Being muted might be the safest way to do all this, but I'm back on so thank you. Welcome everybody. I'm really greatly appreciative for your opportunity to share and for for everything that I've heard. I'm going to be just speaking about sort of my my personal experience with empathy circle. I have a great good fortune of having taken six facilitator training sessions in Santa Barbara and having met Edwin in September of 2023 I've learned from Edwin, and I've learned from Bill and from Lou, you know the very best, And I'm really grateful for that. I'm a retired immigration attorney, and after a while, learn to practice empathy with my clients. You know, in business, I would, somebody would come in, they, they tell me two or three sentences, and I'd already be going into I can, you know, well, you can do this, or you can do that, or you can do this, and and I realized that I wasn't giving them an opportunity to tell me a little bit about themselves, and for me to just listen and rather than go into problem solving. And that, you know, that that really helped. It's a it's a process that allowed me to give back to my clients before we really started any interactions, and that that, you know, that really helped. I also practice NVC before I started doing the empathy circles. I had a son in his 30s who had addiction problems, and I realized that if I could get him to come back home, that I had to learn a whole new way of thinking, being, acting and doing for my son. And being able to see what are you feeling and what are you needing was much better than saying how you doing and what are you feeling and what are you needing, or at the are at the basis of what goes on in an empathy circle. What I found in my experiences here in Santa Barbara, and if I sound Woo, woo, it's because I am Woo, woo, that I hear the divine speaking through people in circles. The everyday knowledge and wisdom and heart and hope of people comes out when they're in that when they're in that circles. And it's really, really, really powerful. People who are strangers have become intimate in the in the in the short period of time that you're that you're in a circle. And that's also, that's also powerful. You know, I learn more and feel closer to people that I'm listening to and speaking to in a in a in a circle than all the things that are happening in my normal life. And also, you know that people somehow hear things and then say things that they haven't said before when they're in a circle than they are in their regular life. And I think that speaks to the how powerful these are. People are inspired to say things to complete strangers that they've never said, you know, before, to friends. And that's something about, you know, the circle that that there's a magic in the circle. They tap into an energy source that we all have that's that's quite extraordinary. The speaker finds clarity and courage knowing that he'll be listened to without judgment, opinion or advice. Being heard is one of the greatest universal needs that we all have in the circle provides a formalized way of being able to do that. There's something about the listening process too. You know, in general, it stops the hamster wheel, the hamster wheel that that wants to offer an opinion, that wants to say, I'm sorry that this happened, that wants to say, Yes, this happened to me too, and simply they act of listening and not thinking about what I'm going to say next. Create something for the person that's listening and create something for the circle itself, that that only happens in a circle. So. People who come to our circles here in Santa Barbara always look forward to coming back. That's why they come back. We're not giving them anything other than the opportunity to be heard, and they're coming for the opportunity to get to know people in a way that doesn't happen in the outside world. My my friend Willie talks about being in the you know, out in the wild, when you're out in the wild, it's same old, same old. But when you're in a circle, you learn things and experience things that you're able to take out. People who are first timers in a circle are amazed at how quickly it is to learn. And that's, again, a beautiful thing about the circle. Once you give the introduction, you get down to experiencing having an empathy circle. And if there are any of you out there who haven't had that experience, you know, I, I invite you to come anywhere where they're offering live circles, or anywhere where they're offering online circles, and you'll be able to see that everything I'm saying has a certain ring of truth to it. It's hands on experience. And I've, I've my own experience has been for people that are new, how it's how it's amazing, how fast people pick it up. In Santa Barbara, we took it out into the community. We went to state we went to State Street, where most people were just too busy going back and forward on their shopping experiences. But at the end, those of us that were there sat in our own circle, and one young girl came riding up on her bicycle and said, Hmm, what are you doing here? It looks kind of interesting. And we invited her to sit down, and she participated in our empathy circle. We went to UCSB and talked to the students. We were there at the end of the Occupy, send occupy UCSB, and we were there when we found students were probably among the most eager to talk. There are people that are talking about loneliness, homesickness, stress in school, and it often brought tears to the eyes of these students to be able to just speak and have something go out, from out, from out of them, into the world. The idea of being able to talk about anything that's on your mind or heart is also great for me. I love topics, but I I use the I use the circle as a chance to springboard things that I haven't been able to talk to anybody about, and it's a great invitation. Things in my mind are sometimes intellectual, but things in my heart takes me to the core of what for me is the real truth about an empathy circle. And let's hear it for the silent listener. The silent listeners hold a circle and give it meaning in a larger witness. They get to listen to everyone, and they and they get to give love by that listening, I think circles are all about love. That's just the kind of guy I am holding intention and bearing witness to the beautiful individuality of everyone, and knowing that everyone wants to be heard puts us in a place when we're out in the world, it puts us in a place of receiving and of giving, receiving all that is said and giving by doing so, receiving all that said and giving by doing so, it's pretty easy. I remember that when I was working with my son, it made my job really easy. All I had to do was listen. I didn't have to offer advice. I didn't have to agree or disagree. I just listened and and after a while, it totally changed the communication that we have. And hearing yourself talk is a new experience for me as as it's relevant for being in a circle. When I talk, I just I just think about talking. I don't think about the pause between sentences. I don't think about what I'm really saying. But it can be a whole new way of communicating to others when I'm hearing myself what I'm saying, and it gets me to say more and deeper and better the next times I have an opportunity to speak, and there's A process of most likely in a circle, people are more likely to speak if they're reminded in the introduction about Carl Rogers or most or Marshall Rosenberg, I found that this sometimes happen. It's a way of inviting people. It makes it feel like it's something based in psychology and history and in a knowledgeable the knowledge. Place,