— Self-Guided Course —

With Lisa Blair and David Bedrick

A New Paradigm for Unshaming

Conflict in Relationships

In this course, we will guide you through relationship conflict with practice-based steps and help you access the powerful, natural wisdom of your body and soul to transmute your problems and differences into opportunities for cultivating deeper emotional intimacy.

In this course, we’ll cover:

  • How to speak directly from your body’s feelings, knowings, and wisdom

  • How to hear the words, feelings, and essence of another’s message

  • How to discover a place of non-separation amidst difference

  • How safety is not created by censorship, but by deeper awareness

  • How to create the joy of discovery in the midst of conflict

You’ll also learn:

  • What exactly is intimacy? How do we co-create it?

  • Threats to intimacy: denial, fixing, and problem solving

  • The limits of compromising

  • Conflict as a spectrum

  • The Somatic Path to intimacy

  • Becoming more direct AND empathetic

  • Hot topics: hurt, resentment, anger, and jealousy

  • Practical skills, steps, and attitudes that cultivate intimacy out of your difficulties, differences, and problems in your relationship

We have a SHIT-TON of models of ABUSIVE & UGLY conflict in our families and world.

We need more models that go even beyond resolution; models of co-creating intimacy.

It’s NOT about “fixing” or “healing” all of our triggers.

Conventional relationship advice focuses on fixing our problems. It tells us we should learn to calm down, be reasonable, compromise, listen better, negotiate better, be more understanding, release our emotions, be more present, give and take, and find common ground. Essentially, it’s all directed towards keeping or moving the relationship towards a status quo, more or less humming along harmoniously.

We know there can be trauma in the background that can get entangled in our relationships, triggers that can become activated, different styles of attachment, various wounds that we wrestle through, and love languages to discover. None of these suggest that our difficulties, differences, or things that disturb us in our relationships could actually be DOORWAYS to intimacy, rather than problems to fix that are impeding intimacy.

What we’re proposing is a radical PARADIGM SHIFT in our relationships, one that focuses on INTIMACY-MAKING as the goal.

Difficulties and differences arise that disturb our relationship harmony, and within those disturbances are opportunities for cultivating deeper intimacy. In fact, that’s where much of the intimacy happens. Just like when you learn about yourself by bumping up against a challenging situation or event and you experience things that make you self-reflect, it’s the same in relationships.

When our goal is to have a relationship without “conflict” we’re losing out on opportunities for cultivating deeper intimacy. 

In fact, when we’re focused on harmony instead of understanding and discovery, we end up avoiding conflict or and support our relationship status quo. This injures our intimacy because we’re suppressing, holding back, and compromising parts of ourselves.

Working through conflict isn’t just about getting back to something, it actually offers something new.

 

So, what do we mean by “conflict”?

We mean any experience in relationship where there are at least two, if not more, different positions being taken. There's usually a core or essential polarity—yes and no, right and wrong, I want to go this way and you want to go that way, I believe this and you believe that.

It could be something as simple as Where should we go to dinner tonight? You want to go here? Well, I want to go there. Or it could be more heated conflicts when you feel mistreated or hurt by your partner/friend/loved one. (Caveat: We are not talking about abusive relationships here.)

Anywhere from the tiniest difference to the biggest fight. Conflict is a spectrum.

Most people would say, we disagree about the content — the actual words, the thing you’re disagreeing on, the place we're going to go, how you’re talking to me, etc. But, in this course, we want to explore below the surface level of content and teach you how to speak up for yourself AND how to listen to another in a deeper way.

Certainly, this includes learning how to say, No, that's not okay with me, but it also includes learning more about each person’s experience so that you can connect with each other in a new way.

That's very radical and that’s intimacy making.

What if your relationship problems were secretly calling to you as opportunities to bridge the gap of intimacy and actually feel closer rather than more distant?

What if you were to view working through conflict as a generative process rather than a restorative one?


How would that shift the ways you show up, share, and understand your partner, friend, or loved one?

