Is this you?
You recognize that stress and witnessing suffering in the world are a part of life, and you do the best you can to stay grounded. But, at times, it all becomes too much, and you would like more skills to help you meet the challenge of feeling fear, overwhelm, dysregulation, anger, and despair with regard to stress in your own life and the painful events you see in the world.
You might be new to Wise Heart, or you might have taken numerous courses with us. Either way, you are ready to direct your energy toward cultivating the consciousness and skills to respond to stress and suffering in a way that helps you stay grounded.
You understand that becoming lost in your suffering or stress doesn’t help create the change you want to see in the world. You know that the consciousness you cultivate matters, and you want to be a consistent source of equanimity, compassion, and wisdom for yourself and others.
What's It All About?
In this series, you will have the opportunity to learn and practice the consciousness and skills of MCD in community. Joining together in community with shared intention is one of the most nourishing things you can do to support your own sense of groundedness and hope. When we learn to trust and lean into the potency of our interdependence, we gain the support of all our natural inclinations and access our innate systems as they were meant to facilitate our thriving and resilience. We are able to shed our conditioning and come more into our authentic way of relating.
In any series from Wise Heart, our priority is to respond to what’s alive and emerging in the moment and, at the same time, we have designed a specific curriculum. Here is a summary :
As a premise we offer that recognizing our interdependence and cultivating community in diverse forms is the common thread in our pursuit of groundedness and well-being. With each concept and practice in the series we will weave in this central thread.
Throughout the eight weeks, we will drop into the consciousness and skills of mourning and celebration as primary tools for staying grounded in challenging times.
The first and last weeks will be dedicated to introduction and integration accordingly. The middle six weeks will be dedicated to the following themes:
Thriving and resilience
True security
Agency
About Mindful Compassionate Dialogue
Mindful Compassionate Dialogue (MCD) naturally supports you in creating the relationships you want by integrating the wisdom and skills of three powerful modalities: Hakomi, Nonviolent Communication (NVC), and mindfulness.
Each modality contributes something unique to the process. Hakomi offers clarity about reactivity and healing. NVC provides a method for achieving self-responsibility, skillful communication, and agency. And mindfulness adds the stable attention and clear focus needed to continuously refine your understanding and skills.
MCD is a system meant to provide access to agency, compassion, mindfulness, and wisdom. Personal transformation is achieved through practice with the 12 Relationship Competencies and 9 Foundations, which arise from a central, life-serving intention.
WHAT to expect
In this series, you will learn and practice the consciousness and skills of Mindful Compassionate Dialogue that help you respond to stress and suffering in your own life and in the world.
You will engage in conceptual learning, group dialogue, experiential body-centered learning, and skills practice. Practice exercises will be done individually, in pairs, and in small groups.
Details
Facilitation team: Elia Paz and Ceferino Cenizo, with assistance from MCD Guides Beth Laskin and Sam Einhorn
When: 10:00 am - 12:00 pm PST every Saturday for 8 sessions beginning on January 24, 2026:
January: 24, 31 / February: 7, 14, 21, 28 / March: 7, 14
Where: Online video conferencing
Cost: $295.00 USD
Please email us at info@wiseheartcommunity.org if financial contribution is the only thing preventing you from joining us.
You may attend live or at your own pace by accessing the materials and recordings. The course will be hosted on Zoom Video conferencing.
Details:
Live attendance means:
Arriving on time to the workshop
Attending and participating in at least 6 of the 8 sessions
Access to the video recording for 8 weeks following the workshop
Receiving a detailed handout that you can download and keep for later reference
The opportunity to be assigned a study buddy
Ensuring you have consistent access to internet speeds and connectivity that support video conferencing (600kbps/1.2Mbps (up/down) for HQ video; 1.5Mbps/1.5Mbps (up/down) for gallery view)
Facility with using the Zoom video conferencing system. For more technical information about Zoom, you can go here.
Self-paced attendance means:
Access to the video recording for eight weeks following the series
Receiving a detailed handout that you can download and keep for later reference
The opportunity to be assigned a study buddy