EQ Rising

"Know Thyself"

The Tao Te Ching states, “Knowing others is intelligence, knowing yourself is true wisdom.”

Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is built upon self-awareness. Knowing oneself means having the capacity to understand one’s own emotions as they arise and fall, having an accurate self-assessment of one’s own strengths and weaknesses, and displaying Self-confidence. When schools teach to a limiting theory of what it means to be intelligent, kids determine their self-worth via the current values and principles rooted within the socialization process.  Those outside the box are often stigmatized or even medicated for not adhering to these rules, for being different and learning differently. 

Shy, intuitive, in touch with feelings, and strongly empathetic, my early childhood offered me the opportunity to "disappear".  This occurred as I submerged my true nature by seeking approval through conforming to the expectations of my school, home and church. Carl Jung calls this "falsifying type" in order to fit into a society that undervalues your unique type of intelligence for those intelligences deemed to be more worthy. In hindsight, being a wallflower and walking on rice-paper ended up honing skills around listening, observing, going within, and writing while deeply communing with the natural world. My journals became my "Know Thyself" teachers, reflecting my inner realms back to me: nature became my church, the world at large my family, and the journey, my schooling.  

It seems I was on a path to better know myself via intelligences that were not valued in school: interpersonal, kinesthetic, musical, naturalist and intrapersonal intelligences (see Howard Gardner - Resource page).  It was a road less traveled to be sure. I observed that opportunities seemed abundant for the more gregarious, self-confident, out-spoken individuals.  To this day, it remains true that "The squeaky wheel gets greased." 

My timid demeanor drew in my opposites as teachers: the "toughen up" crowd , the bullies,  and the "My way or the highway" controllers.  As a reserved child, what I encountered in the outer world did not appear to be safe.  This observation only further heightened my sensitivities to the energies in the communicative interplay I witnessed between people: emotional responses, facial expressions, vocal modulation, the nuances of body language, mechanisms for ‘tuning-in’ or ‘tuning-out,” and ways of hearing what was said through subjective lenses. Unconsciously, my formative years were spent learning to intuit energies and even to grow antennae to feel into the environment. Simple vocal inflection might convey peace and tranquility one moment and then strike utter chaos and wreck havoc the next moment in lives around me.  I took on the outward role of the little adult, became an observer, seldom engaged in play unless with the rare, strongly trusted friend, and found solace in my secret garden - communing with nature and my inner life.

As I matured, I began to notice that people had been socialized to give very little of their energies to active-listening, self-awareness, impulse control and paying deep attention to the present moment, and these skills certainly weren't taught in our schools. 

Subsequent travel in over 21 countries, I developed a love for the diversity in people’s language, culture, arts and their music – all avenues of conveying intelligence. I became enamored with the different ways people learned and communicated their understanding to one another and to those outside their familiar circle.  Curiosity about my own socialization process veered me in the direction of desiring to teach in the public school system. This led to a K-12 Teaching Certificate from the University of Washington.  As a teacher, I gleaned insights into the ways we, through socialization, learn to frame our experiences - our perceptions. Teaching kindergarten taught me the importance of clarification: condensing bulky concepts into bite-sized, chewable pieces. For long-term retention, I witnessed more success if I connected dry theories, facts and concepts to individual learning styles and creativity, through play, art, dance, music or silent nap-time imaginings.  Utilizing my love of rhythm, singing and art, I incorporated creativity into the curriculum, watching as children pursued connections to the material in their own individualized ways. We took time to appreciate beauty and art and to open to the messages housed within original works.  No child was expected to be "equal" in their gifts; each was unique.  This was celebrated. Learning was FUN!  

To broaden my understanding of learning styles and expression, I took classes in interpersonal and inter-cultural communication.  At that time, theories concerning multiple intelligences emerged, and I could more easily communicate to others what I had been seeing happen in our schools - reliance on linguistic and logical mathematical styles over musical, kinesthetic and other forms of intelligence.  In my own experience, I had found retention and understanding noticeably higher when tied to a variety of teaching methods.  It was fulfilling to see children blossom while involved in creative, experiential lessons integrated with the theoretical and conceptual.