DOORWAYS TO INTIMACY

In this course, we will:

  • Present our UnShaming paradigm to relationship conflict and intimacy

  • Outline examples of common difficulties, disturbances, and conflicts in relationships including modeling on our working-through process

  • Teach you core skills needed in a relationship to work through differences in ways that make intimacy, including:

    • Learning how to fully take your own side - understanding yourself more deeply leading to you (and the other person) deeply valuing your feelings, needs, and truth, feeling seen and heard in a new way

    • Learning how to take the other person’s side - understanding the other person’s needs, desires, perspectives more deeply leading to the other person feeling deeply valued, heard, and seen

    • Learning how to pick up accusations - seeing how it could be even the tiniest bit true and practicing how to feel that experience in the body - not on the content level, but on a somatic, feeling level - leading to greater intimacy and the other person feeling deeply understood and heard

  • Teach you how to go beneath the surface content of a conflict, getting to know who you are more deeply and how that creates intimacy

  • Help you navigate emotional hurt in conflict and different communication styles 

  • Guide you through exercises aimed at helping you understand yourself more deeply, where you need to be freer, more direct, and how to self-advocate in conflict as well as where you need to be more empathetic and learn more about your partner/friend/loved one

  • Connect you with your Radical Soma by getting in touch with your somatic feeling, movement, and voice experiences that live inside of you so that you can better understand and feel how things land in your body, the energy of the exchange, and what’s being said, to drop below the actual content of the conflict

Learn to dig down into your soul, into the parts of you that live and feel, and make something truly magnificent in your relationship.

What Past Students Are Saying…

"Lisa Blair is truly brilliant and exceptionally capable, widely skilled, dynamically flexible and an overall badass. If this resonates for you…consider this a sign."

— Ruby

“Working with David absolutely blew my mind. David is compassionate, deeply skilled, and able to support massive shifts if you are ready and willing to make them. Our work together has given me more permission to be ME, to be human, to mess up. Emotionally, I feel a million pounds lighter.”

— Brooke

“David has a lovely wisdom and skill for liberating a truth you didn't know was there! I'm in the process of my third workshop with him and it's changed my life in ways I could've never imagined.”

— Paul

Course Outline

Class 1: Creating Safety

This class will introduce you to a whole new way of viewing the difficulties, differences, and conflicts in your relationships as doorways to intimacy. We’ll explore the questions: What exactly is intimacy? What does the intersection of intimacy and conflict look and feel like? Next, we’ll dive in to learning about how to create safety when dealing with conflict in your relationship, when the priority is intimacy-making. We’ll teach you the awareness necessary to create a safe container to explore conflict, communicate your needs, and stay present with your emotions and what’s happening for you somatically. We’ll also guide you through an exercise for how to safely express anger and other strong, fiery energies.

Class 2: Taking Your Own Side in Conflict

In this class, we’ll start by discussing how to become aware of when you’re hurt and then guide you through an exercise to get in touch with that. Then, we’ll then shift to talking about what it means to “take your own side” in a conflict and guide you through a step-by-step exercise so you can learn how to connect with your deeper feelings, needs, and experiences, and speak them more freely and directly to become your own true advocate.

Class 3: Picking up Accusations

Ever feel like you can’t afford to acknowledge the truth of an accusation from your partner/friend/cherished one because defensiveness has got you digging your heals in? We’ll open the doorway for you to address your defensiveness and learn how to see the 3% of truth in their accusation, guiding you through the steps to pick up (own) accusations in a conflict, and genuinely speak from that place.

Class 4: Taking the Other Person’s Side

When most of us are in the middle of a conflict, argument, or problem, we have a difficult time empathizing with the other person because, well, their viewpoint is just WRONG! Right? In this class, we’ll discuss why taking the other person’s side is so enormously healing both to that person, and also to you and the frequently lesser-known aspects of yourself. What’s more, it is a fast track to cultivating intimacy in your relationship in a profound way. We’ll walk you through how to take the other person’s side in a conflict including how to empathize in a real way with the other person’s needs, feelings, and expression even if you seem to disagree with them completely on the surface.

CLASS DETAILS:

Each class will be 2.5+ hours long.

All classes will have an assortment of approaches to cater to a diversity of learning styles:

  • oral teaching and discussion

  • experiential exercises with debrief

  • witnessing real-time modeling with David and Lisa on their own relationship conflicts and how they work through them

  • witnessing how David and Lisa work with individuals and couples in the classes on their questions and conflicts

  • mini lectures with slideshows including visual sentences and images

Exercises will focus on Radical Soma techniques through body sensations, movement, and voice. Others will use role play or additional techniques. At times, guided grounding, centering, and intention setting will also be addressed.

