Relationship Toolkit Workshop: Skills for Better Connection; Sold out: Fill out the registration form to be added to the wait list!

• Saturday, June 7th, 10am–1pm
• Advance Psychotherapy Practice, Hadley Office
  • 4 Bay Road, Building B, Suite 101, Hadley, MA 01035
• Cost: $295 per couple | Limited to 4 couples
• Facilitated by: Ariel Pliskin, MSW, LICSW, CST, CSE
  • Relationship & Sex Therapy Program Manager at APP

PLEASE FILL OUT THIS FORM BEFORE YOU COMPLETE YOUR PURCHASE: REGISTRATION FORM

Strengthen communication. Deepen connection. Rediscover each other.

This small-group, experiential workshop offers practical tools to enhance communication, resolve conflict, and build intimacy. Through guided practices and supportive facilitation, you’ll leave with tools you can use every day to feel more connected, grounded, and understood in your relationship.

🧭 Our Approach: The Peacemaker Tenets in Practice

Inspired by the Zen Peacemakers and enriched by evidence-based models of couples therapy, our approach blends the wisdom of contemplative practice with real-world relational skills.

🌀 Not-Knowing

Let go of fixed ideas and discover new ways of being together.

• Fresh Curiosity: Cultivate openness to your partner’s inner world.
• Inner Clarity: Use self-regulation skills to interrupt reactive loops
• Openness to Change: Explore what happens when you release rigid expectations and invite possibility.

👁️ Bearing Witness

Stay present with yourself, your partner, and what’s between you.

• Emotional Mapping: Learn mindfulness tools and nervous system awareness to gain insight into your feelings. 
• Deep Listening: Tune into your partner’s perspective without losing your own.
• Intentional Appreciation: Practice directing your attention toward what you value in your partner and relationship.
• Shared Meaning: Explore dreams and values to strengthen the foundation of long-term connection.
  

❤️ Loving Action

Respond with care and courage.

• Compassionate Honesty: Practice expressing needs and feelings clearly and respectfully.
• Conflict Repair: Learn strategies to navigate tension and build trust.
• Real-Life Integration: Bring it home with tools for daily relational maintenance and joy.

This framework integrates best practices from Gottman Method, somatic psychotherapy, and mindful communication. It’s designed to support sustainable change and deeper intimacy.

🧑🏽🤝🧑🏽 Who is this for?

This workshop is open and affirming to all couples and partners, inclusive of all sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, relationship structures, cultural backgrounds, and lived experiences. We warmly welcome BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and neurodivergent participants.

🎓 About the Facilitator- Click Here To See Their Full Profile

Ariel Pliskin, MSW, LICSW, is a Certified Sex Therapist and Certified Sexuality Educator through AASECT, with additional certifications in yoga and mindfulness instruction. They serve as the Relationship & Sex Therapy Program Manager at Advance Psychotherapy Practice and teach as adjunct faculty at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Springfield College. Ariel is the author of multiple publications, including the chapter “Bearing Witness to Sexuality” in Exploring Autistic Sexualities, Relationality, and Genders: Living Under a Double Rainbow (Routledge, 2024). Their clinical work integrates somatic, systemic, and contemplative frameworks to support healing and connection. A longtime mindfulness practitioner and Zen Peacemaker trainee, Ariel helped develop and lead relational groups at Stone Soup Café in Greenfield and co-facilitated a retreat bearing witness to racism and the food system. They continue to deepen their work with couples and communities by integrating trauma-informed care, spiritual practice, and real-world tools that help people connect more deeply with themselves and one another.

Workshop Refund Policy