banner photo credit: Bart LaRue @bartlarueeppler

This article introduces you to Community Heart Share. What is it? How does it work? And so on.

Community Heart Share is a support group for anyone who is a human being. As human beings, we are all limited, imperfect, and prone to suffer. Thankfully, when we share openly and genuinely what’s on our hearts with loving and supportive people, we often gain access to our inner wisdom, and the energy to respond more skillfully to whatever life throws at us.

In this article, we cover the purpose, agreements, culture, and format of the Boundless Love Project’s 90-minute, Zoom-based Community Heart Shares. This will help you know what to expect when you attend.

What’s the purpose of a Community Heart Share?

Human Beings are inherently social. We have a need to be seen, heard, valued, and appreciated by others. Community Heart Shares create a kind and respectful space for that to happen. This helps us process difficulties, find emotional support, mourn and celebrate together, deepen our relationships with each other, and tap into our own inner wisdom.

Community Heart Shares provide us with a supportive and healing space where we can practice heart-based skills such as:

• loving others unconditionally

• mindful listening

• being emotionally vulnerable

• speaking authentically

• witnessing each other’s pain without taking it on or becoming overwhelmed

• listening to and responding to our body’s inner wisdom

• offering emotional support

• and more.

As a community, our collective wisdom and knowledge is greater than any individual within the community. Community Heart Shares allows us to request and benefit from that collective wisdom. At the same time, giving people the space to share authentically and be seen, heard, and valued often is enough for people to access their own inner wisdom and resources to maneuver through the world skillfully.

What are the essential agreements of participants?

The heart and spirit of the Community Heart Shares are the community agreements. When they are followed, participants experience growth, healing, connection, authenticity, and many other positive benefits.

The essential community agreements, which you will find similar to the agreements in many circle processes and support groups across the globe, are as follows:

• Do your best to love, value, honor, respect, and appreciate all present and all not present.

• Listen to others mindfully with compassion and curiosity. Do not engage in cross-talk. When others are speaking, don’t interrupt them or have side conversations.

• What is said here is confidential - do not share what you heard from CHS participants with others.

• Only share what you are comfortable sharing. No one is required to share if they don’t want to.

• Sobbing, crying, grieving, shaking, and other emotions and emotional releases are welcome at CHS. We will hold whatever emotions and releases arise with compassion, acceptance, and kindness. In most social environments, it doesn’t feel safe or appropriate to do these things. Yet these are totally normal human reactions that help prevent traumatic energies from lodging in our bodies. We need more social spaces where these activities are welcomed and CHS is one of them.

• Trust that community support and silence helps each person access their own inner wisdom. Offer kind support, and be comfortable with the silences.

• Don’t offer unsolicited guidance. Only offer guidance when someone specifically requests it. Otherwise, in general, don’t seek to “fix” or “save” others. Don’t believe you know what is best for someone else. It is enough to simply offer them kindness, compassion, support, and listening ears.

• Whenever guidance is given, it is given as a gift which the receiver can do with as they please. They are under no obligation to implement the guidance if their inner wisdom deems it unwise, inappropriate, or unhelpful.

• Do not impose your politics, wisdom traditions, judgments, projections, or other beliefs onto others.

• Be conscientious of how long you speak to ensure that everyone has a chance to share.

When these agreements are followed, we can simply trust the CHS process to offer help to all participants in whatever way they need it.

What other cultural norms are there?

When the Boundless Love Project hosts Community Heart Shares on Zoom, we have other norms specific to our culture to support our time together. They include:

• Whenever one of the hosts rings a bell, we will all take a mindful pause. And any participant can request a mindful pause if they or someone else is excessively triggered.

• Bring an object that you can hold easily in your hand and will be visible to others to use as your talking object. Before speaking you can pick it up and show everyone. This helps remind everyone that you have the floor. Once you have finished talking, you can show the object again and put it down. This let’s others know you have relinquished the floor. If possible, pick an object that you find beautiful, or meaningful to you. 

• If you need to use the bathroom, get water, or so on, simply turn off your camera, mute yourself, and take care of your needs. We will assume you are doing what you need to do and that you will return when you are able to return.

