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Winter/Spring 2012
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The new "Mediate Your Life" weekend retreats
NVC Mediation has a new flexible training option. (You can read more about it here.) It's designed to give all the content of the 4-day intensive retreat in a more flexible, extended format.
The flexible training option begins with one of four weekend retreats--in Mount Shasta (Feb. 24-26), Boston (March 2-4), Austin (March 9-11) and San Mateo (March 9-11). These retreats can be taken as a stand-alone option for people who want a taste of what NVC Mediation offers. They can serve as an alternative entry point into the 2012 NVCM immersion year.
I'll be leading Boston, MA and San Mateo, CA retreats. (The Mount Shasta and Austin retreats will be led, respectively, by my colleagues Lisa Montana and Newt Bailey.) I'm really looking forward to the chance to share all that NVC Mediation has to offer when it comes to navigating difficult situations and developing the skills to be calm and present in the midst of conflict. Won't you join us for a weekend of learning and connection?
Retreat participants will learn the basics of NVC Mediation, including self-connection practice, the elements of empathy, regaining your sense of choice/self-control in a difficult situations. Those who are interested can enroll in a 7-week tele class and 4 skills-integration sessions. Anyone who completes all three mini-trainings (retreat + tele class + skills sessions) will have covered the same material that we teach in the introductory intensive and will be eligible to join the 2012 immersion year in the East, West or Heartland programs.
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Inspired by the People Who Come To Our Trainings
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My experience of our trainings is often richer than I can put into words. Since mid January, we've started the fourth year of our USA West Coast (Berkeley, CA) program, the third year of our USA East Coast (Boston, MA), and the second intensive of a year immersion program we've started in Seoul, South Korea. In the span of five weeks we've done three different 4-day trainings, stretching across opposite parts of the world and different cultures.
I love seeing people's hunger to learn how to respond to conflict differently, to grow this capacity. It's so heartening for me. In all these intensives, person after person shared inspiring stories of how their lives have been affected and how they are making a difference in their worlds. There's a hunger not just to mediate conflict in their own lives, but also how to help other people, how to make a larger contribution in some way. In the stories that I hear from people and what they say they want to do with the training -- it's a lot about how they can bring more connection into conflict when it's happening in the world. In essence, it seems they want to be part of humanity's evolving to greater skill in the face of conflict and intensity.
In Korea, in one of the evening sessions, I did a healing and reconciliation role-play with a participant in the training. Close to 40 other people in the training were watching. Because of a Q & A session with the group beforehand, we didn't start the role-play until around 8:30pm. I was feeling some tiredness, but also a surge of energy to work with this person, as if part of me could tell that something important was going to happen. For 20 years she had been in enormous pain and suffering in relation to her mother-in-law. In my work with her she went so deep, revealed and shared so much of herself, her grief, her rage. She couldn't even look at me as she imagined me to be her mother-in -law. She said she hated me and she'd suffered so much. I think at one point she said she hoped I would die. By the end of the process I went through with her, she was looking at me. She was smiling. She wished for me [mother-in-law] to have connection not only with myself but also with my sons. There was this lightness in the room. The "energy" had completely shifted. She was soft and open, and there was a relaxation in her face and as sense of compassion coming from her - a literal transformation! And she did this with a whole group of people witnessing, lending their silent empathic presence. After we ended the role-play, she said to me, "This is something I'll remember for the rest of my life."
It's so moving for me to be a part of something like this, the fact that she was willing to work on it in that way, willing to go that deep in front of the group and allowing that transformation to happen. She had a vision of what was possible and was willing to heal and to move out of hatred and anger and bitterness into a different place. The people who show up to these trainings are like that. It's what they seem to be about. It's tremendously inspiring to me. I get to be around people who want to do that kind of work with themselves and offer that gift to others, to the world. I literally can go 12-14 hours a day, day after day, and not get overly tired, even with heavy jet lag. And I'm pretty introverted by nature, so being in groups tends to take energy out of me, but working with people who have this intention in the world gives me a lot energy. I hear it in the way they share about their experiences and the rest of their lives. Even what I hear them say after doing the exercises often really moves me. I get to be part of that. It's wonderful.
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