 Hey everybody. Yeah, feel free. Yeah, please do it. It's good comfort. Crap. You guys got the best laugh. So our talk today is entitled, How You Do Anything is How You Do Everything. And before we jump in, we want to just give you a brief roadmap of the journey. First we're going to lay out our own experience. Coming into contact with this principle and the ways in which we practiced it. Then we're going to talk about how it shapes our decision-making process. And finally we're going to talk about why we believe it's a foundational element in operating a float center. So Jake and I met each other while we were working in a residential eating disorder treatment center. And in this environment we learned a great deal about suffering and healing. We were fortunate to have the opportunity to be surrounded by other students and practitioners of healing. As we collectively engaged in a process of discovery, learning, sharing, and growth. And something foundational to our philosophy at the time was that all of us experience similar elements of suffering and relief when it comes to mental and emotional health. And that these elements function within a holistic model. Everything is an interconnected system. Nothing is separate from the whole. And what we understood was that the only difference between the patients we were working with and ourselves was that we were operating from different points on the same emotional spectrum. As we worked with this patient population, which included individuals suffering from eating disorders, trauma, addiction, PTSD, anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive behaviors. We came to see clearly the value of congruence and conversely the detrimental effects of incongruence. Both as symptoms of and contributing factors to the healing process. Oftentimes in our patient struggles we would encounter these recurring themes of compartmentalization, avoidance, denial, minimization, and their movement away from discomfort and away from uncertainty. And these individuals to their own suffering would create often rigid structures of certainty and control through addictive behaviors, even if ultimately those behaviors were destructive. And I just want to emphasize this by saying it again. The only difference between these individuals we were working with and ourselves was that we were operating from different points on the same emotional spectrum. We shared their struggles just with different degrees of intensity. And with them we would encounter recurring themes of compartmentalization, avoidance, denial, minimization, and a movement away from discomfort and uncertainty. So these were qualities known and present to us as well. So as we continued on that journey of understanding, we began to learn how healing is promoted. It's through a process of facilitating increased congruence and communication between all parts of the whole, unifying the system. As agents of this process, we found listening to be one of our greatest tools, challenging us to hone and develop the skill as it was essential to our careers that we became the most present listeners in any given moment. Growing and developing our listening skills led us to a moment of greater clarity. It was that listening is an opportunity and that this skill also applies to us. Listening to ourselves, to our own compartmentalization, avoidance, denial, minimization, and a movement away from discomfort and uncertainty. And this developed a unique consequence. We became more present. Our capacity expanded. Even if just for a moment, our own expansion was reflected to us while working with patients. Listening, attuning, it was effective in informing us to our helpful range of involvement within the patient's process. How much, how little. Fine-tuning that practice allowed the client's healing process to remain theirs. We often speak about letting people have their own experience and just getting out of the way. Listening allowed for us to recognize when to get out of the way. When we listen, not just hear, we become aware of the movements around us. Things slow a bit. Clarity increases. When we begin to listen to ourselves, we can become more clear on the ways we are or are not operating with congruence. And this setting in which we are practicing was full of injury, full of pain, full of suffering. And from their experiences of trauma, the individuals in residence for their treatment stay were highly sensitive to information being brought into their environment. Often this sensitivity to environmental information was misapplied or distorted as it was received through the lens of their past experiences. For example, when a new therapist began to work in the environment, if it wasn't clear upon arrival, it soon became clear that what you brought into the space, both with or without intention, had an impact on the potential for the healing work being done at any given moment. And because so many things were felt to such powerful degrees that as therapists as facilitators of healing, the ability to both listen to ourselves and the other was critical. And this practicing of listening was expansive as it included our holistic understanding of ourselves as beings outside of treatment, how we cared for ourselves, what we consumed, the boundaries we had in place or the boundaries we didn't put in place. All of that contributed to create the picture of our potential to show up, create space, listen and receive as we engaged in these roles as therapists. In this practice, there were no boundaries. We too were integrative systems. So our decisions, our actions during our off times had just as large a role in our patients' healing as the active work we were performing in the therapy office. We often would say that the patient could only go as far in their healing process as the therapist was able to take them. We experienced among us unconscious limits to healing being put in place by the discomfort and avoidance of the therapist to encounter their own unpleasant feelings. So our own process grew to become even more the source from where the therapeutic work flowed. One could not be separated from the other with much expected success. Though these unconscious and unchosen limits were not very easy to identify, oftentimes rationalization for barriers in the work could be applied to extraneous circumstance, blaming the patient, blaming the system, blaming chance. So this required a regular process of honest self-inquiry to understand in what ways were we getting in the way of the healing process. And as we began to process this feedback and make adjustments for better outcomes, we continued to learn. And now if we can just for a moment imagine walking on a path, your head down, only focusing your vision, our vision on our feet. One day we may find that we're