Katherine Train
Personal Coaching in Cape Town

Psychophonetics is a modality of counselling, coaching & facilitation based on an holistic approach to the human being.  Psychophonetics extends the art of conversational counselling to embrace experience and to access deep emotional intelligence. Then to access creative alternatives to more satisfying responses. In groups, couples or individual sessions,  participants are encouraged to explore hidden dynamics underlying habitual reactions to life. This is done through its use of body awareness, gesture and movement, visualisation and sounds.

My research and practice focuses on the nature and impact of interpersonal dynamics, especially empathy, and its management. We will share how to engage a deeper level of empathy that enables you to better discover innovative design opportunities. To be effective (in work and in life) requires empathy with yourself, your team, clients and participants. To empathise with clients and stakeholders ensures your project is on track and relevant. Design Thinking is a framework that has human-centric design at its core. As part of the process towards empathy there is a shared affect experience, which is a mix of your client’s thoughts and feelings, and a combination of what you were experiencing before the interaction as well as what they bring up in you. Fortunately, with directed intent, it can be brought on track and enhanced into adulthood. The first step is to understand the process of empathy, as well as its potential pitfalls. The second is to apply practical exercises to awaken latent capacities and check in with potential pitfalls. Insights from neuroscience identify three elements essential to empathy: an automatic, unconscious shared affect experience, an ability to separate your own experiences from those of your participant, and a capacity to take the perspective of your participant. Shared affect: We have an automatic, and usually unconscious, proclivity to share experiences with people we observe or even think about empathically. This means that you feel and have a bodily response similar to the feeling you observe or imagine in your client or design research participant. The automatic mirrored experience will be magnified by your own experience. This requires that you imagine your participant in their situation. It is only possible if you have gone through the first phases of noticing cues in your participant and in yourself in response to your participant, and been able to distinguish between the two. Accurate awareness of mind-sets, biases, and prejudices is essential to imagine your client in their situation. Without, you are deluded into thinking you’re imagining them. We need to understand the context, situation and stage that people are going through. We do seem to have a latent potential for empathy, but it’s awakening is dependent on interactions as we grow up. You are most likely to experience automatic empathy with others when your life experiences overlap their experiences. Observing, imagining or remembering body cues in your participant provide insight about their deeper needs. With regular and intentional focus on these skills, you’ll awaken latent empathy capacities. Apply self-empathy to identify where you are in relation to your team, clients and participants in thought, feeling and intention. Become aware of your own body cues (for a hands-on and practical experience see the link below for facilitated workshops).