Join us for a FREE equinox ritual space + time for Q & A and to meet myself and Lucy as facilitators of our new offering, Weaving New Ritual.

Register here for ritual + info session!

A FREE Embodiment Practice Space for Queer Community

+ Here Together Retreat Q&A

Come join us for a sweet little embodiment practice at the full moon + time to get to know Here Together Retreat facilitator Nicole Bauman and ask your questions about the retreat!

From 7-8 PM EST on Thursday, May 23 on Zoom, Nicole will lead a simple guided embodiment practice for nourishment and resilience at the full moon, and then hold open space for retreat Q and A at the end.

Come join us and see if this retreat/Nicole’s facilitation might be a good fit for you! 

All are welcome, even if you aren’t sure you can make the retreat. 

Spend an hour in queer community, and leave with a nugget of resourcing body practice you can carry with you.

Zoom link will be emailed to registrants the week of the event. A recording will be shared with all registrants even if you can’t join live.

Please fill out this form to register.

We are surrounded by conflict. In the world. In our countries. In our states. In our cities. In our communities. In our homes. Especially in times such as these, it is easy to feel despair and overwhelm, questioning whether there’s even a point to trying when we, as individuals, feel no real power to enact change.

When we remain in our manufactured bubbles of individualistic capitalism, consumerism, and apathy we can give up hope of moving beyond division to a life where diverse communities thrive.

So where do we start?

Close to home, in the small spaces: ourselves.

We use a sharp pin of education to poke the tiniest of holes in that surprisingly strong bubble, and we learn.

In order to grow a collective and sustained voice for change we need to grow our capacity to connect with ourselves and connect with our neighbors with more compassion and empathy.

Join us in learning how to relate to ourselves and one another with skill, care and effectiveness. Walk away from this workshop with a new set of skills and tools that are ready to be applied to our lives, as well as vocabulary to better understand our own complicity in the divisive powers that be.

More than ever, the world needs your aliveness.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Learn how to navigate conflict through the lens of Nonviolent Communication with radical empathy as its foundation.

Please join us for this event by registering here. This event will take place at the Goshen Public Library in Goshen, IN.

More than ever, the world needs your aliveness. Join me in learning how to relate with skill, compassion and effectiveness.

We want to know that our collective efforts to bring about needed changes and work toward Just Transition will be fruitful. When we pour ourselves into the things we care about, we want to know it matters. 

Especially in times such as these, how exhausting to see our hard work melt away as conflict slows down, stalls out, or, worse yet, dissolves our collaborations.

The legacies of a domination paradigm (capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, to name a few) have left us without the skills we need to lean into interdependence. This makes it incredibly hard to collaborate effectively. It makes it harder still to find generativity in conflict.

But it doesn’t have to be this way! Nonviolent or “Compassionate” Communication (NVC) offers us a toolkit to deepen our own embodied self-connection, build our capacity to reach out for support, and relate to ourselves and one another with empathy so that we can show up more fully to our work in the world. And as we begin to unpack the way that domination culture has shaped our very language, we can learn new/old ways of communicating that bring us more deeply into alignment with our values, our purpose, and into connection with one another.

During this online intro workshop we will explore practical strategies for undoing domination in ourselves, our communication, our relationships, and our collaborations. The session will include interactive content and practices to engage with real-time examples from your life. You will have the opportunity to be paired up with another participant for practice after the workshop.

Details and registration here.

More than ever, the world needs your aliveness. Gather to learn and practice relating with energy, skill, and effectiveness.

Join us Thursday, December 7th at 5 pm at The LGBTQ Center in South Bend, IN.

Nonviolent or “Compassionate” Communication (NVC) offers us a toolkit to deepen our own embodied self-connection, build our capacity to reach out for support, and relate to ourselves and one another with empathy so that we can show up more fully to our work in the world.

During this intro workshop we will explore practical strategies for undoing domination in ourselves, our communication, our relationships, and our collaborations. The session will include interactive content and practices to engage with real-time examples from your life. You will have the opportunity to be paired up with a buddy for practice after the workshop (if you choose).

Seats are limited! Please RSVP here!

This workshop is sliding scale and no one will be turned away for lack of funds. If you're able to, please consider paying $5-20 for attending.

