Relational Empathy is tuning in to the whole instead of tuning in to parts only. Relational Empathyis promoting personal and collective growth. It is fostering a sociocentric instead of an egocentric world view

Relational Empathy is a person-centered concept developed by Maureen O'Hara, a former co-worker of Carl Rogers

Within the arts Relational Empathy is to tune in to all of what an artpiece is offering: Aesthetics that match your personal interests and aesthetics that are beyond your personal interests. Artistic Relational Empathy is to shift between both kinds of aesthetics with empathic curiosity. Instead of getting stuck in conflicting aesthetic interests you explore the interconnectedness of both sides with care and unconditional positive regard

In social life Relational Empathy is to tune in to inner parts and to tune in to relationships with others and respond to the needs of the persons involved (with all the interrelational dynamics of group collectives that might be contradictious to your personal needs, points of view or moral standards)

Making your journey with Creative Compassion Practice (CCP) you will stretch your empathy beyond personal preferences and limitations on multiple layers of existence. You learn to

• cultivate empathy for what feels aesthetically familiar and unfamiliar to you

• process what provokes unease or looks divergent

• tune into and connect with different bodily feelings and energy states that might feel conflicting
  

• shift your perspective on parts and the whole

• generate felt meaning in art life and in social life

• strengthen your sense of collaboration and coexistance
  

You come to a wider range of social empathy by implicitly training interactive skills through making arts from the body sense

Coming in touch with the body sense (a kinaesthetic sense of inner truth emerging from the body's inner wisdom) your can find new ways of being in the world that make you feel more at home with where life is placing you

The benefit of operating from the body sense will be accessable by following the CCP art directives

The art directives you are introduced to come from different traditions: Museum art-based Therapy (Receptive Art Therapy), Guided Drawing® (Sensorimotor Art Therapy®), Dynamic Shape Drawing (anthroposophic art therapy) and Focusing Oriented Expressive Arts FOAT® (integration of Focusing Oriented Therapy and Expressive Arts)

You will be guided by art directives for warming up, art directives for stepping into the process and art directives for developing your process further

Your Creative Compassion Practice will be supported artistically by artwork of an early pioneer of Modern Arts, the German artist Adolf Hölzel. The artwork coming from his art school (The Hölzel Circle) had been banned during the 1930s and 1940s by Nazi persecution

Hölzels simple pastel drawings serve as reference pictures for your receptive-active arts engagement induced by the CCP art directives (low-skill-high-sensitivity approach)

Transfer from artistic to social Relational Empathy needs some kind of facilitation. A Creative Compassion guide (focuser from Focusing/FOAT practitioner level on) can support you finding action steps that integrate your art experience and life