CIIS Public Programs Podcast

TRANSCRIPT

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This is the podcast of the California Institute of Integral studies where each week we bring you conversations and lectures from our public programs live events featuring world-renowned Scholars leaders, authors artists and thinkers in this episode author and teacher orange a sofa in conversation with CIA s has to raise Journeys about Mindful and nonviolent communication skills. This event was recorded on December 12 ,2018 in front of a live audience in San Francisco. To make sure you never miss an episode of the ciis public programs podcast subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts or visit our website at ciis.edu/podcast, and that's also where you can find out more about us including how to sponsor future episodes of the show.

[Audience applauses]

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Terese: Thank you for coming Oren.

Oren:  Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. Hmm. A lot of friends who've attended CIIS over the years and done the somatic psychology program and the counseling program. So there's actually something quite special for me and being here tonight this week that my first book comes out. Yeah

Terese: This practice Springs to mind one of my questions, which is about being in our own experience. And then when we're in communication with another what happens to the focus of our attention,

Oren:  Yeah, what does happen? So much of our world today is pulling our attention out into a screen, out into the road, to other people and our whole world is structured around straight lines. Hallway, lines in the highway, room. There are no straight lines in nature. So the propensity of our attention when we're in a when we're in interaction with other human beings which is kind of increased and amplified both by those societal factors is for our attention to come up and then out through the eyes, right? So we lose our center and we end up being out there with someone else and then there's all kinds of risks involved in [chuckles] that because. Yeah, it's quite vulnerable enough to be alive in one of these human bodies and when we don't have a center where we are much more susceptible to all of the various forces and impulses and energies around us. Emotions, desires from others. Yeah, so, you know contemplative practice meditative training is about finding our ground and reclaiming our center and so many of the contemplative arts whether it's meditation or Tai Chi or Qigong or yoga or even forms of dance, we learn how to find that core in that central axis in the body. And then the invitation of relational practice, communication practice, martial arts, and other other forms of relational practice is to learn how to be in relationship with another human being or with the world and still be still have a center, still be aware of our own experience. And so, you know one tendency is to leave and to go out and lose this and then the other tendency, that tends to be the most common in conversation, but the other tendency is to is to withdraw right and and pull away and shut off and and try to just kind of close down in here and not and and both limit our capacity to be nourished by life and to really connect with others.

Terese:  In your book you spoke at one point about the bringing presence to life section. About if we're on our own, giving a hundred percent attention to our anchor and then when we're in interaction having more like 10 to 20% and our anchor, right?