By the end of our four classes, you’ll have new skills and tools for working through relationship conflicts in a way that leads to deeper intimacy and enhanced access to your body’s and soul’s deeper intimacy intelligence. 

What’s Included?

  • Four (4) Recorded Trainings with both David & Lisa (2.5+ hours each): During these classes, you’ll delve into the innovative skills and attitudes for unshaming relationship conflict and transforming it into deeper intimacy. You’ll also witness David and Lisa working with their own conflicts as well as the conflicts and questions brought forward from individuals and couples in the class space.

  • Four (4) Bonus Videos with David & Lisa: These videos highlight important teachings, expand on the larger discussion around this new paradigm and approach to conflict, and show David & Lisa model working on their own relationship conflicts.

  • The Doorways to Intimacy Guidebook, a 70+ page workbook to guide you through the material and practices, including all the exercises, diagrams, flow charts, and slides, as well as bonus articles written by David & Lisa on relationship conflict and intimacy.

  • Lifetime Access to the Recordings.

  • Two Teachers for the Price of One: You’ll have access to the expertise, awareness, and unique strengths and gifts of two teachers for the price of one for the entire duration of the course.

  • A Shared Community: You’ll feel the value of having a container of a live shared community where the presence of conflict in relationships is unshamed, normalized, and celebrated as nature’s diversity.

BONUS!

Get FREE bonus access to our popular 3+ hour Relationship Detox Masterclass with Doorways to Intimacy!

(Regularly $55 on its own!)

This course IS for you if...

  • You hunger for greater intimacy with your partner, friend, or loved one

  • You think conflicts resolve only through compromise and problem solving 

  • The models you have for conflict have either been avoidant or abusive

  • Inner criticism takes over when you feel vulnerable or hurt

  • You shy away from speaking your mind and heart

  • You tend to avoid conflict

  • Your conflicts in your intimate relationships tend to lead to feeling more distant and/or unresolved rather than closer, more connected, and understood

  • You easily get defensive when someone accuses you of something in a conflict

  • You take care of others at the expense of your own needs

  • You simply can’t relate to others’ perspectives

  • You are judgmental of others you are in intimate relationships with

  • You are a feeling person who tries to be “logical”

  • You get angry and are afraid of hurting others

AND…

  • You are open to seeing how there may be an element of truth in another’s accusation of you

  • You are open to learning more about the deeper feelings and experiences of the other person in your life even if their feelings differ from your own

  • You value “shadow work” and approaches that help you unearth the unconscious feelings, intentions, and even taboo experiences you feel inside

  • You are ready to exercise some courage in working with conflict and begin to take steps towards approaching it from a new perspective, perhaps in a way you’ve never before considered

This course is NOT for you if...

  • You are in an abusive or violent relationship; this requires a different set of skills and support than this course can provide.

  • You are not interested in deeper investigation and learning about yourself; you just want your relationship problems to go away.

  • You are not interested in cultivating deeper intimacy in any of your relationships.

  • You are looking for help to solve problems or blame your partner/friend/loved one for how they treat you.

  • You don’t believe there is meaning and intelligence in your body or your relationship or communication patterns. You simply think these are pathologies to fix and get over.

    We will not be just looking at your thoughts or behaviors. We will also be examining your feelings and sensations in your body.

  • Your goal is to heal your relationships from having conflicts.

    The idea that you can do some work and your relationship conflicts will disappear is inherently shaming. Within that belief, there is no room for you to understand yourself or the other person better and there is no path to cultivating deeper intimacy in any sustainable way.

What Past Students Are Saying…

“David, thank you for such a truly life-altering experience…Being with you was a deep, deep reminder of the power of this paradigm, the power of loving presence, the gift of coming into ever greater contact with what it means to be alive with these wild bodies and minds.”

“Lisa offers us an inspiring, intimate invitation to deepen our loving for one another. She is an astutely skilled listener, tracking what emerges in awareness in an organic way with effortless, sensitive flow. She hones in on what is present with enveloping compassion, loving curiosity, and brilliant insight. We are often surprised and deeply touched by what we share and discover together.” 

— M.M. & K.G.

“I always experience Lisa as open and deeply authentic. With just a few intuitive and powerful words, Lisa helps me change my perception of my experiences and leads me into a place where I trust, accept, and love myself.”

—M.M.

FAQ:

Is this course only for people in romantic relationships?

