Summary

https://otter.ai/u/g8eUWpjxHNewVL7ENjeNc6wof88?view=summary

Edwin Rutsch, founder of the Empathy Center, discussed the foundational role of the empathy circle in the global empathy movement. He emphasized the practice's simplicity, effectiveness, and scalability, aiming to teach 8 billion people to facilitate empathy circles. Rutsch highlighted the empathy circle's components: active listening, perspective taking, mindfulness, curiosity, and reading diverse narratives. He noted its benefits, including fostering mutual understanding, reducing polarization, and enhancing emotional reserves. Rutsch also proposed training facilitators and expanding the empathy movement curriculum, aiming to create a culture of empathy globally.

Action Items

• [ ] @Edwin Rutsch - Collect participant submissions by maintaining the Google Doc link in the chat and invite attendees to post their ideas on whether the empathy circle is the foundational practice of the empathy movement

• [ ] @Edwin Rutsch - Run the next empathy circle facilitator training cohort (next cohort starts in two weeks) and ensure the signup link is published and accessible on bestempthytraining.com

• [ ] @Edwin Rutsch - Develop a more extensive empathy movement curriculum and begin recruiting contributors/trainers to support scaling facilitator training

Outline

Introduction to Edwin Rutsch and the Empathy Movement

• Speaker 1 introduces Edwin Rutsch, founder and director of the Empathy Center, and leader of the global empathy movement.

• Edwin Rutsch begins his presentation, expressing gratitude for the audience's interest in building the empathy movement.

• Edwin mentions the goal of teaching 8 billion people how to facilitate an empathy circle.

• He invites participants to share their thoughts on the empathy circle's foundational role in the empathy movement via a Google Doc link.

Defining the Empathy Movement

• Edwin Rutsch defines the empathy movement and its goal to reorient how individuals and groups relate.

• He contrasts the old authoritarian, adversarial, and transactional way of relating with the new way of mutual empathy and deep dialogue.

• Edwin emphasizes the importance of creating a culture of high empathy among the 8 billion people in the world.

• He discusses the current coexistence of old and new ways of relating and the need to shift towards mutual empathy.

Empathy Circle Practice

• Edwin Rutsch provides a short review of the empathy circle practice, describing it as a structured dialog process based on mutual active empathic listening.

• He explains the roles in an empathy circle: speaker, active listener, silent listeners, and facilitator.

• The process involves the speaker sharing their thoughts, the active listener recapping the speaker's words, and the speaker confirming understanding.

• Edwin highlights the simplicity and effectiveness of the empathy circle in creating mutual understanding and connection.

Core Practices of Social Movements

• Edwin Rutsch compares the empathy circle to other core practices of social movements, such as nonviolent direct action in the Civil Rights Movement and meditation in the compassion and mindfulness movements.

• He discusses the importance of active listening, perspective taking, mindfulness, compassion, curiosity, stepping out of comfort zones, reading diverse narratives, and eye contact in building empathy.

• Edwin emphasizes the mutual nature of the empathy circle, contrasting it with the one-way listening in therapeutic settings.

• He describes the empathy circle as a holistic practice that deepens empathy skills for daily relationships.

Benefits of the Empathy Circle

• Edwin Rutsch outlines the benefits of the empathy circle, including the experiential nature of empathy and the creation of a mini culture of empathy.

• He explains how the empathy circle fosters deep listening, shared understanding, mutuality, openness, trust, creativity, and mutual well-being.

• The empathy circle is scalable and can be applied in various settings, including families, work, education, religious institutions, and conflict resolution.

• Edwin describes the empathy circle as a gateway to other empathy-building practices and a foundation for therapeutic and conflict mediation skills.

Empathy Circle as a Tool for Political Polarization

• Edwin Rutsch discusses the role of the empathy circle in bridging political polarization by providing a safe environment where everyone feels heard.

• He explains how the empathy circle can help reduce extremism and create connections across political divides.

• The empathy circle is likened to a gym for empathy, strengthening neural pathways and rewiring the brain to foster empathy.

• Edwin highlights the emotional benefits of the empathy circle, such as recharging emotional reserves and reducing feelings of depletion and defensiveness.

