If you have spent years developing skills around control, precision, and succeeding, are you feeling a call for something else?
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Presence as an Internal Practice
Presence can be a gentle end to performing.
Presence is an advanced skill. It’s your ability to stay connected to your internal state while engaging with others.
Do you notice what you do just before you speak at a team meeting?
Do you notice what you do just before responding to emails and calls?
A small breath, a noticing of your feet on the ground, or a softening of your heart can change the way you experience being alive.
Practicing presence invites more being and less achieving, thinking, and unnecessary doing.
Safety as an Inner Experience
Did you ever consider that safety is an internal experience?
Constant stress and work drive put pressure on your body. It is possible to present as stable yet actually be experiencing tension and pain on the inside.
From a Compassionate Inquiry® perspective, this outer competence can coexist with an inner state of bracing, tightness, or numbness that has often been there for a long time.
The pressures you feel in courtrooms, complex negotiations, and leadership roles can have a long-term limiting impact on physical and mental well-being.
Chronic stress has been linked with increased physical symptoms, emotional exhaustion, and reduced overall well-being, even when people appear highly functional.
Micro-practices like noticing your breath, feeling the support of the ground beneath you, and bringing your attention to any tension (rather than ignoring it) are incremental steps that lead to transformational safety in your inner world.
Brief grounding and breathing practices can support nervous system balance, reduce stress, and increase clarity, offering a doorway back to the present moment.
A regulated nervous system is different from mental endurance and achievement. A more regulated system supports resilience, clearer thinking, and more sustainable energy, rather than only relying on willpower or overdrive.
The beauty of a healing practice anchored in presence is that it enables you to be more present, attuned, and connected with your loved ones and colleagues.
Your empathic gentleness grows so much you have enough to share.
When you have better relationships with yourself, your loved ones, and your colleagues, you build and cultivate trust and kinship. These are qualities essential for mentoring, team leadership, and client dynamics.
In Compassionate Inquiry®, this kind of attuned presence forms the foundation of a safe relational space where deeper truths can emerge.
Attunement Through Noticing
Presence, safety, and attunement remind me of gardening. When I want my plants to grow, they invite me to be really present.
I notice the soil.
I notice the sunlight.
I notice the sound of the bees that visit.
This noticing brings me into presence.
I water the plants.
I keep any bugs away that might harm the plants.
I protect the roots.
The plants are able to receive and grow.
This is how I create an environment of safety for the plants to be nourished.
I see when the plants need water.
I see when the plants need shade.
I see when the plants need trimming.
This listening is attunement.
These aspects of attention create an environment for the plant to grow. Nothing needs to be forced. There is a collaboration, a trust, and a dance that unfolds.
Questions for Reflection
Questions that may inspire connection in presence for you:
- Where in my life do I bypass what I am sensing and feeling?
- Where in my life do I rush through things in a tense way?
- What changes in my experience when I take a breath before every response?
- What changes in my relationships (with myself and others) when I practice being present throughout every day?
- What transforms in my life when I slow down to listen internally before engaging outwardly?
These are the kinds of inner explorations that Compassionate Inquiry® invites: gentle curiosity that helps reveal not only what you do, but also how you have learned to be—and what becomes possible when presence, safety, and attunement are restored.
My name is Leigh Aschoff. I support seasoned professionals to be honest and have better relationships with themselves, their loved ones, and their colleagues.
To learn more about Leigh’s work, click here
