Empathy Development

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Empathy can be learned, empathy can be developed. The development of empathy in most people occurs naturally when there are people around who attract attention, like them, and when there is a desire and habit to copy them: copy their facial expressions, make the same eyes, repeat the movements of the body and hands.

Naturally, empathy is more developed in women: when girls were busy with people and relationships, boys were busy with the objective world, playing with cars and cubes↑.

Exercise «Feeling»

The empathy exercise is performed together with a partner, it can be performed standing or sitting. Give each other hands, and let all your attention be on these hands. Your task is to feel the reality and life of these hands, to feel how you can live with such hands. If these hands were yours, how would you feel? Try to imagine that these hands are close to you, that they are your continuation: your arm continues from the elbow to the hand, you flow into this arm further and further. You continue in this person. These are also your fingers, your hands. That person’s body becomes your body. You have this nose, these lips. You have this hairstyle on your head, your eyes blink like this, you have ears like this, and your forehead habitually gathers into such wrinkles. These are your shoulders and this is your chest, you wear it like that and now you breathe it — just like that … You wake up every morning with this face and body, you go out with it, you meet people with such an expression on your face, and this happens every day…

Shake yourself… Get back into yourself: you are actually here in your body, not there.

For some, this exercise initially turns out to be natural and uncomplicated, while the majority does not master it right away. In the beginning, it will take you at least a few minutes to physically experience the reality of being in a partner’s body, and it is almost necessary to physically reproduce the expression on the partner’s face, repeat his posture and imitate his gestures. Also, at the beginning, the feeling of immersion is not yet stable, sometimes there are difficulties and a direct protest against immersion in people who are unpleasant to you or very different from you. Later, with practice, bodily immersion becomes instantaneous, “feeling” becomes “jumping in,” and you easily do this not only in relation to people who are somewhat similar to you, but also in relation to people who are distant and difficult for you. You can feel yourself on the go, you easily “jump” into the body of a walking person, and then the criterion turns out to be downright knowledge (knowledge in the body) where the person will turn and when he will stop …

Another criterion for the success of “empathy” is the physical feeling of immersion in his body, the feeling of the organicity of his reactions, the prediction of his movements and words, the bodily feeling of the impossibility for the partner to speak or do anything else.

The direct consequence of this is the disappearance of irritation and the desire to exclaim: “I don’t understand!” You already understand everything, although it is not always clear what to do with it …

How to develop your ability to empathize with people

It is quite possible to develop your ability to feel people, this is helped by the following internal attitudes, exercises, and later habits. First, it is attention to people. If your attention is always turned outward, if your attention is naturally always turned to the interlocutor, then most likely you already have empathy to one degree or another. If, during a conversation, your eyes look anywhere, but not at the interlocutor, then accustom your eyes and your attention to be directed where it should be: to people and life.

The second is general muscle relaxation, the absence of clamps in your body. You can be active, collected — and at the same time all the muscles that you do not need for action will be relaxed. And someone sits sluggish, upset and at the same time tense — in this case, their ability to feel no. People are tense, with clamps in the face or collar zone, they cannot feel deeply — they have nothing. In empathy, not only your intelligent eyes work, but also all the subtle sensitivity of your body. This technique is based on the fact that a person perceives what is happening not only with the eyes and, more broadly, with the organs of perception, but also with all his feelings, passing through trust or doubt, coloring with joy or anxiety, lives what is happening with his whole body. And the most accurate understanding of how the Other sees and experiences what is happening is possible when you manage to feel his experiences through your body, nourish your feelings. As a rule, children and women use this way in the understanding of others, and it is they who, far from always being able to put their feelings into words, in fact turn out to be the most subtle psychologists.

The third is a benevolent attitude towards people. In simpler terms, this is the “people like” setting. Lovers often, without noticing it themselves, perfectly feel into each other precisely because their attention is riveted to each other, because they want to be in each other. Friendly people understand and feel other people easier and better than people with a hostile attitude. How to develop a benevolent attitude towards people? There are many ways, for a start, see the exercise «If I loved.»

And lastly, this is the ability to reproduce the facial expressions and character of the human body. In fact, this skill is very voluminous, consisting of a number of narrower, smaller skills. This is an adjustment to the body (posture, gestures, breathing and rhythms), copying the gait, copying the facial expression of the interlocutor and a mobile, expressive face (see Facial gymnastics). A useful thing is the training of adjustments and calibration exercises.

For many, these empathy exercises have become a favorite: they are really both useful and exciting in their own right.