Call to Action and Conclusion

• Edwin Rutsch calls for training all 8 billion people in the world to take part in and facilitate empathy circles.

• He invites participants to join the Empathy Center's empathy circle facilitator training program.

• Edwin shares an image of a past cohort and provides a link to sign up for the training.

• Speaker 1 expresses emotional gratitude for the practice and the movement's progress, emphasizing the importance of continued momentum.

Transcript 

Speaker 1  0:01  

Much It is now my pleasure to bring on Edwin Rutsch, the founder, director of the empathy center, the leader of this organization and this summit and the global empathy movement. He is a creator and longtime advocate of the empathy circle practice, a simple yet very powerful tool for building understanding and bridging divides. Today, he will share with us why the empathy circle is the foundational practice of the empathy movement.

Edwin Rutsch  0:29  

Thanks, Kara, and I do have a slide show, so I'm going to bring that up, and here we go. Hopefully this works. Yeah. Does that look.

Unknown Speaker  0:41  

Okay. Okay. Coming in, clear.

Edwin Rutsch  0:46  

Coming in, clear. Great. Well, great. So glad to see all of you here for the new year and your interest in building the empathy movement. It's good to see old friends, new friends, and the whole community you know, people who are working on this mission to really transform, you know, our culture. And in this presentation, I wanted to make the case for why I and the empathy center feel that the empathy circle is a foundational practice of the empathy movement. And we're going to be doing an empathy circle. You know, after this, and it's our goal at the empathy center, actually, to teach all 8 billion people in the world how to take part in and facilitate an empathy circle. So I also invite you, and I put it into the chat. There's a link there to a Google Doc, and I invite you to post your ideas in that doc on why or why not. You think the empathy circle is the foundational practice of the empathy movement. So next, you know, what is the empathy movement? And you know, let's start with defining our terms. And the first one is the empathy movement. And this is me at the California State Capitol in our empathy tent, you know, advocating for a culture of empathy. You know, it's part of the empathy movement. We've we've done that, gone out into public spaces and said, Hey, we need more empathy in the world, and we're taking it to the streets. And here's, I've discovered Google Image images, and Google, they call it nano banana. It creates infographics. I really, I really gone to town on creating these infographics. I hope they work. This is the first time I'm kind of trying this out. And so the empathy Movement seeks to reorient how individuals and groups relate. So we have a kind of the old way of relating, which is authoritarian, adversarial, transactional, and we want to shift that culture to a new way, which is mutual empathy, you know, which is based on deep dialog and mutual collaboration. It's very much like Marie was showing with the forest, right, that we want to create, you want the whole forest of all the people, the 8 billion people, to be living in a in a culture where of high level of empathy. And we, you know, right now, we have both, you know, we have both old way and the new way in our culture. And we really want to shift to more of the new way of relating. And we have here, you know, the the authoritarian viewpoint, which is what we have kind of in the ascendancy in the country and the world, is, you know, power over and obedience is imposed by fear versus, you know, people working together and collaborating and really creating that power with dynamic where we have shared power, and we do that through, you know, listening to each other and connecting and seeing and understanding each other's needs. So what is the empathy circle? I'll just give a short review of the empathy circle practice. And the empathy circle is a structured dialog process that effectively supports meaningful and constructive dialog. The process is based on mutual active empathic listening, and it's a very simple process. Can be learned in about 15 