Watch in ASL
Hi. Welcome to the connected interpreter podcast, where we will explore ways of staying connected to ourselves in our work, acknowledging the impact of our practices and continue to grow as practice professionals. I’m Amanda Smith, an interpreter, educator, coach and creative, and I’d love to discuss the puzzles of interpreting the complexities of human interaction and the power we have within ourselves to make a difference. So today’s episode is specifically about connecting with ourselves and both from a personal and a professional standpoint. And so as you go into listening to this, I want you to think about the following reflective prompts. So:
- what if anything is sparking your care for yourself, the work and others?
- Do you feel moved to take any action? And if so, what and when will you do it?
- What questions arise?
- What insights and connections do you see to yourself and your work? So those are the questions to keep in mind.
- I will answer a few of them at the end as well, and let’s go ahead and get started.
Exploring the Intrapersonal Demands of Interpreting
So connecting with ourselves as practitioners and as people is an important part of being a practitioner, particularly in the long run, we are the instrument and the vessel, the tool that we use in our work. So one of the things that I have done over the last number of years is to pursue a couple of things. One my first sabbatical, I really took time to study the intra personal aspects of interpreting. So for those of you familiar with the demand control schema, there are four demand categories, environmental, interpersonal, para linguistic and intra personal. And the intra personal demand category is the one that is about the practitioner themselves. So the thoughts and ruminations, the feelings, the needs that you as a practitioner have in the moment. And so I really took a deep dive into that through various activities, reflective art, being one of them, caring for and tending to the tool that we that I use as an interpreter.
The Power of Somatics and Neuroscience in Meaning-Making
And then, more recently, I have pursued and received credentialing as a coach through the international coaching Federation. And my professional development as a coach has included somatic interpreting, no somatic coaching. And somatic coaching has to do with leveraging the body and the knowledge of the body and the way that the body is made to function in order to heal, in order to engage with the world around us in an intentional kind of way. And then, more recently, one of my coaching trainings has been around neuroscience. And so again, getting into the nitty gritty of how the body works and how it functions. And so since our body is our instrument and is our tool for engaging as practitioners, it’s an important aspect of how we spend our time, and that can range from the physical of do we care for our vocal cords? Do we care for our hands and our wrists and our arms? Do we care for our physical health? Do we care for our nutrition? Do we care for our brain health, make sure that we’re hydrated and those kinds of things, so that we’re well suited in order to use our instrument? There’s other aspects, however, that I think are often overlooked that have to do with actually leveraging our humanity and our ways that we are designed to serve in our interpreting capacity. So there are a number of narratives out there in the world of interpreting that have to do with us being invisible or just a phone line or a conduit. There are these perceptions that interpreting is about taking words and changing them into other words, with which is true, and also very simplistic, very reductive in terms of what it is that we do as interpreters. So one of the things that has come about in my study of somatics and neuroscience is the idea that our bodies are actually meaning making tools. So it’s not just the words that are uttered that we change into other words. It’s not just some of the other things that we often talk about like intonation and those kinds of things.
Embracing Our Humanity in Interpretation Work
But there are also deeper aspects of like nervous systems that actually talk to other nervous systems on this level that we don’t even see as we’re just not even aware of them. It’s just how our bodies are wired, and also the idea of various sensations. Is that we cues that we receive from our environment, that our body is constantly filtering and screening and making sense of in these really, really powerful ways that are also very I’m not sure subconscious is the right word, but it’s not at they’re not overt meaning making they’re not overt like I’m thinking about how the weather is making me feel today, or I’m thinking about like they’re not overt in that way. And so tapping into and learning about these channels of connection, these ways that we make meaning, will actually enrich our work as practitioners. So paying attention to those gut feelings, paying attention to those vibes, paying attention to really being with the other people in the room, and allowing your humanity to be part of how that meaning is made. Because when we when we give in to the narrative, that we’re invisible, that we’re just a phone line, that we’re just a conduit, those kinds of things. When we give into that narrative, we are cutting off a really powerful tool in our tool belt, as interpreters, and that is of being a human with a brain and a gut and nervous system and sensory input analyzers. So taking as taking time to slow down and get connected with ourselves as humans and as people will serve to enrich the work that we do as practitioners.
Somatic Practices to Deepen Connection and Stay Grounded
So let me pause here and just say I’ve created an entire course on this. So there’s a course that I have created, and I’m launching summer of 2024, so this summer, depending when you’re listening to this, but called the somatic practices for interpreters, and it’s a uniquely designed professional development experience that includes content via reading and private podcast. Private podcast streams real time engagement, individual coaching and more. And if you sign up when this airs, you will be able to participate in the first zoom session on the fourth Monday of August, from four to 6pm and you’ll also have plenty of time to complete the work and have your CEUs processed in December, which is the first time that I’m going to batch process the CEUs. And they’ll get in before December 31 the course is 2.9 CEUs. And you can find out more and register at Air Smith studios.com so I want to do a check in.
