just looking at the action items for last week, Edwin to meet with the board to discuss focusing on the holistic empathy movement. We just didn't even get to that. Edwin to continue reaching out to experts like Kevin Waltman, Amber and Claire York. Claire sent me her book. He has a book on empathy and leadership. I don't know if you saw her bio and stuff. So anyway, I'm gonna be, once I read that, probably take a month or so, gonna interview her, but run by the she's using the affective cognitive model. So whenever I interview these people, I'm gonna kind of challenge them on it and and I didn't have the discussion with Amber, and then Kevin, I meet after this afternoon. Actually, it's at 12 o'clock Pacific. Oh, great. About two hours. He had something he was all excited about or to follow up this discussion. So,
so he reached out to you. To
do an empathy circle with him too. I think he's getting interested in empathy. So anyway, I'm not really sure, uh, Jody to look into criticisms of empathy and how they fit into the Drama Triangle.
Hmm, yeah, I did not do that. Okay, I should write that keep talking, but I'm going to write it on my whiteboard. So actually, yeah,
that was just to come up, just to be thinking about it, you know, to find one criticism, just to be thinking about how to do it. And then Dodik to connect with Daryl Cameron and David Wingate regarding empathic AI research,
okay, yeah, I can do that. Remind me what the purpose was for reaching out. Is it you wanted to create a platform that could help facilitate empathy circles? Is that right?
Yeah, how could empathy circles? How can AI, you know, kind of support empathy circles? Okay, right now, I do a lot of research with AI, so that's one thing, but within the circle itself,
okay, yeah, I will reach out to both of them.
The other this was AI's action list that it gave us so,
so look at it helping us already.
So I just copied last week's Action List this week's, and then Joey to be added to empathy Super Friends. I don't know if you heard from Maria, but I did send you that.
No, I did not, but I did see your email. So is that something that I should follow up on? Do you think? No,
I think I just Just to let you, you just were interested in connecting with more people in the empathy space. So this is a group both Maria and old pay with some cameras, first name right now. Both of them have written books on empathy, and they started a group of sort of practitioners, especially in the business world. Who are, you know, promoting empathy, have workshops and things like that. So,
yeah, I definitely, definitely want to. So
Maria just brought out a new book. Has a new book, and I asked for a review copy. So, oh, okay,
that was the one that I saw that you had asked for the review copy, not the other one that you were talking about earlier.
Uh, both. Uh, Claire, York has a new book out too, comes out next month.
Yeah, all I was saying was that I thought that that's the one that I had seen, that you had emailed about, but it was actually Maria that I'd seen that about.
Beyond that, I just been chipping away. Haven't been too productive, but, oh, I've been posting the empathy summit post. I don't know if you're on LinkedIn, I tag you,
so I've seen that. I've been tagged a million times. It's been fun. Well,
every time, every time there's one of the posts, you know. There's like six, seven video clips, you know, from the summit, I post it, and I tag the participants as well as the speakers, and then the next summit speakers too. And you're speaking, I think, at the next two so well,
I know that one in October. Is there one after that as well.
There's one in November. I think you said you're interested in that one. You're
right. You're right. What is the topic for that one? So the one empathy circle. Okay, so the one in October is the one that's about the movement circle is what is being talked about in November? Yeah. Okay. What's the date on?
And let's see.
Just make sure I have it in my calendar.
Yeah. So here's the summit page you can review. In general, it's November 8. Saturday, November 8. I think you're see,
okay, I need to put that in
philosophy, philosophy, psychology and the empathy circle practice is what I had you down for oh, yeah, okay, now I remember that was the other part in the abstract. So you you had everything, okay,
I just had not put it in my calendar, so it was gone from my memory.
Okay, yeah, I had a really, it was really good Summit. Last one, awesome.
Yeah, time I'll go through and look at some of those clips that you posted.
Yeah, the one by Alyssa is really just it tells her personal experience. Let me give you the link to that, because I was just,
she, the one that was a student and and participated in when it really changed her life, yeah, okay, think I actually watched some of that one. Okay, yeah,
it's it just shows the power of it, how to what I really appreciate about that is because when I do the empathy circle, I sort of extrapolate the mindset that I experience. And lot of people don't, they just see the experience itself. And, you know, Alyssa just she could, she could extrapol, she extrapolated the experience, and just could see how it could affect all parts of her life. So,
yeah, that's great. That's pretty right. Um, so this past week, I've been continuing to work on my project that's looking at a lot of the philosophy social sciences bringing different definitions together that overlap with each other, so trying to understand more of when we're empathizing with another person, what part of them are we empathizing with? So I know I mentioned that a little bit, so I've been going deeper into that. So I've been really busy with that project, and you've been
kind of laying out the different parts of what is a person. So what are their different components parts? Yeah, yeah. So what's the center core of a person?
