August 31 – September 3
Talloires, France

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Compassion and Conflict

The Center for Understanding in Conflict will once again be offering an intensive program in Talloires, France in Self-Reflection and its relevance to working as a professional helping people in conflict.

All conflict professionals are welcome to attend, including mediators, lawyers, therapists and anyone who works with people in conflict. Our working language will be English and fluency is a requisite for getting the most out of the program.

Program Overview

We are living in an age of outrage and division. Many of us feel called upon to stand up for our beliefs–and to find ways to reduce the animosity that we see online and all around us. This is difficult work, and it can’t be done without clarity about ourselves. During this Conflict and Compassion retreat we will explore how our emotional reactions to the problems of the external world—from climate change to politics to interpersonal conflicts—influence our outward responses. Together, we will investigate how deeper internal work can make us more resilient and useful in the complicated world we inhabit.

People who work in conflict experience powerful emotional currents, whether they want to or not. From mediators to journalists to politicians to therapists, we can’t help but carry judgments and gut feelings into our work. Exasperation, fear, anger and other difficult emotions go with the job. But they don’t have to drain our spirit and motivation. We can learn to use these reactions to help us form deeper connections to the problems and people we encounter. And with connections come new possibilities for helping people find their way through conflict.

The program will be a combination of self-reflection exercises, role-plays and didactic explanation.

This seminar can host up to 16 participants.

Fees

€1,250 for 24 hours of training, coffee breaks, and buffet lunches.

Faculty

Norman Fischer is a poet, author, Zen Buddhist priest and former abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center. As founder of the Everyday Zen Foundation (www.everydayzen.org), his work with meditation practice has taken him into many corners of contemporary American life including the arts, education, hospice training, education, and lawyering as a spiritual path. Recently, he began offering meditation training to engineers at Google. Norman has worked with the Center for Understanding in Conflict on inquiries that focus on bringing the calmness and insight of meditation practice directly into conflict situations. Norman has written 29 books. His latest books are Untitled Series: Life As It is and The World Could Be Otherwise: Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path.

Gary J. Friedman has been practicing law as a mediator with Mediation Law Offices in Mill Valley, California since 1976, integrating mediative principles into the practice of law and the resolution of legal disputes. Co-founder of the Center for Understanding in Conflict (formerly the Center for Mediation in Law), he has been teaching mediation since 1980. Prior to his work as a mediator, he practiced law as a trial lawyer with Friedman and Friedman in Bridgeport, Connecticut. After several years as an advocate, he sought a new approach to resolving disputes through increasing the participation of the parties in the resolution of their differences. At that time, he and his colleague, Jack Himmelstein, began to develop the Understanding-based model that is now practiced extensively in the United States and Europe. As one of the first lawyer mediators and a primary force in the current mediation movement, he has used this model to complete over one thousand mediations in the last two decades He has mediated numerous two-party and multi-party disputes in the commercial and non-profit realms, in the area of intellectual property, real estate, corporate, personnel, partnership formations and dissolutions, and family law.

Accommodation

The event will be held at the Priory of the Tufts European University Center in Talloires, France on the shores of Lake Annecy, 45 minutes from Geneva, Switzerland.

Talloires has several charming small hotels within a few minutes walking distance from the Priory. Here are some suggestions:

• Hôtel Beau Site: Tel +33(0)4 50 27 00 65 www.beausite-talloires.com
• Hôtel du Lac: Tel +33(0)4 50 60 71 08 www.hotel-du-lac.com
• La Villa des Roses: Tel +33(0)4 50 66 88 90 www.villaofroses.com

A few kilometers from the center:

• La Catarina (gite de France) : Tel +33 (0)6 22 99 75 73 www.lecatarina.com
• Tourist office : Tel +33 (0) 4 50 66 76 54 www.talloires.fr

Cancellation Policy

We strongly suggest that all participants contract cancellation insurance and select transportation options and hotel reservations that can be cancelled without consequences in case pandemic related health restrictions or any other crisis make it impossible to travel to Talloires or to participate in the program.

If the program does need to be cancelled, as was unfortunately the case in 2020 and 2021, any course fees that have been paid will be entirely reimbursed by the organizers.

The program’s organizers and instructors shall not be held responsible for any financial consequences that may be incurred due to the program having to be cancelled due to border closings or other pandemic related measures taken by the public authorities in France or in the country of residence of the participant.

Registration

Please note that registration is being managed by Atout Mediation and Interstices Mediation.

To register for this program, please complete the registration form and send to:

Arlene Weingart – [email protected]

Sylvie Adijes – [email protected]

Download the registration form