Soon thereafter, with the advent of No Child Left Behind and the dictates of standardized testing, which eventually led to “teaching to the test,” I became concerned by the rigorous cutbacks in art and music. In most schools, creativity was severely underfunded and its import overlooked. I watched as many youngsters struggled with the new protocols. With  time, children’s intimate, experiential connection to the world around them seemed to diminish, not only in the realm of innovation and creativity, but in their embodied connection to the natural world...a sort of emotional and nature deficit disorder was on the rise. Cellphones and technical forms of communication began to replace face-to-face interactions. With this over-emphasis on left-brained learning, it was my feeling that teaching in the United States had become unbalanced.

Disillusioned, in 1997 I began teaching at the college level, hoping to ride out this phase of disconnect from creativity and right-brained ways of learning. I chose to integrate seeming polarities -  my BA in Sociology (society, family systems and socialization processes) by obtaining a Master’s in Transpersonal Psychology with an emphasis on Archetype, Myth and Symbol – all languages of the right brain. I became fascinated with the power housed in these fundamentals to enable individuals to access deeper, often repressed foundations and underpinnings, the belief-systems that created (or destroyed) meaning in their world.  I revisited my earlier sociology coursework through the lens of how our stories and myths infuse and inform our outer reality. This led to a certificate in women’s spiritual development, which prompted me to inspire and empower the more compliant and disenfranchised to find their voice; I was becoming a squeaky wheel.

Shortly thereafter, I picked up my Teaching English as a Foreign Language certificate in Dublin, Ireland. At our quarter-end parties, I noted the ease with which college ESL learners grasped the English language while singing karaoke. Self-confidence was strengthened as new vocabulary words were easily acquired through song. I later incorporated rhythm-based activities to encourage syllabication and diction.  My enthusiasm to teach from a creative curriculum was again ignited.

It would take an earth-shattering event to move me from teaching others creatively to actually cultivating a deeper, experiential understanding of the importance of play, imagination and being creative in my own life. Following my eldest son's fall from a cliff - breaking his back and both legs and having two surgeons state that he would never walk again, in the blink of an eye, my life was changed forever. Mythologically, it was a descent into the Underworld - the realm of the unconscious.  It is where I had hidden away the inner child's desire for play and embodied creativity whilst pulling up my bootstraps and donning the roles of both mother and father as a single parent.  Yes, indeed.  I had become too serious.

Remarkably, two years later, my son was walking with a leg brace and a cane. I had witnessed a true miracle, and housed within this in-my-face journey, I discovered we do indeed know far less than we think we know! Amazed, the surgeon at Swedish Hospital in Seattle enrolled my son in a study, and I found myself pondering whether the concepts housed within epigenetics and Dr. Bruce Lipton's The Biology of Belief,  a book I read to my son while he was in a coma, had played a role in his recovery. This opened up a whole new area of research, as obviously what I thought I knew was not the whole picture. I had many questions and found I needed a respite from mainstream teaching in order to attend to them; so, my son became my property manager, and at his suggestion, I moved to Hawaii.

Living on the Big Island, I was bathed in creativity on a daily basis. I took up conga and djembe lessons at the college, went ballroom dancing every Friday evening and balanced this ruled type of movement with free-form ecstatic dancing on Sundays. I learned Hawaiian chant and Hula and began to embody the creativity I had repressed. Expressing that inner child's need for play brought another intelligence my way - the intelligence of the heart. I became intrigued by the research from the HeartMath Institute whose mission is to help people bring their physical, mental and emotional systems into balanced alignment with their heart’s intuitive guidance. I had found my home.

Although I am now working on a curriculum and, with a child’s adventurous spirit, trying my hand at drawing, my focus in Emotional Literacy and the Expressive Arts is definitely music. During an extended stay in France, I learned to play the crystal and Tibetan singing bowls and studied "sound massage" via the Peter Hess method. I developed an interest in how sound and vibration underlie form, the potency of intention and of the spoken word, and the incredible benefits that arise linking left and right brain hemispheres through sound, meditation and hand drumming. I learned to use my voice for healing and participated in several sound healing ceremonies. As a result, my vocal range and control grew enormously, and now, years down the road, I sing and perform both solo and with a fourteen piece dance band.

Perhaps more than ideas, music communicates universal truths; it conveys feelings generally inexpressible through words. It is communication from the heart. Music speaks clearly and immediately, often independent of cultural background.  Lives are transformed by music, as confidence is cultivated in our ability to access and share meaning. Since the beginning of time, music has been a medium of emotional intelligence, perhaps even predating language.  Music that arises from the heart and is tied to the emotional circuitry of our brain affects how we feel and therefore affects our psychology. The dialogue is one on a deeper psychological and emotional level and one, it seems, I was born to pursue.