SOLD OUT - Two Hour Introduction to Mindful Compassionate Dialogue on February 8, 2020 (Portland, OR)

Saturday, February 8, 2020
1:00 PM 3:00 PM

4312 Southeast Stark Street Portland, OR, 97215 United States (map)

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Is this you?

It can be maddening to find yourself going around and around with someone over the same issues. You need a way to communicate and connect.

You are dedicated to living an authentic life with compassion for yourself and others. You understand that living from authenticity and compassion requires mindfulness as well as practical skills. You are ready to learn and practice tools for self-responsible communication and empathic listening.

What’s it all about?

Mindful Compassionate Dialogue (MCD) helps you find and name the real issues and address them effectively. The real issues are universal: love, respect, understanding, being heard & seen, caring, consideration, trust, intimacy, to name a few. Unfortunately these are often communicated indirectly, for example, “You never listen to me!” could be more directly communicated like this: “Hearing you give me advice, I feel frustrated because I want to be heard. Would you be willing to tell me what you understand about what I'm saying?”

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.

Hakomi offers clarity about reactivity and healing, NVC offers a means for self-responsibility, skillful communication, and agency, and Mindfulness adds the stable attention and the clear focus needed to continuously refine your understanding and skills.

What to Expect

The workshop will be experientially focused. We will introduce a concept and skill and then you will take time in a structured exercise in a small group, pair, or individually to practice and integrate what you are learning. You will learn using examples that you choose from your own life.

An introduction to the framework, skills, and consciousness of Mindful Compassionate Dialogue

Practice using new skills in small groups and pairs.
An opportunity for coaching and questions.
You will receive a handout that will help you continue to practice at home.

MCD is a system of 12 relationship competencies and nine foundations. For our introductory workshop, you will be introduced to the first six competencies and have opportunity to practice empathy and honest expression.

Appreciation: Competency 1

Appreciation is about noticing what’s working well, and saying that aloud more often than expressing what’s not working. Appreciation practice lays a foundation for a vibrant relationship, and the ability to meet challenges with skill and grace. It contributes to resilience by creating a sense of confidence that each person is seen for their good intentions. Appreciation is actually a form of positive feedback: it is about knowing what works in clear and specific terms. This level of clarity and sharing makes collaboration easy.

Empathy: Competency 2

There are so many benefits of cultivating empathy in your relationships. When you can give and receive empathy, each person has a deep sense of being heard. Knowing you can be heard, means a relaxing of defensiveness and the impulse to convince another of your point of view. Empathy contributes to healthy differentiation, as well a secure emotional bond. With empathy, you can truly be a companion and support for another without taking on their struggles as your own.

Empathy is a heart-based response to a heart-based expression of another. Empathy means giving your compassionate curiosity to another’s experience without having an agenda. It often involves verbally guessing another’s feelings and needs. For example, when your someone shares about a difficulty at work, instead of trying to problem solve you can make an empathy guess like, “Are you feeling discouraged because you need support?” In this way, empathy makes space for being present with feelings and needs so that the door to wisdom and compassion opens naturally.

Honest Expression: Competency 3

Honest expression is a rich and subtle practice that empowers you to live in alignment with your deepest values. It often feels vulnerable, as it requires awareness and direct expression of your needs and explicit acknowledgment of interdependence through specific and doable requests, and negotiation with others. It helps you to truly collaborate with others while fully maintaining autonomy and self responsibility.

Honest expression includes the following:

Awareness of your intention when you express
Awareness of the quality of connection in a given moment, both with yourself and another
Taking responsibility for reactivity by learning to recognize it and then name it aloud and/or taking time to get grounded before continuing to engage in dialogue
Expressing feelings and needs with full self-responsibility by making specific and doable requests of yourself and/or another
Taking responsibility for thoughts, speech, and reactivity by discerning the difference between what you actually observed and the interpretations you made
Knowing the difference between universal needs and related preferences and strategies for how needs are met
Communicating specific and doable requests as the starting point of collaboration

Recognizing & Managing Reactivity: Competencies 5 & 6

Recognizing reactivity means freedom. The moment you can recognize reactivity arising, you can be free from its grip on you. In addition, when you learn to track reactivity in yourself, you can more easily recognize it in others. This means you can take effective action to prevent escalating arguments.

Reactivity is defined as the misperception of threat to one or more needs. It can be recognized by at least three main characteristics:

1) A change in physiology, such as heart rate or breathing

2) A stuckness or narrowing of view

3) A loss of access to creativity, skills, broad perspective, wisdom, and compassion

Recognizing reactivity means becoming familiar with the many signs and symptoms that it is arising. When you fully know reactivity, it can’t take over. You get to choose speech and actions that truly serve you and others.

When you learn to manage reactivity effectively, a whole world of possibility opens up for you and your relationship. You find it is safe to be yourself in your relationship. Reactivity can come and go without causing major ruptures in connection. You see it as normal and trust that it can be met. Lastly, when you are not walking on eggshells because of reactivity, your relationship has space to grow and evolve in whole new ways.

Once you learn to recognize reactivity, it becomes your cue to engage the skills you have for managing it. Managing reactivity includes skills such as regulation strategies, interpersonal de-escalation strategies, self empathy, naming, recognizing blame, working with tender needs, and engaging healing work.