Oren:  Yeah. Yeah. So this word anchor is a great tool for training the mind and for both inwardly and also in relationships. So one of the things that I've done over the years is as to teach mindfulness to kids started here in Oakland and some of the elementary schools and now I continue to do some work training Educators who work with work with children teaching mindfulness and we teach them that they have an anchor spot and the kids come up with all kinds of funny misinterpretations like my ankle spot or my anger spot [Terese: laughs]. It will draw a picture of, the younger kids, would draw a picture of a boat right on the board and talk about an anchor. And what does an anchor do for a boat, right? It helps to keep it in one place when there's a storm or currents and so in many of the meditative Arts we use various sensory experiences to begin with as an anchor as a primary object for our awareness for the the energies and forces. The energies of our mind to begin to gather and collect and this is a little bit of what we were doing at the beginning of you know, feeling your body feeling its weight and and just using that to keep coming back to. You know, I think one of the challenges of what I'm teaching and what the book is about of, bringing awareness to relationship and dialogue, is that we live in a time in history and in a society and a culture where what's natural and innate and organic to our organisms as sounds like an overstatement. I don't think it is under attack. In the sense that all of the signals and systems that we live within are kind of in training our whole nervous system to a very unnatural pace [Terese: mhmm] right? So we're living at a pace. That's completely unnatural for our evolution. We're also living in a society that's profoundly disembodied. You know so much of our reliance on screens and technology and the overemphasis on the cognitive function and the devaluing of the heart and the body tends to take us up into the virtual world. And I don't know I don't mean just like VR, I mean our thoughts and plans and projections and then we have enough of that as humans as it is getting all of those messages and and of encouragement and temptations from the media and technology just exacerbates that. So the pace of our society, the disembodiment and then this tremendous fragmentation of our attention. You know, there's billions of dollars in persuasive design and persuasive technology trying to influence our behavior and own our attention and decide for us. Where we place our attention so let's..I wanted to invite everyone here to just do a very brief experiment together and I will kind of finally eventually get back to the 10 to 20% part of this. So you don't need to change anything that you're doing right now, but just invite you to put your attention in your hands and see if you can notice or feel any sensations in your hands right now just do that for a moment. I might be warm or cool or tingling, moist or dry. Okay, and then shift your attention to your feet. If  you can put your awareness in your feet and notice any sensations there. Okay, I'm going to take a risk. Was anyone unable to do that? Okay, if you have to be in a room of people. Brent, you're just giving me a hard time right? [Terese: Laughs] No, you're not. All right, we'll talk afterwards, friend. I was about to say if you got to be in a room of people where someone can't do that but Brent proved me wrong. So what right? You just consciously and intentionally shifted your attention from one experience to another. You know how many people and how many companies want to own that right now? So this very innate basic capacity that we have as human beings to choose where we place our attention. There's tremendous power in that for human consciousness because what we pay attention to shapes our mind. So there's the saying “A thief only sees the Saints pockets”. Based on what you're focusing on that starts to shape the quality of your mind, Whatever you pay attention to, one of the famous lines from the early Buddhist texts, “whatever you think and ponder upon that will become the habit and inclination of the mind”. Whatever we spend our time thinking about and focusing our attention on that those that becomes the habit the internal milieu of our mind. So what we're doing with with contemplative practice and meditation is we're strengthening this capacity to intentionally and consciously choose where we place our attention and so informal meditative training exercises, like mindfulness of breathing, mindfulness of the body. We're giving 100% of our attention in certain techniques to our anchor if it's the breath or the body or a mantra or in an intention like kindness or compassion meditation. Whatever comes up. We say ‘not now, later’. We keep coming back. we keep coming back. we keep coming back to that anchor and that's training the mind to be stronger to be able to resist the impulses that arise inside ourself of fragmentation as well as the forces and the temptations, and the distractions all around us. So as we strengthen that capacity, internally now when we come into conversation, we can keep some of that attention here. Right and still be with the other person and then we start to feel and experience what a colleague of mine, Donald Rothberg, call and teach which is relational awareness, being aware of self and others at the same time. We can shift the balance of where the attention is, you know. So whether it's just more internal. Or whether I'm like really out there kind of with you and not so much here with myself at all. Which probably I don't know how that feels for you, doesn't feel good for me. It kind of feels like I'm in your space right because I'm kind of leaning forward energetically even a little bit physically, right and so we can learn to shift, shift the attention in that way. Depending on what's happening in a conversation, we may want more or less attention with the other person or with ourselves. So if the other person is saying something that's important and you know, sensitive and tender like I might have 90 or 95% of my attention with them, you know, but if they say something that's challenging for me to hear I'm starting to get activated, you know, I might only have 5 or 10% of my attention with them. I'm going to be attending more to what's happening here so that I don't say or do something that I'm going to regret later that's going to require a lot more time and energy to clean up. Yeah.

Terese: It makes me think about something like being pulled in towards someone empathically, you know, feeling compassionate maybe pulls you towards. And if someone's angry at you, if they're, this force is coming out that way. There can be a retreat.

