The Heart is Our Compass: An Advanced Compassionate Listening and Embodiment Journey

The Heart is Our Compass: An Advanced Compassionate Listening and Embodiment Journey

Join us for 6 sessions with seasoned Compassionate Listening facilitators

Facilitated by Susan Partnow and Yael Petretti

Join an international and intimate participant group (limited to 18 participants)

6 Tuesdays via Zoom: June 4- July 9th 11:00 am - 1:30 pm PST / 2:00 - 4:30 pm EST

Time Zone Converter HERE

June 4, 11, 18, 25 July 2, 9

“We must be the change we wish to see in the world.”  ~ Gandhi

Dear Friends,

In these unprecedented times, we believe that the world is urgently calling for us to be powerful forces for love, healing, and reconciliation. Over the past 25 years, we have designed our Compassionate Listening practices to support individuals and communities to be the change that Gandhi so wisely challenged us to be. And we believe that change begins with each one of us - one person, one heart at a time.

We are excited to welcome you to our this 6-session Compassionate Listening Embodiment Journey. This is an experiential workshop designed by our nine senior facilitators and drawn from our decades of collective experience with Compassionate Listening at home and abroad, supporting thousands of people to transform conflict and learn powerful skills for peacebuilding. 

Working in large and small groups, this workshop is designed to support you to experience the power of connection and interdependence as a felt sense. Experiencing ourselves as part of the living body of Earth and all of humanity is essential as we move into the consciousness of collaboration and away from the old competitive structures.

We imagine this as a spacious immersion, to give you the time to integrate Compassionate Listening into your daily life. Time will be spent during most sessions with our seasoned co-facilitators in small groups for more intimate time and more depth with the material. The facilitators will be an integral part of this Journey - walking together with you. 

We welcome participation from our global community, where we will all participate via Zoom.

We’ll share readings, podcasts and videos to enrich our time together. 

Our intentions are to:

Encourage you to deepen both your intention and your capacity to integrate the five core Compassionate Listening practices in your daily life: Cultivating compassion; Developing the fair witness; Respecting self and others; Listening with your heart and Speaking from your heart.

Build your capacity to be clear and in alignment with your deepest values in these rapidly changing and difficult times.

Offer specific tools to reinforce your capacity for resilience, courage and honesty as you speak your truth.

Strengthen your capacity to keep an open heart and mind when in the presence of others who disagree with your views and beliefs.

Support you to engage with the conflicts you face as an opportunity for personal growth; and

Encourage you to offer and receive support within the context of a dedicated and nurturing learning community.

Session previews:

Creating Sacred Space, Connecting to Core Essence, Self-Compassion, Living from Core Values

From Drama Triangle to Circle of Empowerment - Victim/Rescuer/Persecutor to Creator/Coach/Champion

Opening to Connection - Speaking from the Heart in Difficult  Situations

From Dehumanizing to Humanizing the Other - raising our awareness of oppression, dehumanization, racism

Forgiveness, Restoration and Repair

Going Forth: The New Story

Prerequisite

This workshop is open to everyone who has taken a Compassionate Listening Intro workshop (including White Bodied Inner Work with Debby and Yael) or participated in our Middle East or Alabama Journey. Please contact Susan Partnow (susanpartnow@gmail.com) if you would like to attend but have not yet engaged in our work. 

Cost

Tickets range from $350 - $650 (sliding scale).  We are committed to accessibility and sincerely desire for all who wish to attend our workshops to be able to do so. Please submit a scholarship request if finances are a barrier to your participation.

And for those who can, paying the higher ticket price and/or donating to our scholarship fund helps make our scholarship program possible. If you have the means, please consider paying it forward.