minutes, usually, and it creates a mutual understanding and connection by just making sure that everyone feels heard and understood to their satisfaction. And we have go into the little bit of the nuts and bolts of how the empathy circle works. Usually it's a in a smaller group. So. You know three to seven participants, and you know four is an ideal group. There's four roles, and one role is the speaker, and then there's an active listener, and then there's the silent listeners, and there's also a facilitator. If people are not familiar with the practice, it's handy to have a facilitator to hold, hold the practice. But if you don't have, if everyone's familiar with the practice, you don't even need a facilitator. So the speaker, you know someone, volunteers to be the first speaker, and they talk on the topic or whatever, is alive for them, and they share you know idea or two, and the active list, and then they pause, and then the active listener recaps or restates the their understanding of what the speaker said and reflects the essence and in their own words and or summarizes or paraphrases what was said. And then the speaker checks, with did that listener understand, you know me and to my satisfaction, and if so, they continue speaking. And if not, they can say again, what, what they you know, what they were saying, maybe in other words, and that really the goal is, in this situation, is for the speaker to be heard and understood to their satisfaction. And if you know, usually we'll have speaking terms, and the speaker will will speak for, you know, maybe five minutes or so, but that that can change. So once the speaker's time is up, they've done a couple rounds of speaking and reflection, then the roles change when the speaker becomes the active listener, and the basic process continues on like that for usually a circle is, you know, 60 to 120 minutes. And that's sort of the basic basis of the empathy circle will be explained a little bit later again, before we do the circle today. And so I was saying that the empathy circle I feel is the the foundational practice of the empathy movement. And if you look at different you know, social movements, they different movements have different foundational core practices. At least that's been my observation. So, for example, the Civil Rights Movement had the core practice of nonviolent direct action. So, you know, doing actions like sit ins, marches, boycotts, so that was like, kind of the core practice. And you know, there's a lot of training that went on on how to do non violent direct action so that you know when you're in a tense, you know, confrontational situation that you didn't get triggered and, you know, lash out when violence was directed at You. Another movement is the compassion and the mindfulness movements. And the core practice of those movements is meditation, you know, usually expressed as loving kindness or compassion practice meditation. And so these are kind of the foundational you know, if you see the compassion, you know, there's a lot out there now about the compassion movement. They've been around for a while, especially with the Dalai Lama. And you know, the meditation is really the core practice of those so let's take a look at what is the core practice of the empathy movement. And I did a search on AI and asked, What are the most common mentioned empathy building practices or approaches in academic and popular magazines, and this is the top empathy practices that came up in for popular magazines. If you the academic and popular magazines have a different rating of different practices. It's a little bit different. But this is not, you know, isn't an exhaustive search, but just a general kind of a you know, thumbnail of the most mentioned practices for creating, you know, building more empathy. Built empathy building practices. So the first one is active listening, you know, which is giving your full attention to someone you know. You're listening without judgment. You're tuning into others words and their nonverbal signals. And the empathy circle is based on this mutual active listening. And then, and that's 80% of the you know, articles mentioned active listening as the practice to do if you want to increase your empathy level.

