All About Words: Exploring Teamwork

In this track, you will deepen your connection to the word "teamwork" through nature, communication support, and vocal play. Learn the many viewpoints of "teamwork", and how nature leads the way in providing examples of teamwork for us, listen to its creative sound, and bring the benefits of this word into your life.

Background music created by Sarah Bruno for Nurtured Voices using Garage Band

Transcript

Welcome to Nurtured Voices.

My name is Sarah Bruno.

I am a certified speech language pathologist,

Creative empath,

And nature enthusiast,

Helping you nurture your voice to communicate with care and connection.

I'm so excited to announce our first guest Lori Amon here on Nurtured Voices for our episode all about words.

Lori is a certified soul art guide and co-creator of the wonderful tool we use called Nature Inspired Feelings.

Welcome Lori.

Thank you Sarah.

It's so exciting all about words.

Oh yes so today on our episode we are going to start with picking a word to explore and I have a little jar here full of all sorts of words that inspired me thinking about the voice and thinking about communication.

So we'll start with picking a word.

Teamwork.

Teamwork.

Let's feel into teamwork for a moment.

Give it a breath.

We're gonna close our eyes and use this wonderful tool that Lori and I created in 2020 to deepen our connection to nature,

To come back home into our bodies,

And to breathe and connect with something in nature to describe for today teamwork.

So it can be anything.

It can be plant,

Animal,

Cosmic,

Weather,

Elemental,

Something to describe teamwork related to nature.

And when we use nature to help us ground and reconnect with ourselves it can give us a renewal of energy,

Motivation,

And even help us transition from day-to-day activities.

So Lori are you feeling anything inspiring you with nature by your side?

I felt a few right away like pop right out.

So I have like three Nature Inspired Feelings already just like nature communicating all the different ways that teamwork is essential to life on our planet.

And first I thought of ants and how just I mean they just embody teamwork to me as someone who's had quite the journey with ants in the house and learning how to just like move with that differently and observe them and their behavior.

I think even the way that they they pick up their dead and bring them back that body goes back to the the community and you know either nourishes them or I don't know I just always found that very beautiful.

But the other example I felt so I have like sort of an insect and then a plant and then I had an ocean one mycelium and root systems of trees so like the teamwork and the inter exchange of mycelium and like all root systems I would say underneath the ground.

So just feeling that exchange of teamwork and how they create communication systems.

I don't think we can even comprehend as humans but it certainly has a feel and then I think of all of the pod people in the ocean.

Dolphins and whales and how they work together to feed like the family system and and all of that.

So quite a few nature inspired feelings and I probably should have picked one but I wanted to share the three that came up.

I love them all and what great examples for teamwork.

I just just breathing into it for a moment like I already feel expanded and seeing the world from different viewpoints of how different aspects of our earth work together in such a positive collaborative way.

So yeah I love that I love all of those.

For me when I when I fell into it I just visualized elephants and how the young hold the tails of the adults with their trunks and just going together migrating.

I don't know too much about the animal but that's just all I visualize them maybe eating together or drinking together and protecting each other.

I know they had some ways of protecting their young where they'll put the young in the middle and make a circle around.

So yeah team teamwork in a protective survival survival way is what came in for me.

That's beautiful I can so feel that it's so essential especially to their their groups their families yeah.

So on to our next section where we're gonna have a little back and forth Laurie talking about teamwork going more into words.

I know when I think about nature inspired feelings I do love that tool so much because sometimes there are no words for connecting to something or talking about how we feel or describing a moment or something we're going through but now we're going to use our words for a nice back and forth of what what teamwork means to you.

I think I picked this word because it does remind me of communication because there's so many different methods of what teamwork could look like and communication is just one one of many.

So any thoughts or feels or insights around teamwork?

Well I can feel how it's changed for me I guess throughout my life.