Yeah, so I have, I shared with you, like a little model that I created,
yeah? Okay, had that sort of a circle, yeah, it was. And then there was different,
oh yeah. And so I have, and I just showed it to you on my phone, right? Or did I show you one that was actually a screen share? Oh,
you wanna let me give you a co host if you want to share,
okay, yeah, I think it'd be helpful if I just show you this. Hang on. It is going to take me a minute to find it, because I think I closed everything down, because I get to this point where I have 75,000 tabs open, and I have to start closing things. Yeah,
feel remiss if you have to close one.
I know it's it feels like you're letting a part of your self die. Okay, let's see. So I started out by kind of looking at the definition of empathy, but then also it requires an understanding of the self. So what is the self like, if we're talking about including the other in the self, right? Like with the with the scale that is often used with the circles, what does that even mean? Right? So there's a lot of social. Psychology and other branches of psychology have deeply studied what the self is, and so there are a lot of different definitions. The ones that are kind of the most influential are William James in 1890 he talked about it comprising the material part of the self, so like your actual physical body and the material possessions that you have, so your home, your clothing, whatever the material stuff is that you have, and then the social which would be others perceptions of the self. But then also, and also, like group memberships, relationships, interactions with other people. And then the spiritual is what happens inside the mind of the individual. So he says that there are, those are the three different components of the self, um, and then let's see. Carl Rogers went on to say that it is an organized, consistent set of perceptions and beliefs about oneself, which I think is an that's an interesting one. I was talking with somebody yesterday about it. How, if we're, if we're saying that the self is made up of our thought patterns, then that would that would mean that if you have maladaptive thought patterns, then that defines you. So I wonder if, in recent decades, since this was in 1951 that he said, that I would wonder if, you know, with the advent of, like cognitive behavioral therapy and things like that, where we're trying to challenge those maladaptive thought patterns and kind of introduce a different way of thinking about something, if maybe we would redefine the self accordingly. So if it's a consistent set of perceptions and beliefs, if we can change those things, does the self actually change? So that's something to just think about as well.
And then just just quick comment on that I had in that empathic and appreciate way of being. He mentions cognitive behavioral therapy. He says he is concerned about it because it's a technical he felt it was sort of authoritarian approach. So I just thought that was, Oh interesting, because he he's what he liked about empathy. He thought it was, saw it as very democratic, because the the the power is in the person to change, whereas cognitive behavioral therapy, he says, well, society likes it. The technical society likes it because they like a method that you can control. You're using that process the therapist or others are in control, to control the person, you know, their the direction. And he was, he was skeptical about that, because he's, you know, very much into the giving space for the person to change themselves, which he felt was more democratic.
Yeah, I like that. And it's more empathetic as well. Because if you, if you come into it with an authoritarian mindset, you're not not giving space for empathy. Yeah, that's interesting. Thanks for sharing that. I'm going to read some more of his writings on that to see if I can get more of a cohesive understanding of how that fits together. Um, are you familiar with Baumeister? No, he's he's a preeminent social psychologist, and his work on the self has really been influential in influential and this, I really like this part of this definition that he has, that it's not a passive entity that things happen to, but also an agentic individual, right? So an active agent, and I think that a lot of the criticisms of empathy kind of fall into the passive side of it, where it's just a reaction to things that happen around you, right? And so if we're viewing the self as more
agentic, and what does agentic mean?
That's a good question. Having the ability to make choices and be proactive. So I want to read more, actually, right before meeting, I was reading some of his stuff, trying to get a deeper understanding of his view of the self as as this agent, as a proactive being. And I would think that if we understand more about more about the self as proactive rather than reactive, and yes, there is going to be some reactivity, but I just think, I think that the empathy research has been so focused on reactivity that I don't think it's really that helpful, because it's only showing one side of this where it's kind of, I mean, it puts you as the empathizer into a victim mindset, right? If you think of it that way, where it's like, I, I just, I can't control it, like these emotions are all around me, everybody else's. Yeah, views are just kind of bombarding me, and I have no control over it. So
the affective empathy, yeah, in a sense that there's two things, are you? I'm seeing sort of two general phenomenon under the affective empathy term. One is what you're talking about, the just reactive, all the different things you're doing to react. And then the other is sort of the process of sensing into someone's feelings. Are just wondering if you're if that's sort of how you see it, how that term, what that term holds.