Oren: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, you know and I mean one of the things that you're touching on is this capacity that we have for empathy and for resonance, which is which is hardwired. It's deeply rooted in our biology and our nervous system, which we discovered in the last few decades that one of the key discoveries was the presence of mirror neurons right that our brains are kind of actively mirror. during the movements and the facial expressions of other people around us of other other creatures, but what's fascinating about the so it's innate and it can be strengthened and cultivated and actually needs to be. So, you know, even though humans are born with this capacity if it's not encouraged and if we don't receive the mirroring and the empathy and the bonding that that that's necessary for human development, that capacity can atrophied. It can you know be harder as an adult to access or develop if there's  some, you know, gaps or difficult experiences. And so that's where like a lot of the work you do and somatic psychology is kind of healing and re-patterning some of those some of those early experiences. What's fascinating though is partly I think just based on kind of our individual makeup, but also, so to a large degree the socialization process and how we get socialized based on our gender and social location and other factors. We may be more or less empathic and I talked about this in the book about how there's this presence of what I call an empathy spectrum right. That some of us, you know, something's happening for someone. We're like right there and oh my god, are you okay and and others it's a can be a lot harder to open the heart and feel tends to fall along gender lines. Not entirely stereotype, but you know generally women are socialized more to be empathic, care for others, give up their own needs you know? While men are socialized to kind of cut off from the heart, disconnect from emotions and be more focused on providing for the family and sacrificing and abandoning oneself in that way. So it's interesting just going back to the attention piece is that depending on where we are on that spectrum, right? So You know if I have been socialized as a male and you know my heart, I don't have such easy access to my heart and I'm wanting to connect more with others or have more meaningful relationships, deeper connections. I might need to put more energy and attention and focus on really putting my attention on someone else, putting my focus on someone else. Training myself to do, think, and inquire and feel and consider what's going on for this person?, and how might they feel? and what would it be like for me? That's a lot of my attention is out there, but for others highly sensitive people or folks who really, you know, their hearts wide open a lot of the time. The movement is actually the other direction, right? It's like well, how do I sense my boundaries more? How do I pull that back a little bit and sense? Okay, there's space here between us feel the boundary of my skin feel the weight of my body recognize your a separate person so that I'm not getting flooded with all of your experience as much and so all of that is supported by this this capacity and training and relational awareness and how much attention is there versus here and what the balances? Yeah, yeah.

Terese:  Well put, yeah. Well, one of the questions that Alex mentioned tonight is that with the holidays coming on that people might want perhaps some tips for having good conversations with family members or people that might be activating in different ways.

