From The Roots Up: Relating in a Fractured World

Since its initial publication in 1999, Nonviolent Communication by clinical psychologist Marshall Rosenberg has been hailed worldwide as a pioneering approach to resolving conflict and building relationships. And yet divorces, depression, and discord continue to climb. Despite our remarkable cleverness and dazzling technological ingenuity, we humans are more lonely, more stressed, more traumatized, and more divided than ever. Even the closest relationships struggle to remain strong and vital. What are we missing?

To effectively minister to relationship challenges in these turbulent times, we need to reconsider our approach .. from the roots up. To be wholly relational requires more than an arsenal of tools to facilitate successful connection with others. Without the capacity to examine and mourn our fragmented isolation, nothing we say will have any more traction than most new year’s resolutions. Being relational requires connection to place and story. Good intentions and techniques simply can’t carry the freight of deep relating when so little shared understanding exists between people.

Come learn a life-centric orientation to relating that will relieve you from the endless mania for self-exploration, self-healing, self-worth, and instead direct you towards a solid enduring alliance with life that is informed by embracing one’s rightful place on a living planet with its own inherent wisdom and rhythms.

Topics and exercises:

• an ecology of needs

• locating ourselves in real place and time

• developing capacity in the face of distress and conflict

• riding the tension between certainty and curiosity

• the two wings: grief and gratitude

• sustained engagement: relational speaking and listening

Expect hard work, confoundment, practical exercises, laughter, tears, deep diving, poetry, .. and copious invitations to wonder.