The Empathy Cafe (Lunch Break in Finsbury Park)

The Empathy Cafe:

“The basics of active and compassionate listening skills”

Make your lunch break a meaningful experience where real connection can support you in building stronger relationships, feeling more connected to yourself and inviting clarity and inspiration into the rest of your working day.

Through asking ourselves the question “what is important to me now”?, we will explore and uncover our core values whilst learning active listening and self reflection skills, and enjoying our lunch breaks together.

The Empathy Cafe experience:

Aim’s to support you in developing different modalities for deepening connection, understanding and trust through the art of listening.

Each week we will learn and practice active listening skills in pairs, groups and sometimes on  your own.

You will be invited to journal, share, listen and learn in community.

Is this experience for me?

• If you want to develop closer connections with your colleagues.
• To feel more able to connect with your partner or loved ones in triggering moments.
• To understand yourself more clearly.
• To forge new friendships & be a part of a compassionate community.
• To practice and expand on your current listening skills.
• Feel more confident about expressing yourself clearly and accessing the power of your vulnerability.
• Be more attentive to your clients.

Then the empathy cafe experience is for you.

You do not need to have any prior experience with compassionate communication to join this course

Each week can be joined separately, although it is recommended to attend consecutive weeks in order to embody the skills that we will learn together.

Weekly program: “The basics of active and compassionate listening skills”

"Silence and presence" (14th September 2022)

We will focus on “The art of doing nothing” a skill which sounds so simple, yet is such a rare and beautiful experience of receiving presence and attention without being interrupted. We will explore how it feels to listen and be heard with presence and begin to look at the core values which underpin our self expression.

"The essence" (21st September 2022)

This week we will focus on listening for the essence of what someone is trying to communicate to us. This will also support us in finding clarity, focus and direction in our own self expression. We will learn the skill of reflecting and reformulating what we have heard and how this can support a sense of being heard, understood and recognised for our experiences.

"Making a curious guess" (28th September 2022)

This week we will focus on developing our connection skills through learning how to make a curious guess about the motivating values which underpin someone's expression, actions and experiences and fundamentally supports us to understand what they are trying to communicate to us.

Emma Buggy

Living in connection with life and one another is what fascinates me most about being human. The struggles I have been through in romantic and familial relationships, are what have led me towards my fascination with human connection and expression today.

Following my intuition over the last 7 years, I have undergone extensive training in teaching and embodying Nonviolent Communication and Mediation skills which have supported me in my understanding of where we get stuck in relationships. These studies now underpin my work in supporting couples and individuals to connect and make sense of one another through the workshops and personal support that I offer to my clients.

Whilst directing and creating The NVC Rising Empathy Cafe project which supported 1000’s of people during the pandemic, I truly came in touch with the potency of our human need for belonging, being seen, understood and heard by one another and just how powerful and transformational it can be to meet those needs in community.

It is my  life's mission to bridge the gap between people and support us to recognise and understand our core values through deep listening practices, so that we can make informed and aware choices about how we want to show up in life and in our relationships, starting with ourselves.