Oren:  Family activating? [Terese: not mine]. Y'all know the joke right about why you know, Why is your family able to push your buttons so well, because they installed them [laughter]. So I can't remember which one of my teachers said this but whether you're talking about spiritual practice or communication practice family is family is like it's not even graduate school. It's like post doc, you know family is like the highest level. I think it might be Jack Kornfield or one of the one of the meditation masters from Asia who said, you know, “ If you think you're enlightened, just go spend a week at home with your family” [laughter]. So yeah it can be hard, it can be painful. I think because you know, we don't choose our family and yet we have these deep bonds and we all have our limits. Sometimes the things that we wish we could share, the quality of the relationships we wish we could have with those in our family. It can be difficult to create the conditions for that and that can be really painful. I know for myself a huge part of my own journey and my own learning around these tools was was with my family and I thank them in the judgments for being patient with me as I went through all of the various phases of you know, misusing these tools and blaming them for not speaking in the right way and all of those things. So going home for the holidays, conversations with family, you know, I think one of the things that I focus that I've been thinking about a lot and reflecting on kind of since writing the book actually. I don't actually know, I don't think I use this phrase in the book. Although the whole book is actually answering this question is: How do we create the conditions for more meaningful conversations for more effective communication and healthy relationships? What are the conditions that are necessary for that to arise? And so the book is really a thorough exploration of that internally and relationally. In terms of going home for the holidays and family, all I can share, some ideas and tips for the actual like, you know, being there at the dinner table and your uncle or sister-in-law whoever is doing that thing again, and you you know feel like you want to run away or you know, jump up and shout. But I think a large amount of what creates the conditions for having an enjoyable and easeful time with family are what we're doing in preparation. The ways we're preparing ourselves internally and in our own life, and so that means looking at things like, you know, how resourced are you, right? If you’ve gotten a good night's sleep, not just the night before, but like a few nights so you're not depleted because it's going to take a lot of energy if you want to stay clear and grounded and not get reactive and pulled into those old patterns and habits. What's your community like? Do you have people in your life where you're getting your needs met relationally in the ways that you wish your family could offer, but maybe they're not able to at this particular time, you know. So particularly, I know for myself when I was in my 20s and when I worked with young adults, we're still kind of in that you know, the human brain actually isn't fully developed until sometime into the early to mid-20s. It differs for, you know, biological females and males. I'm not sure where exactly the point is, but all that's to say, you know, we're still in this process of differentiation psychologically. And so there can be this, you know, very conflicted relationship between my identity as a member of the family and my identity as an adult independent of the family. So, you know, seeing how much those needs for being seen,to be understood, to be heard, to be appreciated for who we are and the gifts that we have. Which are so important for our sense of well-being as human beings. Are we getting those met in other areas of our life so that we're not so hungry when we go home and see mom or dad or bro or sis, right? If we're getting those needs met, if we're getting those reflections from other people and life, our friends, our colleagues, our faculty, or mentors, you know, then are you know psychologically talk about our ego strength in a healthy way our sense of identity is more firmly rooted. So then even when the pattern comes up in the family, whatever our role is, whatever it whatever the situation is, you know, whether we're the people pleaser or the one who's making, you know, always always making jokes or we’re the one who kind of disappears so other people have space. Whatever that role is, when the condition starts to shift and it's like I'm getting back into that same space again. We have a reference point from our own life to call on so that internally we don't need to be defined by that experience and that's huge. Because when we have that sense of ground inside and a healthy sense of identity, we don't need to fight or argue or push because we're not threatened by whatever is happening in the family, right? So these are some things just to reflect on and think about, you know, the holidays are just a couple weeks away. So [laughs] but so one way you can work with this is to set some intentions before going home and this is a really very powerful practice and think about you know, how do you want to show up. What's important to you? You know, think about the places that you've gotten caught in the past when you're with your family and what do you want to do differently? You know, you want to be more patient. Do you want to be more generous? Do you want to do what is integrity really important to you? You know, I'm not going to I'm not going to stuff it. I'm not going to swallow it this time. I'm going to say I'm going to take the risk to say what's on my mind. Drink, maybe it's that. Reflect on what's important to you, what your intentions are and then really feel that inside. Identify the intention and then contact it in your body. How does it feel when you're really connected to that intention when you're actually able to be coming from that place and take a 3D mental polaroid. Take a snapshot of it in your mind and in your heart and then you know for a few days before you go back and see family every day, come back to that place kind of like, you know, touch it with your awareness inside. So you become more familiar with that place. So that then around the dinner table and the kitchen, you know, wherever you are you can come back to that intention. So that's one.

Terese: You’re creating that neural pathway to find that place.

