I’ve been on both sides of spiritual direction sessions that lose their fizz. I’ve been the client who is bored and wondering why I’m here. And, I’ve been the spiritual director who is overseeing an underwhelming client experience.
Many of the clients I’ve seen have previously experienced spiritual direction, and many of them report previous experiences of sessions meandering aimlessly, lacking moments of traction or transformation.
One of my missions as a guide for spiritual directors is to encourage practitioners to be bolder, more present, more playful, more risky, and more real. There are many ways we can energize our time with clients. Which is to say, there are many ways that we can move toward them in ways that are engaging and helpful.
One of the best ways we can interject spice into a session is to invite clients into this exercise… But first, one word of caution:
The key with exercises like this is timing. It doesn’t work to plan an exercise in advance and to throw it into a session at the first opportunity. You judge this by intuition and experience. And when the time is right, an exercise can really add spice and a depth of flavor to the session.
There are many spiritual practices that can serve as exercises within a client session. Before any exercise, I like to shift the rhythm of the session by asking clients to slow their breathing and move their awareness into their heart space.
With that grounding in place, here’s a simple exercise I use when there is a thought or emotion that is hooking the client. I call it the 4 Rs Exercise. Here are the steps:
RECOGNIZE. Invite the client to name thought or feeling that is hooking them, and then to recognize what is the true feeling that is beneath the thought or surface emotion.
RELAX. Invite the client to be with the true feeling in a relaxed way, breathing with it and allowing any judgments toward it to dissipate.
RESPECT. Explore the true feeling and listen respectfully for its deep wisdom and guidance to arise within.
RELEASE. Invite the feelings and reflections to be placed into the hands of the Divine and be surrendered for now. There is a natural lightness and freedom that comes with entrusting our “hooked places” to the Divine, and letting them go for today.
One of the gifts of exercises is that they often can be carried out of the session, for the client to practice at home. Spice we use in the session continues to add savor in the days ahead.
And any time our sessions have an echo in the daily lives of our clients, we can trust that the Spirit is continually adding spice to their spiritual journey.