Tuning-In: The Art of Mindful Communicating

By Ronald D. Gordon, PhD

Last night I finished reading all the rest of this lovely book. After each short chapter, rich with wisdom and love, I just kept being moved by Ron Gordons life path as poet, philosopher, educator, and person-centered practitioner. May this book soon be in many peoples hands and homes and in classrooms and therapists offices. Had Carl Rogers known Ron, I imagine he would rest well, knowing what Ron has done with his work and beyond (Gay Swenson Barfield, PhD).

Gay Swenson Barfield, along with Dr. Carl Rogers, was founding codirector of the Carl Rogers Institute for Peace at the Center for Studies of the Person, La Jolla, California. She is currently in private practice as a licensed marriage and family yherapist.

This book is absolutely great! Im thoroughly enjoying and benefiting from this brilliant book in countless ways. Bravo! This book will deepen and enrich your life (Noelie Rodriguez, PhD).

Noelie Rodriguez is coauthor of Systematic Self-Observation (SAGE Publications) and is a professor of sociology at the HCC campus of the University of Hawaii.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532041204

Ronald D. Gordon, PhD

Ronald D. Gordon (Ph.D., University of Kansas) is Professor of Communication at the Hilo campus of The University of Hawaii. He teaches Interpersonal Communication, Seminar in Human Dialogue, Seminar in Listening, Interviewing, and Leadership and Communication. He has served as chair of the Department of Communication at UH-Hilo, and his scholarship has appeared in twenty different academic journals, including the Journal of Multicultural Discourses, Human Communication, Journal of Business Communication, Psychological Reports, Small Group Behavior, Perceptual and Motor Skills, China Media Research, and Communication Quarterly.

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Copyright © 2018 Ronald D. Gordon, Ph.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Communicating: It’s About Tuning-In

Mindlessness to Mindfulness

Mindful Breathing and Centering

A Night Attunement Saved My Life

The Four Movements

I-IT TO I-THOU

Dr. Carl Rogers’ Big 3: Warmth, Empathy, and Genuineness

Wise Man on the Mountain

Biggest Barrier: Triggering Defensiveness

Best Bridge: Helping Others Feel Understood

Taking a SAFE Pause

SOFTEN: The Power of Nonverbal Communication

Catching the Wave

Tuning-In: The Fascination Mindset

Recap #1

How Perception Works: The Transactional Model

Tuning-In to the Other’s Frame of Reference

Conversational Narcissism: Tuning-Out

If I’m to Hear Myself, I Need You to Listen to Me

Watching the Stream: Zooming-In, Zooming-Out

Opening the Space: Tell Me More

Tuning-In to What People Need

Beyond Ignorance is Bliss

Opening Our Hearts

Choice-Point: Defend, or Suspend?

Gaps: The M-S-R-U Model

Behind Words: Tuning-In to Meanings

Recap #2

Tuning-In to the Dance of Communication

Listening to Peoples’ Stories

Generative Dialogue: 1+1 = 3

Creating Generative Dialogue: WEG-VIBES

Gift of True Listening

On the Path of Communication

Our Either/Or Thinking

Six Core Images

Eloquence of a Hug

Reacting, or Responding?

Paraphrasing: Friend of Communication

Hot-Button Topics: Neutral Box, Nice Box, Nasty Box

Recap #3

Credibility: Character, Competence, and Charisma

Lightly Hold First Impressions

Peoples’ Radar is Turned ON

Get Your Big But Out of My Face

Expanding Our Self-Image

Do I See You, or My Image of You?

The Map is Not the Territory

Nonverbal Communication: Stronger Than Words

Trails I’ve Walked, Trails You’ve Walked

Pinpointing Our Meanings

Shaping Others’ Self-Images

Communicating Clear Agreements

Recap #4

Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

Small is Powerful

Spacious Listening: Even Einstein Needed It

Tuning-In: You’re Right!

