LESSON 02: FEELING INTO A FELT EXPERIENCE
Hearing, reflecting, words, meanings, non-verbal, feelings, receiving information from the other with our ears and our eyes in a way that we zoom into the felt experience of the other.
What information do we receive about how the other is?
In this online training we mostly use our listening and seeing.
We can sense and also receive intuitively, we will talk about that in a later session.
For now we practice two of our senses to get the information: Listening and Seeing. We will dive deeper into the aspects of listening.
Opening
Is there anything you want to share that interferes with having your attention on the meeting?
How are you feeling in the here and now Express with words, sound and movement. (sample VIDEO?)
Household
Anything that needs to be mentioned?
Topic: Listening and the Felt Experience
Practice reflective listening: Closing eyes, listening to sounds, what did you hear? Are you interpreting, or can you describe the sounds objectively?
Can you listen objectively to the words a person says, like a sound-mirror?
We also use seeing as a means of that we get information from the other.
Practice reflective seeing: Meanwhile you have looked at each other. You may have your interpretations about the other already, but can you receive how they may feel or what they think by how they sit, how they use their facial expression, their hands maybe? A short round with mentioning a feeling that you think the other has at this moment (and you may remember what they said themselves in the introduction, which you can use as inspiration). Just take a first guess. The watched person can confirm how close you are in your guess.
REFLECTIVE LISTENING: Reflective listening is a first step to feel how listening can work (what we did already in the first session by reflecting our objectives.)
Practice One round of reflective listening. Just a few sentences.
Speaker mentions a landscape they like.
Listener gives the words and sentences back to the speaker.
It helps for the Speaker to hear their words again. And you can always start with this.
However, it may feel awkward for the speaker, or cause irritation, when these are exactly all the same words with the exact non-verbal tone. Many times this does not move them forward to expressing the message they want to express. The underlying message is often more expressed in their nonverbal communication. Research has shown that 93% of our communication is non-verbal. Only 7% are words. The non-verbal colors the words: our body movements, our facial expressions, the sounds we make, our breathing, melody, accentuation, rhythm. And for the listener the reflective listening can become a memorization request. They can get nervous not remembering exactly what the speaker all mentioned.
EMPATHIC LISTENING: Where Empathy or feeling into the felt experience of the speaker comes in, is by:
1. Listening for and receiving feelings/a state of being, that the speaker shows in the way they express themselves in the here and now, and mentioning that
2. Giving the words back with your own words, staying as close to the words by using synonyms, re-group the words or give even the opposite.
3. Emphasize those words that you heard were important to the speaker (which can be part of lifting out a feeling)
Example: The speaker may say in a certain way: “Snow-mountains are gorgeous” The received feelings information can be that the speaker adores those and has a strong statement about it. The listening message could be: “Mountain-tops with eternal snow are one of the most stunning views.”
Giving the opposite could be: “Mountains without snow do not feel like as breath-taking as those with snow”.
Practice adding some -or all of the three- additions for Empathic Listening:
One round of a few sentences about A food you do not like
Discussion the differences between Reflective and Empathic Listening
Practice: Empathic Circle: Think a minute about something you would want to talk about. It can be about the topic empathy and communication or any other topic. Decide for a speaking time of 5 minutes.
As long as time allows (before moving to the Closing round.)
Closing
Impression of the meeting and anything that still wants to be mentioned
Feeling in the here and now.