Listening With All Five Ears

One of the most powerful tools we can use as birth workers is listening.

We are often so focused on choosing what information to give our clients, and what words to use to respond to their questions, that we forget this essential first step. Before we say anything, we need to listen to what is being said to us. The Five Ears framework can help guide and shape your listening in ways that enhance the interaction for both the speaker and the listener.

1 and 2: The Two Ears on your Head. This is perhaps the most familiar way of listening. The two ears (or eyes, in the case of signed languages or reading captions or transcripts) directly receive the information dispatched from the speaker.

3. The Ear in the Mind. This is the ear that is listening to your own internal mind chatter: What should I say in response? What do I think about what they are saying? This ear is not unimportant, but when you listen too closely with it, you run the risk of short changing your other ears. When your Mind Ear is your primary focus, your attention is more likely to be on yourself rather than the speaker: you may be thinking about being liked, doing things “right,” achieving a predetermined result, etc.

4. The Ear in the Heart. The Heart Ear listens with emotional empathy, sensing the feelings that lie beneath and between what is being said. Through this ear you may gain a picture of the speaker’s overall emotional states of being and feelings-based motivations.

5. The Ear in the Belly. The Belly Ear is our own sense of intuition and gut learning that can tune into the speaker’s beliefs, patterns, and conditioning, which begin in the unconscious mind. With our Belly Ear, we may be able to feel into what the speaker is really needing in the moment, which may be entirely different from the words that they are saying.

Understanding your own listening practice in terms of the Five Ears, and learning how to bring them into balance, gives you a deeper sense of your client’s and your own state of mind and needs in the moment and allows for a more authentic connection and truly individualized, effective support.

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