Oren: Exactly exactly. You're strengthening that pathway so you have more access to it. Another great practice or tip is: come up with some key phrases that you might need to use. I call these canned phrases and there's actually a list of them in the book in the back not specifically around family, but just useful things that you might need to say in a conversation because it's so hard to come up with just the right thing to say in the moment. Maybe if you've been practicing communication for a decade or longer, yeah, you can do it, you can kind of flow with whatever's happening and find the right words. But even then, you know having said something many times before it's accessible. It's there because of the neural pathways. So reflect on, okay what are the situations I've gotten caught in in the past with family? and what would have been helpful to say and let me actually come up with two or three sentences that I think I might need to use and write them down and practice saying them. Get that muscle memory going so that you know, when your aunt makes that statement again that you're afraid she's going to make and she makes it you can politely say, “ wow that's a little bit intense, I really want to stay focused on enjoying each other's company tonight. Why don't we talk about work? You know, what's happening for you at work these days?”. Just kind of gracefully, gently change the subject. So that's another tip is setting/coming up with some phrases that you might use. And then, I think, maybe the last one there's maybe two more two more that I'll mention. So one is if and when you are engaging with family, it should try to really listen and be curious and so this is one of the core steps that I talk about in the book which is to come from curiosity and care. And really get interested about what matters to somebody as they're speaking. Underneath the story,even underneath their emotions, what's important to them that you can connect with that you can relate to on a human level. And so even if we're not sure listening in that way starts to change things. It changes our experience because now we're actually interested. We're not so much judging them necessarily or reacting but we're trying to understand and that's a very powerful intention in conversations and communication because it builds trust and it helps to make it helps to actually communicate which is about sending and receiving messages. So if we're trying to understand, we're helping that cycle of communication to actually happen. So really listen with interest and try to hear what matters for people. The last thing is, you know, be willing to lovingly set limits. This goes back to that Integrity piece, you know and think about if you do need to speak up and say something, how are you going to do that in a way that's speaking from your own heart and your own values rather than judging or blaming the other person? Yeah.

Terese:  Are there any I feel like what you've the tips you've given a help this but I have a if there's any additional tips around if we find ourselves getting triggered [Oren: mhmm] this moment of feeling that like the rising up in the wanting to [Oren: yeah ]nip it [Oren: mhmm] what somebody said. How do we kind of come back to the Anchor? How do we find our way back?

Oren: Yeah yeah [Exhales]. Well, it definitely takes practice. We've all been there. I talked about this, I haven't actually talked about this publicly, but it's in the book so I might as well.  One of my most humbling moments as a meditator was with family at my grandma's house. I was in my mid-20s been meditating for, you know, five or six years so I felt like all right, you know I kind of know this stuff right. I actually just come from meditating and had an argument with my brother, my only sibling. We got into it and he provoked me and just I just went into a rage and actually ended up picking up a chair and smashing it. I was so enraged I felt so helpless inside, I felt so powerless. I was in so much pain for him to understand how I was feeling. It was so painful and it was a really pivotal moment for me actually because I recognized I've got some anger to deal with. [Oren and Terese: laughs]. So there's some emotions here that I haven't actually sorted out, you know, and that there were things that I wasn't actually addressing or contacting in my meditation practice. So how do we deal with it when we get activated? The first and most important thing is just being aware that that's happening because so often it happens so quickly right that we don't even notice until we've said something or lashed out or, you know, slam the door and taken off and they're like, oh god, I just walked out right? So this is where mindfulness is a great alley is that when we're actually aware we get these kind of early warning signals that were getting activated. We feel our clenching hands, we notice we're getting hot, we feel our breath change, we feel our jaw clench, we notice our thoughts are racing. All of these different signals physiologically, emotionally, or psychologically that the nervous system is moving into sympathetic activation and to fight flight and so then we can then when we get those signals we can start to apply some of the techniques that you're referring to to begin to regulate our nervous system. And so some of those would include just the very simple basic taking a deep breath. Which we all know, but remembering to do it is something else. Feeling your hands or your feet is a really excellent way to interrupt the kind of runaway train of activation. A lot of the sympathetic activation emotions we feel will be here and the core of the body so bringing the attention to the periphery. There's also a lot of nerve endings particularly in the hands and most of us can our hands our feet very easily. So you can anchor your attention there in an easy way. Shifting your attention. So here we are again relying on attention and the capacity to choose where we put our attention. So this is really important because when we're getting activated. If we focus on the thing that's sending us: the person's facial expression or what they're saying or whether you know, the judgment that we have. That's just going to jack it up even further. So we want to consciously and intentionally shift our attention away from the stimulating thing to something more neutral or grounding or soothing that could also include sound. It could include the space in the room, right? Because we're getting activated. It's like everything's getting really heated and intense so we don't have any space so we become aware of physical space around us that can create more of a container for the energy to move through. And then the skill, the tool, one of the tools that's greatly underutilized in most circles and communities with one exception which is to pause the conversation. To actually acknowledge, you know, I'm noticing that I'm getting really upset and I'm not sure if it's going to be useful for me to continue the conversation. I'm wondering if we could just pause for an hour or a day or something. Whenever you do something like that you want to actually start with saying some kind of affirmation of the intention to connect or have the conversation so “this is really important to me”, or “I'd like to figure this out”, or “I want to hear what you're saying” or “I'm interested in understanding where you're coming from.” You get the point, right? We want to lead with that reassurance the other person like I'm not just checking out and cutting off and now's not a good time. Can we take a break? Yeah, the one exception is in spiritual communities where it tends to be very conflict avoidant. And so they you know, they will overemphasize that not talking about things to a fault where everything gets suppressed. We're just not going to talk about it right then that then that tool of restraint and holding back and not talking gets gets gets you gets misused to avoid things.

