THE SELF-COMPASSION BOOK CLUB

What You Say Or Do Next Could Change The World

Wednesday's 6th October  - 10th November 2021 Online Class 6.00pm - 7.30pm GMT
Monday's 11th October - 15th November 2021 Online Class 10.00am - 11.30am GMT

INTRODUCTORY VIDEO

OVERVIEW

The phrase ‘what you say or do next could change the world’ means everything to me.  If my father, a violent alcoholic, had had this awareness and sense of choice and the capacity to self-soothe and self-regulate, the beautiful souls around him would not have suffered the way they did. 

This programme is a series of 6 classes to read and work through the content of Marshall Rosenberg’s book ‘Nonviolent Communication A Language Of Life'. It is one of the foundation stones of my own work and I believe offers an understanding of the conditions and belief systems at the root of violence.

It will bring you the opportunity to:

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• anchor within - connect to your needs, in times of difficulty

• navigate life and relationships from a place of compassion

• make sense of the root of the pain in your experience of life

• cultivate the innate skill of self-compassion for which we are hard wired

• explore the spaciousness within the paradigm of non-duality (no more right or wrong, no more good or bad, no more punishment or reward)

FORMAT OF THE CLASS

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Each week the class will contain the following:

A Self-compassion Check-in

Teaching and practice based on the chapter content

Exploration of the content where you share:

the aspects of the chapters that opened and softened you into life

the aspects of the chapters you found challenging to understand or connect with

A Self-compassion Check-out

CONTENT

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WEEK 1 (chapters 1 – 3)

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SOFTENING THE URGENCY & DEMAND IN OUR INNER EXPERIENCE

• What is ‘natural giving and receiving’

• Identifying the cultural conditioning which blocks compassionate connection with all life

• Softening the predominant cultural tendency from judgement towards observing all life with compassionate understanding

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WEEK 2 (chapters 4 – 6)

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EXPRESSING OUR FEELINGS

• The purpose of fully feeling into our somatic experience (feelings, bodily sensations, thoughts/images) in order to express our experience compassionately and kindly

• The origin of our somatic experience, how to describe it without inner or outer judgement

• When a feeling is not a feeling

• Empowerment through identifying self-responsibility

• Expressing honesty that when shared with embodied compassion contributes to all life

• Identifying and requesting that which would make your life wonderful

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WEEK 3 (chapter 7)

BEING A ‘GOOD’ LISTENER

• Compassionate listening and receiving - listening to ourselves and others with spaciousness and compassionate awareness for the longings that are uppermost in the present moment

WEEK 4 (chapters 8 – 10)

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SELF-COMPASSION - THE POWER & ROLE OF VULNERABILITY

• Hearing a 'yes' behind the 'no' - yours and the others

• The relationship between the gift of vulnerability and connection

• The significance of the need for mourning (grief/sadness)

• The violence of 'shoulds' and 'have to's'

• The relief that can come when exploring the difference between 'stimulus' and 'cause'

• The role of anger and how it relates to authenticity and transparency

• Moving from our habitual response to re-membering our natural response - the role of slowing down in our communication processes

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WEEK 5 (chapters 11 – 13)

FREEING OURSELVES FROM OLD PROGRAMMING

• Ending the paradigm of 'punishment & reward'

• Befriending our inner experience

• Dissolving the enemy image connected to our internal world

• Moving from criticism and praise to empathic appreciation

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WEEK 6

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I am leaving the content of this last class open and will design a teaching/space to support any requests from participants and also as I follow my own intuition as to what is needed at the time.