An Introduction to Mindful Compassionate Dialogue – 4 Week Foundation Course

ABOUT

Empowering you with the skills and capacity to create compassionate, skilful and thriving relationships with yourself and others. Relate to yourself and others from authenticity and compassion.

Take the pain, misunderstanding and disconnection out of your relationships and feel connected and like a team again.

Are you ready to shift from conflict and discord to clarity and connection?

We all want to feel connected to the ones we love and care for, be deeply heard and seen for the experiences we’re having and for the values we hold dear and to communicate and relate with others in a way that creates understanding, meaningful contribution and ease.

Instead, so many of us feel frustrated and overwhelmed as we experience painful cycles of misunderstanding, arguments, defensiveness, criticism, blame and disconnection.

This is not your fault. You simply have not been taught the skills to do so.

This course is for you if you answer yes to any of the following:

·      Do you feel unseen, unheard or disconnected in your relationships?

·      Are you struggling to speak your truth or make requests to meet your needs?

·      Do you feel isolated and disconnected from those you care about?

·      Are you ready to shift from conflict to connection?

IS THIS YOU?

You want better communication skills and more fulfilling relationships. You want to create more connection in your personal relationships and have the confidence that you can handle conflict. You want to bring relationship skills to the people you care for that embody your values.

You are dedicated to living an authentic life with compassion for yourself and others. You understand that creating healthy relationships and relating to yourself and others from authenticity and compassion requires mindfulness and practical skills. You are ready and willing to practice mindfulness and concrete skills in a safe environment that includes vulnerability and self-reflection. 

WHAT IS IT ALL ABOUT?

About Mindful Compassionate

Mindful Compassionate Dialogue (MCD) empowers you to create compassionate, skilful and thriving relationships with yourself and others.

MCD is a comprehensive system and map that describes the process and skills necessary for cultivating thriving relationships with yourself and others. It is a system meant to provide access to agency, compassion, mindfulness (mindful engagement) and wisdom (wise discernment). Personal transformation is achieved through practice with the 12 Relationship Competencies and nine Foundations of Selfhood, which arise from a central, life-serving intention.

It naturally supports you in creating the relationships you want by integrating the wisdom and skills of three powerful modalities: Hakomi (body-centred therapy), Nonviolent Communication (NVC), and Mindfulness.

Each modality contributes something unique to the process. Hakomi offers clarity about reactivity and healing. NVC provides a method for achieving self-responsibility, skilful communication, and agency. And Mindfulness adds the stable attention and clear focus needed to continuously refine your understanding and skills.

WHEN AND HOW?

The course runs over four weeks, one two-hour class per week.

You will be provided with a course book containing all the material and exercises, perfect for you to review and work through during and after the course.

You will also have access to a private peer-to-peer WhatsApp and Facebook community to continue practising with fellow participants and discuss questions and challenges that arise.

While you are taking the course, you can also book discounted 1:1 coaching sessions with me.

Contribution for the four-week course: €160 or R1600 for those living and earning in South Africa/ZAR.

For those not living and earning in South Africa/ZAR, please pay via PayPal by clicking HERE or following this link: https://mcd.ceferinocenizo.com/

Start date: The next course begins and runs on Wednesdays, April 3rd, 10th, 17th and 24th.

Time: 7:00 pm SAST / 6:00 pm CEST / 5:00 pm GMT / 9:00 am PST

Method: Live Zoom calls. Calls will be recorded and available for 2 months from the start of the course, should you miss any live calls.

Thank you so much for your participation and dedicating your time and energy to this important work.

MEET YOUR FACILITATOR

Ceferino Cenizo is a Self-Mastery and Relationship Coach who partners with individuals and couples to access their highest potentials. He’s passionate about empowering others to create thriving relationships and transform in the direction of the person they choose to be.

Through his work with others, personal experience and observation, he has come to realise relationships to be the most effective and potent catalyst (and obstacle) for personal transformation and living a joyful, connected and fulfilling life.

He’s an ICF-certified Life and Consciousness Coach ®, Trauma and Tension Release Provider (TRE ®) and Regenerative Farmer.

