Most listening is actually waiting – for a gap, a point, a turn. Somatic listening is different: receiving another person with the whole body, noticing what lands and where. Seven ways to practise it.
1. Feel your own feet while they talk
The entry practice: while listening, keep ten percent of attention on your feet or your seat.
2. Notice your body’s first response
As they speak, the body reacts before the mind: a lean-in, a tightening, a warmth, a recoil. Catch these first responses. They are your own reactions, and they may or may not say anything about the other person. Tracking them quietly is the core skill.
3. Let your face stop managing
Notice the listening-face performance – the nodding schedule, the interested eyebrows – and let it relax into something honest. Just let your face do what it does.
4. Hear the emotion under the content
Practice listening for what their body is saying: the speed, the breath, the pitch shifts, the pause before a word. Treat what you notice as a guess, and check it by asking.
5. Resist the rescue reflex physically
When their pain triggers your urge to fix, notice it in your body – the lean forward, the inhale before advice – and stay seated in it for one more breath. You can ask what they want from you.
6. Check in with yourself before answering
After they finish, take one breath with a hand’s attention inward: what do I actually think and feel? Then speak from that. A long exhale between their sentence and yours is one way to pause.
7. Debrief difficult conversations in the body
After a heavy conversation, take two minutes alone: what landed where? The criticism in the chest, the warmth in the face, the unfinished sentence in the throat. Journaling is one way to record how it felt.
If listening is consistently exhausting
If others’ emotions routinely flood you – especially in caregiving or therapeutic roles – that is worth support. Boundary practices help; so does supervision or therapy for the professional listeners.
Related: co-regulation – what two listening bodies do for each other.
