How God Changes Your Brain - Andrew Newberg, M. D_ [107]
PRACTICING COMPASSIONATE
COMMUNICATION WITH STRANGERS
Mark first introduced a version of Compassionate Communication to members of the Association for Transpersonal Psychology in 1992,8 but we recently modified the technique so we could monitor the neurological changes taking place in the brain. In conjunction with Stephanie Newberg, a licensed clinical social worker and assistant director at the Council for Relationships in Philadelphia (the oldest counseling center in America), we are currently training therapists to use this exercise to improve dialogue and intimacy with conflicted couples. Research also shows that when therapists practice awareness-based and mindfulness-based meditations, they have better results with their patients.9
We are expanding the program to include other university counseling centers and conflict-resolution organizations around the country, and have begun conducting research in churches and public schools to measure the improvements made according to various empathy and intimacy scales. The results so far are surprising and positive.
When we introduce Compassionate Communication in a group setting, we ask participants to pair themselves up with a person they do not know. We specifically request that couples and spouses do not work together because, in a group situation, couples converse with greater defensiveness than when they practice Compassionate Communication with a stranger. At first this may sound counterintuitive, but many long-term studies have shown that the complex demands of marriage increase the degree of stress between couples.10 An intimate conversation can easily bump up against unaddressed conflicts, so a natural reaction is to avoid those issues—and specifically, those conversations—that may threaten marital attachment. However, when you experiment with Compassionate Communication in a group situation, where there is less at stake, participants can take the positive experiences home with them, where they can practice with greater willingness and comfort.
Let's return to our workshop participants. After they paired up with a stranger, we gave them a modified version of the Miller Social Intimacy Scale—a well-established tool for measuring social friendship, closeness, and defensiveness11—and asked them to respond to the questions as they related to the person they were sitting with. Then we guided them through a seven-minute exercise (which I'll introduce to you shortly) that used a combination of the relaxation exercises we described in Chapter 9.
Next, we asked them to hold a compassionate thought about the person with whom they were sitting. This turns out to be an important step, and it reflects the principles in the forgiveness meditation we discussed in the previous chapter. We instructed them to imagine an intimate conversation with the stranger they were sitting with because visualization enables the brain to more easily put into practice whatever goal one wishes to accomplish. In this case, the goal was to stimulate the neural circuits involved with empathy, social awareness, and communication.
Finally, we asked the participants to smile and make eye contact∗1 with their partners as they continued to imagine the possibility of an ensuing compassionate dialogue. They were given seven minutes to talk to each other, but had to stay focused on their breathing and only speak briefly, taking turns talking about whatever came to mind, without censoring anything. They were specifically instructed not to make a conversation happen; instead, they were to simply allow a spontaneous dialogue to flow wherever it wanted to go. When we do this in workshop situations, it's not surprising to see many pairs sharing personal stories they would normally