TEDxTelAviv - Hedy Schleifer - The Power of Connection

Clinical psychologist and a couple and relationship therapy expert Hedy Schleifer "crosses the bridge" with TEDxTelAviv audience and brings laughter and passion to the adventure of learning the art of listening.

I feel really privileged to be here.

I have cried, I have laughed,

I have been profoundly touched

and I feel really privileged to be alive.

I am grateful that I am alive.

In 1944, my parents were in a concentration camp

in Vichy, France.

My mother engineered an escape.

She actually got my father out.

And my parents walked through the Alps.

My mother was pregnant with me.

And when they got to the Swiss border,

the border was closed to refugees.

My mother threw herself into Switzerland.

Anything for her was better than going back

to the hell she came from.

And my father succeeded in smuggling
himself a few days later.

And in 1944, I was born.

Decades later I am sitting with my mother

in an old age home in Israel.

And I cannot bear to see her.

(fights, tears, sighs)

She is sitting in a wheel-chair.

She doesn't know who I am.

I feel guilty. I feel sad. I am struggling. I am angry.

This is my hero. Why should she be here?

And I realize that I am not visiting her.

I am with my own emotions.

And I make a decision.

I am going to cross the bridge

to the world of my mother.

I will leave the world where I am struggling.

I and will go and meet her.

And I will bring with me new eyes.

And so I did. I came, I sat across from her
and I crossed the bridge.

And I landed in her world. And I looked at her.

And she looked at me.

And in Yiddish she said:

"Du bist mein Tochter."

You are my daughter.

And I started to cry and with her hands
she gently wiped my tears.

She hadn't recognized me for months.

Of course, I hadn't been there - emotionally.

This miracle with my mother illustrates

the three invisible connectors
that I want to talk to you about today.

It is the relational space - the space.

It is the bridge between the worlds - the bridge.

And it is the encounter.

Human essence to human essence. The encounter.

These three invisible connectors - you know them.

You live them.

But you may never have framed them that way.

And in working with couples for many, many years

I have come to see that those are
the three invisible connectors.

Let me start by talking to you about the space.

It is the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber who said:

"Our relationship lives in the space between us."

It doesn't live in me or in you

or even in the dialogue between the two of us.

It lives in the space that we live together.

And he said: "That space is sacred space."

Now, if we don't know about the space,

if we don't know how to take responsibility

for the space we live together,

we will actually pollute it

the way I polluted the space with my mother.

I polluted the space with my mother

not because I was feeling my feelings.

I polluted the space with my mother

because I unconsciously put all these
emotions in the middle between us

- unconsciously.

When we don't know about the space,

we pollute it quite automatically.

A word, a look, a reaction, a withdrawal,

a criticism, a judgement.

We put it there, unconsciously.

And the space becomes uncomfortable.

And when the space is uncomfortable,

we react to the discomfort in the space

and the space becomes more uncomfortable.

And slowly but surely, discomfort after
discomfort, the space becomes dangerous.

And then we react to the danger in the space.

And how do we react?

Some of us react by exploding our energy.

We talk louder, we shout, we say many words,

we are in your face.

Some of us react to the danger in the space

by constricting, hiding, withdrawing our energy.

And once those two reactions come together

as a reaction to the danger in the space,

the danger grows

and now we are reacting together
to the pollution and danger

we co-created in the relational space.

What shall we do?

How do we take responsibility for the space between us?

Which is sacred, as says Martin Buber.

Here comes the metaphor of the bridge.

We take responsibility for the space between us

by crossing the bridge to the world of the other

and bringing our full presence on the other side.

How do we do it?

First, sit down.

Take a deep breath.

Put your feet on the ground.

Allow yourself to get to the present moment.

Align yourself with here and now.

Know that you are alive! Be grateful

for this moment of your life. Right now!

That already is a very important beginning

for your journey across the bridge.

And then, you begin to consciously and deliberately

walk the bridge -- slipping the rubber band

that pulls you back to your prejudices,
your story, your identity,

who you think you are, your feelings,
your emotions, whatever it is in your world.

All you take with you across the bridge

is a little plastic bag, transparent,

with a passport and a visa.

The reason it needs to be transparent:

you cannot bring anything of yours
to the other side of the bridge.

And when you have landed

on the other side, what do you do?

You listen.

You listen with an open heart.

You listen with new eyes.

It is Marcel Proust, the French writer, who said:

"The adventure of life is not about
discovering new landscape.

The adventure of life is
seeing the old ones with new eyes."

And you bring your new eyes and your open heart

and your generosity of spirit

and you listen as if you're
learning a new language,

a new music, a new rhythm.

You listen by repeating the words.

I hear you say.

"Have I got you?"

And you learn. You learn about
the landscape in this other world.

And so what can happen on the other side?

And what happens on the other side

is the encounter.

Now, what is the encounter?