Um, I think I like to think of it as a process, more than a reaction. I was looking at one of the empathy measures yesterday. I actually may want to pull this up so we can look at it together. It's the Toronto empathy measure. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that one, but I was looking through every item on the scale, and it was all affective. Like every single one of them was affective empathy, which I found very interesting. Not all of them were like emotion contagion, but some of them were reactions to other people's emotions. So for example, when I see other people crying, I get frustrated, so that's not taking on their emotion, but it is still an emotional process where you're reacting to somebody else's emotions. And so I actually want to just go up here and show you. This is, this is where, where I'm at with my definition. Let's see, okay, and I want to run this by you, see what you think of it, and just pick it apart and, like, put it back together and see, see if we've, like, covered all of our bases with this, we propose that empathy is a process. So first of all, process. I like the term process, because I do think that it is. It's an active process that you're entering into, a process of engaging with other beings. So that could be a human being or a non human being. So it could be like an animal or even an imagined other toward the goal, the goals of either understanding or connecting or and or helping. So you can have one goal or the other, but I don't think that empathy, in and of itself, is the goal. The goal, the reason that you enter into empathy as as a volitional agent, right? Like, as you're like choosing to do it is toward one of these goals, and this may or may not involve the understanding and sharing of emotional experiences. So I wanted to get
your take on that. Yeah, two things before you know, you're just talking about measurements. I had put together a list of measurements here over the years, and so just wanted to give you that. So let's see, yeah, the been like the empathy is a process. It seems like it's both a process and a state of being and and, you know, Rogers called it empathic and unappreciated way of being, so I think it is a process, you know, it's a process of sensing into someone's else, but there's also a being, a quality of being, to that process. So
could you give me, like a real world example of how that actually manifests? Because I'm having a hard time wrapping my brain around what that means. We're an
empathy we're in an empathy circle. And I'm listening to you, and there's, there's a quality when I listen to you, you know, reflect back. There's, there's a felt experience. I'm setting, you know, aside any judgments. I'm bringing my full presence, you know, to listen to you that there is a quality of being that happens, like I can feel for me the there's a gentleness that happens. I can feel a gentleness. I can feel a sort of a spaciousness. I could, for me, it's like a dark space. It's like a It's, it's, it's like a soft, fluffy, dark, you know, colored dark space. But it's not like a dark space in the sense of, you know, being negative. It's more like, like a warm, uh. A space that is, and I'm sure probably other people maybe have a different color for it, but, well, I'm
curious, is it dark? Because it's like, just open and empty,
just like, yeah, it's kind of like space. It's like, it's like space, outer space, it's kind of dark, you know? So it's a bit more like outer space, sort of dark. It's like, you know, can be very beautiful. Well within that space, when I things can, can emerge that are, are very beautiful, or or are very, you know, my own feelings of, you know, joy come up. But say, Oh, that's a really interesting insight that, or, Oh, this is what that person is experiencing. And it's, it's sort of an enriching, you know, it's, it's sort of, it's like a, it's more like a, like a fruit bowl, you know, in the sense or flowers, right? It's so it has sort of a, a, a, a positive, beautiful, sort of a quality to it
so, and you said that Rogers talks about it that way. He doesn't talk
about it that way, but he has his if you have a link to that, that paper empathic and unappreciated way of being
that's something that you have sent to me, or, let's see,
yeah, I've it's actually I have a link to it in Our defining empathy. I uh,
I was the title of it again, sorry,
empathy and unappreciated way of being I
Okay, I'm going to look into that some more.
So there's the link to the
Okay. Thank you.
So he says, in spite of all that has been said and written on this topic, it is a way of being that is rarely seen in full bloom in a relationship. So he, I haven't recalled him sort of outlining the the way of being, but he also has a book on being.
I just, yeah, all of these things when we get into beingness. I mean, this is what my whole paper is about. It just becomes so nebulous. And so that's why I asked for a concrete example of how that feels and what it looks like for you. So I feel like I understand it a little bit better, but I still, I feel like I need to dig deeper into that, to to wrap my brain around it.
