Listening to ourselves and others with warm, tender-hearted presence that resolves and dissolves stuckness.
Do you ever find yourself doing something over and over again that you’d rather not, repeatedly resisting what you truly want, or reacting in ways you later regret? This is stuckness.
In this series, you’ll learn to meet this stuckness with warm, tender-hearted presence and understanding. You’ll train in tender-hearted listening and companionship with yourself and others.
When held in this warmth and tenderness, something that is bound up will free up, something twisted will straighten out, something tangled will untangle, something that is stuck and frozen will get unstuck, thaw and flow. Until you can just be with what is as it is.
Tender-hearted Presence
Tune in to the four flavors of boundless tender-hearted presence that can become the home you return to over and over again: compassion, appreciative joy, loving kindness and equanimity.
These boundless heart qualities are always available. Learning to tune in to them and becoming familiar with them helps us draw on them to be present with whatever arises.
Tender-hearted Understanding
Warm ways of understanding what we are experiencing can give us a deep sense of seeing and being seen, hearing and being heard, of an end to an unconscious, always present “Do you get me?” which is really a “Do I get me?”
When the “Do I get me?” dissolves in the warmth of tender-heartedness, there’s just the peace that is non-conceptuality.
Tender-hearted Languaging
Simple and skillful languaging can evoke warm presence and understanding without requiring previous training in meditation, psychology or philosophy.
Drawing from Non-Violent Communication, Inner Relationship Focusing and Buddhist philosophy, we will learn languaging that holds our experience with empathy, presence and understanding.
Tender-hearted Listening and Companionship
Through partner practice, we will develop listening and companionship skills that facilitate tender-hearted presence and understanding.
The result is a way of being with ourselves and others that meets our fundamental needs for both closeness and space.
Recommended (but not required) reading
- The Compassion Book by Thom Bond
- The Power of Focusing by Ann Weiser Cornell
About Sentha
Sentha Sivabalan has over 20 years of experience in studying, practicing and teaching meditation in all three current streams of Buddhism: Chan (Chinese precursor to Zen) Buddhism with Gilbert Gutierrez, Tibetan and Theravada Buddhism with Marvin Treiger. Both of her teachers have authorized and encouraged her to teach. Gilbert often says to Sentha, “You’ve received my marrow.” Marv says about Sentha, “Sentha is that rare combination of loving Grace & Precision—Wisdom that informs and inspires the student towards their best.”
Sentha has led 5 year-long Zoom courses in Compassionate Communication and Presence based on Non-Violent Communication. Her interest, understanding and study of trauma resilience (TRM Level 1 Training, Dec. 2015, at Trauma Resource Institute) informs her approach to teaching. She has trained in Inner Relationship Focusing (PFP). She also has 200-hour training in teaching meditation in a way that is natural, intuitive, individual and nourishing.
Schedule
14 weekly meetings, 1.5 hours each
Wednesdays, September 9, 2026-December 16, 2026, no meeting on November 25, 2026
6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. PDT
Each workshop will include a topic presentation and partner practice through conversations in breakout rooms.
You will have access to session recordings (excluding partner practice).
Cost
Tiered pricing for the workshop series:
- Basic: $200
- Sponsor: $300
- Supported: $100*
*If this is not comfortably affordable, e-mail Sentha. No one will be turned away based on cost. Work-study options are available.