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Article in Seattle Times

WHAT IS COMPASSIONATE LISTENING?

Compassionate Listening is a tool for conflict resolution, reconciliation, and the prevention of violence. The objectives of Compassionate Listening are to deepen our understanding of the perspectives and suffering of people on all sides of a disagreement or conflict, and to build bridges between them.

Compassionate Listening requires suspending our judgments and listening from an open heart. Through the skills of reflective listening and non-adversarial questioning the compassionate listener generates healing in the heart of the speaker. Once this healing has begun, the compassionate listener builds a bridge by the humanization of the other. When both sides understand the suffering of the other, reconciliation can begin.

Though the skills of Compassionate Listening are very simple to learn, they require letting go of habitual patterns of communication that generate feelings of separation and fear. The skills can be learned by young and old alike, and require a willingness to move towards peace.

HISTORY OF COMPASSIONATE LISTENING

Compassionate Listening was originated by Gene Knudsen Hoffman, International Peacemaker and founder of the US/USSR Reconciliation program of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and further developed by Leah Green and Carol Hwoschinsky. Gene "mothered" the concept of Compassionate Listening after realizing that all parties in a conflict were wounded and needed to be heard. Her over-arching principle is that hearing each other's story reveals unhealed wounds and allows for mutual compassion and understanding.

Two noted quotes from Gene are “An enemy is someone, whose story we haven’t heard.” and “that behind every act of violence is an unhealed wound.”

The breakthrough with compassionate listening skills came in 1996 when Leah Green, at that time the founder/director of ‘Mideast Citizen Diplomacy’ contacted Gene Knudsen Hoffman to apply compassionate listening to her delegations to Israel and Palestine. Leah Green since established The Compassionate Listening Project as an independent non-profit organization (www.compassionatelistening.org).

Gene's essays on Compassionate Listening are on the web at: www.coopcomm.org/listening.htm. You can also download a free sourcebook on Compassionate Listening by Gene - Compassionate Listening: An Exploratory Sourcebook About Conflict Transformation, at: www.coopcomm.org

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