Centering Practice
I want to do a kind of centering practice, but pretty light centering practice, where I just want you, and if you’re driving, I think you can still do this, but don’t, don’t forfeit safety for it, but pay attention to I’m going to actually do this for someone in a car, so I’ll do the seated position. So I want you to pay attention to your sit bones, and I want you to feel heavy in your seat. I want you to feel that chair on your back. Can you feel that sensation? Can you feel the sensation of sitting in your car, or wherever you are, as you aren’t noticing yourself in that chair or in the position that you’re in. Can you notice anything about your body, a tenseness anywhere? Can you release it often? For me, it’s in my belly.
What’s the quality of your breathing right now? Are you breathing at your chest kind of shallowly? Are you breathing all the way to your belly? Do Are you breathing slowly quickly? There are no right or wrong answers here. It’s just about noticing right now. How
about the quality of your thoughts? Now you’re probably thinking about what you just heard, so I’m not sure how well this will necessarily work in this instance, but ask yourself this question when you’ve just been driving for a little while, or when you’ve been out walking or at another time. But what are the quality of your thoughts? Are they largely negative? Positive? Are they largely positive? Are they curious? Are they critical? What’s the quality of your thought? And again, there are no right or wrong answers. It’s just noticing. It’s just noticing. It’s noticing the state of our instrument. It’s noticing the the characteristics of our instrument in this moment.
If you’re not driving, I would also ask you, where are your feet? So your feet or your sit bones, depending if you’re sitting or standing, are a great way to get present.
Leveraging Our Choices and Power as Interpreting Professionals
And in the next episode, I’ll talk about presence a little bit more, and the idea of being present to ourselves, to the work, to the consumers, which is a part of being connected to ourselves. Because being present requires us to be in our body and in our in the moment, one of the other things that we’ll talk about in terms of connecting with self is also that we have, we have the power to choose where our attention lies. So if you pay attention to the activity that we just did, when I asked you to focus on your sit bones, you moved your attention there. When I asked you to feel your back against the chair, you moved your attention there. When I asked you about tension in your body, you scanned and moved your attention there. When I asked you about your breath, you moved your attention there. When I asked you about your thoughts, you moved your attention there. So we do have the power to choose where we lay our attention, and that is another thing that we’ll talk about in terms of connecting with ourselves, is that we are.
Developing Grounding and Staying Power in the Field
What I want you to think about in terms of being connected to ourselves as practitioners is that we are a rooted tree and not a young sapling that is just moved about by the winds and by, you know, whatever the whim is of whoever walks by us, right? We are rooted and we are deep and we are sturdy, and that that is where we get our strength, and that’s where our instrument gets its strength, not because it’s about us, but because it comes through us. We want it to come through a strong channel. So a few of the other things that we’re going to talk about in terms of connecting to self are a few other somatic practices that help you to get connected to this body that is your instrument, and how to leverage it in leverage it in service of whatever it is that you’re doing at the time. So if you’re interpreting, if you’re seeking supervision, if you’re doing restorative practices, whatever it is that you’re doing, you actually have the power to choose where your attention lies for those kinds of things. So we’ll talk more about that in the next one. But I want you to just let those things kind of simmer around and settle.
And I want you to think about if anything that we talked about today sparked care for you, if you feel moved to action, if you have questions that arose, what insights and connections you’re making, I’d love to hear from you about your insights, ahas and questions, so you can feel free to reach out to me at arsmithstudios@gmail.com and you can also sign up for my very intermittent newsletter at arsmithstudios.com and click the newsletter button in the upper right corner.
Amanda’s Musings from This Episode
So just like I did last time, I’m going to answer some of the questions that I posed to you at the beginning. And yeah, so, sparking my care, I’m going to answer that question, and then I’m going to answer the insights and connections to myself questions. I’m not going to answer all of them. So sparking my care, I definitely feel myself really being energized to share even more. And I want to share this tool and that tool and this insight and that insight from my somatic training and my neuroscience training, and I’m having to remind myself that we’re just going to take it a bit at a time and go through this. And then, of course, there’s the deeper dive of the somatic practices for interpreters component as well. But I’m definitely inspired, because I found these tools to be very grounding and rooting for me as a practitioner, and also I think can be really, really helpful for all of us as practitioners, because there’s often a sense that. We are at the whim of others, when, in reality, we are bringing a tool kit to play, and we are the instrument, and we have standing to do that. And so how do we use that in service of others, not in stepping on others, not in overshadowing others, but in service of others, where we can, we can use our human dignity to connect others, to to and hold space for them, and then insights and connections. I guess I shouldn’t have picked that one, because I feel like I just kind of answered that one, but just the idea of like I see all of these connections to the somatic work and to the neuroscience work that I’ve been learning and how powerful our choices are as humans, and how powerfully that impacts our experiences as humans, our experiences with ourselves and with others, and the ways that we reflect on our work. My experience with interpreters is that we are all terribly, terribly hard on ourselves and perfectionists, and yet we deal in human communication, which is probably like the messiest thing you can do that isn’t like physical labor messy, but messiest thing you can do between people is communication. And so I just, I’m really excited to share some tools and some practices and some mindsets that may help to give us staying power in the field and grounding for those experiences that really challenge us, which are potentially all of them, because human communication is messy,
So those are my answers to two of the questions, and I’m super curious to hear yours.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Amanda's Musings 
Leave a comment