Looking ahead to March, and we are continuing our Conflict Resolution series with the second course entitled, Empathic Communication. Our Focusing Skills Course is also continuing. Plans for March include some welcome space for creative work — writing about communication, focusing and mindfulness. I didn’t let on, but this is indeed my new years resolution!
February 2012
It’s nice to start early in the year by running one of our most popular series of courses: Conflict Resolution. The first course in this three-fold theories is Active Listening — again, one of our favourites, because of the alert, listening atmosphere than often builds up over the course of the day.
We are also very busy this month with some delicate facilitation and mediation work. We value our consultancy interventions very highly; not only for the difference they can make to a difficult situation, but because of the potential for learning which they bring for everybody involved. In this case, it has been heart-warming to see the changes that people are prepared to make, and the support from the organisation itself.
The month was then surprisingly full with preparations for a jointly led Focusing weekend, the first in a series which comprises the BFTA Focusing Skills Course.
I have also started explorations into new approach for meditation which I believe will build a new dimension into my teaching of Mindfulness. It has the intriguing title: Unlearning Meditation, and is the work of an American meditation teacher, Jason Siff (see here).
I was delighted to see my usual clients again after the New Year for their coaching sessions. And we were very pleased to offer a cut-price day workshop for a local housing cooperative which was much appreciated.
December 2011
This month’s significant date was decided many years ago ... we leave you all to enjoy the season’s festivities, and will see you in the new year!
Each year, we deliver our course for medics, Dealing with Conflicts and Complaints in Healthcare ( Dealing with Conflicts and Complaints). Formerly a two-day course, it’s now sadly a single day, but still a good chunk of time to introduce the doctors to the radical differences our approaches can make.
November is always a busy month for trainings. We also offered our three-fold course to an international business based in the UK on Conflict Resolution, which includes three separate courses on:
This month’s communication bulletin is on the theme of negotiation. (If you want to receive our monthly letter, sign up here: Communication Tips). So it’s great to have our new YouTube video finished, along similar lines: Communication in Sales:
The highlight of October’s events for us was the UK’s first-ever Focusing School (www.focusingschool.co.uk), inspired by the annual International Focusing School held each year in America. I’ve been involved in the set-up and organisation of the school over the past year, and come the event, I found myself playing a key role as Master of Ceremonies, along with Jerry Conway (www.jerryconway.co.uk/). Jerry and I also collaborated on one of our afternoon workshops on Sleep Focusing, which proved a lively event — with more than one person nodding off as we practised the technique! Another of my workshops was on the theme of communication from a Focusing angle, especially as it combines with Nonviolent Communication™ (we’ve a brief web page on this theme: Focusing with Nonviolent Communication™ (NVC)). Peter Kuklis led a morning Atunement and a his workshop on Focusing and Meditation proved very popular.
Apart from that, our golden October, with its glorious sunshine, also turned us green, as we had our first experiences of the car club, Zipcar. This gave us the thrills of driving brand new cars without paying for them, and the satisfaction of reducing congestion by car sharing. We also found ourselves on our bikes a lot more (I’ve yet to discover how to arrive at a client’s looking elegant as well as environmentally friendly!).
September 2011
Our big news this month is that we’re going green. Well, we’re taking another step in that direction, and becoming a little greener. After all, there’s always more to learn, and many new ways to support the environment. One of them that’s attracted our attention is Streetcar (Zipcar)
So we’re selling the car, lovely though it is. And we’ll be discovering how we can contribute in this way to our crowded city and country by joining Streetcar. One Streetcar vehicle can apparently replace the road use of 26 car owners.
As ever, September feels like the start of a new year (all those years in acadamia, I guess). We enjoyed seeing current coaching clients after the summer, and giving a warm welcome to our news ones. Peter offered a day of pro bono training for a small but extraordinary international children’s charity (www.international-childcare-trust.org).
Peter also attended a training for UK trainers run by visiting Nonviolent Communication trainer, Miki Kasthan (www.baynvc.org).
The month ends with a holiday-cum-writing-retreat in Sardinia. I’m hoping to move forward on some long-cherished writing projects, as well as with some new ideas.