Yeah, it would be like if I was just being very judgmental. You know, the critical are trying to dominate in the circle, right? It affects the quality of my of who I am, right? It's like it's a felt experience. It's a felt experience. That's the other part of the is in terms of definitions, you know, Gene genlin would be someone to look into as well. Since he was a philosopher as well as you know, had studied the psychology with Rogers, so he has a bit of a philosophical mindset, and he's going to bring in the felt experience aspect of it, as we've talked about that he, he's into, like, what's your felt experience, and what's sort of at the edge of your felt experience, in terms of who we are, that that subconscious or that quality of new things arise out of out of us, right? A new thought arises, and it's like, or there's a thought you just kind of at the edge of, oh, there's something there, like, not quite sure what it is, and you can sort of sense it, and you spend enough time with it, and it comes into your your awareness. So in terms of your. A sense of who you are, that that that void, not the void, that where these things are sort of emerging from, that come into your consciousness, that would be part of who you are, too. I don't know if philosophers have written about that.
Yeah. I really want to see how that maps on to my model. Can I share my screen again? Yeah, go ahead. Okay, because I want to, I want to think about that. You called it like a horizon, right at the horizon of your consciousness. And I know metaphor, actually, and now I'm seeing that I didn't put it in here, but that is a term that came up in the philosophical approach to beingness, I guess you could say, and so I wanted to show you this. I think that the horizon is the way that I understand it is is understanding that that excuse me within the individual, like we spend a lot of our time here, and we don't realize that there is all of this underneath it. So what I'm the way I'm organizing this is, this is maybe at the sub Oh Horizon, it's right here. So this, these, these things are more subconscious, maybe, where you're not consciously consistently thinking about them. You're only focusing on the things that are out here, but there, these are only out here because of all the stuff that's underneath it. Mm, hmm, and also because of all the stuff that's outside of it,
yeah. Then you've got young too young was all into the right, the what's like? All these archetypes, these these energies, almost like energies, right? That come intergenerational energies that we've picked up. Right? When we're kids, we just pick them up. Suddenly we don't even, you know, we just pick up the the emotional quality of them in into ourselves, yeah,
yeah. And so we don't even see where a lot of coming from. Um Heidegger is a philosopher who talks about Dasein, which is a term. It's German, and he it means basically, like being there, like being in the world. And so the way that he talks about it is, you can't have any of the core of the self without everything that's outside the self as well. So you pick it like you were saying. You pick it up from from your parents, from those around you, are you saying that it even goes back into like genetic factors as well?
I was just seeing some things from Carl Jung and he's saying it's sort of in the in the ethers, you know, it's in the cultural felt experience, maybe in the ethers of the culture and even in your family. You know, just if you so called, like to say trauma or it could be something positive that it just passed talking, I grab something, yeah, it just passes into you.
Okay, I'm going to add yung to my research on this, yeah, because I hadn't added him in yet to the way that I'm looking at this.
Well, the thing is, is, is like when we're empathizing, I think what you're looking at is, who, the person, who's there or being, what are you sort of sensing into? And what's the what's the landscape of this being, and how do you sort of differentiate different qualities of their landscape
and and you know, when we're talking about just affective empathy, we're just talking about emotions. And I actually don't even know, based on the research that I've done so far, where I would put empathy or sorry, where I would put emotions on this because what I've read about it is that if you have an opinion about something, it's really not very there's not a lot of emotion attached to it. But once you get into these deeper levels, if it's a conviction or part of your identity, you're going to be more emotionally attached to that. And so if I am sensing into somebody else's lived experience, and I'm sensing their emotion that's attached to it, I would think that what I'm getting into is some of these deeper levels of the person. However, sometimes the person experiences emotions on a surface level, and they're not consciously able to make the connection about why they're feeling that emotion, like what, what is bringing that emotion on? So in emotional intelligence books, they talk about emotions as you. Oh, what's the what's the term they use for it messengers. They talk about it as a messenger, as some like unmet need or something that's important to you, and your job at that point is to try and dig in deeper and understand what it is that the emotion is trying to tell you. So it kind of seems like emotion, kind of, it's attached to the more inner parts of the self, but then it's, it manifests on the surface level.
Yeah. Are you familiar with the book Descartes error? What is his name that the guy that wrote that?
Yeah, I'm familiar with it. I haven't read it, though.
