The Heart of Parenting💙(Monthly Drop-Ins)

Cultivating Compassion for Ourselves, Our Children, and Our World

Co-facilitators: Arnina Kashtan & Heather Austin
Next Session: Saturday, June 1st, 2024 @ 8:30 am - 10:00 am PT
(Check your local time here.)
Heather also facilitates weekly parenting groups for additional support and community connection. :)
(Click here for more details.)

In these online sessions, Arnina and Heather invite parents on a courageous, transformational, and fulfilling parenting adventure to transcend socialized parenting paradigms and limiting beliefs instilled from their own childhood experiences. Rather than teach “parenting techniques” or “behavior management”, they hope to reconnect parents with their own innate wisdom so they can engage with their children more compassionately and responsively rather than parenting on auto-pilot – fueled by repetitive patterns – and often (over)reacting in regrettable ways.

Packed with wisdom from their own journeys, challenges, and discoveries, Arnina and Heather will teach and encourage self-care, self-kindness, and self-compassion because experience (and science!) has taught them that doing so gives parents more of each to offer their children. Additionally, when children experience settled nervous systems modeled in the home by their parents, they are much less likely to interpret stress as their fault and less likely to carry burdens that are not theirs to carry. In this sense, self-care is an act of mutual care because the parents learn to honor their own capacity while protecting their children’s sense of mattering.

“The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence.
When mindfulness embraces those we love,
they will bloom like flowers.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Arnina and Heather will also share practices and principles for cultivating more presence, awareness, compassion, and resilience so parents can show up in ways that are more deeply aligned with their values and dreams. And because children learn more from what parents do than what they say, parents will be instilling these same life-serving qualities in their children as they cultivate them in themselves. No parent (or person) is perfect, and modeling imperfection and being explicit about cultivating new habits to care for yourself and others provides a compassionate template of authenticity for children as well.

These sessions include a wide range of content and space for deep engagement so participants can receive the following benefits and more:

Compassion for yourself through understanding why your capacity may lag so far behind your commitment and what you can do to bridge the gap;
Compassion for your children as you understand better what life is like from within their own experience rather than from the outside looking in;
Compassion for and from other parents: so many parents, especially those shifting into to more liberating paradigms, feel alone and lack support; here you will find others whose struggles are similar;
A glimpse of life beyond right/wrong thinking as you release yourself from both the old concepts of what is right, such as “an obedient child” and the new concepts of what is right, such as “a parent who never loses it;”
Practices for cultivating more mindful and heartful presence for yourself and with your children;
A growing capacity to remain empathic with your children even in challenging moments and increased transparency about your own needs as natural limits;
More choicefulness about your “yes” and your “no;”
More capacity to remain calm when your children become dysregulated and more skills to help their nervous systems settle; and
More togetherness (and ease!) in your relationship with them as well.

Tuition & Registration

Generally the First Saturday of every month
8:30 am - 10:00 am PT (Check your local time here.)
(Sliding scale $10 - $60)

We invite you to REGISTER HERE for our next session, June 1st, and/or for future sessions.

If you have any questions, comments, or requests, please don't hesitate to email Heather Austin at heather4compass@nglcommunity.org.

If you would enjoy coming together with this community more regularly for connection and support,
Heather offers weekly small group sessions in addition to private coaching and home/school visits.
Click HERE for more details and to register if you feel inspired to do so. :)

Co-Facilitators

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, for over five years 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.

Heather‘s passion is to support parents 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, and more.

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

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

Please share these offerings with others who you think might enjoy learning these practices and principles in a compasssionate community. :)