walking in circles along the same path, stagnant in our journey. Then one day, any day really, we muster up enough trust to look up and see our path, our surroundings. Noticing, gathering more data, increasing our understanding of where we are on the path, how we're walking. This increasing clarity gives us feedback. However, sometimes this feedback is not what we thought, not what we expected. We may become scared or shameful, quickly looking down back at our feet, continuing to walk in circles. We're stuck. The beauty is, in any moment, we can gather some courage, choose to look up again, reconnect with those same things, likely inducing discomfort and uncertainty. Though with our newfound courage we push through and seize this opportunity to take a different direction in our path. We may struggle through this decision, doubt may spring up, but we become more familiar, more experienced, growing confidence. The struggle is a large part of our process to break the stagnant feedback loop of fear and doubt. It helps inform our decisions and create a more intentional and congruent life. These intentional and congruent life decisions create a new open-ended feedback loop, growing greater connection, clarity, confidence. Personally, the more I began to trust and create space to connect with myself, what I wanted and did not want became clear. Re-examined my relationships, my routines, beliefs, my values. I went through and focused all of my efforts on creating congruence between my relationships, routines, my beliefs, my values. And I let go of the ones that weren't. And as Kevin and I grew our relationship, it became clear that this whole process was congruent with facilitating float experiences. So we decided to come back or come to Portland in 2012 to the float conference. And we left feeling more connected, clear, and confident on creating a float center that we wanted to live in. And so we knew it was critical and favorable that this business creation was also congruent with our values. We'd learned this through observing success and failure in the therapeutic work with our patients, our own success and failure in our personal lives outside of therapy. And we're now attempting to apply this model to the development of our business. However, this became even more of a challenge than before because many times we encountered conflicting perspectives on desire and generosity, fear and goodwill or comfort and insecurity. And along the way there have been and there continue to be opportunities to reflect on how a business decision may or may not be aligned with the values we hold as individuals. So it was important for us to find clarity on our shared values and then also ensure these values were integrated into the fabric of our operational processes and that we could truly feel resolved with these decisions from a deep and heartfelt place. Sometimes we might feel that a smart business decision does not match up with what we know to be true in our hearts. So the question became, how can we be honest with ourselves and each other when we uncover this? And then what do we do with it? We know that the more we can operate from our values, the more we're able to live in greater harmony, the more we're able to reduce internal conflict and therefore this offers up even more resource for facilitating healing. And though this is a very worthy idea, it's not easy. This is part of the process and it's also a great deal of the struggle. Struggling? Not easy. It's a difficult process, but it's interesting because it is simple in practice. What is the practice? Well, it's part transparency in the experience, part embracing the conflict, either denying or avoiding it, owning the experience and focusing on what is real, which many times is the conflict. Conflict is not easy, yet it produces efficacy. Working through conflict with open-minded communication and listening creates byproducts of increased harmony and a reduction of conflict, lessening the need to avoid. However, discomfort is produced. Encountering uncertainty is inevitable. This is what makes practicing so difficult. It's easy to deny, avoid, and blame. However, what is easy often creates more complexity since uncertainty is unavoidable. It takes a constant flux of energy to maintain avoidance. There is no rest in this constant spiral of denial. However, when we move with the direction of conflict, there begins to develop acceptance, and this movement is simple. Simple because it's already there. There's no energy needed to face what's already there. But dang, I know I want relief now. I don't want to experience discomfort. I want to look away, I want to dismiss, I want to deny, I want to blame. It's difficult. We all have created a space to engage in this practice, our float centers, the float tanks. Floating is a mirror. There are greater degrees of honesty with fewer opportunities to avoid. We can dance around the void, avoid dance, or we can lay back into it, welcoming the wakefulness of floating. A difficulty is reminding ourselves to take the time to engage in our practice. Your practice, our practice of floating, of listening. Outside of the float tank and outside of ourselves, we also encounter conflict with our guests at our centers, our employees, coworkers, partners. The movement with and through these conflicts reinforce that open-ended feedback loop growing greater connection, clarity, and confidence. So what happens when we encounter this conflict? As we said, if we're honest, it's everywhere. We experience conflict within ourselves, with our partners, our colleagues, our employees, our customers. And we say that with honesty, conflict is. Not good or bad is. So what can we do? When we find ourselves in conflict, it can be helpful to bring awareness to our own processes of pride and shame, attachment, and identification. How are we attaching to ideas, outcomes, decisions? How are we identifying to perceptions, stories, perspectives? We're all living within our own created realities. The more we identify with those realities as truth, the more we limit our capacity to receive the reality of another. And often with conflict, we can find ourselves in a place of defense, of rigidity, a binary thought process of right and wrong. And here, ultimately, we're talking about fear. And this fear, it's a fear of rejection. So the question is, can we be honest with ourselves while also holding the space to receive the honesty of others with care and respect? While simultaneously reserving judgment and reactivity. This is listening. This is listening with intention. So if we're going to create and be in a place of receiving listening via presence, trust, patience, non-judgment, compassion, we need to be practicing along the way. If we don't, our own judgment, reactivity and momentary