It's he. He's make, you know, it, he is making the case that reason is based on emotion underneath, so that, yeah, it's the question is, yeah, is, is? What is? What is reason? What is feeling? Right? There's this, this notion of, of, like, pure reason, and then, versus, you know, the the,
who would say that it's, you know, they want to get rid of emotion, you know, just, but it's like the, it's the relationship between Reason and feeling right that we're trying to kind of get into, and he's just making the point that you can't without the felt experience. You can't make reasonable. You can't make reasonable. You can't use reason effectively. He has the experiences you know, people whose certain parts of their brains are sort of damaged, where they can't access the felt experience, that they can't make decisions because they don't know what's salient, what's important or not, because it's the felt experience. So but I can say for myself that I kind of like the gene gentle and approach where you just stay with the felt experience is kind of what we did when we were, you know, with, with Gregory, you know, just you and I were kind of talking about the felt experience that we had, that you can see experience things just from that realm like, Oh, what is, what am I feeling in the moment? And be exploring the landscape of that felt experience. So it
is really interesting to be more present with it, and actually to kind of build on that. I started a new with a new therapist this past week, and he said, rather than just being present with it this week. What he wanted me to do was like, actively go out and and seek it. So for example, I know I've told you about my my like, existential panic attacks that I have in the middle of the night, and he was like, when those come on, your job this week is to try and make it the worst one possible. Like That sounds terrible. And I actually did that last night, because I did have an attack, come on. And so I was like, alright, well, I'm going to try and do this. And I was, my thought process was, okay, I can feel it, it's coming. Like, let's, let's see if I can just really relish every single part of this terror that I'm going to feel. I know it's coming. And you know, of course, when the wave comes over me, it's still not pleasant, but I'm more in a role of proactive rather than just reacting to it. And so I I see it as like, kind of this continuum of, like, just reacting and not fully understanding over here, and then mindfulness, where you're present with the emotions, you're trying to understand them. And then over here is what he's wanting me to do, and it's to actively seek after it. And I'm going to do it a few more times hopefully. I mean, I don't want to have any more of these attacks, but when they come on, because they have been coming on a lot lately, I'm what I'm hoping and based on what he's told me, it's going to lessen the power that it has over me, because now I'm in control, like I'm putting my conscious mind back in control of this experience that is that I'm so afraid of. It's
just like a curiosity, isn't it? Or like you're curious about what's happening, and you're going into experience that you're you're allowing the feeling to come and sort of stay present with it,
yeah, because what I have been doing in the past is push it away and, like, try and hide from it, and then it, it takes like, 30 minutes of trying to hide from it, hide from it, hide from it, and then it finally does, still just blow me over. And I so I got through the process a lot more quickly last night. And so rather than it taking two hours, the whole process took about 30 minutes. Oh.
Yeah, stay with it. What happened? I'm just curious what was, what was your experience?
I mean, it was just as terrible as it always is, but the difference was the duration. And actually, now that I think of it, I usually wake up after those experiences completely exhausted and really, really depressed, but I didn't this morning, so I see that as progress. But anyway, this is not a therapy session,
no, but it's about, we're talking about. What we're looking at is self empathy. This is self empathy. You're sensing into yourself, and it's the same thing. If I would have been there with you, listening to you, I would have been empathizing with you. So it's like we're looking at, what is the what is self? How does the self empathy work? Sensing into your experience. You know, being present with it, you know, not detaching, not judging it, you know, but staying present with it yourself and then also with someone else there,
yeah. And I think the interesting thing about the way that you have taught me to empathize, like the way that you do it, it helps the other person to self empathize, because you're just non judgmentally reflecting back what's happening and what you're seeing, what you're noticing, and so that kind of becomes part of the self talk of the other individual. And I think that's a beautiful process, because it really is not just about you, understanding you as the empathizer and understanding the other person. It's also training them to know how to understand themselves as well.