We want to know that our collective efforts to bring about needed changes and work toward Just Transition will be fruitful. When we pour ourselves into the things we care about, we want to know it matters. Especially in times such as these, how exhausting to see our hard work melt away as conflict slows down, stalls out, or, worse yet, dissolves our collaborations. The legacies of a domination paradigm (capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, to name a few) have left us without the skills we need to lean into interdependence. This makes it incredibly hard to collaborate effectively. It makes it harder still to find generativity in conflict. But it doesn’t have to be this way! Nonviolent or “Compassionate” Communication (NVC) offers us a toolkit to deepen our own embodied self-connection, build our capacity to reach out for support, and relate to ourselves and one another with empathy so that we can show up more fully to our work in the world. And as we begin to unpack the way that domination culture has shaped our very language, we can learn new/old ways of communicating that bring us more deeply into alignment with our values, our purpose, and into connection with one another.

This intro workshop is being offered as part of AMBS’ annual Rooted and Grounded Conference. The theme this year is Pathways Through Climate Doom: Resistance and Resilience. You can find all the details and sign up for part or all of this hybrid in-person (Elkhart, IN)/virtual conference here.

Join us on Sunday, September 10, 2:30-4:30 EST, at Shakespeare Meadows Farm, Shakespeare, ON. 

Registration and details here!

More than ever, the world needs your aliveness. Gather to learn and practice relating with energy, skill, and effectiveness.

We want to know that our collective efforts to bring about needed changes and work toward Just Transition will be fruitful. When we pour ourselves into the things we care about, we want to know it matters. Especially in times such as these, how exhausting to see our hard work melt away as conflict slows down, stalls out, or, worse yet, dissolves our collaborations.

The legacies of a domination paradigm (capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, to name a few) have left us without the skills we need to lean into interdependence. This makes it incredibly hard to collaborate effectively. It makes it harder still to find generativity in conflict.

But it doesn’t have to be this way! Nonviolent or “Compassionate” Communication (NVC) offers us a toolkit to deepen our own embodied self-connection, build our capacity to reach out for support, and relate to ourselves and one another with empathy so that we can show up more fully to our work in the world. And as we begin to unpack the way that domination culture has shaped our very language, we can learn new/old ways of communicating that bring us more deeply into alignment with our values, our purpose, and into connection with one another.

During this intro workshop we will explore practical strategies for undoing domination in ourselves, our communication, our relationships, and our collaborations. The session will include interactive content and practices to engage with real-time examples from your life. You will have the opportunity to be paired up with a buddy for practice after the workshop (if you choose). 

Registration and details here!

Full weekend camping available!

Dear queer and trans community.

Can you feel your feet on the ground right now? Your seat in the chair? Your breath touching the back of your own throat? You are here and alive right now, and I am so grateful for you. You just being is a gift to the universe.

And I know it doesn’t feel that way all the time. Where I live in Indiana (along with many states), trans youth could be about to lose safe access to gender affirming care. We are surviving so much right now, at all the intersections of our identities. 

More than ever, it’s time to be together in queer* community, connecting to land and our non-human community, in service of our healing, nourishment, rest, resilience, aliveness, and maybe even our thriving. 

*Queer meaning the whole beautiful rainbow of the LGBTQIA+++ rainbow and beyond. You are welcome here.

Why this retreat?

Are you longing for more queer community? (especially in the midwest/great lakes watershed!?!?) 

Feeling isolated and alone as you face into your trauma and healing work? 

Wishing for more support and connection as you learn to tend to yourself, while also leaning into your commitments to justice, to collective liberation? 

Just plain struggling to make it under capitalism!?

If you’re feeling a yes to any of these, come join us for some slowing down and dropping in together this July, at a beautiful campsite near Delton, Michigan! 

I hope you will leave feeling more connected to yourself, to land/nature, to some seeds of healing and simple tools to keep watering them, and to a deeper sense of connection and belonging to queer community and the wider web of non-human community that sustains us all.  

Find all the details and registration here and please be in touch with any questions. We have limited space. Registration will close July 7. 

More than ever, the world needs your aliveness. Gather to learn and practice relating with energy, skill, and effectiveness.

Join us IN-PERSON at the Salus Center in Lansing, MI!

Nonviolent or “Compassionate” Communication (NVC) offers us a toolkit to deepen our own embodied self-connection, build our capacity to reach out for support, and relate to ourselves and one another with empathy so that we can show up more fully to our work in the world.

