Bringing the Catatonic Chicken Back to Life: The Power of Compassionate, Heartfelt Presence

The ways professors choose to illustrate big concepts during college psychology classes can be rather dramatic. And in one of my big lecture freshman psychology classes, a demonstration made a lifelong impression on me. What I learned is NOT what the professor intended to teach me. However, what I learned went far beyond my mind, penetrating my heart and soul.

I think the concept the professor was trying to illustrate was "learned helplessness." For many years, I could not remember this because of the impact of the "demonstration." The professor began by bringing a young chicken into the classroom, and placed him on top of the marble slab at the front of the classroom, attaching an electrode to the chicken's head.

He then proceeded to zap the unsuspecting chicken with an electric current. The chicken started to shake all over. His eyes started to get really big. And before the chicken had a chance to acclimate to what was going on, the professor zapped him again and again until the chicken froze.

5 minutes went by and the chicken was still frozen. 10 minutes went by and the chicken was still frozen. The class ended and the chicken was still frozen. The class ended and I was still frozen. And everyone except me left the room. I sat in my chair feeling catatonic with tears streaming down my face. I was devastated that the professor had just zapped the chicken into a catatonic state. And I was also upset that the professor just left the chicken there frozen on the marble slab and left the room.

I started to ask myself what was going to happen to the chicken now? Was a janitor going to come along and just scoop him into the garbage? That did not feel right or fair. I began thinking about what it would take to bring the chicken back to life after the experiment. And this question became a key teaching point as I started giving workshops and keynote presentations around the country after my first book, LIVING WITH VISION: RECLAIMING THE POWER OF THE HEART was published.

Some of the answers people responded with included: take the electrode off of the chicken, put the chicken into a safe environment, perhaps with other chickens, zap the professor, and perhaps most commonly, hold the chicken. After the traumatic experience with the electrode, respectful, present compassionate touch was probably needed to let the chicken know that he was safe in the moment, and that the human present with him now was there to help and protect him. Likely the chicken would be pretty frightened of humans after his encounter with the professor!

Watching for non-verbal cues would also be important. If the chicken started to slightly blink his eye, or shake a little bit or make any kind of physical movement, it might be a sign of slightly unfreezing. It would certainly be a message from the chicken's body that deserved respectful witnessing, presence and emotional contact. One would need to be very very patient with the chicken. Establishing trust or starting to unfreeze would take time over time. And caring for the chicken's basic needs, including warmth, food and water, and comfort would be important should the chicken start to unfreeze.

As I looked at my own response to the experiment I realized that many of us feel like catatonic chickens internally, even if some part of us is walking around, working and conducting life as usual. And that the kind of attention and care needed to help the chicken was the very same kind of attention and care needed to help people who have experience trauma unfreeze and come back to life.

Unfortunately, we are more often to be educated to think like the professor, who used the unwitting chicken as an object for his scientific demonstration, with little attention to or care for the impact of his experiment on the chicken's well-being. And once something really traumatic happens, we often don't see what has happened at the levels that really matter, much like the professor. So, people who have been traumatized are left frozen--especially emotionally frozen and spiritually frozen, since emotional and spiritual well-being often miss our day to day radar.

Developing more awareness of emotional and spiritual experience would bring us a long way in recognizing the often too invisible impact of our actions. And this awareness is a necessary foundation for cultivating compassion and heartfelt presence.

We need to become more emotionally embodied and grow our compassionate presence both to prevent people from being traumatized into the "catatonic chicken" state, and to help those who have been traumatized in this way to come back to life.

Changing the World By Living From the Heart

"When the heart is completely liberated, it's impossible to deliberately harm another being. It's impossible to act acquisitively. It's impossible to take advantage of another being sexually or use your sense world indulgently. It is simply impossible. You can't lie or use speech in a harmful or deceitful way. It's as if the force of spiritual gravity won't allow it. There's nothing there that could cause you to bend the truth. . . Goodness feels good because the attitude resonates with reality. Lying and harming feel bad because they are dissonant with that reality of what we are. It's as simple as that."