On a biological level, the encounter

is the resonance between two brains.

The relational neurobiologists
call this resonance the brain bridge.

Two limbic systems that resonate together.

The seed of our emotions
beginning to resonate together.

And relational neurobiologists have found that

when there is this resonance between two brains,

our central nervous system begins to calm down.

Because, they have also discovered,

that our brain is the only organ inside of us

that doesn't regulate from within.

It regulates on the outside
through another brain.

We need each other for self-regulation.

We can only regulate through the other.

Through the eyes of the other.
Through that resonance.

And what happens then is very interesting

because, 10 years ago approximately,
relational neurobiologists

discovered those mirror neurons

that we have in our brain.

Our capacity for compassion,

for empathy,

for deep, deep understanding of the other.

And during the encounter these
mirror neurons become very alive.

And what happens then?

New neural pathways begin to form in the brain.

New neural pathways that give us

the capacity to be in relationship.

Because the brain has been found
to have an enormous plasticity.

It can change at any time during our lifetime.

And so these new neuro-pathways
that are formed in our brain

give us a chance to become

more relationally intelligent

and more relationally mature.

So, that is the encounter in the biological sense.

But in another domain it is harder to define

what the encounter is.

It is the meeting of two full human presences.

Or two human essences.
Or the life force in each person.

Or the meeting of two souls.

And what is that life force?

What is the human essence?

My father has a story about that.

My father had the largest collection of
Yiddish stories in the universe.

And he loved to tell them.

And he laughed harder than anyone

when he told his stories.

This story is about Mr. Goldberg, the tailor.

So somebody came to get a suit
from Mr. Goldberg, the tailor.

And he tries on the suit and he says:

"Mr. Goldberg, this suit looks very strange.

This sleeve doesn't fit at all."

And Mr. Goldberg looks very seriously and he says:

"You are right. For that sleeve you
have to hold your hand like that. OK?"

The man says: "You know,
the other sleeve doesn't fit at all."

"Look, look at it!" - Mr. Goldberg says:

"You are completely right. For that
sleeve you hold your hand like that

and you put this shoulder like this. OK?"

"What about the right leg? The right leg
looks very strange. What about it?"

And Mr. Goldberg says: "You are right.
You just have to put your foot

a little bit inside like that."

"What about this one?", he says.
"Well, that one you put your foot like this."

Well, now the suit was fine and
the man comes out of the tailor store

and as he is walking in the street
this couple comes by

and the woman says to her husband:
"What an amazing tailor!

A man in this condition - the suit fits him perfectly!"

(Applause)

Well... This is us. We are in this suit.

We walk around in this suit
because we have adapted to our life.

And we don't even know that
this is a suit, a survival suit.

We know that this is us.

For example, if I adapted by being
withdrawn and cold and really distant,

I think this is me.

Inside the suit is our human essence - intact!

Inside of our survival adaptation
we are our essence.

And coming over the bridge
allows our spirit to be nourished.

And this transformation to happen
from this survival suit

to our true human essence.

It is in being with each other
that our essence becomes revealed.

It so it reminds me of this wonderful saying:

"I used to be different.
And now I am the same."

I started with a story about my mother.

I'd like to tell you one now
about my grandson Leo.

I was in Istanbul with Leo.
And we were in bed

snuggling and watching a movie.

And at the end of the movie
Leo looked at me

and he said:

"Bube, grandma, I love you."

And I said: "I love you, too, Leo."

And he said: "No. I love you."

And I said: "Sure, sweety,
you love me and I love you."

He said: "No, Bube. I love you."

And then I understood.

He didn't want me to deflect his love.

He wanted me to step over the bridge to come to him

to take in the pure,
essential love he was giving me.

And so I did. I looked at him. I took him in.

I let what he was giving me
in that moment penetrate.

And I said: "Leo, I hear you say: You love me."

And his face just shone.

He was teaching me that
it takes courage to be connected.

I'd like to share with you
one of my favourite quotes

by the Sufi poet Rumi, of the 13th century,

who said: "Beyond right thinking

and beyond wrong thinking

there is a field.

I will meet you there."

I have a dream.
I envision 90 million couples

honoring the three invisible connectors,

honoring the space between them,
crossing the bridge to each other

and encountering each other,
human essence to human essence.

It is enormously important to me
because our children grow

in the space between us.

The space between the couple

is the playground of the child.

And when we know how to honor that space

and make it sacred, our children can blossom

in sacred space.

And I have a date in mind.
November 11th, 2012.

International Crossing The Bridge Day.

It isn't just for couples.

It is for human beings
and it is for nations.

I envision a time when nations

will know that the space between them

is sacred space.
That there is a bridge

to cross to know the culture of the other.

And that we can encounter each other.

Human essence to human essence.

Beyond right thinking
and beyond wrong thinking

there is a field.

I will you meet you there.

Thank you.

(Applause)