is this you?
You want to cultivate more joy in your life and your connections. You want to build practical skills to create better relationships. You know you want more tools to manage reactivity, listen deeply, ask for what you need, and negotiate with others. You are willing to practice mindfulness and relationship skills in a safe environment that includes vulnerability and self-reflection.
what’s it all about?
This course will focus on the relationship competency of appreciation, a form of honest expression. It’s about noticing what’s working well and saying that aloud more often than expressing what’s not working.
Appreciation is a form of positive feedback that uses clear and specific terms to give attention to and keenly observe what is life-serving. It’s not about building someone’s self-esteem or offering praise. Appreciation practice lays the foundation for collaborative and vibrant relationships. It supports the ability to meet challenges with skill and grace, and contributes to resilience by creating a sense of confidence that each person’s good intentions and effective contributions are known and received.
Appreciation as a form of honest expression is likely changing the definition as you know it. When most people hear the word “appreciation,” they think of praise. Examples of praise include telling someone how great they are, complimenting them, and assigning positive labels like “sweet person,” “good parent,” or “hard worker.” Praise and positive judgments (or labels) are usually meant to be forms of celebration, but they are problematic for two reasons.
First, judgments are static and simplistic and don’t represent all that you are—an ever-changing flow of dynamic aliveness. Second, you may have experienced praise as a form of manipulation, an attempt to shape your behavior, or as a means to dole out rewards and punishments. These are tragic strategies that interfere with your ability to hear and benefit from positive feedback.
In Mindful Compassionate Dialogue, the word “celebration” is used synonymously with “appreciation.” In this context, when you share a celebration you express gratitude regarding something a particular person has done to contribute to particular needs for you. Listening to someone offer appreciation is really about hearing their experience of something you did, not their opinion of you. In a fundamental sense, when someone appreciates you, it’s not about you. It helps you get to know the person offering appreciation and how to contribute to them.
About Mindful Compassionate Dialogue
Mindful Compassionate Dialogue (MCD) naturally supports you in creating the relationships you want by integrating the wisdom and skills of three powerful modalities: Hakomi, Nonviolent Communication (NVC), and mindfulness.
Each modality contributes something unique to the process. Hakomi offers clarity about reactivity and healing. NVC provides a method for achieving self-responsibility, skillful communication, and agency. And mindfulness adds the stable attention and clear focus needed to continuously refine your understanding and skills.
MCD is a system meant to provide access to agency, compassion, mindfulness, and wisdom. Personal transformation is achieved through practice with the 12 Relationship Competencies and Nine Foundations, which arise from a central, life-serving intention.
What to expect?
In this four week series, we will engage in conceptual learning, group discussion, experiential learning, and skills practice. Practice exercises will be done individually, in pairs, and in small groups. You can apply examples from your own life that you choose in the exercises.
Details
Trainers: Anne Kean and Ethan Benatan
When: Four Thursdays, 7 - 9pm: May 30th & June 6th, 13th, 20th 2024
Where: Friends Meeting House, 4312 SE Stark St, Portland, OR 97215; 1st floor room 12
Contribution: $125.00
Please contact us by email if you believe you would benefit from this course and payment is the only barrier - info@wiseheartpdx.org
You can read about our approach to gratitude economy here.
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