Punctuating Social Interaction: S/he Started It!

Giving and Taking: The Reciprocity Norm

Slowing Down and Listening

Sometimes Less is More

Manipulative Communication

Pitfalls of Serial Communication

SOFTEN Makes the Difference

Leadership and Emotional Contagion

Recap #5

Tuning-In to Rhythms of Relation

Dialectical Forces of Life and Relationship

Breathing Across Time and Space

The Communication Imperative

Tuning-In: Peak Communication Experiences

Absorption

Spontaneity

Loving Acceptance

Sacred Unity

The Ongoing Communication Challenge

Where We’ve Been

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

About the Author

Also by Ronald D. Gordon

Actualizing

Mindsets and Methods for Becoming and Being

Communicating with the West

(with Professor Satoshi Ishii)

To My Dear Children:

Liahna, Deva, and Drew Gordon

"In this immaterial realm of mind there are,

At any moment,

A few indwellers who,

Entering into close proximity,

Strike flame out of one another

By the intimacy of their communication.

They are the origin

Of the loftiest soaring movement

Which is as yet possible

In this world."

Dr. Karl Jaspers,

Man in the Modern Age

INTRODUCTION

C OMMUNICATION GAPS ARE EVERYWHERE all around us: Gaps in communication between girlfriends and boyfriends, husbands and wives, women and men, parents and kids, bosses and workers, teachers and students, doctors and patients, roommates, police and community, politicians and publics, this group and that group, country X and country Z, and so on ad infin itum .

Our world and lives are replete with communication gaps past, present, and future. News headlines scream-out daily with the latest failures of people to bridge communication gaps, and as one of my colleagues has aptly summarized it, We’re living in a time of discord, division, and separation; we’re pulling apart and shredding. Communication gaps of all forms are a major theme across every context of human encounter in the third decade of the 21st century.

Yet if we are to survive and thrive together as people, we need to learn to minimize, manage, and morph communication gaps.

This book is a shout out for us to stop being communication zombies, and to awaken. It’s an invitation for us to see more clearly during a given moment of attempted communication what we’re doing as we’re doing it (or, better yet, even before we do it), and ask ourselves if this is the right and skillful communication action that’s most needed in this moment.

In these pages you’ll cultivate your tri-fold capacities for (1) greater mindfulness, (2) for truly tuning-in to other people, and (3) for sensing what’s called for in a given communication moment, and doing it.

As we direct our focus to the concepts, models, principles, and mindsets in this volume, they’ll begin to work on us, in us, through us, and for us.

First we were blind.

Then we see, and take right action.

You can quickly upgrade your interpersonal communication mindset and skills if you dip into these pages regularly, a few minutes each time. In fact, I urge you not to read too much at any one sitting. Just open, read, and get out. Frequency is more important than duration. Check-out a message or two each day, then close the book and get on with your life.

Some stuff will stick, and you’ll discover yourself starting to implement it in actual practice, at times effortlessly. Awareness takes over, and can help us prevent, repair, heal, and grow. Dr. Carl Jung stated it well: The urge and compulsion to self-realization is a law of nature, and thus of invincible power.

Author Eric Hoffer once said that for him a book is a good book if it contains but a single good sentence. I encourage you to read the entries in this work with a similar attitude but a higher standard: Look for the one good sentence on each page that makes especially good sense to you, that touches something in you.

Find these sentences, connect with them, feel the energy behind them. Forget whatever doesn’t make sense and go for the sentences and ideas you can relate to, the ones that light you up. Engage and connect, this is enough. Drink in what you want, and leave the rest. You’re in total control of your own reading experience.

There is within me a passion to successfully reach and teach you. I want to have a relationship with you through the words on these pages, and the meanings behind them. I speak to your head, your imagination, your heart, your possibilities. I care about your future as an interpersonal communicator because I know much is at stake for you and the others around you.