Creatively, this month saw the end of some major web-based changes with our wonderful team, Dridhamati and Anna Halfpenny. If you take a browse through the site, you may spot some major changes. And we’re rearing to go with more video projects. We’ve loved working with Laurie (see our August news) — and hope more is to come.
August 2011
Responding to the riots
Ironically, we were away delivering trainings in Listening and Empathic Communication when the riots broke out. Peter and I watched the tempests break out, on the hotel TV. We saw the presenter, tense and fearful, as he interviewed a mob on the night-time streets of Manchester (me, wishing I could help him engage with the rioters better — though taking my hat off to him for his courage). And we saw the trauma, loss and devastation for those personally and professionally hit. At the same time, we were preparing our materials on the ups and downs of human interaction: how we connect empathically with other people, and what goes on when disconnection takes root — a dichotomy which points to the heart of violence, from the minor hiccups of everyday interraction, to fullscale war. I was moved to write a special edition email/blog contribution, adding my own small voice to the crescendo of responses around me. I wanted to bring it close to home; what we can each of us do, individually, to build human connection and peace. You can find it on our August blog: What can the riots teach me about my communication?
Lollywood?
Well, August saw our first venture into the grand world of film-making at Life at Work (that’s Life at Work, L—, Lollywood — get it?). And having begun, the creativity is rolling. First, we met inspired film-maker, Laurie Girling. Currently a gifted amateur, Laurie is building his portfolio in preparation for launching his professional services.
We have been extraordinarily lucky to have had his enthusiasm and expertise taking us through our first steps. We have a whole series of future videos already planed for the autumn, but here’s the result of work our first collaboration: an introduction to the company by me in my garden, just outside my study.
Film and Artwork: Video on Listening
You may have noticed how we’ve chosen artwork images to illustrate our site. So we were very happy when Laurie introduced us to local artist, Mick Abbot, and showed us some of videos of Mick at work. I jumped at the chance to produce some illustrated educational videos, and then astonished and moved at Mick’s response; an immediate, generous and heart-felt response to our values. Just as Laurie had done, Mick instantly grasped the spirit and essence of what we’re offering and teaching. So Mick and Laurie set to work at lightning speed, and created our first educational video on Listening:
Early August 2011
Resolving Conflicts
We’re working this month with a team who want more skill in resolving conflicts. Usually teams benefit in various ways from our training. Team-members learn new ways of communicating smoothly and efficiently within their own team; and they practice approaches for dealing with ‘difficult’ people outside it, such as other colleagues, clients and customers: read more >>
A Mindfulness Month!
Attending a teacher’s Mindfulness retreat in North Wales is our way of investing in our own skills. Exploring Mindfulness in more depth, we spend our time updating, learning, networking and sharing approaches with other teachers. An essential way to keep ourselves well-primed and inspired — essential for offering the best to our clients. You can read about how we integrate Mindfulness with our other approaches in the Mindfulness section of our website: read more >>
Authentic Movement
We’re also building on our work with movement as way to greater awareness and embodiment. So August also sees us heading off to another retreat on Authentic Movement, which is an approach very close to our own training in Wholebody Focusing read more >>
Workshops in Nonviolent Communication and Focusing
The rest of the month sees us surprisingly busy delivering communication and Focusing workshops at an international Buddhist convention.
July 2011
Back from the Advanced Focusing Retreat in Sardinia
We’re back from our annual retreat in Sardinia — although we live the Good Life there so fully that we usually dub it less a retreat than a rare treat!
We’re feeling refreshed and recharged...
The group has been exploring and deepening emotional intelligence with the insights of Focusing.
Now back, the practices continue to permeate through us, bringing positive change, wider perspectives and greater awareness.
As one participant writes:
...thank you all for a wonderful couple of weeks in Sardinia. I feel I came back to London with precious memories that I will treasure for a long time to come. Memories of beauty and friendship, meaningfulness and fun, refinement and pleasure, sunshine and laughter.
So it’s back to reality for us — or was that real, and this is all a dream?
We were lucky to have several artists with us on the retreat too, drawing and painting in their spare time.
What else this July?
