MEDIATE YOUR LIFE LEARNING & PRACTICE GROUP

This Program Gives You The Ability To:

• Recover more quickly in the moment of a difficult interaction and remain more centered
• Deepen presence and connection in conversations and relationships
• Use language more skillfully in your interactions with people
• Cope better with stress, overwhelm, and inner conflict about the past and future
• Transform anger and frustration into empathic understanding for self and other
• Feel more confidence and skill having difficult conversations
• Bring your listening and empathy skills to a new level
• Express yourself more authentically and courageously, and with compassion
• Heal emotional hurt and pain between you and others, and experience reconciliation and forgiveness
• Develop empathic community of support and learning at this higher level
• Work together better to discover creative ideas and solutions

The Mediate Your Life (MYL) online learning and practice group offers conflict maps for navigating the regions and territories of human conflict, internal and external. With a mediation framework, communication components and skills from the international work of Nonviolent Communication (NVC), and mindfulness at the core, the MYL approach helps you return to empathic connection, compassion, and new creative possibilities and solutions. The skills and structures help you return to empathic connection when you’re triggered into the brain’s Fight-Flight-Freeze-Appease safety-survival stress response system. A central aspect of the training is the relationship of the conscious self with the subconscious and superconscious dimensions of mind.

The Mediate Your Life training program was co-created and developed by John Kinyon and Ike Lasater starting in 2002. It has been and continues to be offered throughout the U.S. and internationally. MYL is also integrated with the work of Richard Schwartz's Internal Family Systems (IFS).

The 10 Conflict Territories and Maps:

1. Self-Connection and Wellbeing/Self-Connection Practice is where you get centered and grounded in mindful awareness, regulate your brain’s fight-flight-freeze reaction to conflict, and experience deep, intrinsic wellbeing and universal benevolence.
2. Empathy in Speaking and Listening/Elements of Empathy is where you receive and give empathy support through conversation that is nourishing, sustaining, and enriching.
3. Compassion for Other/Enemy Image Process is where you are experiencing judgments towards another person, and you want to shift and respond from an empathic, caring, and effective place inside you.
4. Resilience with Feedback/Mourn Celebrate Learn is where you are receiving difficult feedback or evaluation from others, and you want to shift into learning and growing from a place of self-care and celebration inside you.
5. Self-Compassion for the Past/Chooser-Evaluator is where you are experiencing judgments towards yourself for something you did, and you want to shift into self-compassion, kindness, learning and growth.
6. Self-Direction for the Future/Internal Mediation is where you are experiencing inner confusion, stuckness, or barriers about a direction to move in, a decision to make, or goals to reach. This may involve inner demands of what you think you should, must, or can’t do.
7. Peace in Intensity/Intensity Practice is where you are getting triggered into a fight-flight-freeze reaction in a difficult moment of an interaction, and you want to be able to shift into self-connection, empathy, and responding in harmony with your values.
8. Freedom with No and Yes/Need Behind the No is where you are experiencing difficulty hearing or saying “no,” and you want to respond from a place of self-connection, compassion, honesty, and creative possibility for meeting the needs of self and others.
9. Bridging Differences/Difficult Conversations is where you are having a challenging conversation with someone, and you want to hear and understand each other, connect in what matters to both of you personally and universally, and collaborate to find solutions.
10. Healing Hurt and Divides/Reconciliation & Healing is where there is emotional hurt or pain between you and another. Perhaps there are judgments of blame, wrongdoing, breaking of trust, and you want to have a reconciling and healing conversation.

Learning and Practice Content. The weekly live group sessions cycle through 12 weeks covering the 10 conflict "territories" and "maps" from the work of Mediate Your Life training for navigating situations of life's challenges and conflicts (inner and outer). You learn and practice how to tap into the positive and transformative Power of Conflict. The training integrates skills of awareness and language, deepening and strengthening the ability to maintain and return to presence and compassionate, creative action in relation to challenging situations.

Learning and practice in the group happen in the context of building empathic community and support with others in the class and in your life.

Weekly Group Meetings. The group meets weekly for 1.5 hours of live group learning and demonstration sessions with John, and after each session there is the option of an additional 30 minutes of partner practice. The group meets on the Zoom video platform. There is also the encouragement of ongoing self-practice and practice with people in the program, access to written, audio, and video learning materials and resources, including books, handouts, and recordings of the live sessions.

Recordings. The weekly live group sessions are recorded if you miss a session.

If you aren't able to attend the live group sessions. It's also possible to register for the course without attending the live group sessions if your schedule or time zone doesn't permit. Email us if you are interested in this option.

Email: programs@johnkinyon.com for any questions or requests, including what topic is going to be offered on a given week and where the group is in the 12 week cycle.

We go in the order listed below and cover 1 bullet point per week. The topics are covered in a 12 week cycle, and you can join anytime in the cycle.

Email programs@johnkinyon.com if you want to know what topic is going to be offered on a given week and where the group is in the 12 week cycle.

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GETTING GROUNDED

• Self-Connection Practice

• Empathy in Speaking and Listening

INTERNAL CONFLICT OR PAIN - My Reaction to Another

• Compassion for Other

• Resilience with Feedback

HAVING A CONVERSATION WITH SOMEONE - Difficult Moments

• Peace in Intensity

• Freedom with No and Yes - Hearing No

• Freedom with No and Yes - Saying No

INTERNAL CONFLICT OR PAIN - Conflict with Myself

• Self-Compassion for the Past

• Self-Direction for the Future

HAVING A CONVERSATION WITH SOMEONE - Challenging Conversations

• Bridging Differences

• Healing Hurt and Divides - When I am the "Receiver" of hurt

• Healing Hurt and Divides - When I am the "Actor" of hurt

In this video, I talk about the program, which is now called the Mediate Your Life Learning & Practice. In describing the course, I talk about Conflict Maps, The Power of Conflict, a Triad Model of Conversation & Consciousness, and being able to respond to the larger challenges we face in the world. Also, I mention "Level 2" and "Level 1" training, however I no longer use those terms, nor do I currently offer what was called Level 1 training.