I have to declare that up until my learning with Newfield, the coach training company where I studied to become an ontological coach back in 2006, I had never understood or even heard of the concept to be centred or to be in centre.
Thanks to Newfield I now appreciate what this term means, I understand it but I still fall short in really experiencing it and embodying the practice of moving from centre.
Newfield embraces ontological coaching and as a result of that philosophical underpinning we spent a good proportion of the course experiencing the domain of the body. For many, myself included this is a wholly foreign territory but it serves as a good place to describe what it means to move from centre.
Our physiology or how the body codes and makes sense of the experiences it gets exposed to in life contributes to our having a plethora of triggered tendencies or reactions to events. This then gets transmuted into the language we then use to make sense of events which has a corresponding connection to the emotions and moods we then live.
We know intuitively that we cannot control everything that happens around us and the only control we can manifest is our reaction to events. Easier said than done!
Is being centered more of a physical state concerning center of gravity, natural posture and movement or is it also a state of mind made up of our philosophy, values, and spirituality? The human system is always searching for and trying to maintain homeostasis or balance. To be centered is to live in the immediate and ever changing balance of all these cooperating systems. Newfield would subscribe to that view and would urge congruence between the moods we live, the body we inhabit and the language we deploy from an authentic self.
The difficulty arises when we are presented with situations which we do not like or appreciate. We can be immediately pushed or pulled off centre, we are triggered. Being centered means to be balanced in this instant one hundred percent, taking in information without clouding it with expectations or fear. By taking in information and making creative, intuitive decisions informed by our “CENTER,” our true intent, our original self, we then actualize this intent through our decisions and our physical expressions. We complete the balance of centeredness by being responsible for our decisions and the actions we subsequently make.
As a novice and new to this notion I have experienced this condition, being in centre, when practicing yoga and lately in conversations with people where initially I was severely triggered. It is an immensely humbling experience and one where I imagine the emotion satisfaction is as good descriptor for the emotion that comes with being centred. It is very gratifying to think that you have spoken from a place of authenticity where your views are not coloured or tainted by immediate and sometimes obvious conditioned tendencies and that after the conversation you still feel whole.
I was similarly chuffed to hear my student’s remark in an essay they had to complete for me after a sales development programme I ran, that they would like to experience what is feels like to conduct sales meetings from a place of centeredness. They got the concept and more importantly the benefits of this heightened state and they are twenty years younger than me! Bravo.
If anyone has any further articles or comments to make on this concept or their experiences in achieving centeredness I would love to hear back.