Break the Cycle: Skills and Tools for Navigating Conflict

​📅 5 online sessions: 28th April, 5th Mai, 12th Mai, 19th Mai, 26th Mai, 7–9 pm CET
🍎 Taster session: April 7th 2026, 7.15 pm- 9.15 pm CET
💶 140-240 € (sliding scale) Early bird € 120 (until April 12, 2026)
👯 Apply-with-two for a price of € 300 total

​About this series

​Conflict is a natural part of human relationships. Although it can feel uncomfortable or overwhelming, it also carries the potential to deepen relationships and unlock creativity. When we approach conflict as an opportunity, it becomes an entry point to greater connection rather than a source of rupture. This five-part workshop series offers practical tools to navigate conflict with more ease and to reveal the value it can bring.

​Drawing on Nonviolent Communication (NVC), mediation practices and power - dynamics awareness, we'll explore how to listen deeply, express yourself in ways others can genuinely hear you and stay grounded when tensions rise. Through guided inner work, partner exercises and group reflections, you'll begin building the capacity to transform conflict into constructive connection.

​🌾 What does this look like?

• ​Learning theoretical foundations of Non Violent Communication, mediation, and power dynamic awareness
• ​Practicing key skills through guided inner work & nervous system awareness, partner exercises, small-group exploration, and whole-group reflection in a supportive environment
• ​Real-time application bringing your own experiences of conflict to work with
• ​Integration practices to anchor learning between sessions
• ​A closed group format allowing for trust, depth and continuity

​🌟 What You'll Gain

​By the end of this series, you will have:

• ​Developed awareness of your feelings, needs, and habitual patterns in conflict
• ​Learned ways to express yourself in ways others can genuinely hear you
• ​Practiced listening with four ways of empathy while staying connected to yourself
• ​Built capacity to stay present when tensions arise
• ​Discovered how judgments can be doorways to understanding
• ​Developed tools for recognizing and begin working with power dynamics
• ​Cultivated skills to turn conflict into opportunities for connection

​👁️ Session Overview

​Session 1: Rooting in Self-Connection​
Session 2: Navigating the Heat of Conflict
Session 3: Mediation; Holding Space for Others
Session 4: Power Dynamics Awareness
Session 5: Review & Integration

Please see below for more details of each session

​🗣️ What others say

​The atmosphere was very gentle, the guidance inclusive and inviting.

​Gesa, Researcher

​What I most enjoyed about the course? Everything. Really. The group. both of you. The heart that was put in it. The silent moments. The beginning circle. The end. The conversation. The reflection. How all of us can come as we are and be welcomed. The honesty. The group game. The change that I felt in me in such a short time. Thank you.

​Keren, Kindergarten Nature & Arts Teacher

​I loved Anna’s and Caro‘s course. They bring a wide range of experiences, many lively examples and they found many creative ways to present the course material. The course experience was super fun and at the same time super informative and relevant.

​Anna-Kathrin , Facilitator

This course gave me very practical tips on how to deal with hard conversations in a curious, constructive, courageous and mature way, while also giving space to my very angry side that just wants to escalate the conflict and harm (me and) the other person. I feel like I learned super important skills that will help me care for my relationships and my community. Thank you Anna and Caro, I loved how you brought yourselves fully, you inspired me to also bring myself and it even felt light and recharging in the midst of winter.

Marta, Scientist, Artist & Community Founder

​👥 About the facilitators

 Anna & Caro during a singing and nature programme, re-approaching each other after a heavy conflict

​
**Carolin Goethel** ** ** is a facilitator, community weaver, and nature-based guide. Rooted in Rites-of-Passage Traditions, Deep Ecology and Nonviolent Communications, she creates experiences with an edge to nourish caring and honest connection to self, others, and the wider web of life. Her approach integrates ancient wisdom with contemporary practices, weaving together the sacred and the political, depth and playfulness. Above all, her craft is relational - an invitation to remember that we belong to each other and to life.

​ Anna Keuchenius** **is a coach trained in Internal Family Systems and Nonviolent Communication, among other modalities. With a background in physics and complexity research, she brings a unique perspective to understanding human systems. In her coaching, Anna integrates four realms of existence—the sensory, cognitive, emotional, and energetic—supporting people to access their full capacity for insight and transformation.

​👀 Curious? Join the taster

​ April 7th 7:15 - 9:15 PM CET

​This taster session offers a glimpse into what the full series will explore—come meet the facilitators and see if it's the right fit for you.

