I provide these calls to meet needs for understanding and clarity.  These are learning calls, meant to inspire your personal development and shared human connection. I may draw from principles including nonviolent communication, somatic experiences, psychology and integral theory – among other.

These calls are neither therapy, nor empathy practice.

Here are a few quick reminders about how to show up on our calls. For more detail, visit the Guidelines section below on this page.

• Share airtime. Balance your contributions with those of others on the call.
• Speak from your personal experience, using “I” instead of “we.”
• Come dressed. Please wear a top, regardless of your gender.
• Have your microphone muted unless you’re speaking.
• No self-promotion. Please don’t tag your social media or promote other programs.
• Judicial sharing of links. Only share links in the chat when Yvette invites everyone to pool resources on a specific topic.
• Judicial use of all CAPS. Otherwise, it can come across as shouting.

Participate in full choice. Drop in whenever it works for you, and join and leave the call at any time. You can have your camera turned on or off. (Yvette prefers cameras on, but it’s up to you!)

Rename yourself for connection and clarity. We invite you to rename yourself in Zoom to include your location, just because it’s fun and illuminating to see where everyone is calling in from. Also, if you’d prefer not to be added to a breakout room, include “no breakout” or “listening only” after your name.

If you have a question for Yvette, use “REQUEST.” During the first 10 or 15 minutes of the call, Yvette will welcome questions that can be explored later on the call. If you have a question you’d like Yvette to respond to, please use the chat and begin your question with “REQUEST” in all caps.

To offer support and get access to the replay archive, sign up here. A great way to support these free community calls is to join our Basic membership. For $25/month you not only get to support the sustainability of these calls but you also get access to the Conversation from the Heart Replay Archive, including video, audio, and transcripts for all our calls.

If you have questions, please email us at support@yvetteerasmus.com.

Conversations from the Heart is a space for you to experience inspiration, encouragement, and support on your personal development journey through developing conceptual clarity with meaningful human connections.

This is a psycho-educational learning forum, focusing on information and understanding. It is not an emotional processing group, a despair work group, an empathy group, or a therapy group. I will help you in getting clarity for that journey with general roadmapping and opportunities for cognitive understanding.

You have the opportunity to ask questions and explore how various concepts might help unpack or reframe sticky interpersonal situations in your life. You’re also welcome to just sit and listen and take it all in. The calls are learning-focused; Practice takes place in your own life, between sessions. 

Is this an NVC group?

Many people who engage with my programs are interested in how to apply Marshall Rosenberg’s model of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) to their personal development. As a result, we often refer to the principles and practices of NVC. The scope of exploration also includes broader principles of nonviolence, compassion, and mindfulness, as well as insights from relational and integral psychology and spiral dynamics.

In my facilitation, guidance, and teaching, I draw from whatever resources seem relevant or useful to the moment, such as archetypes, shadow work, and polarity theory, as well as the work and teachings offered by various NVC teachers.

Conversations from the Heart is not offered as a training in NVC, per se, nor does it focus on the “correct” application of NVC tools. Instead, it is deeply aligned with the consciousness of NVC and has a broader, playful focus on personal development that both transcends and includes the practices of NVC.

We focus on supporting the personal development work needed to help cultivate a just, peaceful, and sustainable world in which everyone’s needs matter, suffering is alleviated, and conflict is transformed into connection. We come together to self-reflect, learn, and grow in our ability to nurture empathic, heartfelt connections with one another. We learn to be attuned to the impact that we are having on one another and to care about that.

Here is the Zoom meeting link we are currently using for these Wednesday calls:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87249852655?pwd=L3JjQlIrQ1hlbjhNbVdDeTlWNGRwUT09
Meeting ID: 872 4985 2655
Passcode: HeartTalk

You’ll receive the link in the reminder emails that are sent every Wednesday about an hour before the call begins. That email includes tips for using Zoom as well as links to tech support.

Format

The 90-minute meeting begins with a general welcome and then moves into breakout sessions where you can check in with others on the call in small groups. You may opt out of the breakout sessions and instead use that time for self-connection and journaling, or, for facilitated conversation in the main room. The group comes together again for the majority of the time, during which you’ll have opportunities to ask questions and explore how various concepts might help you unpack or reframe sticky interpersonal situations in your life.

As a practicing, licensed psychologist, I facilitate the meetings and respond to your questions, drawing from my training in mind-body medicine, somatic experiencing, diversity and inclusiveness, nonviolent communication, and integral-relational-cultural psychology.

Participants from around the world come together to engage with a vibrant community of diverse individuals looking to enrich their personal development journey. We have some regulars attending almost every week, and then there are always some new people too. All are welcome!

How to Participate

If you would like to share, you can raise your hand and wait for me to call on you, or gently interrupt when there’s an opening. I’ll encourage a variety of voices to be heard, first calling on those who haven’t yet contributed and have their hand raised. You’re welcome to contribute, respond, share, ask questions, or you can just listen and take it all in.

