To effect real change, we need to do more than just talk a good game.

Effecting real change requires us to remember what we love about the paths we’re choosing.

That’s where this 3-session course begins: with somatic education designed to increase your capacity for managing mood and emotion. It provides concrete training across physical, emotional, linguistic, intellectual, and intuitive domains through simple yet deep techniques that can readily transform old reactions into resources for connection and healing.

These skills are essential for any of us who want to deepen the quality of our relationships, generate community, cultivate reverence for the sacred, and effect positive change — whether it’s personal, social, environmental, or political.

Following is a brief description of each session.

• Session 1 ~ Shape-Shifting: A Five-Element Practice for Embodying NVC
  In all encounters there is an interaction of nonverbal forces, habits, and responses. What you and I communicate through tone, gesture, body shape, and movement exceeds the impact of our words. Somatic processes illuminate how repetitive responses to life’s situations become lodged in our nervous systems, and how these habituated responses may — or may not — serve what is happening in the present moment.
  
  Shape-Shifting training develops “somatic impressions” — body / mind understandings — that reveal the wisdom within the elements of needs, providing opportunities for profound insight and self-growth It combines visualization and linguistic features with Tai Chi movement, forming a daily practice for managing feelings of being overwhelmed, for listening with empathy, and for harmonizing conflict.
  
  
• Session 2 ~ Transforming Core Strategies: From Reaction to Resource
  Each of us grows up creating strategies that organize around a unique set of circumstances. Core strategies are the deeply embedded physical, emotional, and linguistic behaviors designed to safeguard basic needs for safety and belonging. Over time, these experiences and stories settle almost indelibly into your muscles, cells, intentions, and communications. Noticing where your muscles tighten and how your breathing changes enables you to touch those precious protected areas — and with care, empathy, and practice, you become able to transform old reactions into more inclusive, compassionate responses.
  
  
• Session 3 ~ The Spiral Blend Practice: A Practice for Empathic Communication
  This practice offers an integrated physical, emotional, and linguistic map for practicing and understanding Nonviolent Communication processes. It slows things down, enabling you to establish an awareness of emotions during challenging and triggering moments. This allows your body’s signals to become an “inner guidance system” that brings direction and clarity to the choices at hand. This brings special attention to the nonverbal forces, habits, and responses underlying your words and the stories you tell yourself. The Spiral Blend helps you stay present during times of conflict, enabling you to continue listening empathically while exploring collaborative strategies that honor everyone’s needs.

You can expect to come away with daily practices for:

• Invigorating empathic listening faculties;
• Discharging the anxiety held in old embodied reactions;
• Making decisions and taking actions that align with your values; and
• Cultivating resources for building relationships more capably and enjoyably.