Edwin Rutsch

Topic: The History of the Empathy Circles Development.

9:10 Speaker: Edwin Rutsch (20 min)

Summary 

Edwin Rutsch, founder of the Empathy Center, discussed the development and significance of empathy circles, emphasizing mutual active listening as a core practice. His interest in empathy began in 2008, influenced by George Lakoff and Barack Obama's focus on empathy. He explored various empathic listening practices, including Carl Rogers' person-centered therapy and Marshall Rosenberg's nonviolent communication. 

Rutsch developed the empathy circle, combining elements from World Cafe and restorative circles, to foster empathy in diverse settings. Since 2011, the practice has evolved, with training cohorts and a goal to teach empathy circles globally, aiming to create a culture of empathy and address societal issues.

Action Items

• [ ] Refine the presentation on the history of the Empathy Circle practice.

• [ ] Explore opportunities to have high-profile figures like Trump and Harris participate in Empathy Circles instead of debates.

• [ ] Expand the Empathy Circle Facilitator Training program to additional locations, including the Bay Area, New York, and Phoenix.

Outline

Development and Influences of the Empathy Circle

• Edwin Rutsch introduces himself as the founding director of the Empathy Center and a developer of the Empathy Circle practice.

• He begins by explaining the core practice of the Empathy Movement, which is mutual active listening.

• Edwin shares his journey of discovering empathy in 2008 while making documentaries on human values.

• He mentions his initial interest in empathy as a fundamental skill for fostering human relationships and democracy.

Influences from Academia and Political Figures

• Edwin discusses his encounter with George Lakoff, an academic who emphasized empathy as the basis of progressive thought and family life.

• He reflects on Barack Obama's 2008 campaign, which highlighted the empathy deficit in society.

• Edwin's personal journey includes traveling extensively in his teens, which led him to seek the meaning of life and discover the value of empathy.

• He introduces Carl Rogers, a clinical psychologist who developed person-centered therapy, focusing on active listening.

Active Listening and Empathic Practices

• Edwin elaborates on Carl Rogers' person-centered therapy, which involves active listening without judgment or advice.

• He mentions Marshall Rosenberg and his development of nonviolent communication (NVC), which promotes active listening in human relationships.

• Helen Hunt and Harville Hendrix's Imago relationships are discussed, where mutual active listening is used in romantic couples.

• Edwin shares his experience with community mediation centers in Berkeley, which use active listening to resolve conflicts.

Empathy Circle and Restorative Circles

• Edwin describes his involvement with Dominic Marder's restorative circles, which use a circle approach for conflict resolution.

• He explains the process of restorative circles, where speakers select listeners and reflect back their understanding.

• Juanita Brown and David Isaacs' World Cafe process is introduced, which involves small group discussions and idea sharing.

• Edwin reflects on his experience with Occupy Wall Street in 2011, where he set up an empathy tent to offer active listening and talking stick circles.

Development and Expansion of the Empathy Circle

• Edwin discusses the challenges of implementing empathy circles at Occupy Wall Street and the idea of combining World Cafe with active listening.

• He mentions collaborating with Lidewij Niezink  from the Netherlands to develop the empathy circle practice.

• The first recorded empathy circle and a 10-week book club application of the practice are highlighted.

• Edwin emphasizes the intention of creating a culture of empathy and the ongoing development of the empathy circle practice.

Empathy Circle Facilitator Training and Global Impact

• Edwin talks about the empathy circle facilitator training developed during the COVID-19 pandemic by Lu Swire and Bill Filler.

• He shares photos of empathy circle facilitator training cohorts and the ongoing expansion of the practice.

• The goal of teaching all 8 billion people how to facilitate an empathy circle is discussed.

• Edwin believes that empathy circles can address societal issues and foster a global culture of empathy.

Conclusion and Future Goals

• Edwin expresses his gratitude for the audience's attention and the fun of creating the presentation.

• He mentions that this is the first iteration of the presentation and plans to refine it further.

• The importance of empathy circles in building a global culture of empathy is reiterated.

• Edwin concludes by emphasizing the long-term project of teaching empathy circles to everyone and its potential impact on global well-being.