Let’s become more mindful and tuned-in interpersonal communicators, starting now. This book is entering your life, and it’s going to perform some magic for you. Everything in this volume is people-tested and time-tested. Trust me, this stuff is powerful. Go with the principles and practices here that have the most meaning for you, and let them work within you to transform your inner and outer communication for the better.

I haven’t tried to impress you with too much jargon, or with concepts that have only marginal real-life value. The times in which we live don’t call for mere academics, they call for tools that make a difference.

This volume could have been organized into standard chapters each thirty pages long, but I’ve chosen not to do it that way. I want you to be able to get in and get out quickly, coming away each time with something tangible you can reflect upon.

I’ve always liked those special books where I can spontaneously open to any page and find something useful without having to necessarily read all the preceding pages. Although there is an intended progression across the pages here, if you’re an impulsive reader then simply open to any page and go for it. I would recommend beginning with the first 20% or so of the book, however, since it does lay the foundation.

We’ll also use some first-person affirmations. Following each entry are italicized words you can say out loud or silently to pump-up your willingness to become a more mindful and tuned-in communicator. Your own words and images are more important than mine, so these affirmations are simply to give you direction in jump-starting your own self-directed communication. Use them as springboards for improvising your own affirmative words and images, and you’ll accelerate your development.

In one recent published study on the use of affirmations it was found that people became significantly more satisfied with their lives after only two weeks of using positive affirmations a few minutes a day (compared to a no-affirmation control group), and this affirmation-effect persisted across time. What we say to ourselves can affect us, for better or worse. It’s up to us how we use our own inner communication.

But don’t just say affirmative words: Feel them. Emotionally join up with the meaning behind what you’re saying, and breathe this positive energy into your body. What we say to ourselves and bodily internalize matters, so we’ll want to use words and images to stir our positive life energies and propel us forward.

Throughout these pages you’ll also be invited to practice a key means of mindfulness development: Breath awareness. For every task we need the right tool, and we’ll be using awareness of our breathing as a main tool for repeatedly bringing us back into embodied mindfulness.

There’s a special device to help us practice mindful breath awareness that’s built-in to this book. I’ll tell you about it a few pages ahead in the reading titled Mindful Breathing and Centering. Please check that reading out; the special device described there will likely end-up being of great personal value to you.

I hope you have a playful attitude as you read these pages, and gravitate toward whatever echoes within you. Let the rest fall away. Stay loose, be exploratory, be an eager learner. Empty your mental cup a little if it’s already full. Make room for an even more skillful and satisfying version of you to emerge.

The ultimate payoffs of your study and practice will be huge, both in your personal and professional lives. Tuning-in to the models and principles contained here, combined with learning how to tune-in to yourself through mindful breath awareness, and learning how to truly tune-in to other people, can be not only life-enhancing but life-changing.

As a university teacher of interpersonal communication, time and time again across the years I’ve witnessed firsthand the power of this tri-fold approach of tuning-in to self, to other, and to what’s needed now in this present moment of communicating.

In our next reading we’ll talk more about the meaning and importance of "tuning-in."

COMMUNICATING:

IT’S ABOUT TUNING-IN

A T HOME THERE’S AN inexpensive portable radio with a rotary dial sitting on my kitchen counter. To change from one station to another I need to turn the dial slowly and carefully. I need to be deliberate in tuning-in to precisely the right station, adjusting the dial until the static disappears and the signal I’m seeking comes through loud and clear. I must tune-in , lock-in with finesse and patience to the signal I’m wanting to receive.

In my car I have a digital tuner, so the search for the signal is automatically done by the car radio itself, but the idea’s the same. A signal-searching process takes place, and then a locking-in to the precisely right frequency for harmonious reception to occur.

This process is very much like what’s required of us in face-to-face communication. If you’re not directly on-frequency with another person, what you get is the equivalent of scratchy noise, unpleasant static, and little communication gets through. To communicate effectively we need to carefully dial-in to the other person. We need to nuance into existence an open and receptive communication channel through which information and energy can best flow.