​The taster session covers

• ​the basics of Non Violent Communication
• ​a new awareness of your inner world
• ​practical tools to shift conflictual conversations
• ​demonstrations and embodied practice​​

​ The taster is a free offer. Register here:

https://dandelion.events/e/a4b4c

Sessions Detailed

Session 1: Rooting in Self-Connection

In this first session, we slow down enough to meet what lives beneath our conflicts. Before turning toward another person, we learn to turn toward ourselves: to recognise the deeper needs and longings that often hide beneath irritation, tension, or defensiveness. Together, we explore how to shift from the surface — the No, the judgment, the frustration — into the underlying positive life energy of what we are really wanting.

This session offers the foundations of Nonviolent Communication (NVC):

• understanding the difference between needs and strategies ,
• seeing the beauty in our needs and holding them with care,
• four ways of empathic listening
• recognising judgements as tragic expressions of unmet needs

We work with low-intensity conflict levels (1–5) and introduce practical tools for translating No’s and judgements back into needs — both our own and others’. Participants also learn the four modes of empathic listening, a way of being that supports deep understanding without fixing, analysing, or advising. These listening skills can be applied both outwardly to others and inwardly to your own experience.

By the end of this session, participants have a clearer sense of their inner landscape in conflict and a first set of tools to approach tension with more groundedness, compassion, and choice.

Session 2: Navigating the Heat of Conflict
In this session, we step into the territory of higher-intensity conflict — the moments when our nervous system is activated, emotions rise quickly, and our usual tools no longer feel accessible. Together, we explore how to de-escalate when we feel triggered, overwhelmed, angry, scared, or start shutting down. We also look at how to recognise escalating tension with another person and how to pause before the conversation becomes harmful or unproductive.

Rather than bypassing our feelings, we use embodied practices to safely express and move the energy underneath them, creating space for clarity and deeper needs to emerge. This session gives tools and strategies to reconnect to ourselves, and decharge in the heat of the moment.

Participants learn practical tools for navigating conflict levels 5–8, including:

• how and when to take a break in a conflict, and how to communicate that break effectively,
• self-empathy practices for grounding and regaining presence,
• letting the “jackals” speak — honouring the raw, messy impulses underneath without directing them at others,
• seeking co-regulation through support from regulated others.
• recognising mourning as a way to metabolise pain and restore presence and connection

Session 3: Mediation; Holding Space for Others
In this session, we explore the foundations of mediation — the simple, powerful ways we can support others in conflict, even without being trained mediators. We begin with the most essential ingredient: our own regulation. Offering a regulated nervous system to a conflictual tension between to others can be of tremendous value, and the conflict of others can teach us, in return, valuable lessons about ourselves.

We practice empathy for both sides, offering tools that help each person reconnect to their own feelings and needs. With just a few basic tools — steady breathing, genuine curiosity, and the willingness to hear what lives underneath the surface and by using connection requests— we can already create space for conflict to begin to decharge.

Participants learn how to:

• stay regulated while others are in distress,
• listen for needs rather than stories or blame,
• support each person in touching what truly matters to them,
• reflect back accurately without adding interpretations or advice
• using connection requests skillfully to switch between parties

Session 4: Power Dynamics Awareness
In the fourth session, we broaden the lens to include something often overlooked in Nonviolent Communication: power. Conflict does not happen in a vacuum. Our identities, histories, roles, and social positions shape how we speak, listen, and respond. Rather than turning a blind eye to these dynamics, we learn to name them gently and bring them into the space with awareness and care.

We explore the power structures present in conflict and how acknowledging them can create more honesty, safety, and mutual understanding. We look at both the inner sources of power available to people in disadvantaged positions, and the responsibility of those with more power to act with awareness and care in addressing existing imbalances.

Participants learn:

• recognise power inequalities

• hold perspectives on power (incl. process work after Arnold Mindell)

• practical tips how navigate conflict

  • when in less, equal, or more power/rank positions

• how to use facilitation and teaching practices that support more equitable power relations

• prepare for a difficult conversation, working with a real-life example from their own experience

Session 5: Review & Integration
In the last session, we take a critical and reflective look at NVC itself. While NVC can be a powerful practice for connection, it is sometimes experienced as frustrating or alienating when used rigidly or as a form of moral or communicative authority. We explore how NVC can be misused as a power tool — and return to its core intention: meeting one another with an open heart and listening for the needs behind judgments, including when others do not speak the language of NVC.

Finally, we offer tools and guided reflection to support participants in preparing for real conversations and tensions in their own lives, with attention to needs, power dynamics, and possibilities for staying connected in the midst of conflict.

We close the course with an integration of the key learnings.​

Cancellation Policy

Before April 1st: Full refund (you only cover ticket platform fees)

Before the first session (up to April 28, 2026): 50% refund

After the first session: Cancellations and refunds are no longer possible