Community Resiliency

Anusara School of Hatha Yoga is a global non-profit that helps individuals apply yoga communication skills to life off the mat.

Apply Yoga Communication Skills to Your Life

Living yoga off the mat is its own practice. Skillfully create the relationships you want that uplift your community and our planet. Learn how to apply yoga communication skills.

As part of our commitment to core values that include

  • unity within diversity
  • collaboration
  • mutual respect
  • and responsibility

Anusara School of Hatha Yoga provides opportunities to cultivate skills that create more

  • connection
  • peace
  • happiness
  • and fulfillment.

Our School works from our Compassionate Communication Framework to educate our community on how to apply yoga to life off the mat.

We offer resources including videos and a print manual that you may download to help you gain communication skills.

As well, we have a team of trained volunteers available to assist members in our community.

Increase your skill in our Intensive Study at Samudra Shakti – yoga retreat.

Join us September 17-20, 2023
sunset in a field with yoga person hands to heart

“Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
~Rumi

Compassionate Communication Framework

Anusara’s Compassionate Communication Framework is a tool for realizing our full potential. Based on our School’s philosophy of Non-Dual Tantric yoga, we know our capacity to align with the Divine is enhanced when we recognize the behavior of others as not right or wrong, but as an expression of a need that is met or unmet.

Developing and honing our communication skills is part of our growth and a deeper Tantric practice. As well, it’s a component of our Universal Principle’s of Alignment especially the First Principle: Open to Grace and Set the Foundation. Our speech and communication also moves through this threshold.

Compassionate Communication is about learning how to communicate skillfully. These skills help us

  • deepen our connection to ourselves as we learn to more easily identify our feeelings and related needs,
  • build empathy towards ourselves and others,
  • help us find non-confrontational ways to make requests of others,
  • help resolve conflicts as they arise.

Skillful Communication Resources

purple flowers in a field as sun sets on the wisdom of anusara yoga's compassionate communication

Compassionate Communication

Ready to dive in now? Download Anusara yoga’s Compassionate Communication guide to help you with skillful communication.

Resources for Skillful Communication

Do you need resources to help you apply your yoga communication skills? Contact us to schedule a workshop in your local community or if you are a licensed Anusara member, request support.

Build your Yoga Communication Skills Now

These short videos offer easy ways to increase your communication skills.

Remember that we have the freedom to choose our response in the space between stimulus and response.
A quick reminder of the value of slowing down and how it increases your ability to effectively communicate.
Interested in understanding Anusara’s Compassionate Communication process? Here’s a succinct introduction.
Discover potential in difficult situations by Opening to Grace which is Anusara Yoga’s First Principle of its Universal Principles of Alignment (UPA’s).
Learn how to practice the art of receiving feedback. It’s a skill that we develop that allows us to apply our yoga communication skills to conflict resolution.
Consider the 10% Rule when receiving feedback. Learn how to apply yoga communication skills in your life.

Community Resiliency Team

The Community Resiliency (CR) team helps to ensure harmonious relationships throughout the School’s five global regions by ensuring that its global community has the support and skills needed to foster compassionate communication at all levels of interaction.

Members of the CR team have experience in community support and working with others to find equitable solutions to situations that present the all too common difficulties of being in collaborative relationships. Involvement in the team is a powerful way to participate in our Anusara community and contribute your skills in the growth and development of the School and its international kula (family) of students and teachers.

Cat McCarthy
New York City, USA

Cat McCarthy, Team Leader

Sitting in the gap between what is happening and what I think “should” be happening can be challenging, if not painful.  When I feel disappointed, it’s usually that I am hoping things to be a certain way, and life isn’t panning out as expected.  But rather than trying to make anything wrong, what if I can be curious about what is arising in me?  Yoga for me is a practice of learning to become comfortable with discomfort, which over time expands my comfort zone.

In Anusara Yoga, we teach principles of alignment.  People have alignment.  Poses do not.  Within a tantric perspective, we always are always practicing choice.  To what can I choose to align?  How do I choose?  And how can I respond to people, situations, or even other parts of myself that seem out of alignment to myself?  As we learn to navigate an ever-changing pandemic environment, we have the continual opportunity to accept what is indeed happening around us, while choosing how to respond in a way that keeps connection.

Allow me to introduce myself.  I was part of the Anusara Yoga kula from 2002-2012.  I held Affiliation status in 2004 and earned my Certification in 2008.  Although based in New York City, I spent a decade of my life helping rebuild the yoga communities post-Hurricane Katrina in my hometown of New Orleans, as well as the Gulf Coast and SE region.  Originally a filmmaker, my yoga wings gradually spread to teach nationally and internationally.  Since 2013, I have been integrating Compassionate Communication (NVC) into my yoga trainings, exploring how to align ourselves both inside and out.  I am honored to guide physical, mental, and emotional asana, which requires both curiosity and humor, as we excavate deeper within.

