The "fail" pause and the perfect pause I start almost every essay support session asking students to read-aloud their college essay drafts, and for most it's like asking them to read the omens in my baby's dirty diapers. I can't count the number of times my students lower their eyes and barrel through the read-aloud, with nary a pause. Well, that's not true: they take one pause at the beginning, the "fail" pause, and the last and only time they'll inhale for the duration of their read. A puree of words, no connection to the audience (me), no pacing to measure impact or resonance. I can hardly hear them, and they can hardly hear themselves. They zoom through the read, like the Dalai Lama will condemn them to Samsara, or Obama exile them from the US, if they take too long or stumble on a sentence. (That's why DL and BO are sitting up there in the photo looking so compassionate, right guys?). Lose me or hold me? By contrast, my Whole Heart Connection teacher, Thea Elijah, can hold a whole room with her pause. Nobody snickers, squirms, or gets nervous. No one checks their phone or doubts her credibility. The silence is not awkward. It is very very very full. Everyone just waits for her to begin speaking again. How come? Two kinds of pauses Thea describes it this way: there are two kinds of pauses. There is the pause where the speaker disconnects from the room (the audience), goes inside, and gets lost in their own stuff. They have "lost touch with the field" (i.e. the rest of us. Hellooooooooo, come back!). But then there is the very different kind of pause where the speaker stays connected to the room (the audience) but stops speaking long enough to check-in inside. Like an energetic, mighty octopus, the speaker is still completely aware and part of "the needs and the nature of field" (i.e. the rest of us). The first kind of pause is the lost cause. You can make a come-back from it, but basically you've given your audience a Continue Reading …