And there's another part too, is there's a presence of someone. So you've got the anxiety, you know, I see it as, again, that landscape, here's the landscape is, you know, the anxiety can be a Mount Everest, right, within the within the landscape, and then you can get kind of overwhelmed with it. But if someone is reflecting what you're saying, it's sort of their presence is within the landscape too, and that if, if they're reflecting back saying, Oh, I'm hearing you have Mount Everest of anxiety and fears, and it's, you know, cutting deep into you. And you know, you're feeling, you know, terrified about what, what this it's that part of your consciousness is in the relationship, right? So and then, and then, and then, by even the mirroring, there's something about mirroring someone the the act of mirroring, it seems that it creates a sense of connection and safety so that that it adds to that space, to the landscape, to that inner landscape, so you're not just the Mount Everest hasn't sort of taken taken over. So I think that's the other benefit of of empathy, is it's creating a sense of connection and and connection creates a sense of, like, safety too, and maybe grounding as well. Oxytocin, grounding, yeah, yeah. And
the reason I say grounding is often, when I get into those really negative spirals, I feel like almost the analogy of what you were sharing about the way you feel when you're empathizing, but you're like out in space, but when I'm having these negative internal experiences, it's like there's no ground underneath me. And so if there's another person there, it's like you you are here. You are part of this. You know your feet are on the ground, and you're part of this world. You're part of relationships around you as well. And I think that's a really beautiful part
of it as well. Yeah, so that's a grounding, yeah, I can see us. Your feet are on the ground, so you're you have somewhere to stand, yeah? I see Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I think this is, this is, I mean, this is an important part of the landscape of empathy, you know, it's like, but these real world experiences visit. I don't know if I ever talked about my empathy fear, dance or Okay, so I used to like to really dance, you know, kind of freestyle dance, and my body's cold, but just I used to do contact improv too, with contact
improv, sorry, is it a type of dance? Yeah, it's a
type of dance. But you're always in contact with your partner or partners and you and so when you you can kind of connect, let's say, and you can feel, where do you want to go next? And there's sort of a emotion, you know, you just follow the flow of where the connection wants to go. So it's like an intuitive and you're rolling tumbling, but it's just highly you're in physical contact. So there's huge amount of like oxytocin involved. In it. So if you, if you look that up, it's a really great contact improv. They have some good videos on super interesting. But the the type of dance I was doing, it's more freestyle, you know, just just, you just move however you want. You can roll Tom. You can people do contact or whatever. And so it I was in the in the dance, and I and it was like I was dancing, and I could say I could feel sort of this anxiety in my core, just like, you know, I thought, Okay, I'm gonna do exactly what that first year your therapist said, Stay with it and try to expand it. I thought it was exactly so it was, like, exactly that model. I thought, Okay, I'm going to do that. And I but I was being able to dance with my whole, you know, my move with my whole body. And I was sort of feeling us okay. I'm going to, I want to get close to the fear. I want to get close to this anxiety. And I want to, just like if you zoom in to a picture, you start seeing the individual pixels of the picture. And I thought, I want to get as close to it that I can see the individual pixels of the of the anxiety and and I saw is moving and, it was and then like metaphors started coming. I said, Oh, this is like 1000s of little knives, you know, cutting into into me. And I kind of kept moving, getting closer to it. And, you know, I had other different insights. But it's also kind of fits in with focusing where you're staying with the felt experience and seeing what comes into the space and and then I kept and I got close to it, I got close to it, and it like it disappeared. It just like, it's almost like it wasn't real. It was real. I was it was real. But what I'm
what I'm saying, is it didn't have any foundation to it. So it's like, I guess I can't be here anymore, right,
right? I mean, and that fear is kind of, you didn't want to go somewhere else. There's, I can feel a pool like, I don't want to face my fear. I want to get away from from the fear. So there's that pool to to get, to get away with it. But I did. So
that gives it power when you try and get away from it, yeah,
yeah. Well, it keeps it suppressed and and keeps it, it keeps it alive, yeah. So it keeps it, keeps it alive and have without power. So I did get close to it and with the knives, and then it kind of just disappeared. And I thought, Oh, that's interesting. It's gone. But then within a few seconds, I felt another fear. It was like, I say, Oh, there's another one. And it was like, kind of a heaviness, like, feel like, Oh, my brain is kind of tight, you know, constricted. I said, Okay, there's another one. Gonna go check out, check that one out. And I in the dance, moving around, and, yeah. And I thought, okay, sorry. It feels like fog. And I started, you know, sort of naming what it looked like. What is it? How can I get closer to it? And, you know, I danced for a while, you know, kind of, I can't remember, all the intricacies of, you know, how getting close to but I did get close to it, and it also it sort of disappeared like that. But then I noticed that, within a few seconds, I was noticing another version of the fear, like the fear takes. I just realized fear has almost like unlimited manifestations. And so in the dance, I kept, you know, dancing, you know, trying to find the fears within myself and try to get close to it. And there was even those, one that you know, you're dancing with different people. There's just one woman I would would dance with a little bit, and then she always would leave, you know, so I It felt a little bit like rejection. And I said, Okay, I'm going to and as a fear of, sort of that rejection, right? And then I said, Okay, I'm going to stay close. I'm going to kind of how we just kind of kind of got together, we're sort of starting to dance. And I stayed, I said, Okay, I'm going to just stay with the fear. And I can feel kind of in my gut, sort of this anxiety, kind of, you know, welling up. And I just kind of stayed with it, and always stayed focused on in with the presence of her, but also of the fear and it. I kind of based it, you know, danced through it, and she stayed very present somehow that we both, we had a good dance, you know, out of it. And I think I did this for like an hour or or more, and afterwards, it's like I felt like I was sort of like, you know, some kind of a Buddhist bliss, you know, I just felt like I was sort of like floating in this warm, blissful feel. And, like, after the dance, I have anxiety in terms of talking to people, you know, I don't know what to say to them. Are we going to talk about, what's the conversation? I'm not real good at just, you know, chit chat kind of stuff like that. And usually I feel some anxiety about that. But I just was, like, felt so calm, so peaceful. I didn't feel anxious about not talking to people. You know, it was just like, there's just this spaciousness. So anyways, one of these peak experiences of just being present, and I've always wanted to, you know, even after I thought, what we really need is a fear empathy circle, where you're always facing sensing fear, not only your fear, but other people's fear. And so it, let's do it. Yeah, great, yeah.