absence of compassion is going to get in that way. Get in the way of what? What does this have to do with operating a float center? Well, we encourage gathering all points of data. We create systems and structures of listening. In these systems, we record our mistakes, our failures and successes. We record our employees' mistakes, failures and successes. And we record our customers' disappointments and their feedback. These are all gifts and they are abundant when we listen. As this system becomes more and more common in our day-to-day operations, our float centers become more congruent with the practice of floating. What guests feel as they come in to the center must be congruent with the float experience. If not, it's likely perhaps subconsciously to be felt. And we don't know the full potential of this practice, but we do know that the float will do what the float does. But we're talking about creating a space and getting out of the way. The intention is to create the most potential for a float experience. Floats, again, will be impactful in the way they are for the person. We want to create the space to provide the most potential healing impact as we possibly can. We aim to create a safe space for the cultivation of an individual's relationship with self. We honor discomfort. And when we honor an individual's experience, we create safety. Dishonoring creates abandonment, rejection, fear. Dad, I'm scared. No, you're not. Mom, I'm sad. Oh, honey, it's okay. Just cheer up. So we're talking about safety versus rejection. And we're always wanting to create safety in the space with our guests, with our employees, with each other. And this safety allows us to maximize the potential of the float experience through these relationships. A lack of this safety creates a hindrance to this potential. Every decision we're making, every action or inaction, can be validating and supporting or rejecting and abandoning. And remembering that we're operating from a limited, self-led, eye-driven perspective. We need to come to terms with the reality that we're not able to own all perspectives. We cannot understand all perspectives. And who are we to believe that we can? It is true that as center operators, we're often more experienced and more trained, more informed. But it's also true for us to remember that this certainty, this position conserved to distance us from the perspectives of those around us. So think about when a customer may have told you the water was too cold and you get your thermometer and you go back and you check the water. Temp says 94.5. Exactly where you had meant for it to be. How did that feel? Did you feel validated? Did you feel justified? Is your experience as a center operator more valid because that is the correct temperature? What's the relevance to the customer experience when it's wrong? How does the idea of rightness benefit their healing process? Or think of an employee who may submit an idea, maybe it's a better solution than the one that you've created. Is their offering integrated into your service? Or is it rejected out of fear as it contrasts with your own sense of ownership? Is there a channel for those ideas to be shared? Are the voices of those around you who may speak in contrast to your identity given space to be heard? So as we can receive feedback of varied experiences, especially those that contrast with our own self-driven created realities, we allow for safety. We allow for comfort. We allow for acceptance and vulnerability. And this is the magic formula. This is a secret sauce that allows for the float to shine at its brightest. How do we get to this place of safety, comfort, acceptance and vulnerability? As we've been talking about, it's with consistent listening, attuning with warmth, non-judgment and empathy, welcoming and honoring the experience of another, especially when in contrast with the experiential reality of myself. When we create space to listen, it is our responsibility to support the experience, supporting the practice of self-listening relationships. It can be what a guest feels when they come in to float. We are supporting an experience of self-intimacy, self-care, self-awareness. However, there are things we must let go of in order to get there. Fear, judgment and doubt create a clinging to our firmly held predetermined beliefs. This is why humans come to float, to feel a sense of structured safety as a way to practice letting go. Because letting go is scary. It brings about uncertainty and our provision in the float center allows for a controlled way of letting go. The ways in which we create our space through varied layers of safety and vulnerability will impact the capacity and depth of our guests to experience what it truly feels like to let go, to feel connected, to feel intimacy. And as we talk about these things, these ideas, let's remind ourselves that they're just words. They're important no doubt, helpful for communicating, but the power is in their practice. Floating, gratitude, forgiveness, humility, acceptance. It's helpful to talk about these words, but the word is not the thing. The word moon is not the moon. Moon is only the word we use to communicate. The experience of the moon, the quality of the moon, the power of the moon is beyond words. And to be clear, we're not speaking about these ideas because we have this all figured out. Actually the more we pay attention, the more we're aware of our deficiencies. And that's just part of the ownership and transparency in the process. There's so much we don't know and so many mistakes we make on a regular basis. Greater awareness leads to greater sensitivity in the areas in which we're not yet aware. And that could be humbling. So for practicing being aware of and moving into discomfort and into uncertainty, over time we'll improve our awareness of and capacity to move into discomfort and into uncertainty. And conversely if we're practicing denying and avoiding discomfort and uncertainty, then we'll become better practitioners of denying and avoiding discomfort and uncertainty. What you practice is what you have. And the persistent challenge is that this practice has no end point. As we uncover more layers, we understand our depth. Only to find more layers to uncover, going deeper and deeper. We are layered creatures with infinite depth. Like it or not, our development and our ability to hold and create space is what will allow for the guests and our staff to feel supported to do the same. And a reminder, this is a practice. Therefore there is nothing to attain. It's a practice of listening, a practice of patience, of willingness. We are either slowly moving towards greater degrees of harmony, transparency, congruence and intimacy, or we're moving away from them. How we do anything is how we do everything. Thank you.