Online: Communication Survival Skills for the Holidays
with Elaine Retholtz & Valerie Brown
Tuesday, December 13th, 2022 | 7:30pm – 9:00pm ET
The holiday season can be both a joyful and a stressful time. It may be filled with social gatherings, rituals, and memories. This can lead to social comparisons, loneliness, anxiety, depression, and stress. Holiday celebrations can bring with it – especially with COVID – a sense of overwhelm and heightened expectations that feed tensions and underscore feelings of separation.
Join Elaine and Val as they reflect on how they are supported and grounded in practices based in wisdom from the Buddhist and Quaker faith traditions and relational mindfulness. These practices support our ability to bridge differences and improve the quality of our relationships this holiday season. This evening will be very interactive with opportunities to reflect and practice both in small breakout rooms and with the full community.
Learning Objectives:
Practice mindful speaking with clarity and kindness.
Practice handling strong emotions to support greater understanding.
Listen for connection instead of correction
Registration:
Please register at the highest level that your generosity offers.
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Registration Fees include Teacher Support
New York Insight Meditation Center has streamlined the registration fee levels. Members of our Circle of Friends are eligible to receive 20% off of the Sustaining Rate via a code provided in the email confirming membership, which you can enter after clicking the Sustaining Level registration.
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**Sustaining Level: This level reflects the actual costs to support this program. Circle of Friends members eligible for 20% discount with code. Click here to join.
***Subsidized Base: Made possible by the generosity of Benefactor Level above and other donations to ensure participation by those requiring financial assistance.
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Teacher(s)
Elaine Retholtz
Elaine Retholtz has been studying and practicing the Dharma since 1988. In addition to teaching Dharma at New York Insight, she is a certified Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction teacher and has a deep interest in helping students integrate mindfulness practice into daily life. Elaine is committed to deepening her own understanding of issues of diversity and the way racial conditioning in the United States affects all of us — both as individuals and in relationship to the institutions we are a part of, including New York Insight. She’s been involved in New York Insight’s diversity efforts for many years, serving on the diversity committee, and working with others to create spaces – for diverse groups of practitioners as well as for white practitioners meeting separately – to explore these issues within a Dharma frame.
Valerie Brown
Valerie Brown is an author, ordained Buddhist-Quaker Dharma teacher in the lineage of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village tradition, facilitator, and executive coach specializing in leadership development and mindfulness with a focus on diversity, social equity, and inclusion. A former lawyer and lobbyist, Valerie transformed her high-pressure, twenty-year corporate career into serving leaders and nonprofits to create trustworthy, authentic, compassionate, and connected workspaces.
Her new book is Hope Leans Forward: Braving Your Way toward Simplicity, Awakening, and Peace (Broadleaf, 2022). An accredited leadership coach, she is the Founder and Chief Mindfulness Officer of Lead Smart Coaching, LLC, supporting leaders to apply and integrate leadership and mindfulness for greater resilience, clarity, and creativity, and is a co-director of Georgetown’s Institute for Transformational Leadership.
Valerie leads an annual pilgrimage to El Camino de Santiago, Spain to celebrate the power of sacred places and is a certified Kundalini yoga teacher, engaging leaders to embody somatic wisdom and creativity.