During this intro workshop we will explore practical strategies for undoing domination in ourselves, our communication, our relationships, and our collaborations. The session will include interactive content and practices to engage with real-time examples from your life. You will have the opportunity to be paired up with a buddy for practice after the workshop (if you choose).

Seats are limited! Learn more and RSVP at: http://tinyurl.com/SalusCenterWorkshop

This workshop is sliding scale and no one will be turned away for lack of funds. If you're able to, please consider paying $5-20 for attending.

We’ve been looking for opportunities for past participants in our online Nonviolent Communication workshops to gather in person to build connections and deepen their conflict resilience practices. To that end, we are inviting all alumni to our first Navigating Conflict Mixer in person at the Good Work Institute in Kingston, NY! 

This event is designed to be a social gathering with a Nonviolent Communication (NVC) practice and refresher built in. Nicole Bauman will be present to facilitate, so this is also a rare chance to connect with them in person!  

This offering is intended for anyone who has participated in any of our Nonviolent Communication  workshop series. If there are one or two people who you think would resonate with this work, we encourage you to invite them to join you. We also welcome those who have worked or have considered working with Nicole, or have an interest in taking a future Navigating Conflict class. 

Refreshments will be served.

Learn more.

Register.

Consider joining me at WFAN’s (Women, Food and Agriculture Network) 2022 Conference, “Seeding Community: Revolutionary Healing through Cooperative Models.”

You can register here for this virtual event.

I’ll be facilitating the LGBTQIA+ Affinity Room. Here’s what they have to say about it:

Our rooms are dedicated spaces for reflection, vulnerability, bravery, and community with trained and skilled facilitators to hold safety as paramount. We recognize that it can be challenging to find time, space, and opportunity to connect with folks with whom you may share intersectional interests and identities. We hope these rooms provide folks with a starting point for future collaboration, an ongoing discussion, and an opportunity to engage in a space inclusive to the identities of the listed affinity rooms where folks do not need or feel they need to conform.

More than ever, the world needs your aliveness. Gather to learn and practice relating with energy, skill, and effectiveness.

Come Learn and Practice the Foundations of Nonviolent Communication in a beautiful rural outdoor setting at the Center for Belonging Folk School in Decorah Iowa.

Reserve your spot by Aug 28.

We want to know that our collective efforts to bring about needed changes and work toward Just Transition will be fruitful. When we pour ourselves into the things we care about, we want to know it matters. Especially in times such as these, how exhausting to see our hard work melt away as conflict slows down, stalls out, or, worse yet, dissolves our collaborations.

The legacies of a domination paradigm (capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, to name a few) have left us without the skills we need to lean in to interdependence. This makes it incredibly hard to collaborate effectively. It makes it harder still to find generativity in conflict.

But it doesn’t have to be this way! Nonviolent or “Compassionate” Communication (NVC) offers us a toolkit to deepen our own embodied self-connection, build our capacity to reach out for support, and relate to ourselves and one another with empathy so that we can show up more fully to our work in the world. And as we begin to unpack the way that domination culture has shaped our very language, we can learn new/old ways of communicating that bring us more deeply into alignment with our values, our purpose, and into connection with one another.

During this weekend workshop, we will explore practical strategies for undoing domination in ourselves, our communication, our relationships, and our collaborations. The session will include interactive content and practices to engage with real-time examples from your life. You will have the opportunity to be paired up with a buddy for practice beyond the course (if you choose). This course will support you to:

• Identify patterns of domination culture and develop a needs-based orientation that can enable you to undo domination

• Explore NVC as an embodied mindfulness practice and grow your capacity to tune into body sensations as valuable feedback from your nervous system pointing you towards what matters to you

• Grow your awareness of and vocabulary for resonant language including “feelings” and “needs”, and your understanding of the brain science behind why this kind of language works

• Develop an empathic listening practice with a buddy following the workshop as a foundational tool for resourcing yourself to show up better in conflict and collaboration

As part of the Queer Farmer Convergence hosted by Humble Hands Harvest and the Queer Farmer Network, explore tools and practices for navigating conflict, as part of building our conflict resilience and conflict literacy, towards collective liberation.

Please join us for this year's final session the Equity Centered Pedagogy Virtual Working Group.

2021 has been a year of tumult and transition for many of us: whether shifting between in-person and virtual instruction, processing the pandemic in our own lives and those of our students, or navigating conversations around racial injustice and anti-racism work, teachers in our field have encountered transitions and traumas that have left many of us feeling depleted. This session will focus on developing therapeutic tools for teachers during this time of transition.

