Leona Dawson 

• Contact details
• Trainings
• Private sessions

I have become committed to the practice of NVC both personally and
professionally since my first Foundation Training and then attendance at the Mt Tambourine IIT in 2004. Through practicing NVC I feel certain that I can find ways to joyfully transform both my inner and outer worlds through compassion, cooperation, consciousness and curiosity. NVC gives me concrete tools to practice right speech and actions within my Buddhist spiritual practice and in my day-to-day life.

I combine Nonviolent Communication with Focusing (www.focusing.org) and Mindfulness. Focusing is a special way of paying attention to yourself, so that you sense the whole way you are feeling about situations or issues in your life. This is different from just having emotions or just getting in touch with feelings. Focusing involves having a different kind of relationship with emotions and feelings. It’s as if you are becoming your own good listener. The result is greater calm, wiser choices, and a deeper sense of connection to your own life and being. It is a refreshing way of being with life’s challenges, and it enables positive change to emerge naturally and spontaneously.

My passion is to empower individuals with skills that contribute to their ongoing personal growth and emotional well-being and to empower groups and organisations with skills that contribute to their mission through the practice of intentional and conscious communication. I am committed to facilitating the development and implementation of customised life-affirming practices for people within themselves, within their relationships by co-creating a life in harmony with their values while having fun, feeling fulfilled and alive.

To this end I offer both coaching for individuals and trainings for small groups both face to face, on-line and by telephone. I have taught in the field of adult education in vocational educational (TAFE & industry/business settings), youth at risk and community settings for over 20 years. I have been involved with the delivery of NVC training to staff in TAFE NSW and have mentored teachers in communicating with students ‘from the heart”. I have been featured in a NSW Department of Education DVD on “Supporting Teachers who work with Young People” and the SBS documentary “Divorce Stories”.

Special interest areas:

• Foundation Trainings in NVC
• Communicating to Connect Mediation for Reconciliation & Resolution,
• Compassionate Self-Connection through Heartfelt Coaching,
• SMART Transformations – creating habits in alignment with our needs & values
• Conscious-Clarity Coaching for times of transition, decision-making or stuckness.
• Sustainable Separations

Contact details

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Trainings offered by Leona

Locations  NSW 

Foundation level

Transformative Communication Foundation Course

A year long course of 10 meetings (on the first Monday of the month) bringing you a way of both being with yourself and connecting to others. The monthly meetings will enable you to successfully integrate Transformative Communication into your life.

We'll focus our practice using structured learning exercises practicing a particular skill each month as well as taking the time to engage empathically with each other. We will re-train our old automatic reactive patterns into responsive compassionate communication while building our confidence in a safe, supportive and understanding environment.

Transformative Communication Foundational Workshop

2 day workshop

Are you feeling stuck in old patterns of communication? Do you want to find a way to listen to others while staying in touch with yourself? Do you want to break a cycle of arguments and resentment? Do you want to express yourself honestly with confidence? Then join this interactive, stimulating Transformative Communication workshop.

You will learn ways to:

• Accurately hear what other people feel and need, even when they express themselves in a hostile manner.
• Resolve conflicts in ways that increase trust and mutual understanding.
• Break patterns of thinking that lead to self-criticism, blame, guilt, pity, anger or depression.
• Create the life and relationships you desire, one step at a time, by understanding and meeting your deepest values and needs.

 

Deepening Transformative Communication Course

This year-long course of 10 meetings continues on from the Foundational Course deepening our practice and exploring areas of need coming up in the lives of group members as well as:

• Developing Sustainable Self empathy
• Exploring Persistent Patterns & Core Beliefs
• Valuing our Values
• Embracing Gratitude

Delving into the Dance Floors

This 7 session series of workshops explores the Gina Lawrie & Bridget Belgrave’s Dance Floors. Each workshop is 3 hours. At each session we will explore and engage in a new dance. There are 3 Inner-Outer Dances for integrating NVC and role-playing a dialogue. 4 Inner Dances are The Self-Empathy Dance experiencing deep connection with your life and creativity; The Anger Dance transforming guilt, anger, shame & depression; The Educator/Chooser Dance for achieving inner peace over something we have said or done; and The Yes/No Dance for making decisions.

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Private sessions

Private Sessions
Leona is based in Sydney and offers private sessions & coaching by phone, on-line and in person in:

Communicating to Connect Mediation for Reconciliation & Resolution

NVC based mediation focuses on connection before outcome, and then outcomes emerging from that connection. This process allows each party to trust they have been heard and understood to their satisfaction by the other party - heard not only as to their "story", but heard as to the underlying human needs that have not been met in the conflict. With this connection present, the process moves to collaborative problem solving. Benefits to you can begin with the initial contact with us. I reflect back to you what I hear you say and help you clarify how to proceed in alignment with your values. I help you make a plan that may include either my mediation or communication coaching services, or a combination of both in ways that increase the likelihood that you will get your needs met in relationship to the other person.

Communicating to Connect mediation works with what is alive in the parties right now: their feelings, their needs, and what would make life even better in this moment. Once connection has been achieved and needs and values heard, solutions tend to emerge easily and spontaneously.

Compassionate Self-Connection through Heartfelt Coaching

Would you like to breathe new life into your emotional landscape? Do you enjoy flexibility and personal service? Would you like to learn the 7 steps for transforming communication while exploring and resolving your own concerns? Heartfelt Coaching can help you get beyond logic & traditional thinking to explore options and find answers that allow you to express who you are, enable you to realise your potential, and embrace your values and natural talents. You will develop skills to use in your daily life. You can practice difficult conversations that may be coming up in your life to develop the skills and language to bring about the change you want to see. Or you can explore existing patterns in your life that seem to bring discomfort and pain. You can learn to transform pain, difficulty and discomfort into clarity, compassion, consciousness and life serving actions.

SMART Transformations

Do you have a habit that's causing you pain, affecting your health, finances, your loved ones or career or just plain old wasting your time? You hear yourself saying “I should change BUT…I really have tried before and failed SO...It is all too much ANYWAY...”

SMART Transformations can help you acquire new useful habits and to transform existing, undesired habits. SMART Transformations are incremental action-based steps towards creating the life you deserve. They are Simple, Manageable, Achievable, Realistic, with a Timeframe of only 21 dedicated days. SMART Transformations are based on understanding and being compassionately conscious of our needs and values and the strategies we employ to meet them. You will receive 20 mins of coaching each week, an e-journal supporting your journey and recording your achievements and a daily email of encouragement and optional strategies to enhance your success.

Conscious-Clarity Coaching

Are you in a time of transition? Are you trying to make one or more decisions? Are you feeling stuck or blocked somewhere in your life? Have you tried all kinds of ways to change or improve your life but something seems to get in the way? Conscious-Clarity Coaching involves your whole self: body, heart & mind. It takes you through a 5 step process where you find out what your heart desires, you explore the options which feel right, you check in for the best option, you make a decision that you can celebrate.

Creating Sustainable Separations

Sustainable separations offer a way to move past the story...the “what happened” and “who did what” of your marriage and separation. Realising that separation and divorce are verbs...they are something you always doing every time you meet, discuss something or have to work out arrangements Sustainable Separations offers tools to turn the feeling of “just wanting it over” to creating a “life-serving separation that supports moving forward positively”. Sustainable Separations offers the possibility of an alternative to costly court proceedings.

Transformative Listening

By being deeply heard you are able to get in touch with those places within yourself needing attention and space. Through the experience of “Transformative Listening” you can explore your feelings and needs in an atmosphere of trust and safety. Transformative Listening is neither counselling nor therapy; it is a simple, compassionate personal hearing.
 

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