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The Talking stick has been used in many cultures as a communication tool in group gatherings to provide space to be heard and listened to respectfully.   The stick is passed around the circle and only the person holding the stick may talk.

Each person in turn has their chance to speak. This offers a chance to speak uninterrupted and also to practice the art of listening.

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Erich Seligmann Fromm, a German social psychologist, drawing on his half-century practice as a therapist offers guidelines for mastering the art of listening...

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“Listening is an art like the understanding of poetry and, like any art, has its own rules and norms.

The basic rule for practicing this art is the complete concentration of the listener.

Nothing of importance must be on his mind, he must be optimally free from anxiety as well as from greed.

He must possess a freely-working imagination which is sufficiently concrete to be expressed in words.

He must be endowed with a capacity for empathy with another person and strong enough to feel the experience of the other as if it were his own.

The condition for such empathy is a crucial facet of the capacity for love. To understand another means to love him — not in the erotic sense but in the sense of reaching out to him and of overcoming the fear of losing oneself.

Understanding and loving are inseparable. If they are separate, it is a cerebral process and the door to essential understanding remains closed.” 

 

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