What Training Taught Me About Listening (and What It Didn’t)
- Julie Jewels Smoot
- Jan 25
- 2 min read
Training did not teach me when to stop.
It did not teach me how to recognize the quiet signals of a body that is dissociating, bracing, or enduring instead of receiving. It did not teach me how to sit with discomfort without trying to fix it. It did not teach me how to trust silence.
Training also did not teach me how power moves in subtle ways—how even well-intentioned facilitation can become intrusive if listening is replaced by agenda.
Those lessons came from paying attention. From watching what happened when I slowed down. From noticing when sound helped—and when it didn’t. From honoring the moments when the most supportive thing was to do less, not more.
Listening is not a technique
Listening is not something I “apply.
”It is not a method I deploy.
Listening is relational. It happens between bodies, between breath and sound, between movement and rest. It requires humility. It requires a willingness to be changed by what you notice.
Listening means I don’t assume:
That sound is always welcome
That movement is always the answer
That catharsis is always healing
That my training knows better than someone else’s nervous system
Listening asks different questions:
What is present right now?
What is being asked for, if anything?
Is this moment calling for sound, or for quiet?
For movement, or for stillness?
Lineage without rigidity
I respect lineage deeply. My training matters to me because it connects me to practices that were shaped thoughtfully, over time, by people who paid attention.
But lineage is not meant to become a script.
What training taught me is how to hold lineage without becoming rigid—how to let it inform my work without replacing curiosity with certainty. Listening keeps lineage alive. It prevents it from becoming performative or imposed.
The work happens in the pause
Some of the most meaningful moments in my work have happened when nothing “impressive” was happening.
A breath softening.
A body settling.
A choice not to continue.
Training prepared me to recognize those moments. Listening taught me to honor them.
I am not interested in pushing people through experiences. I am interested in creating conditions where bodies feel safe enough to respond in their own timing—whether that response is sound, movement, rest, or no response at all.
What guides my work now
My certifications ground me.
My listening guides me.
I hold both.
Training gave me tools.
Listening taught me responsibility.
And the longer I do this work, the clearer it becomes:
The deepest skill is not knowing what to do—it is knowing when not to.
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