…freedom is the journey itself. It is like a labyrinth, a circle, a flower’s petal-by-petal opening, or a deepening spiral, a dance around the still point, the center of all things. There are always changing cycles-ups and downs, openings and closings, awakenings to love and freedom, often followed by new and subtle entanglements. In the course of this great spiral, we return to where we started again and again, but each time with a fuller, more open heart.

–Jack Kornfield, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry


Day-to-day living, in all its pressures, its ups and its downs, can sometimes feel challenging to navigate. Add in the complex challenges and upheaval that humanity is grappling with as a collective, and existence can also sometimes feel overwhelming – as though there is no anchor, no light at the end of the tunnel.

And yet, at such inflection points in our lives, I believe there exists great opportunity to hone our connection with ourselves and our own guiding lights – and with one another. We have the innate potential to survive the storms of life and even to grow and flourish through them. There exists many resources within our reach to optimize our overall wellbeing.

I offer a series of psychoeducational and experiential workshops focusing on navigating life transitions and building our resilience. In community, we explore strategies and ways of being to know ourselves more deeply – to relate to our feelings, thoughts and habitual knee-jerk reactions and patterns in more skillful ways, to ground and befriend our nervous systems, to develop a more flexible mindset, and to live in the unknown zone with compassion.

Workshops


Finding Our Way through Change

Some say we will experience, on average, three to five major transitions during our adult life. Others see life essentially as change. However one views our life transitions, at times they can feel confusing and challenging. And yet these passages can also offer opportunity for self-discovery and growth. In this workshop, we will gather together to explore our endings, beginnings and the liminal. Participants will take away insights, tools and practices that will enable you to move through your transitions with greater ease and confidence.




Cultivating Resilience through Life’s Challenges

As we emerge into a post-pandemic era, it seems resilience has entered our popular lexicon as a buzzword: a desirable quality helpful to buffer our myriad 21st century stressors and complex challenges, including healing mental health difficulties, trauma and childhood adversity. The good news is that resilience is a capacity that we all have and can continue to grow, no matter our age. This workshop is designed to introduce participants to key concepts underpinning resilience and practical research-backed skills and activities to hone resilience competencies.

Related workshops: Befriending Our Emotions


Befriending Ourselves: Surfing the Waves with Inner Compassion

The force of compassion connects us powerfully in our common humanity and enriches our relationships, our communities and our global awareness. During this inflection point in history, it appears to be a quality that we are collectively in dire need of cultivating. An important, and sometimes overlooked part of living a compassionate life is self-compassion: being open to our own suffering in a non-judgmental way with a desire to relieve it. This way of being is strongly associated with an overall sense of well-being and resilience, and a host of other benefits including an enhanced ability to cope with stress, anxiety, depression, and self-critical tendencies. During this workshop, participants will learn about the concept of self-compassion, explore their relationship to it via a variety of creative activities and group discussion, and build a toolbox of compassion-focused skills.

Related workshop: Self-Compassion for the Compassionate Caregiver

For more information or to join the mailing list, please reach me through my Contact Form or at spiralsofchange@protonmail.com