Terese: Then you have to go break chairs. [Oren: exactly]. Right? [Oren: Exactly] Yeah anything that you'd like to. We had this list of things we're going to talk about and we meandered in different places. So anything to share anything.

Oren: Yeah, I'd love to tell just a short story or two from a couple of my students about the power of these skills. I taught a retreat recently in New Mexico and about 25-30 people the whole week of mindfulness and communication and relational practice. Really wonderful experience. One of the participants was an older gentleman in his 70s from Colorado, didn't say much the whole week and I was very curious like, you know, what's going on for this guy?, kind of Midwestern sort of cowboy type assist seemed to be his kind of vibe. And so at the closing Circle, he did say one or two things, but at the closing Circle everyone's sharing, you know, just a few words of what they're taking away or what was meaningful for them on the mic gets around to him. And he says, you know. What I learned this week is that my wife is the person I talked to the most. But talk with the least. I'm going to change that when I go home. Really beautiful, really touching for me to hear that and there's that sense of you know at the heart of these tools and I say this multiple times in the book. Is that communication is not about what we say, the words matter, they're important in the end. They can help us in many ways to get clearer and build connection. But ultimately it's not about what we say. It's about where we're coming from and about the quality of understanding and connection that we're able to create. When we get present, when we actually show up, we can feel and experience the sense of mutuality. That you know communication is this kind of mysterious gift that we have to contact one another's unique world and experience. Yeah.

Terese: Earlier when we were speaking backstage in the green room we were talking about when you don't quite know what to say or you don't have the answers being able to be in that space of just sorting through it out loud with somebody [ Oren: right ] together.

Oren: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's one of the great gifts of communication training that I feel very fortunate to have been exposed. Through the nonviolent communication world and training of that, you know, we can really just trust our moment-to-moment experience and not even need to know what's going to come at the end of a sentence because there can be so much pressure to have it all figured out and wrapped up neatly and know what we're going to say, but just being able to contact what's actually happening in the moment and speak from that place or even if we're not naming everything that's happening because that's not always helpful depending on the situation and the context and the level of trust or safety that there is when we can be aware of that that can inform just in the moment what we're going to say next without needing to know what the resolution is.

Terese: Mmm. It’s that true curiosity of not knowing ahead of time where it's going to go.

Oren:  Yeah indeed. And so, you know, I'm just aware we've been chatting for the whole hour and I just kind of want to mention and acknowledge and give gratitude to just some of the three of the main streams that inform my work. The contemplative arts and the contemplative practice that I study comes out of the Buddhist tradition and so I'm kind of forever indebted to my Buddhist teachers for sharing with me and the kind of the heart of the communication tools that I've learned and which I teach come from nonviolent communication, which was founded by Marshall Rosenberg, very powerful and transformative awareness practice and communication technique and and then the the deeper understanding of how our nervous system works comes from Peter Levine and the training of somatic experiencing, which I know that we share and so I'm kind of profoundly grateful to each of those practices traditions and the founders or the lineage that has kind of maintained that wisdom in in each of those those schools. Yeah

Terese: Did you start first with nonviolent communication or with mindfulness or meditation?

