EVENTS

Our latest GROK and After GROK Parties

services

We offer the following Services to Individuals, Couples, Families, Businesses, and Organizations.
Contact us for more information

Individuals, Couples and Families

Mediation
One of the comments we most often hear from our clients is, “I wish we would have met with you sooner.”  We help bridge the gaps in communication and connection between couples, partners, family members, friends, roommates, or neighbors.

Counseling and Coaching
Even if someone doesn’t like role plays (or even the idea of role plays!), we find that when they say “yes” to trying one, they become a fan! In role plays, we play the person with whom they are having the conflict, and we play that person as if they were the best listener in the world!  Then we switch to having our client play the person with whom they are having the conflict, and we play our clients role. The unfolding conversations and mutual understanding creates new perspective, healing of emotional pain, and renewed willingness and openness to further dialogue.

Empathy Sessions
Often what people need is a good listening to! We listen with heart and presence to your experience, feelings, and needs. This allows each person’s connection within themselves to deepen, and their understanding to increase, and then new options emerge for them.

Services by Phone/Zoom
Individual coaching sessions can be arranged for current situations.

Couples and Families
Mediation, counseling, facilitated dialogues
The NVC process is particularly effective in helping couples and families listen and really hear one another. Coming together in a supportive facilitated environment can provide the opportunity to share what’s most important and remove barriers that prevent heartfelt sharing. Individuals often discover a heightened awareness of one’s impact on others and can learn new ways to communicate. While considered therapeutic, an NVC session is not the same as therapy.
We can meet with couples and families in their offices, over Zoom, or in the comfort of your home. 

Family Retreats/Reconciliation
We offer families the opportunity to meet in a retreat environment or other setting to help resolve issues, re-connect, and learn new ways to communicate. Issues may concern a family business, finances, assets, properties, life transitions, death or illness. Differing values, birth order, old hurts, and unresolved conflicts can stand in the way of true understanding and connection. Coming together in a retreat setting provides an opportunity to meet in a peaceful and neutral environment with professionals who can guide you to a place of mutuality, cooperation, and respect for differences.
Family retreats can be inter-generational or one generation. They are individually designed to match the concerns and issues of each family.

Businesses, Schools, Organizations, and Groups

Mediation
We offer mediation services to facilitate a dialogue between individuals or small groups. With neutral support and structure, each side can express what is important to them and they can hear and understand one another.  From this place of honesty and mutual understanding, new strategies emerge to create movement regarding their issue or concern.

Custom Trainings and Workshops
We work with our clients to design trainings to meet the needs and requirements of the particular group. Benefits include:

• Reducing stress
• Increasing productivity and efficiency
• Resolving conflicts
• Strengthening morale and teamwork
• Maximizing staff potential
• Improving the evaluation and feedback process
• Improving the process and efficiency of meetings

Presentations and Introductory Talks
Many groups and organizations invite us to give an initial presentation to their staff or team as “a place to start.”  We tailor this presentation to your particular business. From there, we can provide further specific training for your focus of interest.

Services by Zoom/Skype
Individual coaching sessions can be arranged for current situations.

Mentoring
If you are a beginning or seasoned NVC trainer or teacher, we can provide mentoring opportunities for your continued growth and development. This includes working with challenging clients, facilitation tips, workshop and material ideas.
Purchase our training manual "GROK it!.” 
Collectively, we have over 40 years of experience teaching and training in Nonviolent Communication, including founding our local NVC organization.

Restorative Circle
The purpose of a Restorative Circle is to restore balance and wholeness whenever there is a break in connection between two people or a group of people. A Circle is called to hold a non-punitive dialog among those affected to bring back trust, connection, and safety to the community. Restorative Circles can be used in businesses, classrooms, families, non-profit organizations, congregations, or wherever people have a desire to take responsibility for their conflicts and heal relationships.
Christine has trained extensively with Dominic Barter, NVC Trainer from Brazil who developed this model. She has introduced this process to several schools in Santa Cruz who are using it for conflict resolution. 

Enneagram
The Enneagram is a system that has evolved over several centuries by people noticing their patterns of “personality” and essence. We start with determining our own “type” through self-observation. With this knowledge and awareness we can then effectively make changes in our choices, communication, behavior, and reactive patterns. It can support our understanding and compassion for our self and others. This dynamic system can now be learned from books, classes, and private sessions.   

Whole Brain Learning and Thinking Styles
The Herrmann Brain Dominance Index (HBDI) is a tool which provides information, perspective, and application for how we process information: how we think, make decisions, talk, listen, learn, act. It is based in our physiology and has high correlation with other models that explain human behavior.