You know teamwork means something different I feel personally when you're a kid it means you know like there's a lot more I just keep thinking of like gym class being being picked for a team and you know maybe the teacher saying like you like teamwork everybody you know like when you're when you have to pair up with classmates to get a project done and things like that so it definitely brings up some like what are my early impressions of that word and they do go back to being in public school and and then I think about just how I I had like my my extracurricular things like I was in dance and like art classes and Girl Scouts and things like that you know the after-school things where you learn different aspects of what teamwork feels like and who you work well with versus who you might have like a challenge being on a team with and so it just brings up that ever-evolving thing of relationships for me and definitely communication.

I would say there's teamwork that challenges you to have to look at how other people learn or how they communicate and like be able to be a little bit more flexible and then there's teamwork where it's just so easy and you're like oh my gosh we work so well together so yeah and it's interesting that it's called well it's like two words put together team and work.

The word teamwork has teamwork.

It has teamwork and team in itself it makes me think more than two people but when I think of my husband and I I feel like we make a good team and when I think of you and me I think we make a good team so even that has changed and then work is however you want to define work I mean that to me it works or it doesn't right like so teamwork make it work or work like what we are doing together the tasks we're deciding to do together so yeah those are all of my initial thoughts.

I love those when you were describing your thoughts around teamwork I do have that give and take there's like this alignment piece but there is this this pull and this tug that it's not always an easy that's why the word work might be in there and I do I do have a lot of charge around that word work because for me work means hard difficult struggle and you talked about flexibility and like you and your husband make a great team so it's interesting to pair the word team which for me has like it's working it's positive and then work not so much you know there's like a little bit of a struggle there but that's that's what it's bringing up for me I'm sure not everyone relates to the word work that way I'm sure even the word work can relate to like what you do you know your livelihood and whether you're enjoying it or not enjoying it so there's a lot in the word work I realize which is only half of the word of teamwork but I agree that it has evolved so much from being a child and I did think about sports and all that when I first said the word but I think of a team as two people like in a relationship we make a good team and of course there can be a much larger team almost like a collective but when you think about team and this back and forth it does have a lot of that communication piece you have to be a team to communicate successfully with each other so there is that give and take when someone is talking they need to formulate their words know who they're talking to what they're going to say how they're going to say it how their tone is their gestures are their posture there's so much in that one piece of giving of the communication piece and then the other team member your partner has to have a give-and-take to are they actively listening are they thinking about what they want to say next are they receiving it are they interrupting so like if I think about the elephants and the ants and the mycelium they all just work together with this flow and I do feel like communication in a way needs to have that because when it doesn't there's this this breakdown and then the teamwork doesn't really occur mm-hmm I like that bringing in that word flow and the back and forth and the active listening I was really curious yeah from your communication expertise what aspects of teamwork do you find our challenges it's just like what what came up for me like why is it important for us as humans to learn how to do this I feel like it can be very organic in nature intuitive and I wonder why it has like that effort you know so I'm curious what your perspective is on that with communication I do think there is an effort involved and it's a has to be you know we use the word active active listening but it has to be deliberate to and I know all of our brains work differently we were born with unique bodies and brains and minds but mine in particular it is effort to be part of a conversation to be a good teammate or effective I should say effective teammate and so even as we're talking there's so much going on in my background I have noises within the room where I'm looking what you're saying interpreting what you're saying what is the message behind you're saying maybe what I'm thinking next and then I'm sure we all have it oh I have to pick up this thing later and what are we having for dinner so to hush all that and be here like it does have a huge piece of being present and mindful and there is a lot and maybe that's why the word work really does make sense because there is that deliberate effort you have to put in to make it work I've never really thought about it too much in like my one-on-one relationships because I think I have those in like this other category of like oh you know we're aligned partners like there's maybe like more the term partnership and then or relationship and then with team I always think group right and so and I'm I'm so used to