Oren: I started with mindfulness practice and then within a few years. Realize that all of the beautiful presence and compassion and peace would somehow very quickly evaporate when I was having a disagreement or argument with somebody, even just a coworker, you know around you know, how the carrots were cut or something in the kitchen. And so I realized the need for some kind of a bridge between the internal cultivation and the external relational realm and that's when I came in contact with Marshall Rosenberg and started reading and learning and going to trainings and retreats and workshops and developing those tools and I did most of my training right here in Oakland at Bay NVC, Bay Area nonviolent communication, with Mickey Cashton and her late sister Imbal Cashton and some of the other trainers there and then and then further down the line came and come into contact with Peters work and somatic experiencing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Terese: and in your book we spoke a little bit about the relationship between these practices and social change. You know, how can these practices help support social change. I read. [Oren: how much time do we have?]

[laughter]

Terese: Wait, five minutes?

Oren:  Yeah, so the question is how much can these support social change? Yeah, it's a huge topic. I mean we could have a whole nother hour long conversation about it. So I'll say just a just a just a couple or a few things one is just this a deep concern and passion of mine from an early age and particularly today. Because of everything that we're facing in this country and on the planet, there's immense suffering and a real pressing need for compassionate change and also it's it's it's a learning edge. This is an area where I feel ill equipped in many ways because it hasn't been my main focus and so I feel like I'm you know, particularly as a white heterosexual male, I'm in my own learning process for the last 20 years as an adult and continue to be humbled and learn about my you know, my own blind spots and privilege and conditioning. So all that said, you know, I think these tools are indispensable for social change in a few ways. One: the internal work of mindfulness and contemplative practice and the internal transformation that comes with relational work and nonviolent communication. [Exhales] Can help us can help help us to heal some of the places in the wounds that we carry so that we have more energy for for the work and I think in an essential part of working for social change is on the one hand mourning, you know allowing ourselves to feel the pain of what's happening, not suppressing that but being able to metabolize it in a healthy way and also developing resilience. And so the inner practices are one way of supporting that, so that's one essential way in which they help. A second essential way in which they help is one of the great challenges. I think that's been kind of acknowledged and pointed out about social change is the risk of recreating the very systems that were trying to change and what you want to change. One of my favorite quotes about this comes from Albert Einstein who said “The Consciousness that created a problem can't solve it”. So the social systems and institutions within which we live that are not serving life that are destroying communities that are breaking people. Those were created by a certain Consciousness, a certain worldview, a certain set of beliefs and assumptions that's perpetuated by certain by the socialization process. And so in order to change those institutions one essential component needs to be a shift in our consciousness. From a worldview of separation and scarcity and obedience to authority and right and wrong and being separated from our sense of empowerment and internal motivation. So if we're not working to actively transform those beliefs and in some assumptions and views, which are very deeply embedded in our Consciousness because they've been kind of imprinted feeling very early age by our family, our school, our society, the media. We run the risk of recreating the same kind of domination systems that were living within and and we see this and I hear about it when I teach and I work with activists and one of the things that I hear over and over again is the infighting that happens among Affinity groups or organizations working for social change can be you know as bad if not worse. The kind of, you know, aggression that we see on different sides of the aisle. So transforming our consciousness is a second way that these tools can help with social change. And then the third way, you know is in this is why I'm so fascinated by and in love with communication training and relational practice, is that our communication, because it’s internal in a way and it's external. It's at this Nexus at this bridge between our inner experience of life and our external experience of life. So when we have communication training and skills, we can be more effective in advocating for and working for social change. It actually gives us the mechanisms and the tools to advocate in a way that's powerful and persuasive without being controlling, violent or oppressive.

