Reclaiming the Female Body for Power in Negotiation
Wow, what strange, nerve-racking and global times we are living in. This pandemic certainly underscores for me how interdependent we are and how important it is – MORE THAN EVER – that we pull together to create a more livable, humane, pleasurable and sustainable world. There is great power in where we place our attention – and we can focus on the positive world we are trying to create – the diamonds that form under great pressure, the lotus flower than blooms out of the muck. To quote a signature message of my podcast (Pete Drucker), “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
The just-released episode of The Peacebuilding Podcast: From Conflict to Common Ground focuses on negotiation skills for women, and the body. As you know, I believe (along with many others) that THE most impactful peacebuilding initiative that can happen on the planet is to empower women -- at home, at work and in the world. These things are very connected and my podcast interviews are showcasing the links. Subscribe here if you would like.
The topic of negotiation and the body evokes a lot in me. In fact, the night before I recorded the episode, I woke up at three in the morning and wrote down these thoughts:
First, (as my last guest, Thomas Hubl, suggested) “the feminine” is the body;
That my body didn't belong to me for a lot of my life;
That my sexuality also didn't belong to me until I did a lot of work to reclaim it;
Regarding the phrases “I want” and “I need”, which are so important in negotiation and conflict resolution -- I wasn't supposed to have wants, and I'm not sure about needs either. As a girl in my family, I was supposed to serve, and I was supposed to accommodate;
It was hard for me to have a clear connection to my “yes” and particularly to my “no”. And, if not connected to your “no”, it can be difficult to walk away from a negotiation -- which is fundamental to power;
I didn't feel safe claiming value, a popular negotiation concept, because I was taught so deeply that I was supposed to let a man do that;
Though, throughout the course of my life I have cleared out a lot of unhelpful acculturation, I'm aware of the depth with which these ideas still live in my body.
My two guests in this episode, Dr. Deborah Heifetz and Dr. Martha Eddy, are both dancers and embodiment conflict resolution experts. Among other cool things about Deborah, she served as a special advisor to the crisis management team of the Israeli police and acted in Track II Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. She currently lives in northern Italy where, with her husband and other Italian changemakers, they are working to have their geo-region become a prototype for human scale, community-based sustainable development. Martha is an author, researcher and worldwide lecturer on somatics (i.e. the body as experienced from within), peace and violence prevention and the role of the body in negotiation. She lives with her family in New York City.
As I recounted my 3 a.m. thoughts to the two of them, Martha shook her head in agreement. . .
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