We are creating a new format for Heart of Listening in 2024 in order to make this program accessible to more people. Dates and details will be announced soon. Please sign up here to receive an announcement when registration opens.
“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.”
Mark Van Doren
6-Month Facilitation Training & Mentorship:
the heart of listening
2024 DATES TO BE ANNOUNCED, Offered Remotely
Who this program is for:
Scroll down for a video about the Heart of Listening
This training is for those who are ready to go much deeper in their embodiment of practice, leadership, and relational intelligence on behalf of collective transformation. It is for experienced practitioners and those who facilitate meditation, mindfulness, or other forms of awareness practice or healing. It is also appropriate for community leaders and activists with a spiritual practice. Personal growth and transformation is also a welcome motivation for joining this program. Those who do not currently facilitate but are ready to embody presence more fully in their everyday life may also apply. Please do not be intimidated if you are not a facilitator.
This is an opportunity to work closely with Eden for 6 months to deepen your embodiment of practice and to expand your capacity as a facilitator of compassionate awareness and healing in changing times. This training will help you to cultivate your capacity to access relational intelligence in everyday life; hold a heartfelt, inclusive, and transformative space; and to guide transformative Mindful Inquiry with individuals and groups. Eden will help you to identify and address the areas that you need to grow in personally as a practitioner, facilitator and leader, and will offer demonstration of how to skillfully use the tools she offers.
This training does not offer a certificate, It offers an invitation to work intimately with Eden and a community of experienced practitioners on behalf of the greater good. It is about being of service in an age of global uncertainty, rather than collecting an external credential. This training will impact every aspect of your life, and not just your work as a facilitator. It offers an exploration of the integration between presence, relational intelligence, and collective transformation.
The Heart of Listening draws from the wisdom streams of Zen Buddhism, Relational Mindfulness, Regenerative Leadership, and the Work That Reconnects.
There are 4 basic understandings that are pre-requisites for this course:
1- We can only ever teach what we know deeply. Empowering oneself as a facilitator requires deepening one’s personal practice, and understanding facilitation as a sacred expression of presence.
2- Being of service as a leader or facilitator requires the willingness to “get out of the way” and allow oneself to be guided.. Being open to receiving guidance requires an understanding of the interplay of both the light and dark elements of the human experience.
3- The dominant paradigm follows a leadership model that affirms “power over” rather than “power with.” Practice offers a path for investigating and releasing collective biases that stem from patriarchy, colonialism, and individualism and that affirm the lens of separation, hierarchy and domination/subordination. We see these biases reflected in systemic oppression throughout our world and in a “top down” approach to leadership. The Heart of Listening offers a radically different approach.
4- We are living in an age of global uncertainty. The times we are living in provide a unique set of circumstances and an incredible opportunity to expand our embodiment of true nature, resilience, right action, acceptance, and collective healing.
Structure: Each month, you will receive one pre-recorded teaching, and each month, we will meet as a group twice for an interactive and experiential teaching. Every session will be recorded You will also receive a monthly one on one session with Eden for personal mindful inquiry work. You will be assigned a practice partner for facilitation practices.
Group meetings: 2 Sundays a month at 12pm ET. February 5th & 19th; March 12th & 19th; April 16th & 30th; May 7th & 21st; June 4th & 25th; July 9th & 23rd*
*Dates are subject to change
Your Personal Consultations (50 minutes, once a month) will be scheduled directly with Eden’s assistant. At times you will also receive recorded teachings and practices to engage in in between our group meetings. You will also be required to read Eden’s book, Relational Mindfulness: A Handbook for Deepening Our Connection with Ourselves, Each Other, and Our Planet.
There is a $50 administration fee for The Heart of Listening, to be paid at the time you send in responses to the application questions below.
Once you are accepted, you are invited to make a donation based on our suggested sliding scale: $3000 - $5000. (This is a tax-deductible donation to support the work of Mindful Living Revolution). No one is turned away due to lack of funds.
REGISTRATION DEADLINE: January 25th, 2023.
The sliding scale is intended to offer those who have less resources an opportunity to participate and those who have more resources an opportunity to generously support those who have less. In addition, if you are applying from the BIPOC community, you may apply for a scholarship/ partial scholarship.
NOTE: THERE ARE 16 SPACES AVAILABLE IN THIS TRAINING/MENTORSHIP. This is a rolling application process (applications are read at they come in, so acceptances are on a first come, first served basis)
TO APPLY, please pay the course admin fee and send a Letter of Intention to deborahedentull@gmail.com answering these questions:
What is your past and present experience with meditation and mindfulness practice?
What is your leadership and/or facilitation experience? Eden defines leadership broadly, acknowledging that in this time of global change, we are all called to lead on behalf of consciousness. While some applying to this program are in professional positions of leadership, for others, leadership has to do with how one shows up for one's family and community, one's spiritual path, and one's convictions.
