The Compass: An Integrative Roadmap Towards Personal, Familial, and Collective Nonviolent Liberation

Drop-In Sessions: April - September, 2026
with Arnina Kashtan and Heather Austin

🗓️ 2nd Sunday of each month with Arnina Kashtan

🕘 9:30–11:30 a.m. PT (Check your local time here.⏰)

🗓️4th Sunday of each month with Heather Austin

🕘 9:30–11:00 a.m. PT (Check your local time here.⏰)

Beginning in 2026, Arnina Kashtan and Heather Austin are offering The Compass in a new drop-in format, replacing the previous six-month weekly online course. This new rhythm is designed to offer greater flexibility while still holding the depth, intimacy, and transformative power that have made the Compass experience so meaningful for so many.

In these sessions, you’ll engage with real-life experiences, guided inquiry, and shared learning in community to support you in:

Discovering the hidden roots of your suffering by understanding the collective conditioning leading to it
Accessing your authentic core and experiencing a new sense of Presence in the world
Transforming painful, non-serving thinking into compassionate consciousness
Healing old wounds, scars, painful contracts, and inner voices
Ending the “double life” by removing your masks so you can be who you really are and support others in seeing their own true self
Discovering the acquired identity with which you show up in the world versus what you’ve hidden deep inside, even from yourself
Dissolving “The Vow” that keeps you stuck
Learning how to quickly recover when you temporarily fall back into old patterns
Awakening into a larger field of awareness by understanding the influence of systems around us and igniting new strategies and ways of being

How the Drop-In Format Works

Each month includes two interconnected sessions that can be attended independently or together.

While these sessions are especially supportive for those with prior Compass experience, they are open to everyone, and we trust that each participant will leave with something meaningful and supportive, wherever they are on their journey.

2nd Sundays: Compass Mapping & Open Coaching

Facilitated by Arnina Kashtan, these sessions offer a focused exploration of a core Compass theme, along with live inquiry, Q&A, and open coaching. Participants are invited to bring real-life situations and questions, whether for personal clarification, relational challenges, or accompanying others on their liberation journeys.

These sessions emphasize seeing the map clearly, recognizing conditioning as it appears in daily life, and discovering where compassion and choice are available.

4th Sundays: Integration & Practice Labs

Facilitated by Heather Austin, these sessions offer space for and support with deepening into and integrating the monthly theme through embodied practices, nervous system support, dyads, reflection, and applied tools drawn from the Compass and related frameworks.

These sessions emphasize lived integration, sustainability, and practice, supporting participants in bringing insight into the body, into relationships, and into everyday choices.

Together, the two sessions offer both orientation and embodiment, insight and practice, understanding and integration.

“The Compass” is Arnina Kashtan’s unique methodology which synthesizes practices from Nonviolent Communication, The Work of Byron Katie, and Inner Child work with Arnina’s own discoveries, insights, and tools to support you in moving beyond old patterns of guilt, shame, anger, and fear…into freedom and an untapped celebration of who you really are, while influencing and accompanying others in their liberation journeys.

“I’m especially grateful that Heather Austin will be co-holding these spaces with me. Heather brings a depth of care, presence, and integration that I trust deeply, and I’m delighted we’ll be offering this together. ” ~ Arnina Kashtan

Drop-in Details
🗓️ 2nd Sunday of each month with Arnina Kashtan

🕘 9:30–11:30 a.m. PT (Check your local time here.⏰)

Sliding Scale*: $30 - 60 per session

🗓️4th Sundays of each month with Heather Austin

🕘 9:30–11:00 a.m. PT (Check your local time here.⏰)

Sliding Scale*: $20 - 40 per session

Click here to register

*We are aiming to care for both accessibility and sustainability needs with our sliding scale structure. If contributing within the scale is an obstacle to your participation due to financial hardship, we welcome a conversation about partial scholarships and other ways of contributing. For those able to contribute beyond the scale, your generosity supports not only your journey but also ensures the inclusivity and sustainability of this liberating learning journey for others.