Transcript

https://otter.ai/u/JWFh5EpyE1nsw-Lc_LdbHEP5k2o?view=transcript

Ruth: And I now have the honor to announce Edwin Rutsch as our first speaker. Edwin the founding director of the empathy Center. He is a developer and long term evangelist of the empathy circle. Practice. Over to you, Edwin, thank you.

Thank you Ruth, and thank you everyone else for being here. I wanted to do in my presentation is to I'm going to show a slideshow, and let me get that up on the screen. Here, I can there. There we go. And I want to do in this presentation is, I want to give you a short overview of how the empathy circle came about, I see this process which is based on mutual active listening as the core practice of the empathy movement

. You know, with active listening being just very fundamental to as a fundamental skill for to learn, for fostering empathy. And what I want to do is cover the influences of how the practice was developed, and then all the other presentations will help you know, build, build on that. So little bit about me is my interest in empathy. Started in 2008 I was making some documentaries on different human values, on exploring progressive values, and I came across the topic of empathy when I was doing my interviews. And I thought, hey, this is really an important topic. It's really fundamental to how we relate to each other as human beings. 

And so I started researching and studying and interviewing and just really learning about empathy through, you know, just kind of through all the research and the interviews. And one of the first people I came across was an academic, George Lakoff, who teaches linguistics at UC Berkeley, and he's he talked about how empathy is the basis of progressive thought, and it's the basis of progressive family life. And since I was thinking of myself as a progressive at that time, I thought, well, I want to, you know, dig into these progressive values and and he was kind of making the case that empathy was core to progressive values, just and I don't think of myself as a progressive currently, I sort of left the different sort of political views and now really see myself as, you know, grounded in an empathic way of being is so but anyway, at that time, I was very much into just looking at progressive values, and he also talked about empathy is the heart of democracy

. And that is, he says, that is what this is all about, citizens caring about each other, other citizens, and having a government that is of the people and by and for the people. So just seeing that, you know, mutual empathy is really the core of of democracy, and then around this time, as well, Barack Obama was running for for office, and he was saying, he says, it seems to me like we've got an empathy shortage and empathy deficit, and it's More serious than the federal budget deficit, and we've become so cynical that it is almost naive to believe that we can understand each other across the Gulf of race or class, religion, region or religion. And so his campaign was very much based on on fostering this quality of addressing the empathy deficit, really, I thought, well, maybe I can also help with that, with that issue as well, is just really, you know, through all the research and, you know, making, you know, documentary and so forth. So those were some of the sort of philosophical motivations for my interest in in empathy.

 And also in my teens, I did a lot of traveling. I was a seeker, and, you know, traveling around the world for 10 years, sort of seeking the meaning of life. And when I discovered empathy, the value of empathy, connecting with human, you know, fellow seeing our thinking with our fellow human beings, and seeing our common humanity, it really resonated with, I think, was what I was seeking. So I started learning about empathy practices.

 You know, I had that sort of philosophical, yeah, let's get. Empathy is this important value, and in my studying of empathy, I started learning about active or empathic listening, and one of the first people I learned about was Carl Rogers. So Carl Rogers was, is considered one of the, you know, top two or three clinical psychologists in, you know, in history, for that matter, and in the 1950s 60s and 70s, he developed this process he called the person centered therapy, where he would just listen to people actively, you know, to his clients. 

And on YouTube, there's this video that you can find where this person, Gloria, there's three different therapists use their different therapeutic approaches with her. And you know, he used his person centered therapy, you know, using active listening with her. And you can see a demonstration of how that works. So, and Rogers also really articulated and developed the whole active listening process, you know, he gives credit. He mentions that he had someone that did ronke and therapy, and that she was the one that told him about when you listen, you kind of look for the deeper feelings that you're listening for, that you're listening when the person is speaking, and that you hear the feelings kind of behind, under the surface of what they're saying. And you reflect, actively reflect that as well. So the way this work is we have Person Centered therapy where the therapist actively listens one way to the client, and so they listen for, you know, they're doing typical therapy is, you know, like a 50 minute session. 

