting past his usual round of jokes about the process being either sexual or painful. I understood his discomfort because asking a person to lie down like this is not a normal social posture and therefore quite unfamiliar in the presence of another. In this sense it required us to move to a different level of trust together. Once he began to relax a bit I asked him to drop below the level of his thoughts and tell me what sensations were going on in his body. Where did he see them? How did he feel them? Were there any paths of sensation he could trace going from one area to another? Once he felt secure at just being aware of his own sensations, we then moved on to the next deeper level of awareness. As he opened his eyes I asked him to take off his glasses and follow me in some eye movements. I placed my finger about 12-14 inches from his face and asked him to follow with his eyes while I slowly moved it in different directions and patterns - small circles, bigger circles, figure eights, near and far, slow and faster, etc. After a minute or two of this I simply asked him to close his eyes and tell me about what he noticed. After saying he felt strangely more relaxed and at home with himself, he again wanted to know about the theory behind all this. I explained that as his eyes relaxed so did he. I continued saying that how you see cannot be separated from you as a whole, and that largely vision is something learned, not genetically determined. As such people have adopted visual patterns of tension and holding which reflect the same patterns seen in the rest of their body. I said, "Let's see if you can feel the truth of what I'm saying from inside yourself. Just lay back and relax. Let what I am about to say sink in and then see for yourself if it makes any sense. Try and hear my words not just in your mind, but from within your body." Slowly saying each sentence and then letting it stand on it's own for a moment, I said: "The eyes are part of a total system which perceives reality. The eyes are the gateway to the brain, which controls the central nervous system. How you see both affects and mirrors the condition of your nervous system. Compensations, or tension, in your vision reflect your life experience and choices you have made about how to interpret the world. The totality of these choices is an attitude, a posture and a viewpoint carried in your mind, you body, and your emotions." After a long moment of silence he said, "Wow, Boss, that's heavy." I responded, "Ready for more? There are two more stages to this particular exercise. Think you can handle it?" "Well, we'll see" he said quietly. Clearly he was interested now, but I was pushing the edge a bit by keeping him in this experiential state instead of moving back to his comfortable zone of conceptual understanding.
At each stage of the way he went deeper and deeper into himself. He seemed to feel himself from the inside as never before and was literally awash in a sea of sensation and feeling he had never felt before. It was both amazing and unsettling, or at least this was how I saw it. Soon he needed to open his eyes and sit up just to gain some sense of normalcy. It took a few moments for him to collect his thoughts. He looked more openly into my eyes than I had ever seen before, saying he felt "good" but "kind of weird" and that he felt me "seeing into him" deeper than ever. I said the feeling was weird because he probably felt more naked and exposed than he was used to. At this point I talked about "armoring". Armoring is like a shell one wraps around oneself for protection. His body showed this in many places. Armoring functions like a mask hiding essential vulnerabilities, hurts and tender feelings. When you touch the body what gets evoked is a history, a background of memories living behind the mask. Often this in turn evokes a flood of sensations long since stored and awaiting release. These sensations carry with them a narrative or story about what we feel. As new sensations come to the surface so do new stories or narratives. In Steve's case these memories were of early days at the company when he was new and wanting to please by working hard and showing people he was tough. He told me story after story of times he was hurt by what people had said, but could not show any of it. On and on he went releasing painful memories of when he thought he could count on someone and they let him down. At the time he had neither the communication skills nor the depth of relationship with people to work it out, so he just carried this sense of betrayal around within him and continued acting cool. Afterward we had a long discussion about the fact that these memories were lodged in the tissue of his body, not just in his mind, and that we had freed them through using touch and breath, not just psychology. I continued saying that when you free the body, not just the mind, you increase the chances of the person “being a different actor” in the world, taking different action, not just thinking differently. One of Steve's main physical goals was to "loose his gut", meaning have a flatter stomach. My contention was he would do much better to get interested in his "core strength" and take up a physical program that would train this quality. A flat stomach was a particular look he wanted. A living strength in the core of his body would bring him something much more essential. After a bit of convincing I began to teach him core strengthening exercises. To my surprise he practiced them regularly. Over the months of our