Asking for what you need in a direct and specific way can be very vulnerable and challenging. In this one day workshop, you will have an opportunity to build confidence and skill in making requests.
Is this for you?
You are dedicated to living an authentic life with compassion for yourself and others. You understand that living from authenticity and compassion requires an expansive and discerning mind as well as practical skills. You are willing to practice mindfulness and relationship skills in a safe environment that includes vulnerability and self-reflection. You are ready for support in making specific and doable requests of yourself and others.
What's It All About?
Mindful Compassionate Dialogue naturally supports you in creating the relationships you want by integrating the wisdom and skills of three powerful modalities: Hakomi, Nonviolent Communication (NVC), and Mindfulness.
Hakomi offers clarity about reactivity and healing, NVC offers a means for self-responsibility, skillful communication, and agency, and Mindfulness adds the stable attention and the clear focus needed to continuously refine your understanding and skills.
MCD is a system meant to provide access to agency, compassion, and wisdom through practice with 12 Relationship Competencies, nine foundations, and the intention to connect. Making requests is a part of a number of different competencies such as Competency 3 - Honest Expression, Competency 4 - Self Empathy, Competency 7 - Needs-based Negotiation, Competency 8 - Life-serving Boundaries, and more. For this one-day workshop we will focus on the skill of making requests in a variety of situations.
What to expect?
You will meet people that are grounded in the values of mindfulness and compassion and bring a strong intention for growth and transformation. While some conceptual learning is useful, most of your learning will occur experientially. Throughout the day we will briefly introduce concepts and skills and then you will practice in structured exercises. Exercises will be done individually, in pairs, and in small groups. You will apply examples that you choose from your own life in each exercise.
Wise Heart has many dedicated students. Any given workshop will be a mix of students who are new to Wise Heart and students who know the trainers and each other from previous courses.
Topics for the Day
We will approach the practice of making requests from the inside out and the outside in. Like many important skills making requests requires internal resources as well as information and practice.
Internal Resources include:
- The ability to identify your needs as they arise.
- The ability to consider and guess other's needs.
- Accessing a sense of trust that your needs matter equally with others' needs
- Accessing a sense of trust that your needs are inherently valid
- Accessing a sense of trust that your needs can be met in harmony with the needs of others
- Accessing a sense of trust that consideration and collaboration with others is the best strategy for meeting your needs.
- Cultivating trust in multiple strategies to meet a single need.
External Resources (information and practice) include:
- Learning the difference between a wishes/hopes, demands, and requests
- Learning the words and phrases that support Needs-based Negotiation
- Learning specific tools to manage reactivity such as fear of rejection, fear of interdependency, and beliefs that you have to do it on your own
- Learning how to break down overarching hopes or goals into small requests. Examples might include: "I would like recognition for the years I worked", "I would like more presence", "I want my kids to understand what I went through in the divorce", "I would like to ask myself to be more loving", "I would like to ask myself to be less reactive", "I want my partner to be more understanding,'' etc.
- Being exposed to lots and lots of little requests; the words, phrases, and syntax.
- Receiving validation and support from others that it's okay to ask for what you need.
Presentations and exercises will weave together these topics.
Assistant: David Zimmerman
LaShelle Lowe-Chardé is passionate about helping people express their deepest values in their relationships and creating clarity and connection with self and others.
She began her professional career with a master’s degree in school psychology. In addition to nine years in public schools, she spent several years facilitating group healing work for adolescent youth labeled “at-risk”. During that same time she led leadership and teamwork trainings for businesses and organizations around Portland, Oregon.
Along the way she found Compassionate/Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and began training with Marshall Rosenberg and other internationally known NVC trainers. She immediately knew that Compassionate Communication was the missing piece. It offers a deep and broad yet simple understanding of human nature along with a concrete set of tools to help us act and live from a place of clarity and compassion. For LaShelle, Compassionate Communication is the hands and feet of spirituality. In 2006, she was certified as a NVC trainer.
In addition to certification in Nonviolent Communication, she has completed a three year training in Hakomi - Body Centered Therapy and introductory trainings in Emotionally Focused Therapy and with the Gottman Institute.
In 2004, she founded her business, Wise Heart (www.wiseheartpdx.org). Since that time she has served as a trainer, private coach, and mentor for the learning and practice of Compassionate Communication and mindfulness. LaShelle teaches locally as well as through video conferencing online. She has offerings for couples, women, and the general public in addition to trainings for local nonprofit organizations. Her offerings focus on combining NVC with mindfulness and a subtle understanding of reactivity and relationship skills.