Empathy Tent > UC Berkeley > Empathic Listening and Empathy Circle Practice
http://j.mp/12dNgp7

 "...the research evidence keeps piling up, and it points strongly to the conclusion that a high degree of empathy in a relationship is possibly the most potent and certainly one of the most potent factors in bringing about change and learning."  Carl Rogers
 

An empathy circle is an opportunity to nurture, practice and deepen empathy with ourselves and others in an environment where we specifically intend to cultivate a global culture of empathy. Deeper empathy has many benefits; it fosters learning, connection, social change, reduces stress and supports sustainable collaborative action, transforms conflict, it fosters resilience, as well as builds trust and heals.

 

How to do Empathic Listening

The foundation of empathy circles is to empathically listen to each other.  You can start practicing listening with just one other person. Later you can add more people to the circle. We begin with a question like, “How can we work together to create more empathy in ourselves and the world?””
 

Sitting across from each other, the first person speaks about whatever comes up for them. The listener reflects back what they are hearing, until the speaker feels heard to their satisfaction.  Then it is the listeners turn to speak and the other person to reflect back what they are hearing.  The dialog continues back and forth like this.

 

Tips

·         As speaker, pause often to give the listener a chance to reflect back what they heard.

·         remember that you are guiding the listener in how to hear you to your satisfaction.

·         when you are done talking, you can say something like, “I’m fully heard” to indicate that you are done and it’s the listeners turn to speak.

·         As listener, just reflect back, summarize, paraphrase, etc. what you hear as best you can.

 There is no right-wrong here. No worry about getting it right, the speaker can just say it again.

·         While it’s the speakers turn to talk, refrain from asking questions, judging, analyzing, detaching, diagnosing, advising or sympathizing. When it’s your turn to speak, you can say whatever you want.
 

With this basic process, you can start creating larger circles and add other empathy building exercises.  Visit our website for more about how to take part in and host circles in-person or online.  http://cultureofempathy.com/Projects/Empathy-Movement/

Quotes

The biggest deficit that we have in our society and in the world right now is an empathy deficit. We are in great need of people being able to stand in somebody else's shoes and see the world through their eyes.  
Barack Obama
 

Listening is a very deep practice…You have to empty yourself. You have to leave space in order to listen…especially to people we think are our enemies… Thich Nhat Hanh

 In empathic listening you listen with your ears, but you also, and more importantly, listen with your eyes and with your heart. You listen for feeling, for meaning. You listen for behavior. You use your right brain as well as your left. You sense, you intuit, you feel...  You have to open yourself up to be influenced…  Empathic listening is so powerful because it gives you accurate data to work with. Instead of projecting your own autobiography and assuming thoughts, feelings, motives and interpretation, you're dealing with the reality inside another person's head and heart. You're listening to understand. You're focused on receiving the deep communication of another human soul.  Stephen R. Covey

When a person realizes he has been deeply heard, his eyes moisten. I think in some real sense he is weeping for joy. It is as though he were saying, “Thank God, somebody heard me. Someone knows what it's like to be me”. Carl Rogers

So it's empathy that makes us connect to other people. It's empathy that makes us help other people. It's empathy that makes us moral.   Paul Zak, The Moral Molecule

 “Empathy is a universal solvent. Any problem immersed in empathy becomes soluble.”
Simon Baron-Cohen,  Zero Degrees of Empathy: a New Theory of Human Cruelty

When someone has listened to you, you go home rested and lighthearted. It is when people really listen to us, with quiet fascinated attention, that the little (creative) fountain begins to work again, to accelerate in the most surprising way. Brenda Ueland