When observing teachers in action, one is likely to witness explaining, modeling, managing, guiding, and encouraging. These expressive behaviors constitute a directive force moving outward from teacher to students. Though less visible to an outside observer, teaching also requires receptive skills, the ability to take in information by being fully in the moment--akin to the Zen concept of "mindfulness" or Rodgers and Raider-Roth's (2006) "capacity for presence." Being receptive entails being still, open, looking, listening, perceiving, and waiting. This article describes a set of field-tested receptive practices that evolved from the author's understanding of the balance of directive and receptive energies. These concepts were first presented to the author in a meditation class class (Tadd n.d.). That class focused on developing the ability to maintain a balance of receptive and directive energies with equal ease, and to apply these concepts to one's life as the situation requires.