working in groups because I have been for so long and I know what that feels like when it like flows and it that is always amazing when you can achieve that in a group but yeah I really like applying it to a more intimate space I have a question for you do you relate the word team with winning or losing well when I put teamwork with it like work I think of winning when I think of just the word team I think you never know are we gonna win are we gonna lose that kind of a feel but yeah when it when it comes to teamwork I definitely like think of all those movies from you know the 90s and I don't know like the fan law and Field of Dreams and all these like sports movies of Mighty Ducks you know quack quack quack quack quack like that like those movies model chanting and the slow clap yes the slow clap is always with teamwork and I don't know if you're familiar with Wonder Pets of what's gonna work teamwork what's gonna work teamwork like that's always in my head when I say that word for you wonder pet lovers yeah those are like nice models I guess for like it's okay if you don't start off working out like together you know there is like this arc of development in all of these stories that we've seen in movies and shows and even like the show Schitt's Creek if anybody you know likes that show I think they start off as a hot mess and then like the way the show evolves is so beautiful to me so I don't know I guess I'm starting to now expand out and see this word applying in so many different ways to family like beyond sports and to two groups to companies I know corporate companies have to focus a lot on teamwork like a lot for a whole big entity to work mm-hmm yeah it's interesting to me when I think of the word team it could be win or lose but then when you put work in there it gives it the connotation of winning but then work on its own could kind of be a win-lose too so it's like that the two have some really partnered together quite nicely to make the word teamwork so I like that thank you for exploring that word with me and seeing what comes up in our space and our world and our viewpoints and I'm sure there are many other feels and definitions and relationships to that word we will wrap up our conversation and move on beyond words to a little bit of vocal play fun so vocal play is just a way to give something a unique sound and it can be anything from hum or a little tune or a song or just making sound in your environment patting your legs it can be a howl or a whisper or wishing of wind or an animal sound really anything goes we're gonna vocal play a little bit today of what is a unique sound our unique sound with our unique voice for teamwork can I do like team and you can do work and then we can put them together sounds good I'm like I can't do the whole thing like I need another person to be my half that's funny cuz I was like I need to harmonize it with you so team what does team sound like and you can use some gentle movements too it gets the energy flowing it gets you smiling and laughing it's a little bit of playing releasing some endorphins and serotonin and calming the body so team team you want to try some work that's cute it feels very childlike I feel like I'm gonna be bringing in the adult yeah the work right Oh team team is like playing in sports and class and then work is you become an adult work just feels adult to me you know I want to tune into like this feeling of like how we used to like you know put a rhythm when we had to when we had to like get work done that was like washing things hammering things when I just think back to like how we would pass the time mm-hmm yeah you want to put them together like something mm-hmm yeah it felt it felt grounding and earthy yeah and do you want to try it one more time sure I just like wanted to be in it a little longer I bet it sounds really cool I like it no thank you Lori for vocal playing with me and thank you teamwork for showing up today yeah all right any last feels or how you might want to bring whatever we chatted about today into your life or even a sound that we explored or a nature feeling anything like that that you think you can put in your pocket to bring along I'm definitely gonna put in my pocket that it is a work in progress and I can give I love how like fun the vocal play was for both parts of the word and then together so like just reminding myself that work can have that like steady rhythm and teamwork is an evolution with steady rhythm is kind of how I want to like bring it into my life and look at all of my you know my projects and relationships like that like it if it's not working out like give it a rhythm give it some time you know let it be all right so beautiful yes I think I'm really going to take the shift of the word work I didn't even realize I had so much charge around it until being intimate with it today and realizing that it can link to other things like a word and make it and transform it into something positive and winning and beautiful and progress and steady right yeah steady movement forward so that's what I'll be taking with me from today thank you Laurie so much we are going to end our time with a warm hum wrapping up this all about words episode and I will pick a note and hum and you can pick any other note to hum along with me so we can give our viewers and listeners some harmony to bring into their world what a better way to say farewell than do it in harmony thank you Laurie I love that starting a creation and then just letting it organically end when it's time hmm this was absolutely lovely thank you this was awesome I love it from the bottom of my heart thank you again when you nurture your voice you nurture your soul