Resourcing, Getting Unstuck & Navigating Conflict in Challenging Times

Application & Practice - Course Overview

Why This Training Matters

How can we move confidently, compassionately, and gracefully through conflict in groups and organizations? How do we bring people together across different perspectives in order to heal relationships and work towards a better world for all? Join our expert facilitators for a deep dive into the practical and personal skills needed to answer these questions. 

Our world is facing mounting crises from housing to climate change, affordability to polarization. Too often, leaders' effective responses to these issues are undermined by unresolved emotional currents—anxiety, frustration, and exhaustion. Many people who long for a more sustainable, compassionate and equitable world feel unable to create movement frozen or blocked by organizational and team tensions, overwhelmed by mounting pressures and dwindling resources. There is a gap in practical, heart-centered skills that allow us to address stuck issues and conflicts as they arise.

In this training, you’ll gain medicine for our times—simple, embodied practices that help you:

• Use inevitable differences or tensions to help your group make wiser decisions that simultaneously strengthen your bonds.

• Address polarization internally, in your closest relationships, and in your team spaces.

• Reclaim your power and take your seat with surprising ripple effects in your life.

• Learn key skills to shift stuck dynamics even if the other person or group does not want to engage.

What You’ll Learn

1. Embodied Listening & Dialogue

   • Use somatic (body-based) tools to get grounded and aligned

   • Support teams through charged or tense conversations with safety, courage, and compassion

2. Unsticking Techniques

   • Identify early cues that conversations are degrading into “us vs. them”

   • Draw out diverse perspectives without blaming or stifling anyone

   • Transform conflict and resistance into creative momentum

3. Edge-Work for Transformation

   • Cut through the noise and name what’s really going on

   • Learn how to work gently and with buy-in on the tough conversations, so you don’t enflame —but do move forward

   • Build the resilience your team or community needs to get unstuck, grow and be effective

4. Building Bigger Tents & Right Relationships

   • Expand who can be “at the table” by holding space for underheard voices

   • Practice compassionate accountability: address hard truths while preserving dignity

Why It Works

• Rooted in Somatics & Lewis Deep Democracy Principles (no jargon—just practical exercises you can use immediately)

• Medicine for Our Times: Designed to heal deep fatigue and strengthen collective resilience

• Focus on Real-World Pain Points: You’re tired of meetings where nothing changes, of conversations that get stuck in shame and blame, and of watching important issues go unaddressed

• Simple, Actionable Tools: No heavy theory—straightforward steps to show up better in groups, meetings, community gatherings, or on the front lines of systems change
  
  

Who Should Attend

This course is for you if you are:

• A community organizer, manager, leader or change practitioner seeking tools beyond standard conflict-resolution models

• A facilitator, coach, or therapist wanting to bring body-centered practices into your work

• Someone who feels stuck by fear or hesitant to speak on urgent issues—yet knows that change demands courageous conversation
  
  

What Past Participants Say (Testimonials)

“I think out of the many courses that I've taken in the last 2 years, this one changed me the most. And not just in any single moment, throughout the 2 days I felt small changes that gave me clarity like I don't think I've ever had before.”

“The facilitators were an absolute joy!! Truly knowledgeable, caring, and surprisingly efficient at getting to the core of our ...underlying conflicts.”

"I really loved the mix of theory/understandings of human nature and practical tools. It helped me shift my perspective on conflict, roles in relationships and I was happy to do it alongside my colleagues."

Register here

Equivalent to Level 1 Deep Democracy with Lewis Deep Democracy International and eligible for ICF CCE