I love that idea. I mean, we talked about anxieties a couple of weeks ago when we did that empathy circle, and I think that that was really helpful to just talk about what it felt like, but I think going deeper into it would be powerful
set sometimes. Give me some times that work for you.
That sounds really fun. I'm curious if you could explain to me why you felt so present, specifically during that dance like first of all, why was there fear in the first place during I
have a low level anxiety in general, in life, you know, it's just like, so it's just always going to kind of be there, yeah, it's always kind of there, yeah. And it has different forms, you know, it it takes, it has, it's like a little in the core here. It's sort of a heaviness in the head of constriction and focus and and has this lot of different manifestations. So I think it's, it's just, for some reason that one time I decided to just really face it, and it was, like, beautiful. It was. And I want to say to what we're talking about, I think in terms of your, your studies, I mean, this is the important stuff, right? It's like, how does, how does all that theory, all that stuff, fit into the real, lived experience,
yeah, because otherwise, why are we even talking about it? Yeah.
And how does, how does it help give insights and and move, you know, the core of who we are,
yeah, and I think if we don't tap into the philosophical we do miss a lot of the depth of what it is we're experiencing. You know, for example, like you were saying, like most people who come into an empathy circle, they just kind of experience it on a surface level, but you and a few other people have been able to get down into deeper as like, looking at what is the experience of the whole group. Why are we experiencing it the way we are? So I think there's a lot of value to talking about the philosophical as long as we always take, excuse me, I'm sorry. I'm like, kind of choking on something today. It's not the food, it's it's my own self, um, but always bringing it back to the practical, yeah? Because that's the reason that we're even getting into the philosophical is for the sake of understanding the practical and informing the practical.
Yeah. I think you know, if your paper research, if it can bring that into the lived experience like that. I think it just, you know, brings the the work alive too.
Yeah, um, I'm thinking about the book that will eventually write. And I say eventually, because it might be five years from now. Mm, hmm, but that story that you just told is a, it's such a good story and it needs to be told.
Yeah, it was like a peak experience. And I have a longing to, you know, if you like, I would be great to do a beer empathy circle, you know. And I think it could be something that could catch on, because facing your fears is, you know, it's a healthy thing to do, I think. And you know, if you can have do it in the environment with others, I think it could be a real growth, promoting something that could really catch on, you know, having the framework for doing that, that other people can then use that as a practice to,
yeah, I think so. And I think that there's really something there with like bringing in the dance aspect of it as well, or some sort of embodied experience rather than talk, yeah, I just think that yeah, embodied experiences are so powerful, and maybe that's why, in that moment, you were able to focus on it, you were able to face it, because your body was doing something proactive. And a lot of times with anxiety, it's this is what my therapist was just explaining to me, and it's an analogy that makes perfect sense to me. So you know, back hundreds and 1000s of years ago, when you felt that, that immediate feeling of anxiety that's like an alarm going off that there's something wrong, it usually is because there's something wrong, like there's a wolf. Outside your house, and you have to go get your bow and arrow or whatever, you have to go out and kill the wolf, and so your body is doing something to address the problem, whereas nowadays there's not that imminent threat. And so we just kind of sit with this low level of anxiety, and it's just kind of like coming along, and it's always at the periphery, and we never address it head on. And I so that's why, bringing it back to that embodied experience, I think that that could be so powerful to help people address their fears as if there's some sort of physical thing that they're doing in the processes.