Edwin Rutsch  9:54  

70% of the articles mentioned perspective taking. They they sort of a. Exhort you to stand in someone else's shoes. And I think Lou is talking about that like standing in other pieces of people's shoes. You know, take off your own shoes, and when you when you do that. And then another practice. I'm just going to go through these quickly and then go into more depth afterwards. There's mindfulness and compassion. It is mentioned that they're 45 and 60% of the articles mentioned those as practices. And meditation is, you know, primarily a core practice and done alone inside, you know, one's one's own mind and so but those two practices are mentioned quite often. Another one is curiosity, asking questions. You're sort of exhorted to be curious. And they usually don't say, you know how you're supposed to be curious, how you're supposed to grow your curiosity. And they also say, ask questions, and that's 45% mentioned that stepping out of your comfort zone is, yeah, about 40% of the papers articles mentioned that. And that's just kind of being risk taking and, you know, trying something new, something different, and they don't really say how to sort of develop that practice generally, they just exhort you to do it then reading diverse narratives. And that's what the emojin was at the empathy lab was talking about, that it's a good way to to increase your empathy, and by standing in other reading people's stories, personal stories, and just learning how to, you know, what their lives are about. And then we have eye contact emotional cues so that you when you're with someone, you know, they give you sort of techniques for how to do have eye contacts and how to read their, you know, emotional cues, which are good fit in an empathy circle you want to be able to read, you know, people's physical cues and how they're sitting or how they're moving their body, and then volunteering, taking action, some kind of Service learning is often mentioned. And and then self compassion exercises, which I would really call self empathy practices, you know, connecting to your own body. It's that single tree that was in that metaphor for Marie. And let's go into these, into a little bit more depth. So active listening. So the majority are most often, you know, mentioned practices active listening, which I agree with. I think it's most powerful practice for and it was developed by Carl Rogers, and he developed it in a one on one therapy, you know, within therapeutic process. And this is a photo of him doing an empathic listening with the client as a demonstration video, which you can see on the internet. And I call this basic empathy, which is the direct sensing into the experience of another person. And in magazines articles, they usually say, you know, do this, and they suggest doing it with all interactions, and you're not just in a therapeutic situation, but with friends, you know, family. But it's not really explained or a way of how to learn and practice active listening is not really in the articles I find, it's not really explained. So a problem I see with therapy is that it's one way listening mutual, basic listening, or basic empathy, and it's not mutual, like the empathy circle, like in the empathy circle. It's, you know, a group, and you're you're everyone is a listener and a speaker. In this case, it's just the client that you know, paid client is receiving empathy, which is important, you know, in an emergency situation or emergency empathy. But it's not really learning the client, it's being listened to is not learning empathy skills that they can take into their daily relationships in life. So the empathy circle is different, and the it is a way to mutually practice, learn and deepen active listening, because everyone's an equal speaker like the if it was the therapist, they would be having their turn to speak and listen as well. And this is what I call a holistic empathy. And again, that holistic empathy is like the whole forest, right? There's an energy of the whole forest, which is the holistic empathy. It's just. Not one person being listened to, sort of in this basic empathy, you know, way. And then so the empathy circle, as I was saying, is based on, you know, Roger's active listening process, basic, you know, active empathic listening. But it's mutual. And so it really expands on that, on that basic process. Then, you know, we're told another is, take people, take, you know, perspective taking, take some, you know, stand in someone else's shoes is the big metaphor you always hear. And you're told, for example, to put yourself in a homeless person's shoes. It's not really explained, you know, usually in these articles, how you practice this. It's just like you're told to do it. And there's two different forms of this perspective taking, and I call it actually imaginative empathy, because it's a different it's different quality than that direct listening to someone, where you're actually listening and you're reflecting back and sensing directly into their experience, like you do in therapy and in the empathy circle. And this is not that basic empathy, but a more imaginative form where you're stepping into someone else's situation from an imaginative form. And there's two actually forms, two forms of this that, you know, academics point out. There's that you imagine yourself in someone's situation, like, how would I feel, you know, being homeless, and what would I do? And then it's sort of like having your own shoes on and stepping into someone else's shoes situation, and then the other is stepping into the other person's shoes and imagining what is the other going through as themselves, and what are they feeling? And you know, what's their background, and kind of, what's their unique, you know, situation, perspective. And again, this is different from basic empathy. I think it's two different phenomenon in the academic world. They usually call this maybe cognitive empathy, but, you know, academic definitions of empathy are a little bit of a mess, if you ask me. So let's move on. We have mindfulness and non judgment and compassion practice. Again, the meditation is the practice that's promoted and but this is a solo practice. Now you're turning in, you're that you're sort of like the tree in the in the metaphor we had before, you're in your own mind. You're observing your own sensations, your own emotions, your own thoughts, and doing it in non judgmental way. And while this is helpful to become aware of your you know, thoughts and feelings, it's still not empathy in the sense that, you know, empathy is really about more of a relational process, how we're relating to others. You know, you bring a self to it, of course, and that's sort of the or how we put in the self, empathy. And so let's see. So anyway, it's the meditation. I don't see as a core practice of the empathy movement, because it doesn't practice that relational process like the empathy circle does. You know, the empathy circle is really practicing that relational those relational skills and mindset. The next one is curiosity. You know, asking questions, stepping out of your comfort zone. You know, 45 and 40% of the articles mentioned that. So this is not really, I don't know if there's any really repeatable practice for increasing these qualities, like the empathy circle. And I do see the empathy circle is a container, actually, for nurturing these qualities. So you know, when you're listening to someone, you're connecting to their humanity, I find that curiosity does does grow in those situations. The next one is reading literature, pathway to empathy, which, you know, I love reading, or did nowadays. I don't read as much stories as I did when I was younger. And you immerse yourself in stories and