Professor Wilbur Schramm is widely recognized as one of the founding fathers of modern human communication theory. At Stanford University for many years, Dr. Schramm ended his illustrious teaching and research career here in Hawai’i at the East-West Center in Honolulu.

Dr. Schramm taught that when people want to create true communication, they need to tune-in to each other, to get on one another’s wavelength so they can bring mutual understanding into being. Here he states an attunement-based view quite succinctly: "The essence of communication is getting the receiver and sender ‘tuned’ together for a particular message."

Professor Schramm taught that each person has their own individual field of experience, and that when two people attempt to come together in communication they need to align these individual fields, they need to reach an overlap of personal fields that enables the tuning-in. In other words, they need to find that place where together they create resonance with one another, where they’re on the same frequency: "Receiver and sender must be in tune."

But Professor Schramm wasn’t the first master teacher of communication to come to the realization that communication is about tuning-in.

In ancient Greece nearly 2,400 years ago Aristotle taught that skillfully jumping communication gaps and creating bonds of connection is about aligning with the other person that we want to communicate with, getting a solid sense of who they are and where they’re coming from. Aristotle, like Dr. Schramm in more modern times, was talking about getting past a preoccupation with the self and instead more finely tuning-in to the other, and then synchronizing with the other person with whom we want to effectively be in communication.

Communication in this classic attunement-based view is less about concentrating on our own message and securing buy-in and more about slowing down and tuning-in to the other, listening to them, making them our primary focus, grasping their reality as they experience it.

We let go of controlling and dominating the situation. We take ourselves out of the driver’s seat of the interaction. Instead of stage-managing, we drop back and follow.

We choose to receptively listen. We make room for receiving more of the totality of the other person. We project less, and absorb more. We become more fascinated with the other than we are with ourselves. We give up being the center of attention, and provide the other person with a safe open space to step into, so we can get a better sense of them.

We care enough to take time to finely dial-in to the other person, so that we can come to know them, where they’ve been, what they’ve done, how they are, how they see and think and feel, what they value and hold dear.

We seek to get on their wavelength.

Then, and only then, are we in the best possible position to more wisely adapt our own eventual messages to this specific other human being, now that we have tuned-in to them, and where they’re coming from. We create rapport, we establish harmonious interpersonal connection. The other can begin to hear us maybe as never before, because we’ve first heard them as perhaps never before.

When we survey the thesaurus for terms related to "tuning-in or tuned-in" here’s what we find: Awake, aware, attentive, alert, observant, conscious, plugged-in, listening, receptive, perceptive, with it, savvy, mindful, enlightened. Yes, all of these apply.

Many social interaction scholars and researchers have contributed to an attunement-based model of interpersonal communication, including Dr. Carl Rogers, Dr. Mary Ainsworth, Dr. John Bowlby, Dr. Sue Johnson, Dr. Daniel Siegel, Drs. John and Julie Gottman, Dr. Daniel Goleman, and Dr. Thomas Lewis and colleagues (see Bibliography).

Underlying this book, then, is both an ancient and yet still cutting-edge model of human communication as a tuning-in process. To fine-tune to another person, to sense who they are, where they’ve been, what they value and believe and feel, what their style is, what their rhythms are, what they need, this is the work of a tuned-in communicator.

The tuned-in interpersonal communicator gets past themselves, and moves into the terrain of their communication partner, getting a clear sense of the lay of the land there. This tuned-in communicator is other-focused rather than self-focused.

When we tune-in to another we go beyond our own personality, our own mental chatter, our own world view, our own message, our own everything, and dial-in to the personal world of the other person as they are experiencing it.

More than doing this from a distance, from afar, we ourselves take some steps into the mental and attitudinal and emotional realms of the other, gaining a close-up sense of their personal reality.

