Taking a Knee with You

I just finished reading a book that touched me deeply. It’s titled Seabiscuit and is written by Laura Hillenbrand. It is the story of one of the most famous horses the US has ever known. Born in 1933, he was undersized, chunky rather than sleek, knobby-kneed, and given to sleeping and eating for long periods. He was often the butt of stable jokes.

His trainer considered him lazy and mean and his solution was to race him endlessly – 35 times as a two-year-old – which is unheard of in thoroughbred racing. As they tried to dominate him, Seabiscuit got meaner, more stubborn, and more lethargic. Every once in a while, he would win but eventually his trainer gave up on him.

When Tom Smith, his trainer for the rest of his life, first met him, he recognized the depth of this horse’s heart and his love of running but felt that nobody had ever really seen or understood Seabiscuit.

Smith’s first step with the horse was to deeply listen to him. He saw how lonely he was so he introduced Seabiscuit to his longtime friend, a horse called Pumpkin, and Smith opened their side to side stalls so they could communicate more easily. He also discovered that Seabiscuit liked dogs and often the horse would go to sleep with a dog curled up by his chest.

Smith’s next step with Seabiscuit was to let him know that he would never again be forced to do anything he didn’t want to do. It took Seabiscuit a while to finally recognize this and in direct proportion to his recognition, Seabiscuit began to win and even become a pleasant horse to be around. He was the top winning horse of the 30s and was voted racehorse of the year in 1938. He also won the famous match race with War Admiral who was the triple crown winner.

At that time, Tom Smith’s way of working with Seabiscuit was unorthodox. Most trainers were about dominating their horses but thankfully that didn’t work with Seabiscuit. He instead responded to a respect filled partnership with Smith and his main jockey, Red Pollard.

Why am I spending this time talking about a horse? Because the relationship between Smith and Seabiscuit is the key to our own healing. We too have been trained to try to dominate ourselves – to try to get rid of the parts we don’t like and grab hold of the ones that we do. But has this ever brought you the lasting healing you long for? It certainly didn’t work for me. By trying to control my overeating, I ended up gaining 97 pounds in a year. And then a little voice inside of me said, maybe, just maybe, listening rather than trying to control my eating is where lasting healing happens. And now my body has been at a normal weight for many years, and I eat whatever calls to me.

What I am offering here is that we are all like Seabiscuit. We begin to be healed when we are heard!! If you doubt this think about a difficult day and when you shared it with a friend, they told you to get over it, or grow up, or they were tired of listening to you, or they just walked out of the room. How would you feel? Now, imagine sharing your day with a friend who listens to you. They don’t try to fix you, they don’t judge you, they don’t tell you what to do. Instead they are simply present for you. After a few minutes of talking, you would begin to feel better because you were heard! Being met exactly as you are allows the upset energy to move more easily right on through you.

If you doubt the power of that think about what’s happening during these days and weeks after George Floyd’s murder. A few days ago, there was a curfew in Seattle and thousands of people were protesting. The mayor said that she wouldn’t enforce the curfew because people were protesting peacefully, and no violence showed up that night. But on the same night, in New York City, without warning, when the curfew time came, the police began gassing and hitting the peaceful crowds with their batons. It was painful to watch the videos of the different interchanges between police and protesters that night.

When we try to overpower a crowd, a friend’s pain, or our own pain, we only empower reaction and resistance. But all over the country we can now see police chiefs, policemen, mayors and national guardsmen taking a knee with the protesters. When this happens, the energy of possible violence loses its momentum.

We are being shown a new way of feeling and it doesn’t come from dominating. It comes from listening and we can see the power of that listening in Seabiscuit’s story, in my overeating and in the world finally hearing the heartache that people with darker skins have had to endure for centuries.

How can you make a difference in this challenging time on our planet? You can protest, vote and have conversations with people you formerly held at arm’s length. But most importantly, you can make a difference by learning how to listen to yourself – metaphorically taking a knee with the parts of yourself that you have hated and feared.

So, the first step in true healing, as I explored in last week’s blog, is to see how much you turn away from yourself. See how much you resist and react to your immediate experience. And when you can, turn toward. In any given moment, ask yourself, “In this moment, what am I experiencing?” It could be anger, despair, irritation, a headache, a fear of dying, the flu. And when you notice whatever is there be willing to say, “I see you. You have permission to be here.”

That is what taking a knee is all about. Rather than reacting to what you are experiencing, it’s saying, “I see you and you have permission to be here. I am doing my best to listen to you.” What we’re talking about here is the art of alchemy, the art of transformation. What you try to control, controls you. But when you listen, the energy that was bound up in the parts of you that you have formerly resisted, feared and even hated, begins to open back into the free-flowing aliveness that you really are.

I invite you to bring this phenomenally healing way of being with you into your everyday life and watch our world be healed one person at a time.