To Develop:

Speaking from Feelings

How do we go about effectively navigating our felt experience?

An empathic way of being rests on the awareness and sensitivity to felt experience. The training is about practicing being aware of feelings, and articulating and sharing them. For us to be aware of each others ongoing felt experience. Finding constricted blocks to the ongoing flow of feelings and to release those and to do this in relationship. Not only foster a flow of feelings in each of us and in the relationship.

A core part of building a culture of empathy is having a sensitivity and awareness of feelings.

That is;

• our own feelings,

• the feelings of others,

• the feeling of relationships

• and the overall feeling of the culture and environment.

Resources

• Alan Watts ~ Embrace All Your Feelings

What are the qualities of feelings?

• when we express a feeling other feels arise, and a whole chain of feelings (and the associated stories) arise.

• feeling are not static but move and change.

• feelings of pain point to feelings that we desire behind them.

How do these words relate to feelings?

• Empathy - is feeling into the visceral experience of ourselve, others, the environment, etc

• Self Empathy - Sensing and Feeling into our own feelings

• Imaginative Empathy - imagining being in a different from a different perspective or point of view and what it feels like.

• Sympathy - feeling for someone. feeling sorry for someone.

• Apathy - absence of feeling

• Objectivity - the feeling of distancing feeling

• Identifying - similar feeling. Finding the same feelings in ones self

• Power over - (authoritarian) feelings dominating other feelings..

• Passion - strong feelings

• Emotional contagion - catching the feelings of others. babies cry and the others catch it. A person yawns and another person catches it.

• Reason - the relationship of feelings?

Resources

Notes

• The idea that we are feeling and not just listening.

  • "You are not feeling me". Instead use 'you are not hearing me'.

  • I do not feel felt.

• Translate all the uses of the word about 'listening' to 'feeling'

Choosing Peace:

New Ways to Communicate to Reduce Stress, Create Connection, and Resolve Conflict

by Ike Lasater, John Kinyon, Mary Sitze

Ch 4: How do you feel about what happened? Finding Feelings

"So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it."

- Jiddu Krishnamurti

• * Feelings: How are you feeling right now?

• * Feelings vs. Faux Feelings (feelings vs. judgement)

• * Feelings In Conflict Situations: (Hiding feelings.)

• * Techniques for Finding Feelings

  • #5: Translating Faux Feelings

  • #6: Translating Images

  • #7:Translating Thoughts

• *Finding Your Own Feelings

Ch5: What is the Underlying Motivation: Finding Needs

• [The feelings that people would like to have or value highlyl]

I’ll Meet You There:

A Practical Guide to Empathy, Mindfulness and Communication

by Shantigarbha

"Empathy is an intuitive body-sense rather that an intellectual understanding of other people's psychology."

- Shantigarbha

"The hearing this only in the ears is one thing. The hearing of the understanding is another. But the hearing of the spirit is not limited to anyone faculty, to the ear, or to the mind. hence it demands the emptiness of all the faculties. And when the faculties are empty, then the whole being listens. There is then a direct grasp of what is right there before you that can never be heard with the ear or understood with the mind. "

- Zhuangzi

Chapter 14: Empathy and Compassion

Bodily awareness

"Rather than thinking about your experience of your boy, actually feeling the sensations associated with breathing, standing, sitting, or lying down."

" What Helps? Anything that takes your attention from your thoughts to the internal state of your body."

Exercise: awareness of body, breath and feelings.