Companioning: Compassionate Listening

Learn an incredible process to listen so deeply that you gain new insights, create intimacy in your relationships, and see your relationships become better than you thought possible. This works with spouses, friends, children, co-workers, and employees.

Learn:

• 7 simple steps to better listening

• Ask cup-emptying questions to help others open up

• Take the pressure off yourself without rescuing, advising or fixing

• How compassion & detachment make you a better listener

• Empower others with listening deeply

• A powerful tool for healing grief, anger, and trauma.

The Art of Companioning, the fifth strategy of The Virtues Project, was developed by Virtues Project founder, Linda Kavelin Popov, when she was the Spiritual Care Director at Hospice in Victoria, BC, Canada. Linda found that dying people didn't want to be fixed or cured, but they wanted someone who could deeply listen to them, without judgment, without rescuing, without offering solutions. They wanted someone to companion them in their joy or their grief, to just deeply listen and be fully present to them.

The Art of Companioning is not just for dying people. It helps us learn to be fully present to our partner, our child, our friend, our colleague or employee. It allows the speaker to find their own clarity, their own truth, and often to resolve their own problems. This process helps deepen our relationships. It is not just for counselors; it is for everyone and everyone can do it.

The Art of Companioning workshops teach the steps to Companioning and provide opportunities to practice in a safe and caring environment with hands-on activities.

"I loved it and highly recommend The Art of Companioning workshop. I am more confident in my abilities to companion; I have a greater understanding of this strategy. Once again The Virtues Project has enriched my life and relationships with others by reminding me who we are meant to be." -Jodi Williams, Family & Community Services, Wainwright, AB