Terese: Mhmm. It's it gives us a truly collaborative way. [Oren: Yeah] to understand each other.

Oren: Yes, exactly. Yeah, and to access our power and our voice while staying connected to the humanity of others. Yeah

Terese: Reminds me of a part of your book where you talk about being able to empathize without necessarily having to agree with.

Oren: Right. Yeah. This is one of the great gifts and strengths of empathy. is that we can we can see the shared common humanity with others even with others with whom we very very strongly disagree with their their actions or their views or their beliefs that we can we can find something underneath that that we can relate to and connect with and this this is kind of at the core of non-violent communication, which is the view that comes out of humanistic psychology out of Carl Rogers work and Abraham Maslow's work that human beings are motivated to meet basic fundamental needs and that those needs are Universal that they're shared. And so when we can identify this deeper layer of what matters our fundamental values our needs we sense our shared Humanity. And that our commonalities then from that perspective outweigh our differences. That's what we find. I could tell another story about shared needs. This is a story that I heard from a colleague of mine of ours, Mickey Asten. Some women met at a demonstration in Boston quite a few years ago. I think this was actually in the 80s or the early 90s. So one group of women from a pro-choice group and one group of women from a pro-life group. So demonstration is kind of standard seen picket lines, banners, signs, shouting, yelling and somehow Within all of the hubbub and craziness, you know, some one one woman says to another like this is crazy one woman on one side says to women of this is crazy. We're not going to get anywhere. Just yelling at each other, right? This is not going to accomplish anything, you know, and so they started talking and they exchanged numbers and they got together afterwards and so a small group of women from each Camp started meeting regularly to talk to talk about Their views and to get to know one another and so they met for a number of months and you know, they would debate and ask questions and listen to one another but they also got to know each other's families. They shared about their lives. They really got to know one another. The interesting thing is none of them change their views. Nobody had you know, as far as I understand kind of an epiphany of you know, they're right and I'm going to give up my perspective on this. But they humanize each other; they're able to see and respect the values underneath the position and recognize each other's humanity. And so at some point, the women from the pro-life group got word that somebody was planning on coming to Boston to bomb an abortion clinic and they heard this. And they responded. They put a word out into the network. They said you are not welcome in our community. Please do not come. That's the Power of these tools when we're able to see the humanity and others even when we disagree. We won't see violence as a viable strategy to meet our needs because we recognize the shared Humanity.

Terese: And this wish for you to be a consultant to the Senate [laughs]

Oren: spare me, please [Terese: laughs] yeah. You know, I mean there's a great need for these tools in our world. There always has been but it's it's kind of like in our face right now, you know, and so that's my hope with this book. Is that the more people who have access to these tools in small ways, the more we'll be able to hear and listen to one another which is I think what we need so much more of today and which is not being modeled. You know, it's completely absent for the most part from public discourse. Which you know, I think many many are saying and I would agree that you know, when when we can't actually have dialogue that's that's the breakdown of civil society and of democracy when we can't actually have a respectful discourse about our differences and engage and try to learn from one another and challenge one another and be inquisitive and so what will why? and where's that coming from? And It doesn't make sense or here's the problem I see with that. You know, and that's more and more absent. And so, you know the gift and the possibility is that in many ways. This is our nature. You know children have to be taught to hate. Children have to be taught to see difference and separation and you know, when we're given two options as human beings and both of them more or less will meet our needs equally all things being considered human beings will naturally choose the option that causes less harm. Because we feel, because we're empathic. So this is not something new that we need to create, it is something that we need to return to. We need to unlearn the things that we've learned and come back to something that's more natural at least that's my view.

Terese: Well, thank you all so much for coming tonight.,For your attention and your presence and it's been great having you here. It's been great to talk with you, Oren.

Oren: Yeah, thanks for having me Terese.

[Audience applauses]

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