This is not to say that we get lost in the world of the other, abandoning ourselves to it. Rather we tentatively and safely step our way into at least the outer edges of their world of experiencing, thinking, and feeling. We do this so that we may empathically understand the inner realm out of which they are functioning.

As we do this we simultaneously remain tuned-in to ourselves, rooted in our own ground and center, in large part established through our ongoing practice of mindful breath awareness as we’ll be approaching it in these pages.

We practice tuning-in to our breathing in order to tune-in to this currently alive moment, and this sets the stage for us being able to tune-in to this other person with whom we’re wanting to communicate. This tuning-in and centering within ourselves will also enable us to more fully tune-in to what is needed in the current communication moment, and do a better job of meeting that need. Tuning-in to our breathing reduces default-mode mind-wandering, and readies us for deploying the searchlight of our attention to where we choose.

As we proceed I’ll share with you what you need to understand and do to become a more mindful and tuned-in communicator. This gives you the best shot at transcending communication gaps, and replacing them with communication bonds.

The teacher’s role is to point you in the right direction, then your role is to study and practice. As a result, doors open, and what was hidden is found, and this can serve you and others well.

The terms tuning-in and attunement have great meaning for me. I see these as leveraging tools, microscopes and telescopes, that allow us to see into otherwise hidden dimensions. The concept of tuning-in is a focal device that can revolutionize our communication with others. It can be our overall operational orientation from which our actions then unfold.

Whenever we attempt to communicate with another person, if there’s not a subtle tuning-in to that other, then our communication effort will suffer, or just plain fail. The way to span the distance between two people is through first briefly tuning-in to our self and getting poised, and then tuning-in to the other person, and tuning-in to the nature of the situation we’re in, and to what’s needed next. These are moves this book will enable you to make so you can better survive and flourish in this world.

The title of the one of the readings in this book, Catching the Wave, comes from the fact that scores of my university students over many years here in Hawai’i have been surfers, and my student surfer friends often tell me about a kind of tuning-in process that’s required to catch the great wave. The excellent ride demands attuning with the wave and where to go to catch it, and when, and how. Too early, too late, wrong place, wrong angle, all no good. No, everything has to be just right. It’s all about humbly tuning-in to the wave, bringing oneself into accord with it.

And in our everyday human communication as well, knowing how to tune-in to another person, and tuning-in to the situation at hand and approaching it skillfully, matters if we’re to get the best possible ride.

To become more skilled in the art of tuning-in, we need to learn to make the move from mindlessness to greater mindfulness in our daily communication awareness. As we become more mindful, more tuned-in to our own body and awareness of this existentially unique moment, we’re in prime position to engage in the fun and exciting process of tuning-in to another person and the context of our encounter. This brings us to our next reading.

Affirmation: I start to realize more clearly than ever before that interpersonal communication is about artfully tuning-in to someone else, and to the present-centered moment. It’s bigger than me: It’s about gaining a feel for the other person, a sense of where they’re coming from, where they’ve been, who and how they are, and the specific moment we’re now in. I begin to sense a tuning-in process awakening within me as I turn the pages of this book, and steep myself in its guiding messages. This tuning-in is like blending with the waves, and merging, and riding.

MINDLESSNESS TO MINDFULNESS

A PIONEERING RESEARCHER ON THE effects of mindlessness (as contrasted with mindfulness ) is Dr. Ellen Langer of Harvard University. It all began after Dr. Langer’s grandmother died. Her grandmother had been an immigrant to America and spoke only limited English. Grandmother had been complaining of head pains, and was only able to tell her attending physicians that she felt like she had a snake slithering around inside her head, and it was driving her crazy. Her medical doctors diagnosed her as being senile, and eventually subjected her to electroconvulsive therapy.

It was only after the grandmother’s death that an autopsy revealed that Professor Langer’s grandmother had a brain tumor that had previously gone undetected. The fact that her grandmother had been misdiagnosed and the brain tumor had gone untreated brought personal anguish to Dr. Langer. It also caused her to become professionally interested in what she called mindlessness, an area of research she founded and in which she has since conducted dozens of controlled experiments.