No, this course is open for all - single, in a relationship, friendship, married - everyone! The skills you will learn in this class can be applied to any relationships in which you would like to cultivate deeper intimacy, connection, and understanding, including a more intimate relationship with yourself. All exercises will be designed for individuals that can be applied to their relationships, meaning exercises are not geared towards couples doing exercises together.

Do all people in the relationship need to attend the class to benefit?

No, the exercises and the work will be focused on individuals, but you can take the skills and exercises back to your relationship to do the work together or share what you’ve learned about yourself through the process.

How would this course benefit me if I’m not currently in a romantic relationship?

First, there may be other relationships in your life such as with a friend, family member, peer, or anyone with whom you wish to feel closer and more connected that you wish to apply the skills and attitudes you learn in this course. Second, even if you don’t have a particular relationship right now that you wish had a deeper level of intimacy, the learnings you receive would help you with relationship conflict and intimacy down the road. In fact, even if greater intimacy is not your goal in a particular relationship, the learnings you receive would still help you with working through conflict in any relationship.

Will this workshop help me fix the problems in the relationship?

The focus of our teaching is not on “fixing” problems, difficulties, or conflicts but on how those things can be used as doorways for cultivating intimacy—this is a fundamental PARADIGM SHIFT from conventional relationship learning. It’s possible that a problem of yours may indeed get “fixed” in the process, but that is not the goal of this course.

I already know how to compromise, especially for tiny things, like which restaurant to go – i.e., we’ll do my choice this time and yours next time. Why would I want to learn more about something I can resolve easily?

The option is always there to resolve certain conflicts or differences easily, you already have that as a tool, so to speak, in your toolbox. When you simply decide we're going to go to my restaurant tonight and yours tomorrow, you've got the restaurant decision figured out—you've fixed that problem—but you haven't necessarily gotten any closer. You've only made a decision. What we're offering is using those differences as an opportunity to create deeper intimacy and to expand your toolbox.

What forms of payment do you accept? 

When you click on Register Here, it will take you to our Thinkific checkout page where you can input your credit card or use Apple Pay. Alternatively, we can invoice you via PayPal. Contact Kristin at info@davidbedrick.com if you need this. Unfortunately, we can not accept other forms of payment such as Venmo, Zelle, Wise, or wire transfers.

Is there a refund policy or money-back guarantee for this course?

No, all sales are final.

Do you have a payment plan?

Yes, you can choose to pay in two installments. See the payment options below.

Payment Options:

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PAY IN FULL

1 payment of $465

PAYMENT PLAN

2 monthly payments of $233

Meet Lisa

Lisa Blair, MA, Dipl. PW, is a modern-day Renaissance Woman who follows an embodied path of Sovereign Beauty. She is a consultant and coach, a spirit-led maker and sage, a scholar, writer, artist, lover, and fashionista. As an International Women’s Consultant, she coaches and teaches internationally, specializing in emotional intimacy, high sensitivity, and empowerment from a process-oriented perspective. As a PhD candidate at the California Institute of Integral Studies, her doctoral work explores redefining intimacy to address the unprecedented challenges romantic partners face in a postnormal world. Her research has been published in World Futures, the Journal of Consciousness Studies, and the 2nd edition of the International Handbook of Love. She and her husband David Bedrick co-host In Two Deep, a podcast about emotional intimacy, conflict, and connection from a depth psychological perspective. Lisa is also the publisher at Belly Song Press, a small independent press of nonfiction titles in psychology, social justice, and leadership. www.lisablair.com

Meet David

David Bedrick, JD, Dipl. PW, is a teacher, counselor, and attorney. He grew up in a family marked by violence. While his father’s brutality was physical and verbal, his mother’s denial and gaslighting had its own covert power. This formative context introduced David early to the etiology of shame and instilled an urge to unshame.

Professionally, he was on the faculty for the University of Phoenix and the Process Work Institute in the U.S. and Poland and is the founder of the Santa Fe Institute for Shame-based Studies where he trains therapists, coaches and healers and offers workshops for individuals to further their own personal development.

David writes for Psychology Today and is the author of three books: Talking Back to Dr. Phil:Alternatives to Mainstream Psychology, Revisioning Activism: Bringing Depth, Dialogue, and Diversity to Individual and Social Change and You Can’t Judge a Body by Its Cover: 17 Women’s Stories of Hunger, Body Shame and Redemption.

His upcoming book, The Unshaming Way, will be published by North Atlantic books on November 26, 2024.