So for just 50 minutes or an hour, Rogers would just do the active listening. The speaker would speak, and he would just reflect back his understanding. He would not ask questions, he wouldn't give advice, he wouldn't give sympathy, he wouldn't judge them. He would only listen to them actively. And so this really, I started seeing, as I did more and more research, seeing that this practice really becomes really a foundation for the empathy, you know, creating an empathic way of being. And then I learned about Marshall Rosenberg and non violent communication.

 And it's actually the first group that I connected after I got interested in empathy in the in the Bay Area, I got connected with the local Bay Area NVC community, and which was the over or NVC for nonviolent communication community. And this organization was developed by Marshall Rosenberg, who is a graduate student with Rogers. And so he learned, you know, the philosophy of empathic philosophy and this active listening skills. 

And he built, built on that, and developed the whole community around the tools and practices and mindset that he developed. And so in his process in nonviolent communication, it's not just a therapist listening to another person, it's anyone can use active listening to listen to another person. So he would, he taught, you know, in his workshops, he taught how to just in just human relationships, how you could use active listening to speak, you know, to listen to others. And then another influence that I came across in my research about actual practices was Helen Hunt and Harville Hendrix, and they developed what they call Imago relationships. And so they, again, you know, took this work of Rogers, of active listening, and they put it into relationships.

 And so they developed a whole tool set for what they call, like I said, Imago relationships, and where it's mutual active listening between romantic couples. So when couples, you know if they're in conflict, or even before they're in conflict, they would use active listening to just talk with each other so they could be sure that they really hurt each. Other, and so this is like another manifestation of how people, you know, different therapists and so forth, used the active listening process.

Then, you know, continuing. You know, as I kind of looked around, I saw that we have in Berkeley. I live in El Cerrito, which is near Berkeley, California. In Berkeley, there's a Community Mediation Center, and they do this 40 hour training, and I took that training and there again, you know, active listening pops up. So there, if you have a conflict. You know, you're, you're a mediator. People come into the into the center there to have, you know, deal with some conflict. You have a mediator. And the mediator actually uses active listening to speak, you know, to listen to one of the disputants, and then, then they listen to the other and it kind of goes, you know, back and forth. 

They they listen to each of the disputants, and that helps the, you know, people feel, feel heard. And it kind of really helps to unravel the conflict. And the mediator helps with that. And then another workshop I did, which was very influential, was with Dominic Marder, and he developed something called restorative circles. And this is where you take a circle approach. And he developed this in Brazil. He's from the UK, but he developed it in Brazil. And he says he had a lot of influence from you know, Rosen Marshall, Rosenberg and NVC. I'm not sure how much he looked into Rogers work, but he did, does mention Rosenberg for some influences. 

So in this process, you have a circle and people who are, you know, a couple of people who are in conflict, they invite other people into the circle to discuss the conflict, and you have a speaker, and then the speaker selects their listener, and then that listener reflects back their understanding of what the speaker says. And then, like in the empathy circle, when the speaker is done, the speak, the listener becomes the speaker, and they select the listener, and then they speak. And there's no, I believe there's no time limit, so people can just go on and on, and then it just goes around in the circle like that. And, you know, these sessions go three hours or more where people discuss the conflict using active listening. 

And there's a lot of other, lot of other steps to it. I won't go into the other steps to it. Then another influence that I came across as I was kind of researching on the Internet was Juanita Brown and David Isaacs, and they developed a process called World Cafe. And in the World Cafe process, they would just bring people together around tables, maybe five people, four or five people to a table, and they would have a topic that they would discuss in small groups, and they would speak, you know, talk for, you know, a little while, and then at some point, people from each table would get up and then go to to the other, to another table. And they would do this a few times, and it was a way to, you know, just have people discuss with each other, and then for the ideas to shift from one table to the other. So those were just some sort of technologies, practices that I had seen so as I was doing my research.

 And then in 2011 Occupy Wall Street happened. And you know, people at Occupy Wall Street, and that would say, you know, it's the 99 against the 1% and I think, you know, I was trying to build a culture of empathy, which I think is 100% empathy. You know, that we don't have an us versus them mindset. So I got this canopy, this tent, and set up the empathy tent and took it to Occupy Wall Street in Berkeley, and that was in the fall of 2011 and that was our tent from the other side, you know. Just go there. And a few things I noticed about the dynamics of the of the camp there was, there was a lot of factions and a lot of groups, and they would, you know, were kind of at each other's throats, and there was a lot of conflict. And you can just see the. 