Dr. Langer saw that when people, like the physicians in her story, lock-on to a single-perspective (in that case a faulty diagnosis) they can become victims of premature cognitive commitment. They become limited in their outlook, trapped by their categories and stuck in their fixed vantage-points.

This mental entrapment is often the result of acting out of memory and habit alone. People can end up behaving mindlessly in this moment, seeing and doing exactly as they have in the past, merely because that’s what they’re used to doing. Inertia prevails, and steers behavior.

Instead of freshly tuning-in to this specific situation in front of us now in this new moment, we often impose templates from memory and close-off to new incoming data. As Dr. Langer summarizes it, When we blindly follow routines or unwittingly carry out senseless orders, we are acting like automatons, with potentially grave consequences for ourselves and others. The title of Professor Langer’s opening chapter in one of her books on mindlessness expresses this graphically: When the Lights Are On and Nobody’s Home.

She gives this brief example of our readiness for mindlessness: What do we call the tree that grows from an acorn? An oak. What do we call a funny story? A joke. What do we call the sound made by a frog? Croak. What do you call the white of an egg? If you first thought or said yolk, that’s due to the rhythmic set-up for a mindless reaction. And every day, in multiple forms, life events, if we let them, are setting us up for mindlessness.

Mindlessness is about being on autopilot, or worse, asleep at the wheel. Other expressions that come to mind for forms of mindlessness would include out-to-lunch, distracted, and automatized.

Mindfulness, on the other hand, points us toward the opposite end of the continuum. Mindfulness is about being present, aware, awake, conscious, curious, and attentive, and it’s also about not being a victim of the limiting categories, semantics, judgments, and perspectives that we or others hastily or rigidly impose.

Dr. Langer encourages us to experiment at times with shifting our mindsets, shifting our definitions of situations, shifting our semantics and patterns. This is part of what is entailed in the shift from the mindlessness zone to the mindfulness region of the continuum.

Living in a more mindful state is like living in a transparent house where the interior walls are made of glass, says Dr. Langer. Everything can be seen if we need to see it, objects in another room or in the basement are rendered more available for use if needed. The mind is more ever-ready to draw upon potential resources, and put them into action. The lights are on, and someone is home, and awake and aware.

A prominent pioneer in the scientific study of mindfulness, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, famously defined mindfulness this way: Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally. This is the most commonly used definition of mindfulness in the sizable scientific literature on its benefits.

When we’re being mindful, we kindly self-observe our mental, physical, emotional experiencing with open receptivity and friendliness toward ourselves, without latching on to this or that passing content. We remain unattached, we let content pass through without freezing it.

We loosen our grip, and we remain mentally open and flexible and fluid.

We practice letting go of getting prematurely stuck in any one angle of vision, any single mental label, or conclusion. We practice not taking so seriously the thoughts and judgments and conclusions that are passing through our awareness. We witness these passing contents, we notice them, but we melt away from grabbing onto them and identifying ourselves with them. We refrain from feeding them.

We practice letting them pass through and flow on.

This is our move toward mindfulness.

Mindfulness is about side-stepping from dwelling on thoughts about the past, ruminating about what should or could have been done differently, or how awful or great things were back then. We walk around that muddy pothole, choosing not to get stuck in it.

Mindfulness is also about smoothly sliding around preoccupations about the future, worries and fantasies of what could possibly happen.

And mindfulness is about side-stepping the quicksand of random monkey-mind mental chatter (technically called default-mode network activity) of all sorts, including negativity and judgments.

Mindfulness is the practice of returning to being centered in this living moment right now and right here, being openly and kindly present to our own immediate mental, emotional, and bodily experiencing, and without judgment. As we do this, we’re making space inside ourselves to witness, to discover, to heal, to grow, and to transcend.

