Thank you. Welcome. Thank you so much. I really appreciate this summit, and I'm so excited to see all of us here together to learn more about empathy. Today, I'm going to talk about the silent listening in the empathy circle, and some just some reflections I have on it from my own practice. And also, I looked up some research on what what role silence plays in communication. So I'll start my talk by explaining a little bit about the communication model by Jacobson and some research on what researchers have found about the role of silence, and using that, I will I will just reflect on my experiences in the empathy circle, what I've heard from other people, And also my own experience about being a silent listener in the empathy circle, and how that facilitates and fosters connection and understanding. I want to start by reading a poem by Emily Dickinson, and it goes something like this, silence is all we dread. There's ransom in a voice, but silence is infinity himself. Have not a face. So the poem roughly means silence is something we all dread, and this is also there in lot of research, especially Mediterranean cultures like Spain and Italy, silence is not welcome in conversations, and people are it's very noisy culture, as the researchers called it, and so are Arab culture, whereas other cultures, like in Japan and China, silence is very contextual, and it has to be understood In conversations. It could be a deflection of they want to say no, but they can't say it openly to your face. So they use silence as a soft No, and that happens in India also, which is a high context culture. But silence is also used to foster understanding, empathy and a reflective space, and especially Nordic culture, this is the case where listening is encouraged more than speaking often, and researchers found that silencing conversations really foster the reflective space and more engagement with the person that is Speaking. And when people have that those pauses to introspect and to reflect whatever information has been shared is taken more it seems to have more retention, and people engage more with that information. What is silence defined as in communication? It's basically the absence of noise, and also in non verbal communication. Sometimes, when we are talking to one another, we use noises like, Oh, yeah. And that's also way of communicating. The problem with all of these noises is that it can interfere in the person's process, because even though we are not using words, we are interjecting ourselves into that conversation. So when someone says something, and I do, oh, I'm interjecting my reaction, even though it's not verbal. I'm not saying I'm surprised, but I'm still interjecting my experience into it, and that can distract people. So I was recently in a meeting where there was this person who every, every time the speaker was saying, something, would go, Oh, really, ah, and it was so distracting for me as a listener, I couldn't listen deeply to the person that was sharing because of this, because this person was constantly putting interjecting their reactions into So, in a silent in a in an empathy circle, silent listening, actually, my experience was it was quite Scary in the beginning to just be silent because words and small talk, I realized that I was using it as an armor to not be vulnerable. So when I'm I remember there was one workshop where we just had to first be silent and not say anything and just look at each other. It was this. Curious experience, because suddenly I was there in this silence, and I had to be vulnerable, and I couldn't use the armor of words or small talk to, kind of to, kind of, like, replace my anxiety. And when I reflected, reflected on it, the anxiety was about being accepted by the other person, about belonging and not having that, that verbal validation from the person that you're you're okay for me, you belong, you're safe here and but we can communicate that with silence as well. This. The non verbal cues here become very important. Silence can be used to communicate distaste or hatred, but it can also be used to communicate empathy and understanding, which is what we do in the empathy circle. So when I'm in the empathy circle, when other people are silently listening, I'm taking in what they are communicating to my message, ah, through the non verbal body language. So through their facial expressions, even though there is no sound that is distracting me, the verbal expression that's still there and I can, I can discern when I'm being received warmly welcomed by the other person, through the listening and when I'm not so this, this cultivating this kind of presence, I think, as a silent listener and an empathy circle is very important, that kind of presence where the other person feels welcome, feels safe and feels received, and at the same time I'm not interjecting my experience, to distract the other person or other people who are listening in the same and for example, this can happen when I'm triggered by what the other person is saying. And if I'm not able to hold that trigger and my face shows, you know, this kind of exaggerated shock, it can distract the other person, and suddenly, instead of being in their process, they have to take care of me, because I look so distressed. So practicing self empathy at the same time as listening to the other person is there's so much happening when a silent listener listening, although it seems like it's not, there's not much happening. The silent listener deals with whatever's coming up within by giving oneself self empathy and at the same time being with the other person in a way that is not distracting for that person that I'm I'm making sure that I'm accompanying the person, but I'm not interjecting my reaction, my world, into them, so that I can walk with them and they can be safe in that process. So this is, this is something that is challenging, I think, for silent listener. And another thing that is challenging is when someone says something, and I really am triggered, and I want to say something, I really want to say something, and I can't hold it, I really want to say it. So in an empathy circle, it's so beautiful, because when we practice being in an empathy circle, it gives us that ability to be silent and not react. So it helps us to work on our reactivity, like Bob was mentioning about consciousness, being aware, being aware, being aware. Often. We don't know when we are in a conversation we have. We are habitual. Way is to react and to just blurt out words. The MBT circle really taught me, in an a very embodied way, to to learn how to really contain my my reaction, my wish to react rather than respond. And I noticed that when I held it in and I waited for my turn, my response is much better now, when I wanted to react to the person, it was a response rather than a reaction, and often times I even forgot about it and I spoke about something completely different because I had processed it. And it just made me wonder, in everyday conversations, and normal conversations, how many words I'm using that are super fluid, that are just reaction, and how many, how many times I might have not really reflected and so what as an active as a silent listener and an empathy circle? I've also heard many people say, ask me questions, like, so I'm just supposed to sit there and not do anything. It's like, you are, you will be doing a lot. And this is the reaction I get after the circle was like, Yeah, I really wanted to jump in and I really wanted to say something to this person. I want. To save this person. I wanted to console many people have a problem when somebody is sharing something that's very sad for them, and we want to jump in and save that person. We want, no, no, no, no, you're not ugly. You're really beautiful. No, we want to say something reassuring and that that is not empathy and to to train ourselves to do that. It's really what you learn as an active listener in a in an empathy circle,