This is one of the core component trainings of our Integral Peacemaker Training program. These trainings do not need to be taken in any particular order. New participants join at each component.
Building Body-Mind-Heart Skills for Authentic Relationship and Effective Leadership
Below is more detailed information about the focus of the training. Please email
or call 303-544-5923 if you have further questions.
1. Synchronizing Body and Mind
Our interactions with each other in the relationship sphere present constant challenges. We often find ourselves in an uncertain and confusing landscape colored by our own and others' conflicting ideas, biases, projections, needs and emotional reactivity. The ability to “hold one’s seat” in this confusing domain is the starting point for developing effective relationship and leadership skills. Synchronizing body and mind is key to holding one’s seat.
This training will focus on body-centered mindfulness-awareness practices that lend themselves to body-mind synchronization, including breath work, body scans, mindfulness meditation, yoga, and chi-kung.
2. Cultivating Emotional Intelligence (EQ)
Emotional Intelligence or EQ is measured according to four factors:
self-awareness,
the ability to self-manage,
social awareness,
the ability to effectively and beneficially manage or navigate relationships with others.
In Transforming Relationship, we focus on the second two of these, social awareness and effective relationship management. We cultivate greater social awareness through mindfulness and awareness practices that heighten our awareness of and sensitivity with others. Having developed greater awareness of our environment and the particular energies of people we interact with, we learn and practice the skill of tracking the relational field, the ability to recognize what is occurring energetically and emotionally with another person and what is needed in the moment to facilitate genuine communication.
As peacemakers and social change agents, we will inevitably and even frequently encounter situations and forms of suffering and conflict that are confusing and that challenge our ability to stay present and interact or communicate skillfully with another person. By slowing down and paying attention to our state of mind, to the emotional energy and needs of the other person, and to the relational field we are co-creating and participating in with this person, we gain access to real data and the natural wisdom of situations that allows us to intuitively discover skillful, compassionate and beneficial communication in the moment. Unless we learn to tune into and accurately read the relational field in this way, it will be difficult to realize our full potential as peacemakers.
3. Authentic Presence and Deep Listening
Many would agree that one of our deepest longings is to be truly listened to and understood by another human being. No one will ever understand or “get” us completely, as a certain degree of aloneness is inherent in the human condition; but it is possible for human beings to connect and understand each other at a very deep level. This kind of deep intimacy with best friends and loved ones is perhaps what we treasure most in life, and ironically we seem to have evolved a culture that avoids such intimacy like the plague.
4. Nonviolent Communication and Conflict Resolution
Conflict is inevitable. It is simply a part of life as we negotiate relationships, expectations and agreements with each other in pursuit of meeting our individual and shared or collective needs. As we know, conflict often results in a lot of unproductive and sometimes damaging drama. Transforming Relationship will focus on the tools we need to skillfully manage and transform conflicts so that they become a creative rather than destructive force in our personal and professional lives, our organizations and our communities. Nonviolent Communication or NVC, which is based on the work of Marshall Rosenberg, points to the inherent violence and potential for unproductive and damaging drama prevalent in our use of language and our overall cultural conditioning. Working with the principles of NVC, we learn to connect with each other from a place of appreciation, and understanding, rather from a place of fear and defensiveness. NVC is one of several modalities we will work with to transform the energy of conflict into a creative force for change and possibility.
Cost for each of the four intensives individually is $375 ($325 if preregistered one month in advance). Please click here to read about our approach to finances. Click here for our cancellation policy.
This cost does not include housing, travel or meal expenses.
Peacemaker Institute • 401-941-0791 •
The Peacemaker Institute is a division of Peacemaker Community USA, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The Peacemaker Institute is located in Providence, Rhode Island.