We welcome special guest Nicole Bauman! Nicole is a Midwest-based queer parent steeped in the sacred work of facilitation, transformative justice, somatics, and Nonviolent Communication. They see building conflict resiliency as an essential part of living into the world to come, and are passionate about creating space where personal and collective liberation feel possible. Nicole is an ICF-certified Professional and Community Healing-Centered Coach and a student of Somatics with the Strozzi Institute and in the lineage of generative somatics.

Nicole will help us learn to build tools to help us cultivate own mental help and stay grounded in order to bring our best selves to our teaching practice.

Are you cooped up at home with your partner, housemates, family or all by yourself? Do you find yourself dreading weeks of isolation, fear, confusion, and loneliness? Are you feeling hopeless about being in such close proximity?

Join us for a free 90-minute webinar from Amanda, Josh, and Nicole of "Getting the Support You Need" to learn some simple but powerful strategies for keeping you connected and grounded in these times of “social distancing.”

Just because you can’t gather in-person doesn’t mean you have to feel isolated and alone. And just because you're cooped up with the same people doesn't mean you have to settle for constant conflict and tension. We want to help you connect to your innate capacity for resilience and identify some ways to strengthen your ability to access support.

We’ll guide you through a few simple exercises, hold space for some collective mourning, and offer some wisdom from the work we’ve been doing around building virtual community for years now. There will also be singing, movement, reflection, small group time, and sharing of additional resources.

Registration is required. The webinar is free if you attend live and a recording of the webinar will be available to non-attendees for purchase.

REGISTRATION LINK:
https://airtable.com/shr9aauOWF7Z3PJB2

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT US:
"I have deeply appreciated how you collaborate and work together and support each other in facilitation. It speaks volumes to me about how to radically and wholly share space and power with each other."

"I really appreciate the way you facilitate connection among class members. Also how your co-facilitation models connection."

FACILITATORS
Amanda Blaine is a white, cisgendered, straight, double-Ivy-League-educated, middle class, Jewish woman. And she’s hellbent on using every ounce of her privilege to leverage change. She wants to support you to learn the skills that make the difference between “heartbreaking waste of time” and “heart-opening, get-lots-of-important-shit-done-together collaboration.” She makes her home on Vashon Island, occupied Puyallup land near Seattle, Washington.”

Nicole Bauman is a white, middle class, queer, genderqueer, farmer, healer, facilitator, movement builder and parent, rooted in community and organizing in the Rust Belt city of Elkhart, IN (occupied Potawatomi territory). Nonviolent Communication has been an empowering tool for Nicole's own personal healing and transformation, and has also increased her capacity to show up more skillfully to communication, conflict and collaboration interpersonally and within the movement. Nicole’s embodiment and teaching of this work is deeply shaped and informed by her own parenting journey, as well as years of work as a birth doula and yoga teacher, and a decade of living in an intentional community.

Josh Blaine is a community song leader and organizer based out of Austin, TX (occupied Numunu and Tikan'watic territory) who's found that unlearning his patterns of white and male supremacy is best done in community. Since the Fall of 2017, he's been organizing other men who are committed to undoing male domination patterns by leveraging the tools of nonviolent communication as a backbone of the work.

Are you ready for 2020? Given the most recent timelines regarding climate chaos, 2020 marks the beginning of what might be the most important decade of our lifetime. With the stakes so high, we’re each being called into our highest purpose. In this “all hands on deck moment,” many of us need to (re)learn how to lean on one another and practice robust collaboration and cooperation. Do you have the support you need to thrive in these uncertain times?

The legacies of domination cultures - patriarchy, white supremacy and capitalism to name a few - have kept most of us separated from aligning to our deepest truth and calling. As a result, many of us are not equipped with the tools to connect to our inner wisdom, nor are we self-connected enough to collaborate in a way that reflects our deepest values. So even when we make a step towards beloved community - when we step outside the mainstream paradigm of "every person for themselves" - we find that it's a monumentally difficult task.

Undoing domination communication, as we see and teach it, is the process of relearning how to be in relationship, how to have both the autonomy and interdependence we need to reach our unique creative potential and align with our highest purpose in this time of global crisis. Language is a primary way we engage in relationship, so we focus on language as a way to transform our inner (spiritual/emotional) and outer (social/collaborative) lives. We believe that this work of relearning patterns of language and communication is essential to the work of bringing about what Joanna Macy calls, "The Great Turning."

*WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT GSYN*
"This class has been a revelation. I have encountered certain of my habits of mind and expression that I now see as blocks to authentic communication. But in the challenge of facing them, I am learning to give myself empathy, while learning a lot about empathizing with others. This has been a glimpse of a post dominance world, a palpable experience of a new paradigm. I want to continue!"
-Sarah C.

"This course has been a weekly reminder that the world can be full of abundance and love when we choose to see each other tenderly and look at each other without the lens the domination culture that surrounds us. I have felt held and supported to care for myself and others in a way that I want to share in every space I work in, but that is difficult to do without support."
-Helen C.

"This course is an open door to a lifelong opportunity for personal growth and connection with myself and others. It has positively impacted my life and these tools will be used for a lifetime. It's an invaluable course that everyone will benefit from."
-Rachel R.

**WORKSHOP DETAILS**
This workshop is a total of 16 hours of live, interactive small group instruction and guidance spread across eight Wednesday evening sessions beginning Wednesday, January 15 and concluding Wednesday, March 4. This is NOT a prerecorded or self-paced course, though recordings of the sessions will be available to participants after each session.

Classes will meet on ZOOM, an online video platform, from 7pm - 9pm CST.

This series is highly interactive and experiential. There will be ample opportunities to apply and practice these tools as we learn them.

While this workshop will be grounded in the practice and principles of Nonviolent Communication, it will be supported by an understanding of interpersonal neurobiology, a growing area of study that's adding to our knowledge of how humans thrive. Nonviolent communication is a practical and accessible way to apply these new findings - that humans thrive in relationships with warmth, resonance, and attunement.

**SCHEDULE**
8 Wednesday evenings, 7pm - 9pm CST.
First Session: Wednesday, January 15, 2020
Final Session: Wednesday, March 4, 2020

**COST**
Sliding Scale "Pay from the Heart:" $360 ($45/class) - $144 ($18/class) for the 8-class series. Contributions over $200 meet our minimum financial needs to sustain this work. We request that contributions below $200 be reserved for those for whom food and/or shelter would be compromised. Comparable offerings run in the range of $300-$450.

We know that determining how much to contribute can be tricky for so many of us living in a "traumatizing and traumatized" economy (Mark Silver). We ask that you sit with the idea of "getting the support you need to thrive in 2020" and first decide if you'd like to join us. Then, once you've decided, check in with your body/heart to find an amount to contribute that feels both generous and within your means.

If cost is a barrier to participation, please reach out to us directly at contact@gettingthesupport.org.

**REGISTRATION REQUIRED**
Registration is required and space is limited!
https://airtable.com/shrXxPoey6lR38ubv

**A NOTE ABOUT WHITENESS**
We are a group of white-identifying facilitators committed to undoing white supremacy internally and systemically, and specifically in our facilitation of this class. That said, we acknowledge that an all-white facilitation team will in itself mean that some People of Color will not have the sense of ease and trust needed to participate. We are mourning this, and holding the dilemma of dismantling white supremacy while still being embedded in the legacy of white supremacy. Having said that, we welcome people of all racial identities.

**FACILITATORS**
Amanda Blaine is a white, cisgendered, straight, double-Ivy-League-educated, middle class, Jewish woman. And she’s hellbent on using every ounce of her privilege to leverage change. She wants to support you to learn the skills that make the difference between “heartbreaking waste of time” and “heart-opening, get-lots-of-important-shit-done-together collaboration.” She makes her home on Vashon Island, occupied Puyallup land near Seattle, Washington.”

Nicole Bauman is a white, middle class, queer, genderqueer, farmer, healer, movement builder and parent, rooted in community and organizing in the Rust Belt city of Elkhart, IN, on occupied Potawatomi territory. Nonviolent Communication has been an empowering tool for Nicole's own personal healing and transformation, and has also increased her capacity to show up more skillfully to communication, conflict and collaboration interpersonally and within the movement. Nicole is excited to share all of this with you!

Josh Blaine is a community song leader and organizer based out of Austin, TX (occupied Numunu and Tikan'watic territory) who's found that unlearning his patterns of white and male supremacy is best done in community. Since the Fall of 2017, he's been organizing other men who are committed to undoing male domination patterns by leveraging the tools of nonviolent communication as a backbone of the work.