Edwin Rutsch  19:34  

and you just kind of learn about different perspectives, and that can expand your your empathy, you know, skills and sensitivity. And what we've done with empathy circles, we've done book clubs, where you read a book and then you come together in, you know, relational form, and you actually use the empathy circle to discuss books. So I think that's actually a way of combining these two practices. Says, you know, finding looking at nonverbal cues. You know, reading body language is a good you know, becoming sensitive service, service, learning and self compassion. I do think that the empathy circle, you know, is in holistic empathy, or better tools, you know, and self compassion, I would really make that into self empathy and the empathy circle, I find, you know, while meditation, you know, being becoming aware of your body, does you know, really help with your self empathy? Being in an empathy circle where someone is listening to you and you're able to share, I find really helps with that self empathy, developing that self empathy skills. So let's look at some other benefits of the empathy circle that make it the core practice of the empathy movement. The first one is people just don't hear about empathy in the empathy circle, they do and feel it. And we have, I think Bill filler is here, and he's always talking about that, you know, just how you really feel empathy. In the empathy circle, there's a lot of talks, presentations and so forth. You know about empathy. You know, be more empathic, or this is the benefits of empathy, but in the empathy circle, you're actually experiencing it. And we did have, I remember we had a big empathy advocate who took our training, empathy circle, facilitation training, and afterwards they said, I didn't realize I was not a good listener. So they're doing all this promotion of empathy, but they themselves aren't good listeners, and that's really the skill you're going to learn in the empathy circle and and actually feel it. So the empathy circles another benefit, embody the way of being of the empathy movement. So it's sort of like a mini culture of empathy. When we bring people together, you know, there's deep listening, shared understanding, and it it creates a sort of a mini environment of the world we're trying to create. You know, like the sense of care increases, there's a sense of the mutuality. There's the feeling of openness, of understanding, and this, this basic little core that we build on, is it, I find it creates a whole positive spiral of of positive feelings. So it with mutual empathy. And, you know, mutual active listening in the empathy circle is the foundation. It leads to a feeling of safety, because we're, you know, we most mutually agree on the rules. You know, what to expect. You're feeling heard and seen. And then you start feeling a sense of connection. Oh, I feel connected with with these people. You know, I'm being heard, and then that creates also a sense of care that, you know, we you I matter, and I see people's other people's humanity, or common humanity. And that leads to, you know, when you have those feelings, you feel more comfortable, and that creates more openness, and you gain that sort of that understanding, which you see the logic of their lives, like, you know how, why they're doing what they're doing. You see all the internal connections that they have, that map of who they are. And it creates more feelings of trust, like, Hey, I'm safe here, even if I disagree, I will be heard and understood, you know, to my satisfaction. And that creates a foundational, you know, basis for creativity and innovation. And that's, you know, also, I just creates a more mutual well being. So another benefits is the empathy circle can be used in many situations. So you can do it in your family, and I've done it in my family, and we have regular, I have family, regular little empathy buddy, you know, one on one, empathy, empathic listening sessions with my partner. You can use it in work. So if you want to transform those work environments, you know, bring in the empathy circle. You can do it with your friends. You can do it with the greater community, like we're doing here in the summit. Bring it into the education, you know, environment, or religious institutions, or it's, you know, very good for people in conflict as well. So it can really be applied, you know, in all different kinds of situations. And so in that case, it's scalable, very scalable practice. And the empathy circle I see is also a gateway to deepening empathy based practices. And sort of like. I see it as sort of a boot camp, like, right, the military. You go to boot camp. Everybody takes part in it. You learn some basic skills, and those skills, you know, you can take into any of the therapeutic, you know, context, you can that those skills and that mindset and those attitudes will apply to any of the therapeutic practices and and then there's also the, for example, Rogers person centered approach, you know, his therapeutic approach, but any, any of the other ones too. Then there's also, like, Gene gentleman focusing, if you're familiar with that process. They show just one person here, but you can also do it with multiple people, doing, you know, using active listening with each other. And then there's Marshall Rosenberg's nonviolent communication, the empathy circle. A lot of people talk about it's an easy way to, you know, as an entry into NVC that it's easier, it's like cheaper, and you can use, use, bring those skills into that practice. There's motivational interviewing, which was from William Miller. He created that process for empowering change in people. There's a conflict mediation practices. It'll be helpful for that. If you're familiar with Dominic barters, restorative circles, it's a gateway to that. If you're wanting to do political work, we have citizens assemblies and people's assemblies, sort of democratic dialog and making decision making. The Empathy circle is going to help you with that, as well as for human centered design, which is a way of using empathy for creating, for creativity and innovation. So the empathy circle, I see, is a foundation for all of these other empathy building practices, and they can build on the skills that you've that you learn there. So the empathy circle, I'm just, I just added this here because of bridging political polarization through the power of feeling. Heard that, you know, there's a real, we have a real situation here in United States, and you know, everywhere in the world, with this growing polarization. And one of the core issues with polarization is that people who don't feel heard, they start to get more extreme in their in how they react. So there's you feel excluded, you just start yelling louder, and you become more radical so that you're heard. And if you bring people, and we've done it from both sides of the political spectrum, together into an empathy circle, everyone gets heard to their satisfaction, and it creates a, you know, a safe environment, and it really can build a connection. The other benefit I see the empathy circle is a bit like a gym that there's this notion in in neuroscience that neurons that fire together, wire together, so if you do the actions like in the empathy circle, listening, you know, reflecting that that's in the more you do it, the more those neurons wire together, that pathway that for that sort of mindset. And so it's a bit of an empathy gym for why rewiring your brain? You know, you're taking out judgment, you're taking out the things that block empathy, and you're getting creating those neural pathways. And another I'm just adding a bunch here is empathy circles, recharges our emotional reserves. So I know for myself, if I haven't been heard for a while or seen, I start feeling, you know, depleted, defensive, reactive or lonely, disconnected, and when I've been heard and seen, I feel more grounded, and I don't get triggered as easily, and I have more space to listen to others. And I know one person mentioned how for doing the empathy circle, she went and talked with her father, and usually she gets really triggered, you know, by, you know, by kind of their relationship. But after doing this empathy circle, getting her empathy battery filled, she had a lot more space for listening to him.