working together he experienced a major reduction in back pain, neck tension, and other related problems, directly as a result of this practice. At one point later in our process together he became furious with me about something I said. After I apologized, we both agreed his reaction was much stronger than what my words had merited. His overreaction was a predictable result from years of stored up anger, the kind I had seen that very first day of the Communication Workshop. From this point on we made regular trips over to my neighbor's house to work out his anger energy on the "heavy bag". This meant lengthy, exhausting sessions where he would hit the bag with a bat over and over again while letting out any kind of sound or words that he felt like. I would encourage him to really go for it, even when he had nothing more to give. Each time, though exhausted, he would reach new levels of power and intensity, and then release from his past pain. Increasing amounts of self-forgiveness, relaxation and peace would flow from there. Whenever I suggested we go to the heavy bag his first reaction was "Oh no, man, I don't need that shit again!" However once we started he relished the idea of aggressively and uninhibitedly beating the shit out of that bag. I always made sure he understood the point of the process was to safely release negative energy and then to access softer feelings behind it. At one point he said, "Hey Boss, this is kind of like ringing out an old sponge, huh? It makes space for something new to be absorbed". People like Steve get prematurely old because they stop growing and just stubbornly hang on to old habits that bring no real vitality to their mind/body system. We talked about how one of the main aspects of health is learning to get "empty" by taking appropriate actions (like hitting the heavy bag) to release old pent up thoughts and emotions. Without this ability to release your system begins to shut down because it is overloaded and holding too much. Once the skill of emptying is learned the system naturally can cleanse itself and be restored. This is where practices come in. Practices are a way of training yourself to engrain new positive habits of being. To make any clear change in life, particularly one as big as what Steve was attempting, you need to adopt daily practices that will continue the process of growth and change over the long run of your life. From the beginning part of my deal with Steve was that no matter how good, or how bad, it got he would keep going with the practices we established because they were the foundation of building who he was to become. Steve had the most trouble with the practice of meditation. He was suspicious of "the spiritual thing" and joked I was trying and convert him with all this "brainwashing" and that my real motive was to land him in "some damn cult". Each time he brought it up I knew that while being funny he was still serious. At this point I would just ask him what he wanted out of his life and whether or not we were making progress on that. We agreed that "progress" meant developing a greater capacity to be his own unique "self". For real progress to occur it
Each week on the phone we would talk about his life, his vitality and his relationships. He had an increasing sense of undoing in one year what he took many years to put together. As he gained momentum he talked about how his sense of purpose in life had changed, how the energy within him had increased, and how friends remarked that he looked good. Then he would humorously tag on something about how his golf game had also improved, but I knew he was proud of it. During our Colorado time together we laid a foundation that set in new habits of thought, feeling and action. Instead of stuffing down every uncomfortable feeling he learned to simply articulate what bubbled up within him. He learned that telling the truth had to do with saying what he was feeling, not just what he was thinking. When he returned home and practiced this way of communicating with his family they liked it, saying he was more available and less withdrawn. Steve and I had long talks during these weeks together. As we walked in the mountains I asked him questions like what qualities he respected in people, what he thought it meant to be a "whole" human being, and what it is to be "self-realized". From this he created a clear picture for himself of someone who had a well-developed mind, body, heart and soul. We talked at length about the effect this would have on his ability to be a better father, husband and friend to the people he loved. The practices we established supported this desire by building strength in the core of his body, sharpening his concentration and relaxing his defensiveness. As he progressed with these practices throughout the year the qualities he was looking for became more and more apparent to others, but most importantly he began to see them in himself. When we first met what passion Steve had was negative, and emanated from resistance, resentment and bitterness. Increasingly now Steve had real passion for life. As the momentum of this new energy grew he started to really feel it on a daily basis, then he began to see visible changes in his body. All this served to draw him even further into his quest. Every once in a while he would get discouraged, usually because he could not tolerate some new, uncomfortable feeling in his awareness. Each time that happened Steve would want to be reminded about "why this is worth it". Again, I simply would ask him