Taste of "Compassionate Listening in Polarizing Times"

Taste of "Compassionate Listening in Polarizing Times":

Practicing Challenging Political Conversations with our Hearts Open and our Wisdom Intact

Facilitated by Rachel Eryn Kalish

Monday, March 21, 2022

4:00-6:30pm PST

Learn how to incorporate powerful Compassionate Listening tools into challenging and polarizing conversations with friends, family, community, and online. 

Living in a time of accelerating change and intense political polarization—with fears of politically motivated violence too often in the background—we need skills, stamina, and practices to foster healthy engagement. If you are engaging in political conversations with family, friends, community members, or on social media, this workshop will provide support and tools to maximize your effectiveness. 

In a safe and courageous container we will use all of the tools of Compassionate Listening to help each other stay grounded, and focus our energy on having challenging conversations: cultivating compassion for ourselves and others; developing the fair witness; respecting ourselves and others; listening and speaking from the heart.    

Sourced in heart connections and deep values, we will practice how to keep our democracy vital and heal our collective traumas one conversation at a time including online.

Cost

$25 - Friend

$45 - Supporter

$65 - Champion

$85 - Visionary

The cost for this workshop is tiered according to a pay-as-you-are-able structure. This enables us to offer workshops in a financially sustainable way while creating accessibility for those without financial means to attend, as well as opportunities for generosity for those who would like to support others' attendance.

We are committed to accessibility and sincerely wish for all who wish to attend our workshops to be able to do so, regardless of financial means. If the lowest available ticket price is not affordable for you, please submit a scholarship request.

Your generous donations make our scholarship program possible. If you have the means, please consider donating to our scholarship fund to enable others to attend who otherwise would not be able to do so.

Cancellation Policy

Cancellations made 7 days or more in advance of the event date will receive a 100% refund. Cancellations made within 7 days of the first session will receive a tuition credit which may be used towards any future Compassionate Listening course or workshop.

Please note that due to the container of trust that participants begin to build with one another early in the course, as well as the cumulative nature of the curriculum, we request that participants make every effort to arrive on time. If unforeseen circumstances prevent this, your registration will be canceled and your funds will be applied as a credit toward a future course. Please contact us before the course begins in order to receive a credit.

Event Details

This online course will be held on Zoom. It is highly experiential and requires your full presence, participation, and commitment to show up without distraction. 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. Our hope is that everyone will be able to connect to the event using a device that has full video and audio capability because breakout rooms will be used to guide participants through our curriculum in small groups and we will be sharing screens throughout the course.

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 and help meets your needs.

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.

Looking forward to meeting you in the circle!

Rachel Eryn Kalish, M.C.

San Francisco Bay Area

Rachel Eryn Kalish, M.C. has over 30 years as a certified compassionate listening trainer, certified mediator, facilitator, and trainer in the field of conflict transformation. She has worked with a wide spectrum of business and nonprofit organizations, with families and within communities to increase their capacity to listen deeply, navigate differences, repair broken relationships, and create & implement effective, wise, collaborative decision-making strategies with recognized results. She works on multiple levels: intrapersonal, interpersonal, organizational, political, and spiritual, balancing visionary thinking with highly sensitive attention to details that can deepen or impede trust and collaboration. She was the facilitator and thought partner in the pioneering Year of Civil Discourse which changed the conversation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Bay Area Jewish and interfaith communities, inspiring other projects around the country. She is also a certified meditation teacher. Her life’s mission is to bring conflict transformation tools and spiritual practice into our world to increase our capacity for loving, honest, rigorous conversations while maintaining respectful, caring connections. She is a senior consultant and a writer for Blueprint of We California; the principal in Workplace Connections and the co-author of Challenging Conversations, a training program distributed globally by the Ken Blanchard Companies. She is the former board president of The Compassionate Listening Project.