Edwin Rutsch  29:36  

And so a quick review, so empathy, benefit, circle benefits. It's low friction practice to kind of get the ball rolling. There's no prerequisites, you know, no degrees, no special training. You can learn fairly easy. You can't take our training though. It's cost free, it's open. And you know, you're not going to there's no barrier to entry there. It's highly reproducible, as we were showing you can use it in a lot of different situations. It's a gateway practice. It's going to be a foundational skill that you can use in a lot of different situation. You can really put it, have it in a lot of different situations. And above all empathy circles feel damn good. You know, it just feels good to take part in meaningful and constructive dialogs. It just like it feels good. You know, for me to be here in this empathy summit with all of you, it just feels good to be kind of in all of your presence and knowing that we're working towards the same, you know, positive, you know, goal, and it also feels good, you know, be able to fully express oneself and feel good. You know, feel heard. It feels good to listen to someone else, and, you know, contribute to their well being. I really enjoy that, you know, just knowing that I've contributed to someone's well being, and it feels good, you know, just to see the common humanity. So in the circle, I really start seeing, you know, who the people are and just how they're so much just like me. And it's just we all have this common humanity. And bring it back again to Rogers, who said, you know, when someone really hears you without passing judgment on you, without trying to take responsibility for you, without trying to mold you, it feels damn good. I just, I just love that, that statement there, and let's see we have a call to action. Don't want to leave without a call to action. We want to train all 8 billion people in the world how to take part in and facilitate a circle, and, yeah, and we also want to train trainers to train facilitators. So we want to do that. That's another thing. And, you know, create a we also want to create a more extensive empathy movement curriculum. So we hope you'll join us in that. And so as the next step, you can start taking part in our empathy circle facilitator training. That's next one starts in two weeks. And this is an image that I converted from one of our past cohorts. We had a really, it was really great cohort, wonderful cohort. And we have four of these trainings lined up. And if you go to you know best empathy training Comm, you'll find the link to this to how to sign up. And with that, I think that's it. I'm going to bring Eric back on. So thank you very much.

Speaker 1  32:54  

Thank you. We were talking about that spiral of positive feelings, and I'm finding myself getting really emotional today in that my heart is so full that it wants to leak out my eyes, kind of way, simple practice. Thank you. And the spectrum of applications that we've seen just today is exquisite. The movement is moving. And what I know about Newtonian physics is that an object in motion likes to stay in motion. So we're just going to keep being in motion. And I'm going to bring up Jonathan Gordon.