We have some new coaching clients — a Chief Executive from an international, London-based charity, and an NHS Lead in mental health from a local region. We continue to run taster courses locally in Nonviolent Communication and Focusing. We’re also heading off on a Mindfulness course to network and learn from other Mindfulness practitioners. While July is typically supposed to be a quiet month, it’s looking full of riches and interesting new projects. Let’s hope for some more sunshine too, as we enter full summer.
June 2011
Well, this is it... we’re finally launching our monthly Communication Tips at the start of June! The tips give us a chance to respond to your questions, and to offer support and discussion on issues which are alive and buzzing for our readers. To see what it’s all about, visit our blog.
After a year or so of preparing the new site with all its downloads and online resources, here we are — that’s really me on the content — Elizabeth (Locana), plus long, hard work from our support, technical and design team (thanks Dridhamati/Pierrick, Peter, Viryakumara, Lisa, Eddie and Anna).
So apart from finding out what happens when we send the links to our whole Life at Work community (that’s all our various clients and, well, anyone who’s expressed an interest... our suppliers, friends, distant cousins, long-lost godmothers, you get the picture) — we’ll be following the discussion on the blog, taking feedback on the web, and adding posts about the launch on facebook.
Once we’ve come back down to earth from the sheer joy of completion, it’ll be life at work, as usual.
Advanced Focusing Retreat in Sardinia
It’s our annual visit to exquisite La Maddalena, where Roger hosts, cooks and serves us five-star cuisine, while we delve deeply into the extraordinary riches of Focusing practice.
Last year, we ended up re-defining our ‘retreat’, simply as a ‘treat’. Apart from our retreat and course times (morning, late afternoon and evening), everything was interspersed with play. We sank into a rhythm of long, lazy mealtimes, made daily trips down the winding footpaths to the private beach, lounged in Roger’s secret gardens, jogged, dozed, chatted — just soaked ourselves in sunshine, peace and health. Some artistic folk took out chalks, charcoals and paints to capture what sprang up in nature, or before their inner eyes. Others read, wrote, practised yoga or danced as the mood took them. For ten days, the flowering mediterranean wove its spells, with the scent of crushed herbs underfoot, the gentle osmosis of sea-breezes, and a breath-taking seascape complete with islets, white horses, far-off sailboats and the distant blue mountains of Corsica across the watery main.
Team Development
Back in the UK, the end of the month sees us busy, helping build teams in a NHS Mental Health Trust. We’ll be combining different elements of our team skills to help them take stock:
These teams have asked to focus on what they’ve achieved so far, to learn how to express that in a genuine way and so to build on good practice and consolidate strengths — before discussing how and where they go next in order to best support their patients and deliver their service within current constraints.
May 2011
This month, we’re delighted to launch our gleaming new website — along with a whole raft of new courses and interactive opportunities:
Our work has developed in many new ways since we began in 2004. We’re excited and inspired by this, and we want our new directions to be reflected in our site. We’re doing this in several ways:
We highlight our main areas of expertise, which covers interpersonal skills and human interaction:
We give detailed information about how we work, that is, our different approaches. Each approach by itself offers a rich means for learning more about human interaction. Together they create a powerful process for human change. Some of our consultants are rare (possibly unique) in specialising in all three approaches:
Our new interactive blog allows us to respond to people’s real and pertinent questions as they put their learning into practice — and for you to add your own questions and thoughts.
Too often following our consultancy, a course or sessons of coaching, people head off into busy lives, and the insights and positive changes are gradually dimmed through the usual hectic and habitual pressures. We want the blog to help keep those insights and changes alive.
Why free online learning resources?
All our courses delegates are given a tailor-made handbook full of exercises and details of our models. But we’d like everyone to have access to them. Our online learning resources offer a selection of our materials. This is us at our most creative edge as these materials are continually changing, evolving and growing. We hope you enjoy absorbing and learning the processes of human interaction they all describe in different ways.
Coming shortly...
Bi-monthly Communication Tips by email
A number of new courses and coaching topics
We’ll say more about these next month. See you then!
Dealing with Conflicts and Complaints
Well, August saw our first venture into the grand world of film-making at Life at Work (that’s Life at Work, L—, Lollywood — get it?). And having begun, the creativity is rolling. First, we met inspired film-maker, Laurie Girling. Currently a gifted amateur, Laurie is building his portfolio in preparation for launching his professional services.
