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Contributors
John Kinyon and Ike Lasater are co-founders of Mediate Your Life. Learn about Ike, John and the history of their partnership here.

Mary Sitze is MYL's communications leader. She is a writer, a parent, and a graduate of the East Coast Immersion Program. Contact.

Julie Stiles is the owner of Julie Stiles Coaching and is Ike Lasater's writing partner. Together, she and Ike wrote Words That Work in Business: A Practical Guide to Effective Communication in the Workplace (2010). Julie writes the "In the Wild" and "Real Life Skills" series for this blog. Contact.

John Kinyon Reflects on the Essex Retreat

Thank you, East Coast immersion program participants! I took such energy from our recent intensive training (May 4-8) in Essex, Massachusetts. There seemed to be a new level of enthusiasm and excitement from everyone about how the training produced change and growth in them and their lives and how it opened up new possibilities. A key, I think, is the depth of experience and the shifts that reliably happen through the practices. It’s deeply satisfying to see our training evolve and have a greater impact on what people want to do and create for themselves and the world.

I’d like to express my deep appreciation to Shivani Carroll, Paul Merrill, Pat Arcady and Mark Roth for their support with the training.

Ike and I have begun emailing weekly practice suggestions to our participants when they are in-between intensives. We request that the yearlong participants to commit to the following:

1. Daily self-connection practice (SCP), at least 5 minutes set aside each day, and also throughout the day, between and during activities. We ask that participants use the Enemy Image Process (EIP) and Celebrate/Mourn/Learn (CML) process for self-empathy whenever it applies.

2. Weekly dyad practice:

- Before (pre-mediation): EIP for empathy and 2-chair role play

- During (mediating a conversation between self and other): Intensity Exercise/Interpersonal Mediation model and the Making Amends process (H&R model)
- After (post-mediation): Mourn/Celebrate/Learn (MCL) for empathy

3. Weekly triad practice:

Practicing the 5-step Mediation Model and all 9 skills:
  • Empathy
  • Connecting requests
  • “Pulling by the ears”
  • Emergency first-aid empathy
  • Tracking
  • Interrupting
  • Self-empathy
  • Self-expression
  • Solution requests (including the “Need behind the No” process and the 3 types agreements—main, supporting, and restoring)

1 comment to John Kinyon Reflects on the Essex Retreat

  • marg pontin

    hey John,
    great hearing about this retreat and reading the enthusiasm you are feeling. Jeremy, Greg and myself continue to meet fortnightly, it took a long time to find each other but we are outlasting the training! i now see this time as always helpful, not so much as work, and that has helped me to last.
    hoping to reconnect with you or Ike again down the track and keep on learning and deepening learning.
    i often think of you saying the real learning comes in between the retreats, and yes it does, AND the retreats bring refreshment of a different sort.
    enjoying keeping in touch,
    warmly,
    marg
    ps using the skills all the time.

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