It’s a cold Wednesday night in the midst of a busy week and everyone here has chosen to participate in my 5‑week workshop, eager to explore communication through a mindfulness lens. I’m astonished to see how many people have found their way to my Zoom room thanks to an email from the Tang Institute.
But when I Zoom out (pun intended), I realize I shouldn’t be surprised. Earlier this year, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy published an urgent advisory on the loneliness epidemic. In it, he repeatedly reminds us that human beings are wired for meaningful connection – and that it’s up to us, individually and collectively, to reweave the social fabric. Because interpersonal communication plays an outsized role in our lives and well-being, what would it be like to intentionally spend time strengthening our communication skills?
In response to this call to action, the Tang Institute supported two virtual class series in 2023: the spring “Introduction to Mindfulness-Based Communication for Connection (MBCC)” and a fall follow-up that acted as both an MBCC refresher and introduced new content.
Both series incorporated experiential communication practices such as W.A.I.T., an acronym that stands for “Why Am I Talking?” and Spoken Listening, which refers to demonstrating active listening through verbal cues like paraphrasing, validating, and asking clarifying questions. Tools such as these are critical components of MBCC, a communication framework I’m developing. MBCC draws from a diversity of sources, including mindful communication tenets, Dr. Brené Brown’s trust-building framework, and Harvard researcher Hanne Collins’ recent studies on high-quality listening.
Perfect communication is not the goal, nor is it possible. The premise of MBCC is that rather than criticizing ourselves for communication gone awry, we can cultivate a communication toolkit grounded in mindful awareness, allowing us to interact with our own inner landscapes and each other in a more attuned, connective way.
Mindful communication teacher Oren Jay Sofer puts it this way, “Most communication systems focus on the external dimension, which includes a receptive element of listening and an expressive element of speaking. Yet with mindfulness practice comes the recognition of the interior dimension to human experience. In communication, we begin to see the importance of a third, often unseen, primary component: awareness.”
So let’s circle back to that cold Wednesday night. As our time together comes to a close, I invite everyone to share their takeaways in the chat: using practices such as W.A.I.T. and Permission to Pause in daily interactions; asking questions to keep attention focused on the speaker; employing the Under the Hood strategy to listen for the unmet needs that may underlie difficult feelings expressed by a colleague, classmate, or family member; and more.
And then we wish each other well until next week, when we’ll return to this communal space to practice together and learn from each other, as this wisdom from adrienne maree brown stays close to our hearts:
Breathing in my contradictions
Breathing out compassion for contradiction in others
Breathing in complexity
Breathing out space for complexity in others
Breathing in humility at my humanity
Breathing out I recommit to our humanity
