Connecting Beyond the Surface

one day in-person, 9 Nov 24,  10am – 5pm, followed by 6 online sessions, Wednesdays 7 – 9pm, starting 13 Nov. Three of these sessions will be taught, alternating with meeting in small peer practice groups.

Cost: £200 – £170 – £140

(If the price is an obstacle to you joining this course, please get in touch with Ratnadevi)

Mindfulness and compassion practice can open up a sense of choice and ease in many areas of our lives, but we may still feel ourselves at a loss and disappointed in ourselves when it comes to communication. Our buttons get pushed and before we know it, words come out in ways that lead to hurt, misunderstanding and mutual defensiveness. Or we play it safe and just skim the surface, at the cost of not accessing the openness, love, depth and mystery of connectedness that we intuit is possible. Maybe, after years of trying, we wonder whether it really could be different, whether we could ever feel confident in our ability to stay grounded, open-hearted and connected in most social circumstances?

This course offers clear and applicable tools that have the potential to make a tangible difference to the relationship with yourself and with others. You will take the expertly structured input from the teaching sessions into your practice groups to deepen and refine your skills, letting them land deeply, so that they will be available when you need them most. This is what we are aiming for:

- Cultivating a solid basis of presence, so you notice when you stop being curious about what is going on inside yourself and in the other person, and you can quickly re-centre yourself.

- Exploring the power of pausing and being choiceful about when to speak and when to receive others.

- Enhancing your awareness of feeling states and your vocabulary to accurately and sensitively convey them. Taking responsibility for your feelings and avoiding blame.

- Embracing and managing fear, including of the unknown, and becoming skilled at re-balancing the nervous system.

- Recognising your impulse to blame yourself or others as a sign of unmet needs.

- Taking time to establish empathetic understanding of everyone’s needs, as a basis for creatively finding strategies that work for everyone.

- Maturing your empathy skills - somatically, affectively and cognitively. Having empathy for yourself increases your capacity to listen.

- Developing confidence in raising an issue without starting a fight – clearly stating what happened, without judgement.

- Making requests that can be easily received and offer choice.

This workshop is informed by mindfulness and (self)-compassion practice, Non-Violent Communication (NVC), Internal Family Systems (IFS) inner parts work, Insight Dialogue and neuroscience.

Ratnadevi Holtbernd PhD is a mindfulness teacher/ trainer/ supervisor with decades of experience. As a certified coach she is skilled in effective communication tools based on NVC and IFS. She is passionate about exploring the interface of traditional Buddhist teachings (she is an ordained Buddhist) with effective contemporary methods of healing and integration. She is also an artist and writer and brings an ecological and systems-based perspective to her work. She is the author of ‘Bringing Mindfulness to Life’ and a columnist at Buddhist Door Global.

www.livingmindfulness.netinfo@livingmindfulness.net

Kristine Mackenzie-Janson came to being a mindfulness teacher, trainer and supervisor through her adventures in Tibetan Buddhism. She has worked as a tutor for the Mindfulness Association and as an honorary fellow of the University of Aberdeen on their MSc Studies in Mindfulness for over a decade, and loves to witness the unfolding transformation when people bring mindfulness, compassion and insight into the heart of their lives. In the last few years Kristine has become increasingly interested in how we either become closer or get disconnected in communications with others, and she qualified as a coach last year in a training based on NVC.

www.earthymindfulness.comKristine.m.janson@gmail.com