How God Changes Your Brain - Andrew Newberg, M. D_ [112]
Imagine hearing your partner talk slowly, and no matter what your partner says, you will stay relaxed, smiling and holding a compassionate thought in your mind. As you listen, all your defenses fall away. Remember, all you have to do is talk … breathe … listen … breathe … and relax.*
The conversation that emerges in your imagination is slow, spontaneous, and relaxed. There is no need to rush. All you need to do is talk softly, breathe, listen, breathe, and relax. In your mind let the conversation take any direction it wants. Don't control it. Don't try to make a point, and don't worry if the subject changes. Just stay relaxed as you imagine having a compassionate dialogue: talking, listening, breathing, and relaxing.*
Take one more yawn, and open your eyes. Gaze compassionately into your partner's eyes as you hold a loving thought, and continue to do this for ten seconds. Smile warmly as you hold that thought in your mind.*
In a moment you will begin your conversation by opening up with a compliment and listening to a compliment from your partner. It does not matter if the compliment feels forced at the beginning, because the other person will still respond in a positive way.*
Keep your eyes focused on each other as you let a spontaneous conversation emerge. Speak only a sentence or two, as slowly as you can, for no longer than thirty seconds, and then let your partner speak. Continue for the next five minutes, breathing, talking, breathing, listening, and staying as relaxed as you can.*
After five minutes take the conversation a little deeper by sharing a more intimate thought. Then, after another three minutes have passed, close the conversation by giving each other a compliment.*
Research, by the way, has shown that a person needs to hear five compliments before he or she can listen nondefensively to a criticism. So I highly recommend that you train yourself to deliberately give compliments to different people throughout the day. If you keep a list, you may even notice that after a few weeks more people will compliment you.
RESISTANCE
Many people feel awkward when they first think about trying Compassionate Communication, so don't be surprised if your friend or partner puts up some defense at first. Even people from our workshops have told us how powerful the experience was, but they still had resistance to practicing it with their partners. However, one woman in her sixties went home and asked her husband (who was unwilling to go to the workshop) if he would do the exercise with her. When it came to the compliment part, he said, “You're really beautiful.” After they dialogued, she asked him if he'd meant it. He said, “Of course!” In their forty years of marriage, he had never told her she was pretty.
But if you and your partner are fighting, you'll both need to make a serious commitment to cooperate with each other, at least throughout the exercise. If you see your partner frown, it may be a sign that he or she has had a strong emotional reaction to something you said, and the defensiveness that follows shuts down the brain's ability to remain consciously attuned.
Another level of resistance comes from a mild discomfort at engaging in an artificially constructed dialogue. “It just doesn't feel real,” some people will say. And of course it's not real. It's training. Whether it's sports, education, or communication, you have to practice a new skill before it feels natural to your body or your mind.
Another problem often arises concerning the limitation of speech. Most people aren't used to it, but in Compassionate Communication it is very important to talk for thirty seconds or less. Why? Because your brain is only capable of consciously holding a handful of concepts