Coming Home to Presence with Ourselves and Each Other
Relating to others with emotional depth and presence is a way of coming home.
This group brings a community together to practice Nonviolent Communication and meditation
Tuesdays, 6:00pm - 7:30pm, July 30th - August 20th
We will meet in-person in Sausalito
While many of us long to be true to who we are and connect deeply with others, our innate capacity to be fully present with ourselves and each other is often blocked by limiting beliefs about social scripts we ought to follow in order to belong. This 4-week group, led by a Psychologist and a Nonviolent Communication Coach, will offer experiential practices and skills to slow down and center our minds and bodies and tune into what feels authentic to us and explore what we truly need from ourselves and others.
The series is designed with two intentions. The first is to build a community that gathers to create a safe and supportive container for each person to experience self-discovery and express what feels real in a space that is shared with others who are doing the same. The second is to learn and practice skills for cultivating presence and accessing a depth of emotional connection with others through Nonviolent Communication (NVC).
What to Expect
Each session will include guided meditations, a short talk, a poetry reading, and experiential practices based on Nonviolent Communication that will help you express yourself and connect with others authentically. At the end of each session, the facilitators will invite anyone who likes to join them at Schoonmaker Point Marina to watch the sunset together on the beach.
Themes for Each Week:
July 30th: Coming Home to Ourselves
This session will explore what it means to return to ourselves alone and with others and cultivate self-empathy for our emotions as they arise.
August 6th: Acceptance, Calming the Anxious Mind, and Finding Resonance
We will focus on how we reground ourselves when anxiety arises, what it means to feel safe and free to be ourselves, and deepen connection with others.
August 13th: Undoing Aloneness
This session will explore how to melt the feeling of loneliness, including the sense of distance we may experience with others.
August 20th: The Upwards Spiral
We will focus on how to cultivate and grow the experiences, relationships, and activities that bring us home to ourselves.
Event Details
To support this depth of sharing, each drop in class will be limited to six participants. The group will gather in Sausalito and location of the meeting will be shared upon registration. The registration fee is $30. The facilitators are happy to offer a discount for those who would like to attend but lack the funds to do so.
Facilitator Bios:
Nethra Samarawickrema, PhD, is a communication, career, and leadership coach. She brings her training in Anthropology, Design Thinking, and Nonviolent Communication to help her clients craft lives and build careers that express who they are. She coaches her clients to deepen their self-awareness, communicate their needs and boundaries, embrace difficult conversations, and resolve workplace conflicts. She also trains teams in organizations to transform the culture of communication at work and to enhance collaboration.
Robert Foster, PhD, has been working as a Psychologist in the Bay Area for 35 years. He works with people to create an open shared space for slowing down and becoming aware of habits of thinking and emotional reactivity. He works with his clients to overcome anxiety and he believes that awareness is an essential to developing skills that leads to peace of mind and freedom from emotional distress.