The heavy baggage of judgment and of past and future gets set-down, again, and again, and again.

In less than a minute from this sentence, I’m going to ask you to imagine that you’re holding two heavy suitcases, one hanging from each arm and hand, clutched in your tight grip. In your left hand will be a very heavy suitcase that represents your past and the world’s past and all related judgments. And the suitcase in your right hand will be holding all your thoughts and fantasies and judgments about your future and the world’s future.

Both suitcases are jammed full, lots of heavy stuff. Get ready to put your arms down at your sides and close your eyes after the next couple of sentences, and get ready to feel how heavy these gigantic stuffed suitcases are in your grip. Prepare to use your imagination and really feel this tremendously heavy burden. Get ready to visualize in your mind’s eye your arms and shoulders and clenched fists and face and jaw and breath all straining, as you struggle to hold-up this incredibly heavy burden. Let’s do and feel this now, feeling the pull on your arms, shoulders, and hands and how this weighs you down. Close your eyes and go ahead.

When you’re done, set this weighty load down.

Notice how your body wants to breathe and relax.

Let yourself breathe a deep sigh of relief.

Feel better?

Kind of nice to finally set-down the heavy baggage of past and future, yeah? In this moment you’re less weighted down, as if you’re traveling lighter.

Well this is what the practice of mindfulness is about, and particularly mindfulness of our breathing. Because our body has a marvelous capacity that our intellect doesn’t have: Our body lives primarily in the present moment.

Therefore, whenever we realize it would be of benefit for us to set-down the heavy baggage of past and future, and miscellaneous conceptual thoughts and judgments, and relax and feel good and come into this moment NOW, the quickest route is through the body, and particularly through practicing mindfulness of our breathing. To come into mindfulness, to come into Now, we tune-in to our breathing.

This is our way of practicing setting-down the damned suitcases.

Again, and again, and again.

And the word practice is most apt, because that’s exactly what we’re out to do.

We practice getting less trapped in else-where and else-when, imprisoned by our racing mind. We become more Now and Here, through the door of our present-centered breathing awareness. We practice tuning-in to our breathing, and thereby become more mindful, each time getting unstuck.

We’re watching as thoughts and images and moods arise, yet we don’t elaborate on any of this material, we don’t add to it, we don’t fuel it, we don’t throw more wood on the fire. We practice letting things flow on by without feeding them. We practice watching the movie from a distance, and, in the moment at hand, taking it less seriously than before.

The mindlessness zone is in one region of the continuum, and mindfulness zone is in the other direction. To move increasingly into the mindful direction of the continuum means this: To practice paying greater attention, with open-minded and open-hearted awareness, to precisely what’s going on in this present moment, inside and outside, and without being bogged down by judgment of self or others, and entanglement in thoughts of past and future.

Dr. Langer from Harvard cautions us, however, that Even with the best definitions, the finest research designs, and the most careful answers to each question, mindfulness cannot be captured, cannot be analyzed once and for all. In trying to quantify it, or reduce it to a formula, we risk losing sight of the whole. She’s right, we might never have a complete handle on phenomena such as consciousness and mind and mindfulness.

Yet we do know enough in this area to begin to become relatively less mindless and more mindful at the practical level. This appears to be our innate human capacity, we come equipped with the internal resources to continue to progress into the mindful zone.

In the pages ahead you’re invited to do exactly this, because being less mindless and more mindful is of incredible value in becoming an effective human communicator. It’s where we want to be headed. We want to move toward increased mindfulness as a listener, as a speaker, and as a partner in the attuned dance that is interpersonal communication.

Mindfulness will be an underlying cord woven throughout this communication book. You’ll be encouraged to tune-in to yourself and build a safe center of mindful awareness there, and each reading will give you an opportunity to evoke and reinforce this evermore spacious inner center of open awareness.

We tune-in to our breathing to get focused in the now moment, and this in turn facilitates our tuning-in to other