More Details 

This six-session online course will be held on Zoom. Unlike a webinar where you can tune in at your convenience and listen casually, our workshop is highly experiential and requires your full presence, participation, and commitment. To support a courageous and intimate space, sessions will not be recorded. In order to make the most of your experience and support others' learning and engagement, please:

• Plan to arrive in a quiet distraction-free environment, fully present and available to experience the workshop.
• Do not join the workshop while in transit (walking, driving, on the bus, etc.), or while multitasking (cooking, working, watching television, etc.).
• Connect to the event using a device that has full video and audio capability, and plan to have your video turned on for the majority of the workshop once it begins—especially during circle time and in breakout rooms, which will be used for small group exercises. (It's okay to turn your video off temporarily to attend to background distractions or needs.)
• Your presence at each and every session is essential and valued. Please note that all participants are required to attend the first session in order to honor and support the container of trust which will set the tone for the following sessions. We respectfully request that you attend all sessions possible.
• You will spend time in most sessions in a small ‘pod’ of participants for more intimate time and a deeper dive into the material. Each pod will be led by one of our stellar facilitators. 
• Compassionate Listening is a practice: There will be suggested activities to practice between sessions.
• Sessions will not be recorded. 

If you require any accommodations to attend, including physical limitations around viewing screens or having your video on, please contact us before the first session so that we can plan accordingly.

After registration and payment, you will receive a registration confirmation and welcome email. Please add us (staff@compassionatelistening.org) to your safe senders list to ensure that you receive all course access information.

If you have any questions, please contact us at staff@compassionatelistening.org.

Cancellation Policy

Cancellations made before March 5 will receive a full refund minus a $25 admin fee. (We do expect this workshop to fill to capacity so early registration is encouraged.)

Due to the container of trust that participants begin to build with one another early in the course and the cumulative nature of the curriculum, we request that participants attend the first session. 

Testimonials

The Advanced Training hugely exceeded my expectations in the depth of learning, self-revelation, connection to others, and in accepting love, courage, and inspiration to move forward.

The material is magnificent, as is the transparent, loving, and dedicated facilitation and leadership. The field that was created was incredibly powerful and loving.

The exercises moved me, and brought me to insight and change quickly. I am filled with awe at the potential power of this work, and filled with gratitude for it. It’s fabulous!

Facilitators

Susan Partnow 

Susan Partnow has catalyzed social transformation for 30+ years from Africa to Guatemala, Cuba to Japan. Co-founder of Conversation Cafes, Let’s Talk America, Global Citizen Journey, and Seattle Restorative Justice, Susan especially enjoys transforming conflict using Restorative Circles, Open Space, World Café, and Appreciative Inquiry. Author of Everyday Speaking for All Occasions and co-contributor to Practicing the Art of Compassionate Listening. Passionately committed to inter-cultural understanding, peacemaking, and community building, Susan deeply believes we can and must 'listen our way to wholeness' to find our essential humanity through connection, wise co-creation, and dialogue. Susan has been an essential part of Compassionate Listening soon after its inception. She was one of the very first trainers, part of the core council that created the core practices and the advanced training, the first director of Advanced Training, and a former Board member.  You can visit her website here.

Yael Petretti

Before earning a Bachelor's Degree in International Relations at the U.C. Berkeley, Yael was already passionately involved the struggle for civil rights during the 1968 Poor People’s March on Washington, helping build Resurrection City and tutoring children of color whose schools were being desegregated in southern Virginia. Certified as a CL facilitator in 2004, she led and co-led a number of CL delegations to Israel-Palestine where she lived for 29 years. Yael co-authored “Making Peace with Faith: The Challenges of Religion and Peacebuilding (Peace and Security in the 21st Century,”), 2018. She lives in New England where she facilitates CL trainings and volunteers as an Alternatives to Violence facilitator in a men's high security prison. Witnessing the “new Jim Crow” there has brought her around full-circle to rejoin the struggle for racial/social justice here in the U.S. In January 2020, she initiated and co-led the first domestic Compassionate Listening delegation, “Listening in the Heart of Alabama.”  She looks forward to many more such trips to explore the perfect “marriage” of Compassionate Listening and antiracism (and all other “isms”) work in the world. You can visit her website here.