• Use nonverbal gestures to provide feedback to the speaker while they are speaking. Head nodding and/or twinkle fingers to say “yes, I totally resonate with what you are saying!” Hand on heart or in prayer hands to say, “that sounds really hard, I send you compassion.” Twinkle fingers and/or a big smile to say “That is awesome!” or “I’m so happy for you!” When people ask questions or take polls of the audience, a thumbs up can mean “yes” or “that work’s.” While thumbs down means “no” or “that won’t work for me.” While a thumb sideways means “maybe,” or “I’m fine with whatever.” A hand facing the ground rotating back and forth means “so-so.” And so on.

• When others share their personal suffering, don’t take on their pain. Do your best to send them compassion by silently offering them some loving energy or words of compassion such as: I care about your suffering, I care enough to be close. May love and wisdom protect and guide you. May you be free from suffering and the root causes of suffering. May you be peaceful and skillful during challenging times.

• Some find it helpful to listen if they are doodling, drawing, knitting or doing something else creative. Feel free to bring art supplies and create while engaging.

What do hosts do?

At a Community Heart Share, there may be one or more hosts. Hosts serve a variety of roles and they may either cooperatively share the roles or divide up the roles between them. Their main ways the serve include:

• Opening and closing the circle.

• Reminding people of the agreements as needed.

• Ensuring everyone has the chance to participate and offering those who have not spoken yet the opportunity to speak.

• Keeping track of time for each person who speaks.

• Monitoring group energies and providing group pauses whenever needed by hitting the bell.

What is the format for a Community Heart Share?

Our online Zoom versions are 90-minutes long and the format looks something like this:

Opening and grounding (15-20 min)

To start, we welcome each other, set loving intentions for our time together, meditate to ground ourselves in mindfulness and the present moment, and remind ourselves of the community agreements and the purpose of the Community Heart Share.

Heart Share and Reflections (60-70 min)

One-at-a-time, everyone is welcome to share openly whatever is on their heart. They may share celebrations of good news, one or more emotional or situational hardships they face, a poem or a passage from a book that speaks to them, and so on. Shares need not only be spoken. People may also share by singing, dancing, expressing an emotion, sharing some art that they made or that touches them, or any other kind of sharing that is alive for them in the moment.

After a person shares, there will be time for others to offer reflections, appreciation, and other feedback.

To reflect, you use our own words to tell the person what you heard shared and then give them time to verify if that’s correct or to further explain. During reflections you may name emotions, values, and needs you saw operating in their share that were not explicitly mentioned, such as “I heard a lot of frustration and overwhelm in what you were sharing, is that correct?”

To appreciate, you share the values, qualities, and wisdom you see in the person who shared. Other feedback may include kind supportive words, or guidance and resources if those things were specifically asked for. When reflecting, do your best to keep the focus on the person who shared.

Because our time for reflections is so limited, if you agree with others, this is a great time to use your nonverbal gestures so the sharer can get your feedback as well.

Currently, we will experiment with a 2:1 ration between sharing and reflecting for each person. We are open to change that ratio if another ratio better serves our community. Hosts may use time cards or signals to help speakers know how much time they have remaining and when to wrap up so that everyone who wants to share gets an opportunity to do that.

Closing (5-10 min)

At the end we close the CHS, with some community mindfulness (silence, humming, mindful pause, or similar), and a reading of a poem or prayer that honors the wisdom, love, and connection shared in circle, and sets our intentions to live with love, kindness, and connection in the wider world.

Some Final Words

Community Heart Share helps those who participate feel seen, heard, valued, and appreciated. It provides a place for us to practice heart-based relationship skills. By adopting the agreements, participants co-create a space that helps us feel connected, enjoy emotional support, and gain access our inner wisdom.

This article introduces you to the purpose, agreements, roles of hosts, and format of Community Heart Shares.

These events are a new offering of the Boundless Love Project. For now, this article outlines our current plan going forward. And while the essential agreements will remain, we are always open to changing other aspects as we gain experience, hear feedback, and learn how to better serve our community.

This article speaks to your intellect, and your intellect may want to judge or dismiss the idea of Community Heart Shares. We encourage you to set aside any reservations that arise and try them out. Community Heart Shares may affect your heart in profound and transformative ways that the intellect cannot comprehend until it has experienced them.

It may also take time to trust the process and fully participate in ways that allow these transformations to unfold. So please reserve judgment on them until you have become comfortable with the process, and are able to openly share what’s on your heart. Then have patience with recieving the benefits of the practice.

Thanks for reading and we hope to see you at an upcoming Community Heart Share.