You know, the different factions there, and so it was rather somewhat dysfunctional, sort of a community. But in the tent, we would, we, did, you know, one on one listening. So we had an empathy tent member and a community member would come in, and we would offer listening, active listening to them. And then another practice we tried was talking stick circle, where you know one person speaks, and then you pass the talking stick and then another person speaks and go all the way around. And I found that that process didn't work too well. I wasn't too happy with that process, because one person would just keep speaking and speaking. And, you know, every I saw, everyone wanted to speak. And another structure I saw there was they had Occupy Wall Street. They have the General Assembly, where you have one person speak, and they speak to the whole group, and different people would get up and speak. But sometimes that was kind of like manipulated, like, who would get a chance to speak? So? 

And then I kind of thought, well, what's a way of really addressing sort of these conflicts that are there? And that's sort of where I had the idea of an empathy circle, sort of combining the World Cafe, but with the active listening. So you'd have small groups using active listening with each other, like in a World Cafe, but you know, one person would speak and the other, you know, would listen, and we'd go around, and then they would maybe go for an hour, and then they would shift, you know, go around and meet with other people. And during the day, maybe they would just be a whole day of of doing empathy circles, because, you know, people didn't have much else to do and at these camps. But then they closed down the camps I never got to really implement, you know, try to develop the empathy circle and sort of idea. And then I sort of just sat on it and on the idea.

 And then I got connected with lead of I knees, Inc, who is someone from the Netherlands that has, she has a PhD in empathy, and I interviewed her. And then afterwards, she said, Oh, let's work together, develop some empathy practices and and so we actually got together, and for like, over a year, just sort of experimented and really kind of developed the empathy circle practice, and sort of experimented with different aspects to it. And, you know, we held, this is a, oh, this is actually go back. That's the first, that's the first recorded empathy circle. Picture of it with the four of us. And then this was a book club we did with that was like a 10 week book club with diff. You know, on a book club, we applied the empathy circle practice in 2013 and, you know, we just keep so we just kept innovating, you know, coming up with different ideas. 

And then Levi got interested in other other projects, and I just kept sticking with the empathy circle. And, you know, we another thing that we added, too was not just the empathy circle is just a practice, but also that it has an intention. And the intention is that we want to create a culture of empathy. Because I've the first website created was the center for building a culture of empathy. And it's really about sort of cultural transformation. And then another milestone was in 2020, during the COVID period, Lu Swire and Bill filler worked with some doctors at a hospital in New York. It was overwhelmed. They were dealing with COVID issues, and they developed the core of the empathy circle facilitator training, and kept innovating and developing it. And then we were working together, and this is a just a photo of our second empathy circle facilitator training cohort number two that was in 2020, and so with that, you know, you can see that the empathy circle practice keeps developing. We keep adding, you know, more aspects to it, and keep expanding it,

you know, and now we're really trying to build the empathy movement with the empathy circle practice and innovating on it is one of the core to the to the empathy movement. And these are just some of the cohorts that we held have held. Online. I think we've done quite a few of them in the past four years or so, and we're holding them in person now here at the empathy Center in Santa Barbara, and we're planning on holding them in in person in the Bay Area in New York and in Phoenix as well. And so we, you know, it's, you can see this, you know, this basic practice is growing, and our goal is really to teach all 8 billion people in the world how to take part in and facilitate an empathy circle. 

Because it's really an easy first step gateway practice to deepening those empathy skills and also creating that empathic way of being. And I really believe that this is a just an excellent tool practice, you know, for for building that global culture of empathy and nurturing, which will really nurture greater well being and flourishing in in in the world. And it's going to be a, you know, it's a long term project by, you know, to get all 8 billion people in the world to learn this practice. 

But I think it's very doable, if we can get high profile people like, you know, Trump and Harris or so forth, to do empathy circles instead of debates. You know, just one little thing like that could spread it all over the world, I believe, and it can really address a lot of the issues, the wars and issues the dysfunction we have in our society in general. So thank you. Thank you for listening. And it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun to create this presentation to articulate the you know, how the history came about. And this is my first iteration of I refine a little bit, and then we'll have it out there, just for.