Yeah, it could be start with the empathy circle, and then you take it into the some mirroring exercises like, you know, for acting, one of the core acting practice is the mirroring, where you sit with someone else, and then you move, and they move and sort of follow you. And then you shift, and you follow them, and you kind of shift back and forth, who's sort of leading, and then you stop taking, you know, conscious control. And then people kind of move in sort of this harmonic experience where they're kind of reading each other, you know, Oh, I love
it so much. We almost had an experiment where we were going to do that with BYU dance camps this summer. So we did have an intervention that was, like, focused on character development. And one of the things that I really wanted to have in there was a partner dance, and then we were going to look at how it increases people's empathy. Unfortunately, because it was a it was multiple parts, like, you know, different stakeholders involved. We didn't, we weren't able to do that, that part of it. But Garrett Carden, the neuroscientist at BYU, he has, you know, you've seen his thing that he does with art, where they're looking at art together, and it sparks conversation. And so, like, I'm helping him with two papers on on some of those projects. But then what we are hoping to do in the future is something similar to that as well, with with different media, so with dance, with music, you know, so it could be, it could be anything that is an embodied experience, where you're you're not just talking about it that I think could be really beneficial for helping people to empathize with each other and also understand themselves
better. Yeah. How does empathy fit into those contexts? Like, where is Yeah, I mean, dancers, musicians, they've, I've done interviews with, you know, musicians, they just talk about reading the energy being empathic to the holistic empathy, right? There's, you're in a band, there's a holistic empathy of the group, and you're sensing that in your from split second, you know, you know, yeah, split second, you know, interaction with, with, with the others, yeah.
And I love that feeling. I'm a pianist, and so I've accompanied a lot of different groups and individuals, and I've played with a lot of musicians, and my favorite moment is that breath that people take and it's like, okay, we're all on the same page, and we're going to do this right now, and you don't even have to say a word, and everybody knows what's happening. It's just, it's such, it's it's an unparalleled, unparalleled experience that I just, I can't get enough of it. Every single time that it happens. It's just, it gives me the warm fuzzies. It's just so great. I've got to go because I have an appointment. But this is good stuff. And I want to keep, I always want to keep talking.
Yeah, I can talk. I can go for days. This is I like this much better than writing.
Yeah, well, and that's what I was thinking, the fact that you have to share that story in a book, it's, it's here, and it's going to be in the AI transcript, and so it's going to be part of I really think that it will be so easy to pull together all of this information and write a book about it, because, as we're talking about it, it is being written, and so it's going to it's going to simplify the process.
Yeah, we've got the recordings, we've got transcripts, we've got two AI reports on it, so it's well
documented. So it's gonna really facilitate the process. Let me know
about the fear circle. I had been wanting to do that and just, yeah, okay, um, time for somebody who's as equally as enthusiastic as I. You know about it.
I love fear. I'm just gonna start telling myself that I'm I'm very enthusiastic about fear, as of as a Friday, when I talk to my therapist about it, I'm pretending to be enthusiastic about fear. It still is, it still is scary. But why not? Why not head on?
And I think it's core because, like, you know, authoritarianism. Is based on fear, right? You people are afraid to speak up. And, you know, it's, it kind of permeates our whole society and, and I think shuts down democracy and democratic so I think it's as well as everything that does, you know, to your body. So, yeah, yeah, I need probably at least an hour and a half time for circle ideally.
Yeah, I'm just wondering who else I maybe, maybe Greg would be interested. I did talk to him last week, by the way, it was awesome on Thursday. And he's also interested in maybe sometime in the future, doing an A study on the empathy circle. And for both of us, it's just a matter of bandwidth.
And he's got the whole, there's a whole fellow fellows. He's so he has, there's a whole group there that he's good to get them involved in an empathy circle. I think that would,
yeah, I'm sorry I saw that you you emailed about that, but it was like, after I had talked to him, and I was like, I actually don't know any of the other people in his group, and so I didn't feel comfortable like reaching out at that point, but let me just see he also invited me to join this other research group where they have, like, weekly meetings and talk about empathy research. So hang on, I'm just
gonna, he'd be interested in the fear circle and others. Yeah. I mean, I can always send out a news, you know, the newsletter asking people so there's always find, you know, kind of the shotgun approach, versus having specific people. It'd be good to have a group that's consistent, you know, maybe, yeah, five people. Maybe,
yeah. I think it would be really fun, and I think it could be very therapeutic. I think it's all around a good thing.
Okay, well, let me know dates whenever. Okay,
I mean on, honestly, if it could be at the same time as our normal meeting and then just replace one of the meetings. That's, that's a time that I got set aside. So I'm starting classes next week. And so it's, it's always as as you've seen, each time I get into a new semester, I have to kind of figure out what's the new normal and see what my bandwidth is. So I don't feel like I can commit to a specific day or time or number of meetings about that yet, just because I don't know how how intense the classes are going
to be, what do we do next week? Then let's
just still meet next week and time you talking about the projects and, you know, the the training and everything. So, okay, okay, I'll see you. Then next week. Bye. Hey. Bye.
