Inner Fitness: Love and Mindfulness

Week of October 9, 2021

Love is a feeling; loving is a skill. In this series of five talks, author and therapist Linda Carroll combines the practice of mindfulness and inner fitness with her work on relationships cycles.

The BIG SHIFT:  Mindfulness and Relationships
The big shift refers to the transition from outer connection to inner fitness; shifting from reacting to responding, from mindless to mindful, and from belonging to another to belonging to ourselves. Using the Love Cycles model from her two highly acclaimed books on the topic, Linda describes the stages of relationships, highlighting the challenges at each stage and demonstrating how mindfulness is the key to overcoming these challenges.

5 Basic Skills in Communication (PAUSE)
Communication defines the health of our relationships and communication under stress can be particularly challenging. Using the acronym PAUSE, Linda provides tools for developing a healthy inner dialogue, even when we are feeling the stress reactions of fight, freeze, or flight. She also offers insight into how to transform defensiveness and into open curiosity and encourage honest dialogue.

Neuroplasticity and the Five Essential Keys to Emotional Fitness
Having a high IQ might make you a genius, but having a high EQ makes you someone everyone else wants to be around. Join Linda as she shares tips for strengthening our emotional fitness with these 5 essential habits:

Habit #1: Self-Regulation
Habit #2: Awareness and Empathy for Others
Habit #3: Healthy Inner Dialogue
Habit #4: Understanding and Managing Triggers (when stress styles collide)
Habit #5: Recognizing Feelings

Powerful You
How does our impact on others affect us in leadership and love? This talk will show how you can cultivate the “gift of presence” and learn the three magic words that help others feel truly seen (Hint: it’s not “I love you”).

Create Your Best Life
Find out what it truly means to be “wholehearted.” Learn the truth about “self-love,” owning your story, and staying vertical in a horizontal world. Join Linda on a journey of the two main pillars in all relationships: connection and separation.

 

Linda Carroll holds a master’s degree in counseling and has practiced psychotherapy since 1981, specializing in couples and communication. She has been coaching since 2008 and obtained certification as a Life Coach in 2016. She works with couples in her private practice in Corvallis, Oregon, and coaches clients virtually, by phone, and in person. She has authored three books on personal growth and healing and is a frequent presenter at the Ranch on the topic of love and relationships. Her lectures feature material from her highly acclaimed book, Love Cycles, published by New World Library in 2014 and her upcoming book, LoveSkills: The Keys to Unlocking Lasting Wholehearted Love, which will be released Feb 14, 2020 by New World Library.

Linda grew up in San Francisco during the 1950s and came of age during the countercultural 1960s. From her more traditional childhood, she preserves a faith in the importance of service, mystery, and reverence for all forms of life. From her early flower-child leanings, she has maintained a belief in looking “outside the box” for approaches to healing. Visit her website at lindaacarroll.com.

Handouts
Emotional Fluency
Wholehearted Loving and Living
Powerful You: Impact as Legacy
Mindfulness The Big Shift
5 Basic Skills in Communication