Doing the Work in Regenerative Practice of working with Your Level of Energy

By Mary Casey

I’m doing work that I feel deeply called to do… so why am I so tired??!!

If you hear yourself using these words to describe your experience, then congratulations! You have an opportunity to be engaged in the Work.

In regenerative practice, we refer to it with a capital W when we are talking about the developmental aspect — when you examine yourself and build capability in managing your Function, Being, and Will. In this post, we will focus on the Being aspect.

Being engaged in something you feel called to can be powerfully energizing. American writer Joseph Campbell described this aspect as to “follow your bliss”. If you’ve been in that zone, you know the feeling of synchronicity that accompanies it: as if you are attracting the precise assistance you need at precisely the right moment.

However, it can also be that having had that experience, you go to “do” the “same” thing on a different day, and it is not like that at all. Instead, you experience a sense of overwhelm, frustration, and possibly even despair. What’s going on, here?

One way towards the answer to that question is to notice your thoughts and speech. What words do you habitually use in situations where you are seeking change? I know I have fallen out of regenerative practice when I hear thoughts like, “This is broken and needs to be fixed!”, or “This isn’t working; I need to work harder”, or even “How can I get this person on board with this idea?”

Having seen the thoughts, I can then consider what effect they have on my experience of the moment and on my capability to choose in that moment.

To work with this, one of the frameworks I have learned from Carol Sanford is the levels of energy. The level of energy determines how much potential is accessible in a situation: the higher the level of energy, the greater the potential that can be enabled or realised.

The framework is shown in the diagram below:

Levels of Energy, from Carol Sanford

Let’s examine the framework, starting at the bottom and working up:

• Vital: This is your “Alarm!”, a survival response energy. It is fear-based and reactive. This is sometimes appropriate (life and death situations), but not often. There do not appear to be many options at this level of energy; you might even feel like there is ‘only one choice’ or there’s an ‘either/or’.

• Automatic: At this level, you are relying on established processes. You are not freaking out, but you are not really engaged, either. This is a kind of autopilot energy, like sleepwalking. There’s little, if any, access to creativity here; this is the comfort zone illusion of ‘knowing what is coming next’.

• Sensitive: At this level, empathy appears; I notice what is happening for myself and can put myself in the shoes of another. I am present to the energy in the system, and I perceive that there are aspects of the system that could be better (according to me). This latter parenthetical is not necessarily in your awareness. Although working at this level is absolutely intended as work “on behalf of/for the benefit of others”, it is based on a pushing or shoving energy, as an imposition of one’s Will onto a system. No wonder you are tired! As soon as you release the pressure, it slides back to where it was before. You can’t let up, or all of your "progress" is lost.

• Conscious: At a conscious level, we let go of preferences and opinions. We see that all is connected. Where Sensitive energy is similar to Newtonian physics (pushing things around assuming a cause-and-effect process that I can personally direct towards results that accord with my preferences and opinions), Conscious energy is more quantum physics: I arrive in a moment, observe a system in all of its complexity. I seek to understand what value-adding processes support this system to thrive according to its desires and trajectories. Once I have discerned this, I look for what my contribution might be in service of the system’s unfolding. In doing so, I also understand that both the system and my understanding of it will shift and change over time, making this a moment-by-moment inquiry. I am checking in, trying something, and checking in again. I am in a dynamic partnership with the system.

In looking at this framework, it is essential not to judge — or congratulate — yourself based on where you see that you habitually operate. This is an opportunity to become curious about what it would take to lift from Vital (if that’s where you are) to Automatic, or from Automatic to Sensitive, or Sensitive to Conscious.

As an exercise, find yourself a quiet space where you will not be interrupted for 30-45 minutes. Bring to mind a current situation where you are trying to be an agent of change. Be very specific (e.g. "a workshop that is coming up in three weeks", not "my job"), image* it clearly, with as much detail as you can. Write down everything that you can notice, including your language as you think about this, emotions that are present, or sensations in your body.

Do this as honestly as you can – no one is going to read this but you. Locate yourself on the framework, and then image what it would take to move to the next level up and describe in detail what that experience would be like. With each step up in the framework, consider: How would this affect your own experience, as well as others’? What is enabled for you, those around you, and the larger system?

*Imaging is distinct from imagining, which is you making something up. Imaging is a mental process of drawing on observation and experience.

Having done this exercise, you might feel motivated to give this a go and intentionally apply your insights from this exercise in the actual situation. If you do, within one to two days of the experience, write about what was different? In yourself? In the outcome that was achieved? In what way(s)?

By maintaining awareness of energy levels and consistently doing this practice, you can start to see when you are in your habitual energy level, as well as the times when you are able to be in the energy you are seeking to lift into. You will likely still experience intense feelings when working in an urgent or challenging situation, but you can build the capability to manage your framing of such situations from a different place.

Therefore, the real Work of change occurs within you, building the capacity and capability to be open to seeing the system as it unfolds and working with and within it skillfully — like a dancer partnering the system rather than a wrestler forcing it into a position and trying to hold it there.

Watch a pax de deux and consider the level of sensitivity, strength, focus and flexibility that is required for that. Just like ballet, this is work. Dancers do not just show up on the day and expect to be able to work together at that level. There is a lot of practice, both individually and collectively, to arrive at a point where the dancers can be fully in the moment, accessing all their creativity, and putting that into their performance.

Joy is our natural state. Flow is our natural state. If life feels forced and difficult and tiring, what might a few minutes of noticing your level of energy yield in terms of insights? What would be possible if you got really skilled at noticing your energy level and intentionally shifted yourself into higher levels of energy? With gratitude, love, lightness — and even humour?

“Labour is blossoming or dancing where

The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,

Nor beauty born out of its own despair,

Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.

O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,

Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?

O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,

How can we know the dancer from the dance?”

— Among School Children, W B Yeats

Mary Casey is a Principal, Sustainability, in Australia. This is an edited version of her monthly LinkedIn newsletter, Resonances.

Contact Mary via email or connect with her on LinkedIn and sign up for the newsletter.

Photo: Nazarevich/Shutterstock