what really mattered to him in life. Each time it would come down to family, living with a sense of vitality and purpose, and then making a positive contribution to the people he cared about. Clarity about those simple desires kept him doing the practices and expressing what was truly in his heart. The more he found those truths the more his burden lifted, his vitality increased, and he gained momentum on his goals. Everyone wants to wake up in the morning and be inspired with who they are and what they have become. Steve was no different, except that when we first met he thought the way to do that was to avoid the dark places in himself. As he found out, this will just not get it done. Steve put his big shoulder against the wheel of his life and pushed himself into a new future by clearing away the negativity of his past. The more he was able to do that the more energy he had for the present and the people who were in it. At one point toward the end he said, "You know what Boss? When I first came to you I thought I was all broken and you were going to fix me. You didn't fix me, you showed me a whole new way of living. I wouldn't call it easier, just a lot more fun." Life's challenges go on for Steve like they do for all of us. The difference is that now he continues to grow more and more heartened by what he sees in himself. |
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He turns away from me staring off into his anger. I imagine he's being carried back to the "old days" I've heard so much about, when people "loved their work", were "proud of the company", the "family atmosphere" and their "place" in the community. But it's not that way now. Not at all. Now he just wants to get back at "them", do as little as possible and get as much as he can. "Screw them back" is his last remaining act of inspiration after 32 years of what the company calls service. "You bet!” he says, “Get all I can and stick it to them. Over and over, much as I can. They deserve it and more for all the shit I've had to take. Ya, I get paid well, damn sure better after putting up with their lies all these years".
How can you fault his simmering resentment, yet who can really deal with it? Management hides behind layers of other managers working ever so closely with even more layers of lawyers. Certainly not them. Steve is caught. Like so many others he feels stuffed into some irrelevant inseam of our national grab for profits. Steve is a heartful man, yet he can feel no heart in the world of work these days.
Yet these executives are not much different than anyone else. They carry the usual human baggage: self-centered concerns, a penchant for talking when they should be listening, shortsighted decision-making, and impatience with individuals unlike themselves. Yet I never met one I would call uncaring or indifferent. They too are caught in this destructive tangle, except their role is to get over-paid and over-blamed. 
After another long moment, I said, "That may have been the most courageous question you’ve asked in a very long time." He looked away from me saying, "Well, we'll see about that". I continued explaining there was an area of personal development called "Deep Work" which would be required. Deep work accesses new levels of vitality through looking at yourself from a much deeper perspective. It accelerates your growth and maturity dramatically, but it requires learning and stretching yourself in an unaccustomed manner.
Our time in Colorado centered around practices that would develop his strength mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. This involved two different weeks of 10 to 12 hour days doing everything from meditation, to working out at the gym, to deep emotional release and taking long walks together in the mountains. Key to all this, and linking it all together, was working directly with his body to access, and then release, deep patterns of unconscious experience buried within him.
In the next stage we brought in breath. Drawing deeper breath into the body raises the excitement level of the whole body and tends to bring repressed emotion to the surface. In addition when you bring your breath to particular parts of the body it brings new awareness and sensation to that area. This can also reveal where excitement and sensation are blocked. I asked Steve to begin a particular pattern of breathing and to keep it going until he felt resistance to doing it any longer. At that point he would rest and then shortly after that I would ask him to begin again. As he repeated this breathing pattern over and over the energy or "charge" in his body slowly began to increase. Each time he rested his body would be more charged with energy and I would gently touch a part of his body I knew was holding tension. At other times I would massage a very tight muscle. On other rest periods I lightly tapped an area that appeared to be numb or uninvolved.
We joked about how the heavy, withdrawn, serious part of him had given way to a natural lightness, and with it came a deeper, more heartfelt laugh. When Steve and I first met he was literally swelled up with a stubborn resistance. As this quality began to subside Steve in his own view became more innocent, less jaded and more funny. During the year Steve shed layer after layer of what we called "excess baggage" - negative thoughts, feelings and pounds. Some days he felt great, other days the opposite, but always he kept up the most fundamental practice of all: honestly admitting where he was at and continuing the practices.