-- Achan Amaro

I received this quote in the e-mail, and really liked it. When we are emotionally grounded and live from the heart, we create a very different world than the one we live in today. Our world is so emotionally unsafe, emotionally illiterate, and even emotionally dangerous. These conditions create a struggle for survival, gross inequities in the allocation of resources, and great challenges for any of us who wish to co-create and sustain meaningful relationships with others.

We suffer from a collective heart wound where truth is hard to come by, trust is rarely earned, and sadly, selfish self-interest can dominate when fairness and respect is needed.

The heart has room for difference, for authenticity, for uniqueness, for commonality and most importantly, operates on a foundation of respect.

If we treat others heartfully, acting on the power of the fully liberated heart, we create openings and possibilities that enrich our lives and the lives of those around us.

Healing our own hearts, getting to know our own hearts and building heartful principles into the fabric of our lives is a demonstration of social change at work. May more of us join together to support one another in healing our hearts, listening to our hearts and following our hearts--individually and collectively. Together, we can create a more honest, comforting, equitable and sustainable world.

Emotional Fitness

Many years ago, I found myself coining the term "emotional embody building." I go to the gym all the time, and watch people trying to attain physical fitness. Yet, there are no gyms for us to work out in to develop our emotional fitness. Sometimes developing one's physique is actually part of an emotional defense structure, to keep others at a distance. We need to strengthen our hearts in other ways to be emotionally healthy, and to create a relationship between our emotional fitness and our physical fitness.

Emotional fitness includes developing a healthy sense of who we are. Narcissism seems epidemic, sadly, starting with school age kids. My son brings home countless tales of his 8th grade classmates who are so self-absorbed, they have no clue about the impact of their behavior on others. Without some healthy feedback, and relational coaching, these kids will grow into relationally insensitive, self-absorbed adults.

We hear so much of "entitled" twentysomethings, who have carried on their middle school narcissism, without the benefit of emotional contact and mentoring to help them grow into adults who are both self-defined and relationally conscious.

Emotional fitness also includes the ability to see many sides of any conflict or dilemma. If we take the time to ask what it is like to be in another's shoes, we may see that different experiences, different cultures, different values and different understandings inform why this other person acts as s/he does. When we too quickly move into a "blameframe," we are likely to find ourselves in an escalating conflict where hurt and anger build, and ultimately, nobody really wins.

To truly resolve and move through a conflict, we need to create the safety, the space and the compassion, to hear what it's like from both sides. This expands our frame of reference, and allows for workable solutions we might never have imagined. Mutually empowering conflict resolution requires the complete information that comes from supporting two people to articulate and define their deeper needs.

Emotional fitness includes an authentic humility. If we are truly introspective in life, open to honest and respectful feedback, and allow ourselves to learn from our relationships, a natural sense of humility will start to evolve over time. No one knows everything. We all have blindspots. Well-intentioned behavior may still need tuning to connect with another human being. We all make mistakes. Perhaps it is a paradox that the more we are open to constructive coaching, the more humble and relationally competent we become at the same time!

Emotional fitness cultivates a value for mutuality, collaboration and partnership. When we can truly team with another person, the possibilities of what we can create together expand exponentially. When mutuality and partnership are lacking, we too easily end up competing, polarized or in win-lose scenarios. Mutual, collaborative relationships are self-sustaining and energizing. Competitive and polarized relationships deplete life energy from one or both parties.

Emotional fitness is built on a foundation of respect. This includes respect for self, other, the larger context we share, the things within our grasp and the things beyond our control. Respect and humility go together. We do not take others for granted. We allow ourselves to be open and vulnerable to the moment. Yet, by being grounded in our sense of selves, this vulnerability creates an emotional vitality, a heart power, that expands to include others.

As we become more emotionally fit, we build the foundation to really LIVE in our bodies, and appreciate our innate capacities including intuition. A relationship between two emotionally fit individuals is likely to have clearer and cleaner communication, and feel more enlivening to our hearts and minds.