Compassionate Communication has been the most clear, practical, and effective way of applying my yoga off of the mat and into my life.  Not only has it changed my relationships with others, it has fostered more self-compassion.  However, not unlike doing handstand in the middle of the room, it’s not easy and might take some time to accomplish.  When I am able to see from different angles in asana (even when scary), I can view the world from the benefit of multiple perspectives.  This is abhyasa.  This takes skill in action.

As the Community Resiliency Team Leader, I am excited to be sharing with the Anusara kula all that I have learned on my path.  I am happy to be back in the fold and honored to be taking up the reigns from Tiffany Wood, collaborating with an established stellar team.  It is within a safe and attuned community that we can all learn from one another while cultivating more understanding, connection, and most of all compassion.  I look forward to sharing this practice with my fellow teachers, as we all hold the space for healing in the world.

In gratitude, Cat

will doran smiling in a field as an anusara yoga teacher
Will Doran
Seattle, Washington USA

Will Doran, Team Member

Will is a Certified Anusara yoga teacher who began his yoga journey in 1998.  He has extensive experience in business management, customer support, and interpersonal relationship guidance.  Will has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington Jackson School of International Studies (with a major in Latin American studies),  is certified as a Professional Life Coach, has seven years of computer retail sales management, and has served for over twenty five years as a board of directors member for his family’s corporate business.  His life philosophy aligns and resonates with ASHY’s core values of recognizing the sacred in the heart of all beings.

Help us model, lead, and teach non-violent compassionate communication in your global region.

Community Resiliency / Communication Skills

Join Our Volunteer Team

Are you interested in serving our global community? Contact us if you’d like to serve Asia, Canada, Europe, and Latin America by being on the School’s Community Resiliency Team. 

Please note: Members of the CR Team are highly encouraged to read and implement the skills of mediation in the Mediate Your Life manual by mediation and conflict resolution experts John Kinyon and Ike Lasater.

Team Member Description

Provide guidance and support to maintain mutual respect and responsibility within the represented region of teachers, practitioners, and students.

Clearly implement communications and conflict resolution skills that utilize and implement Anusara School of Hatha Yoga’s core values and ethics.

Responsibilities

  • Willing to be a successful and contributing member of the team
  • Receive basic training in Anusara’s conflict resolution protocol, gradients of agreement, appreciative inquiry.
  • Interact and participate with Community Relations Team and Team Leader
  • Respond to challenges or conflicts within your regional community of ASHY teachers, students and practitioners.
  • Initiate communication with the person(s) involved in the unresolved conflict.
  • Implement the conflict resolution protocol as it pertains to the unique situation.
  • Draw upon Ansuara’s core values to guide individuals and groups to resolution.

Qualifications

A licensed teacher for a minimum of 2 years as well as connections within your region.

  • Communication, team management, and leadership skills
  • Mediation and conflict resolution experience suggested
  • Ability to see all sides of the issue and remain neutral
  • Knows when to delegate and when to ask for support
  • A sense of humility and service towards the community

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does Anusara yoga have a Compassionate Communication Framework?

Skillfull communication with others is essential to our journey of remembering our full potential as individuals and as an organization.

A compassion-based approach to communication helps us to recognize the sacred in all beings. It also helps us connect more deeply to one another.

How did Anusara yoga’s conflict resolution model based on compassionate communication arise?

Anusara yoga’s conflict resolution framework grew out of a desire expressed by Anusara practitioners to have additional resources to navigate difficult conversations with co-workers, fellow teachers, community leaders, and family members. Developing and honing our communication skills are part of our growth.

What is Anusara yoga’s conflict resolution model using Compassionate Communication based on?

Anusara uses ideas from Non-Violent Communication (NVC) which offers us a way to connect to the Divine, similar to Ansuara’s Universal Principles of Alignment (UPA’s). NVC is based on four components of communication:

• Observations
• Feelings
• Needs
• Requests.

How does Anusara yoga view conflict resolution?

Conflict is simply the gap between what we want and what we are experiencing at any point in time. This gap generates energy because humans are highly motivated to close the gap because it isn’t comfortable.

What does Anusara yoga mean by the term Community Resliency?

Community Resiliency is the ability to recover quickly when a conflict arises. A conflict resilient community is one where conflict is managed well and not allowed to escalate because of a commitment to change, review current practice, identify areas for improvement, present options for change, and evaluate success.

Why does Anusara yoga think enhancing communication skills for conflict resolution is important?

The possibility of conflict – and conflict itself – are part of the human experience and thus part of being skillful yoga practitioners united within a global organization.

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