#WHAT a trust exercise: says 'i'll listen.' and then proves it. and also never crosses her own boundaries to fulfill another's need.

[eruditetyro]

"...As a practitioner I could say: 'Well how about this?' or 'You might like this' but what I learned was not to do that, because that deprived them of the opportunity to take the time to notice what they want. And I came to see over time that that faculty of noticing what you want is actually the primary and most important thing in this entire exercise, that if I skip over that-- as a coach and a professional-- if I skip over that, I've done them a great disservice. So it's not the actual doing of stuff that really counts here: it's giving the client time to notice what it is that they want... ...I've seen it take a few seconds, a few minutes, 5 minutes; I had it take 45 minutes one time. Gal came in, third or fourth session with me, we're all fully clothed, I said 'We're going to practice asking for what you want. We're going to just keep doing that.' I said 'You climb on the massage table, get comfortable however you want, sit, lie down, whatever you want, and I'm going to sit here on the side, and when you ask me to do something I'll do it. You get to choose, moment by moment, exactly what you want.' I said 'I'm not going to do anything except exactly what you ask for.' And she lay on that table for 45 minutes. And she she didn't fall asleep, because I was watching her breathe. 45 minutes. And then she said 'Would you put your hands on my feet?' So I rested my hands on her feet. I didn't rub her feet, because she didn't say that. She just said 'Put your hands on my feet,' so I put my hands on her feet, and I just left them there. And that was for about 5 minutes or so, and then our time was up. And she got up from that table and she said 'Wow. You have been telling me that I get to choose what happens to me, but I never really got it until now.' And oh, that was a big 'Aha!' for me. Gives me goosebumps just telling the story again. And that was a profound change in her life, and she had told me that many times over the years after that. So I learned when I asked someone 'How do you want me to touch you for 3 minutes?' my job is to zip it and don't figure it out for them." - Betty Martin