At Growing Humankindness, we help people who care deeply, struggle with being too hard on themselves, and who want a more tender relationship with their humanity and struggles.
We offer web based group classes and do at home courses to help you bring kindness and mercy to the places where you’ve gotten stuck, where you’ve suffered loss, or where you felt you ‘should’ve done better.’
Our courses come in 3 formats:
- Do at home courses, which you can begin at any time
- Small group classes, where a small group moves through a course together
- And a year long, more intimate small group intensive
Do at home courses
Emerge – Create a New Habit
If you overuse sugar – or another habit – for stress relief, to care for your emotions, and if you tend to be hard on yourself about being so stuck, this course will help you soften self criticism, set nourishing limits, and change your sugar habits with a gentle, compassion based approach. You’ll receive daily emotional support and learn how to apply self compassion to the process of habit change, so you can create more nourishing self talk and build resilience, that internal sense of, “I trust myself to move through this.”
This course is our most popular and has been taken by thousands from around the world since 2012. *Note – this course used to be called The 30 Day Lift. It was renamed and revised in 2019 as Emerge: Create a New Habit.
If you’re needing help with food, this is where we recommend that you start.
Price: $99 USD or 2 payments of $50
Available any time. Includes an email companion, guiding you through the 30 day course.
Align: Heal the Battle with Your Inner Rebel
When you attempt to make changes in how you eat, care for your body, or care for your self, you may bump into your Inner Rebel – the part of you that strongly says “No!” The result? You may get stuck in collapse, resistance or inner conflict – fighting amongst these various parts and needs. In this course, you’ll learn how to soften this inner conflict, understand the needs underneath the inner rebel, and playfully work with this part of you rather than against it. This will help you follow through on the changes you want to make and express a greater sense of power in your life.
Price: $99 USD or 2 payments of $50
Available any time. Includes a 6 week email companion, guiding you through the course.
If you’re wanting help in your relationship with food, we recommend taking Emerge first, then Align.
Group classes
These classes are offered throughout the year with a small group. The course materials are delivered online and we meet regularly for Q&A webinars to connect, share insights, ask questions, and practice the exercises together.
You can find the dates for upcoming classes on the events page.
When Food Is Your Mother
For many people, overeating, food obsessions (like a sugar obsession), and binge eating are not just “bad” habits or coping strategies but emotional bonds – a well-intentioned attempt to feel safe, secure and connected in the face of isolation, overwhelming emotion, powerlessness, and pain. This emotional bond with food – and the needs that drive it – can be so strong that it overrides a need for health or sobriety. Gain insight on how to heal it, and guidance on how to replace it with true, secure refuge.
Price: $447 USD or 4 payments of $125
Next class begins July 2020.
The Book of Love
When we experience heartache, hardship, or pain, or when we struggle with something long term, it’s easy to feel like we’re ‘damaged goods’ – like there’s something wrong with us.
Our struggles can become the lens through which we see ourselves, coloring our perceptions and beliefs about who we are. In the wake of this separation, we often lose our connection with ourselves: our hopes and dreams, abiding goodness, capability, and trustworthiness.
The Book of Love is a playful, art based class to reconnect to your wholeness: to the deeper story that lives underneath feelings of disconnection.
In this 6 week class, you’ll be crafting a journal – using a blank book that you fill with images, stories, symbols and more – to create a book of connection, a chronicle and witness to your soul’s story. Through this creation and through sharing a space with others, you’ll reconnect with your deepest self, soften shame, and embolden courage.
The year long small group intensive
You can learn more about the year long intensive here. The next intensive begins in October 2020 and runs for a calendar year, with breaks in between.
More about our approach
Our approach is based in self compassion, developmental psychology, attachment theory, creative expression, and contemplative spiritual practices.
In all our offerings you’ll find these common assumptions:
- That our brains are shaped in and wired for relationship – what we’ve learned from IPNB (interpersonal neurobiology) and attachment theory.
- That all our internal parts are valuable and worthy of compassion, respect, warmth and curiosity – what we’ve learned from systems like Focusing, non violent communication, and IFS (Interal Family Systems.)
- That we’re fundamentally resilient, created in goodness, and rooted in love – what we’ve learned from our contemplative and wisdom traditions and from trauma research.
- And that we heal in connection, community and compassion – what we’ve learned from all of the above.
Our courses are here to help you create inner hospitality for the hard, painful, and messy parts of your journey so you can care for the vulnerability that lies underneath coping strategies like overconsuming, overdoing, overeating, and perfectionism.
Instead of feeling caught in judgment, shame, or self criticism about how you ‘should’ve done better’ or ‘should know better,’ you’ll learn how to care for your vulnerability and pain with tenderness, wisdom, sovereignty, and hope.
Being tender with our pain grows our love for ourselves, for each other, for life, and for all of humanity. It softens the tendency to blame or scapegoat, and deepens forgiveness, understanding and an embrace of the complexity of being human.
As you reconnect with your wholeness, goodness, and strength, you also connect with what we call the Deeper Story. Connecting with your Deeper Story softens the shame of separation and reunites you with wholeness, where you can create a more merciful and embracing relationship with yourself, others, and all of life.
Vulnerability is a pathway to love, how we connect with others on an emotional, not an intellectual level, how we grow and embody the fullness of our hearts. It’s also one of the pathways that’s desperately needed in our world right now to nurture justice, equality, healing, and peace in our outer communities, something that we’re all being called to heed, support, and nurture.
We help in 3 key areas:
- Changing how you see – we see compulsive behavior, defenses, and self protections as a cry from the soul: cries for connection, secure attachment and help. Learn how to use compassion and connection to build the container for growth: loving relationship.
- Changing how you relate – connection can support you in difficult situations, when you feel triggered and reactive. This is an important switch: responding to your needs, emotions, challenges, and triggers with compassionate, caring support rather than fear/anxiety, disgust, contempt, frustration, collapse/helplessness, or self hatred.
- Changing how you grow – learn how to use the safety of relationship to support your growth out of compulsive behavior. Connection makes healing and growth easier, less stressful, and possible.
The fruits of this approach appear “up on the surface” as changes in how you respond to triggers, changes in how you talk to or relate to yourself, and changes in how you relate to your emotions, struggles, losses, and vulnerability.
Our approach is non-violent, gentle, and grounded in deep respect for our human vulnerability.
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