What are your personal hopes for participating in this program?
What growth edges are you working with — in life, in practice, and/or professionally? How would you like to grow through this program?
Have you trained with Eden before?
What teachers or guides have you trained with before?
If you are accepted into the program, you can then make your sliding scaled donation for the course. You will not be formally confirmed until you have submitted both your Letter of Intention and donation.
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ALL SESSIONS ARE RECORDED, IF YOU NEED TO MISS ANY.
THIS MENTORSHIP PROGRAM REQUIRES A COMMITMENT. IT IS ALSO DESIGNED FOR THOSE WHO HAVE BUSY SCHEDULES AND MAY NEED TO DO THE WORK ON THEIR OWN TIME. DAILY LIFE IS YOUR LABORATORY FOR THIS TRAINING.
Topics include
Getting Out of the Way: Deepening Your Commitment to Leading from Presence, Rather than Ego
Mindful Inquiry: Learning to Assist Others Through Their Own Organic Transformation
Developing Both Soft and Fierce Compassion: Deepening Your Capacity to Hold Space for Difficult Emotions and Unmetabolized Pain
Cultivating True Humility and Genuine Confidence on Behalf of the Collective
Learning How to Address the State of the World: Making the Connection Between Personal Practice, Systemic Biases, and Collective Healing
Cultivating Deep Listening and Learning to Attune to Both Individuals and Groups
The Balance of Conscious Allowing and Conscious Boundaries Required to be a Transformative Presence in the World
The Courage and Skill Required to Teach from Your True Voice
Right Action and the Integration of the Inner and Outer Work Required to be a Change Agent in Our World
Topics will also include self-care, personal sustainability, and avoiding burnout; curriculum development, creating sacred space, helping people to address shadow work through love and courage, and more. Time and space will be built in for the specific topics that you wish to have covered and address.
For more information, please email Deborahedentull@gmail.com.
A message from Eden about The Heart of Listening.
TESTIMONIALS
There are so many reasons I would recommend Eden's Heart of Listening Facilitator Training.
True to Eden’s teachings in Relational Mindfulness, The Heart of Listening Facilitator Training Program guides us to trusting our true nature and stillness when it comes to facilitation and leadership. The training offers the safety of an unconditionally loving container in which I was able to explore both the gifts and shadows of what I bring to my life and to facilitation. I was able to see more clearly and thus move into a source of trust and strength that feels more like home than a goal outside myself to “achieve.”
I so appreciate the non-linear, intuitive, and powerful teachings I received and deepened in myself through this training. I wish every person who holds space for others had the opportunity to engage in these teachings. I have experienced a profound shift in how aI hold space as a facilitator. Perhaps the biggest surprise in this is seeing how engaging in the practices through this training impacts how I show up in all my relationships.
I am filled with gratitude for the mentorship I receive from Eden, for the connections I have made with the people in my cohort, and for the deepening of the connection with myself, others and the world. Thank you, Eden.
- Jodi Strock, LMFT
The Heart of Listening Facilitator Training - how to describe this 6 month journey? It is at once a deeply personal exploration and an exploration of "How do I stand and serve in the world?"... a compassionate reckoning and opportunity for growth. Eden's true and easy presence and her incredible well of mindful inquiry applications blow me away each time we meet. Our group meetings were a forum to share what teachings we have applied to our lives, our partnership with a fellow students were a way to practice vulnerability and being deeply present with ourselves and the other, and our monthly calls with Eden allowed us to truly meet ourselves and step into the beautiful, imperfect, perfect being we all are. I have developed greater self-confidence in public settings, especially those contexts where I used to uncomfortable. I have learned to speak from a "this is who I am" place - more in touch with and settled into deep stillness. The Heart of Listening allows you to create your own artist's palette of how you love yourself and how you show up in the world - based on your formal mediation practice and on your informal practice of presence.
- Summer Meyer, Sustainability consultant and CEO of Imagine Mindfulness
This program has helped reduce the pressure I feel in needing to be “the expert” when leading and to show up to guide groups as my full heart and full self. Eden is a remarkable, kind, and inspiring presence. I am very grateful for the opportunity to learn from her. Each course I have taken helps me remember who I am, get myself out of the way and tune in more deeply into service.
- Anne Johnston
I have benefited deeply from this in-depth look into how I show up as a facilitator. The Heart of Listening has helped me really understand how to show up in an honest and authentic way, not only in sessions that I lead, but in my personal life as well. With Eden’s insight and thoughtful guidance, I have reflections that will not only help me to deepen my own practice, but will help all those I work with and interact with. I feel these teachings are the cornerstone to progressing into a mindful way of leading in unity.
- Angeliki Captain Townsend
For Heart of Listening Graduates who are interested in furthering their mentorship with Eden, she is now offering Seeing with the Heart: A Year-Long Training & Mentorship for Personal and Collective Transformation.