Contact

If you have any questions or requests, please don't hesitate to reach out to Heather Austin, 'The Compass' Coordinator, Coach and Facilitator. Heather4Compass@nglcommunity.org. Thank you! 🙂

Samples of The Compass Material

Additional Resources

Testimonials

“My sister Arnina puts together so much — systemic perspective, compassion for trauma, deep understanding about how humans function, and more — into a comprehensive, deep, and fully accessible framework that supports dramatic shifts in the experience of being alive. I highly recommend it to anyone who has a passion for freedom.” ~ Miki Kashtan

"I am now, at 77 years old, learning the many unconscious ways my body and mind have been habitually programmed, specifically around my parenting. ... Because of Heather's caring, compassionate heart, her skilled teaching methods, and her embodiment of the modalities she shares, we are experiencing the material intellectually through her references to brain science and developmental theory, viscerally, through practicing and experimenting with our bodies, and spiritually, through the presence and unconditional love and acceptance we all feel from Heather. ... I am grateful for this opportunity to create and model a world for my children and grandchildren more in alignment with my highest values." ~ Margery Pricket

“Thanks to Arnina...I am newly aware of choices there are in how I speak…and even though it is a momentous challenge to change, I am hopeful in going forward.” ~ Marge Margulies

“Heather is able to widen any circle of awareness, bringing in what is not easily seen in our parent-children relationships. Heather is connected to her innate care for others, and with her, I feel seen, heard, and understood in my challenges as a mother. She has inspired me with her commitment to walk the path of compassion.” ~ Fernanda Cecin

"Arnina supported a shift toward including myself fully in caring for the whole, that resonates in all areas of my being.” ~ Vesta Kroese

“Heather has given me clarity around dynamics that contribute to strengthening a heartfelt connection with my children. She has offered me practical strategies to transform patterns of reactivity into behaviors that are more aligned with my values.” ~ Grace Deckers

“You [Arnina] accompanied me very lovingly to ‘see my son’ and I saw him! Wonderful. …and you helped me see my daughter in all her beauty, without wanting to change her. Thank you so much for sharing your vital wisdom and for bringing light and clarity where it was tangled and dark. My gratitude cannot be expressed in words.” ~ Marta Delgado

"I love how you [Heather] extract the principle after each sharing and expand it. It provides a sense of being heard for the person sharing and learning for all other participants. I learn so many facilitation skills from you in addition to all the content you share. I was so much longing for exactly a space like this: You bring all the wisdom of the Kashtans and put it into practice for parenting, and I really love this new dimension that mindfulness brings to it. Thank you soooo much!" ~ Csenge Fekete

“I enjoy Arnina’s authenticity, strength, and own flavor bringing NVC into the world. I feel more free, more alive, more motivated and empowered.” ~ Claudia Sánchez

“Heather is a person who gives herself without limits, without judgment, she is a being full of compassion, love, empathy, and resilience. She has the ability to give her unconditional presence to…accompany parents on their parenting journey.” ~ Carolina Zamorano

Arnina Kashtan, certified NVC trainer (1992), is the creator of “The Compass”, the process for personal, familial & collective liberation, and author of “Falling in Love with Myself Again” (2016). Founder of Meitarim, the Center for The Compass & NVC Studies in Israel (2000), she delivers workshops and trainings, online & offline, to the general public, as well as trainings for coaches, mediators & trainers (in Hebrew, English & Spanish).

Arnina’s passion and special gifts are in enhancing breakthroughs in awareness, thus bringing forth deep transformations on all levels. Her unique approach combines a profound, laser-like exploration into our innermost core supported by a rare sense of humor and embedded in deep, embracing empathy. The emerging almost magical space she creates has enabled her students all over the world to open up into new understandings and embark on a fresh, compassionate, and expanding free path.

Heather Austin was introduced to, and fell in love with, Nonviolent Communication (NVC) through Inbal Kashtan’s book, “Parenting From Your Heart” and she is deeply grateful to have been working closely with and learning from (and together with) Inbal’s sisters, Arnina and Miki, over seven yeaers as a founding member of the Nonviolent Global Liberation (NGL) Community, the Event Coordinator at Bay Area Nonviolent Communication (BayNVC), and The Compass Program Coordinator and Coach.

Heather‘s passion is to support people, especially parents, educators, and children, in cultivating their capacity for non-judgemental present moment awareness; deepening their connection with one another; and co-creating compassionate, purpose-aligned, collaborative family systems, in the hope that these family systems will serve as seeds for creating a world that works for all. She has been doing this with the consciousness and practical tools that are part of her learnings from NVC, NGL, The Compass, UCLA's Adaptive Schools & Parent Empowerment Training, Attachment Theory, Polyvagal Theory, Mindfulness and more.

In addition to her work with the Kashtan sisters, Heather facilitates nvc classes and groups, and offers individual support sessions including home and school visits. She brings wisdom from her decades-long journey of teaching parents, educators, and children of all ages, in and out of school settings, both in the U.S. and Mexico (and more recently across Europe) as well as her own journey of parenting and homeschooling her neurodivergent child.

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