For more, please click HERE or visit visit https://www.ceferinocenizo.com/

TOPICS FOR THE COURSE:

MCD is a system of 12 relationship competencies and nine foundations. For our introductory course, you will be introduced to and have an opportunity to practice with an element of each of the first six competencies. The foundations will be weaved into material throughout the series. Here are the relationship competencies you will begin to learn:

Appreciation: Competency 1

Appreciation is about noticing what’s working well, and saying that aloud more often than expressing what’s not working. Appreciation practice lays a foundation for a vibrant relationship, and the ability to meet challenges with skill and grace. It contributes to resilience by creating a sense of confidence that each person is seen for their good intentions. Appreciation is actually a form of positive feedback: it is about knowing what works in clear and specific terms. This level of clarity and sharing makes collaboration easy.

Empathy: Competency 2

There are so many benefits of cultivating empathy in your relationships. When you can give and receive empathy, each person has a deep sense of being heard. Knowing you can be heard, means a relaxing of defensiveness and the impulse to convince another of your point of view. Empathy contributes to healthy differentiation, as well as a secure emotional bond. With empathy, you can truly be a companion and support for another without taking on their struggles as your own.

Empathy is a heart-based response to a heart-based expression of another. Empathy means giving your compassionate curiosity to another’s experience without having an agenda. It often involves verbally guessing another’s feelings and needs. For example, when someone shares about a difficulty at work, instead of trying to problem solve you can make an empathy guess like, “Are you feeling discouraged because you need support?” In this way, empathy makes space for being present with feelings and needs so that the door to wisdom and compassion opens naturally.

Honest Expression: Competency 3

Honest expression is a rich and subtle practice that empowers you to live in alignment with your deepest values. It often feels vulnerable, as it requires awareness and direct expression of your needs and explicit acknowledgement of interdependence through specific and doable requests, and negotiation with others. It helps you to truly collaborate with others while fully maintaining autonomy and self-responsibility.

Honest expression includes the following:

>       Awareness of your intention when you express

>       Awareness of the quality of connection in a given moment, both with yourself and another

>       Taking responsibility for reactivity by learning to recognize it and then name it aloud and/or taking time to get grounded before continuing to engage in

dialogue

>       Expressing feelings and needs with full self-responsibility by making specific and doable requests of yourself and/or another

>       Taking responsibility for thoughts, speech, and reactivity by discerning the difference between what you actually observed and the interpretations you

made

>       Knowing the difference between universal needs and related preferences and strategies for how needs are met

>       Communicating specific and doable requests as the starting point of collaboration

Self Empathy: Competency 4

Self-empathy is an essential ingredient in a thriving relationship. To have a loving and conscious relationship with another, you also need to have a loving and conscious relationship with yourself.

In addition, self-empathy gives you relief from internal conflict, criticism, and doubt. You can learn to greet each part of your experience with compassion and acceptance, which gives you access to wise discernment and effective action.

Self-empathy means taking responsibility for your experience by gaining the skills to identify observations, thoughts, feelings, needs, and requests with compassion for yourself. Being able to identify your experience in this way opens the door to staying true to yourself and honest with another.

Recognizing & Managing Reactivity: Competencies 5 & 6

Recognizing reactivity means freedom. The moment you can recognize reactivity arising, you can be free from its grip on you. In addition, when you learn to track reactivity in yourself, you can more easily recognize it in others. This means you can take effective action to prevent escalating arguments.

Reactivity is defined as the misperception of threat to one or more needs. It can be recognized by at least three main characteristics:

1) A change in physiology, such as heart rate or breathing

2) A stuckness or narrowing of view

3) A loss of access to creativity, skills, broad perspective, wisdom, and compassion

Recognizing reactivity means becoming familiar with the many signs and symptoms that it is arising. When you fully know reactivity, it can’t take over. You get to choose speech and actions that truly serve you and others.

When you learn to manage reactivity effectively, a whole world of possibility opens up for you and your relationship. You find it is safe to be yourself in your relationship. Reactivity can come and go without causing major ruptures in connection. You see it as normal and trust that it can be met. Lastly, when you are not walking on eggshells because of reactivity, your relationship has space to grow and evolve in whole new ways.

Once you learn to recognize reactivity, it becomes your cue to engage the skills you have for managing it. Managing reactivity includes skills such as regulation strategies, interpersonal de-escalation strategies, self-empathy, naming, recognizing blame, working with tender needs, and engaging healing work.