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Building Confidence and Managing Reactivity: Practicing with Anchors and Cultivating Emotional Security - Eight Week Series Beginning April 3, 2020 (Video Conferencing or Self-Paced)

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Is this you?

You value conscious compassionate relationships yet find yourself getting caught in reactivity. You would like to unhook yourself from reactivity and stand up for what you value with confidence. 

You know that reactivity interferes with your ability to access the skills you have learned and practiced. You recognize that turning towards your experience of reactivity requires vulnerability and the ability to be present with uncomfortable feelings.  You trust that the group structure we offer and your own resources will allow you to meet these challenges in our class series.

You are ready to dive into practicing with anchors and cultivating emotional security. 

What is it all about?

Mindful Compassionate Dialogue 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.

MCD is a system meant to provide access to agency, compassion, and wisdom through transformation and practice with 12 Relationship Competencies, nine foundations, and the intention to connect.

Overview for the series:

In this series, you will practice recognizing reactivity before it takes over, intervening with reactivity to find groundedness, identifying the needs underneath reactivity, strengthening anchors, and cultivating emotional security.

An anchor is something you turn your attention toward in order to interrupt reactivity and access a non-reactive expansive perspective. It is specific, doable, has aliveness or meaning, is simple, and can be done any time and anywhere.  It could be physical, verbal, energetic, visual, or any combination. Essentially, an anchor wakes up the parts of you that can access a bigger perspective, begin to calm your physiology, engage mindfulness, and use your skills.

Emotional security is a relational confidence in which you trust that you can be received and held with care by others, and that your experience is acceptable and can be met with care and comfort.

While we can’t recreate the infant/caregiver attachment experience as adults, there is a lot we can do to create emotional security as adults and enjoy the gifts of that.  Mindful Compassionate Dialogue provides an ideal doorway to create healthy attachment as an adult.  

Transforming reactivity means engaging in at least two primary relationship competencies,  Recognizing Reactivity and Managing Reactivity. For each of these competencies there are six main skills to learn and practice.  

Building confidence with these skills means drawing on one or more of the nine foundations; attunement, warmth, security, awareness, health, regulation, equanimity, clarity, and concentration. For this series we will focus primarily on security, awareness, regulation, and equanimity.

For our series, we will focus on three skills for each competency:

Recognize Reactivity

  1. Identify the signs of reactivity the moment it arises.

  2. Acknowledge that the causes for reactivity are internal and name what that looks like for you: Where you put your attention, thoughts, limiting beliefs, decisions, posture, behavior, etc.

  3. Identify your own “tender needs” and potential healing experiences related to these needs.

Manage Reactivity

  1. Practice with regulation strategies and an anchor

  2. Shift to empathy or self-empathy the moment reactivity is identified

  3. Name the differences between useful feedback regarding unmet needs and blame or judgment

What to expect:

You will interact with other students who are grounded in the values of mindfulness and compassion and bring a strong intention for growth and transformation. You 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 will apply examples that you choose from your own life in each exercise.

Wise Heart has many dedicated students. Any given class series will be a mix of students who are new to Wise Heart and students who know the trainers and each other from previous courses.

Understanding the online format

Students will be signing in from their own location in real time, at the same time. We will be able to see and hear each other in little boxes on the screen. For visibility, it's important to have a light in front of you, not behind you. The technology allows for breaking up into pairs or small groups, which I can visit and check in with just as I would do in an in-person course.

It's okay to miss one or two classes in a series. You will receive a recording of the class and be asked to view it and do the corresponding exercises before the next class. Students won't be shown on the recording, but can be heard.

You can also opt to take the series only through the recording and to participate in discussion via the online format.

With the online format you can participate in a weekly discussion with all students I recommend that you find someone to do the course exercises with if you are receiving the recording.

You will receive a detailed workbook as a part of the class, which you will need to have with you for each class. This workbook is packed with information and contains instructions for each experiential exercise.

Details:

Live attendance means:

  • Attending at least six of the eight classes.

  • Arriving on time to each class (2:00 p.m. PDT).

  • Attending and participating for the duration of the class (2:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m., with a 10-minute break in the middle). It is very disruptive to come in and out of a single class session; please plan to attend by recording if you cannot stay for the full two hours of the class.

  • Consistent access to internet speeds and connectivity that support video conferencing (600kbps/1.2Mbps (up/down) for HQ video; 1.5Mbps/1.5Mbps (up/down) for gallery view).

  • Facility with using the Zoom video conferencing system. Please ask to consult with one of the staff members at Wise Heart if you are unsure about this aspect of your attendance.

  • Logging in each week using the initial instructions and meeting ID # you received before the start of the course.

  • Optional participation in the weekly online discussion with all students enrolled in the course.

Self-paced attendance means:  

  • As self-paced participants, you will receive an extensive workbook as well as access to the video recordings of each session within 24 hours of the end of the session (4:00 p.m. PDT).

  • You can ask to be assigned a study buddy to work with if you like.

  • Questions regarding the material, recordings, and practice each week will be answered by LaShelle via email correspondence. Please place the word QUESTION in all caps in the subject line so that we can track them and respond in a timely manner.

  • Optional participation in the weekly online discussion with all students enrolled in the course.

For more technical information about zoom, you can go here.  

  • Trainer: LaShelle Lowe-Chardé

  • When: 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. PDT, eight consecutive weekly meetings from April 3, 2020 – May 22, 2020

  • Where: Online Video Conference Course

Cost $260.00 (Participants can opt to pay a $99 deposit to register, and pay the remaining balance on or before the first day of the workshop.)

 

Register:

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March 17

SOLD OUT - Couples Series: Learning the Basics of Mindful Compassionate Dialogue - Six-Week Series Beginning March 17, 2020 (Portland, OR)

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April 18

Transforming and Managing Reactivity Starting April 18, 2020 (Video Conferencing or Self-Paced)