• Please have your microphone muted unless you’re speaking.
• You can have your camera turned on or off. (I prefer when the cameras are turned on, but you’re welcome to have them on or off.)
• You can join and leave the call at any time.

If you want to be anonymous on the calls, you can join with a pseudonym for your screen name and keep your video turned off.

Whether your video is on or off, you are welcome to bring questions and participate in discussion (verbally or through the chat) or just listen and learn.

Closed Captions

Closed captions will be made available during the calls. You can choose to view the captions or to turn them off. If you would like to save the transcript, click “view full transcript” in the transcript menu and then select “save transcript” at the bottom of the transcript window. The option to save the transcript may not be available on some devices. Transcripts are made available to Basic and Full level members.

Video, audio, and transcript recordings of these calls are available for registered users of this student portal. If anonymity is important to you, you can join the Zoom calls with a pseudonym and keep your video turned off. You can ask questions and participate verbally or through the chat, or you can remain silent through the call if you don’t want your voice or contribution included in the recording.

By participating, you agree to keep information shared by others during the call private and confidential. That said, please remember that this is a public forum. If you share during the large group time, you are consenting to the use of your voice, question, or contribution for common learning through the session recording. Furthermore, while everyone is asked to keep information private and confidential, there is no guarantee that this will always be implemented perfectly by people on the call. Please participate keeping these risks and benefits in mind.

Call Etiquette & Guidelines

Three Do’s

1. Share airtime: Please contribute verbally and via chat with an intention to stay in balance with contributions made by other members on the call.
2. Speak from personal experience: To support a focused learning environment for participants on the call, as much as possible speak from your own personal experience, from the “I” rather than speaking generally for others or introducing teachings of your own.
3. Come dressed: Regardless of gender, and in consideration of a wide variety of different comfort-levels for participants, please wear a top – even if you’re at the beach or hanging out by a pool.

In general, please feel free to use the chat and call time freely for comments that support the conversation and content such as: sharing your feelings/needs check-in at the top of the call; sharing your specific questions for Yvette; sharing your reflections and empathy for others on the call; and sharing your personal responses and reflections as it relates to the content of the call.

Three Don’ts

1. No self-promotion: Please don’t link and/or tag your social media accounts, websites, opt-in pages, registration pages, podcasts, or programs. Please also refrain from soliciting via DM’s unless specifically invited to do so. Our primary intention is to be in relationship with one another and the content, not to network or promote other programs.
2. Judicial sharing of links: Please don’t share outside links to supplemental material unless Yvette makes an open invitation to pool resources on a specific topic. Also, please do not share affiliate links in the group or DMs.
3. Judicial use of CAPS: Please be mindful of your use of all caps in text; it comes across as shouting.

Below are some additional requests, some of which elaborate on the guidelines above.

1. Be “for” each other and help create an inclusive environment.
Have the intention to be here on the call “for” each other, in the spirit of mutual support and generous goodwill. At the same time, please recognize that the group is diverse and that others may have differing political views, religious views, life experiences, philosophical orientations, and more. Given this, please show up openhearted, inclusive, and curious.

2. “Everything is on the way not in the way.”
If somebody says something that you find triggering, try approaching it with the attitude that everything that happens to us is an opportunity for practice rather than an obstacle to our growth. This intention helps us reorient from victim-consciousness into co-creative consciousness, viewing whatever happens in life as an opportunity to cultivate our own consciousness, compassion, and courage.

3. Speak from your first-person experience rather than generalizing for others.
During these sessions, please share about yourself. We ask that you avoid leading with “you” and “we” and “us” and instead ground yourself in talking about “me” and “I.” For example, “My response has been… Here’s what comes up in me…” Speaking from your own personal subjectivity is also a way of speaking from your most empowered place.

4. Balance your needs with the wider group interests.
This guideline mostly refers to the specificity of your questions and the use of airtime:

• Keep your questions somewhat general so that they can benefit everyone. Questions that require a lot of personal details to be understood clearly are better suited to a private consultation. For these community calls, we use our individual experiences to reflect on more general human experiences and provide broad roadmapping and conceptual clarity around common human dilemmas.
• Add a little bit of time between questions and your response so that we can get as many voices in the room as possible. If you’re a more extroverted person who finds it easier to jump in more quickly and more often, please help to create these runways for others who might be slower to respond to unmute and enter the conversation.

5. Meet your needs and stay choiceful.
We strive to be as inclusive and welcoming as possible, so please feel free to meet your needs as you see fit during these calls. For example:

• You can have your video on, or you can have your video off. (I do prefer when participants have their videos on as it makes for a more engaged conversation and energetic exchange, but please know that you are absolutely welcome to keep your camera turned off.)
• You can join the breakout rooms or stay in the main room. You decide how you want to use the time.
• Show up when you want and leave when you want.
• Share at your own comfort level, knowing these public calls are shared with a diverse set of humans. (If you want to remain anonymous, keep your video turned off, use a different screen name or no screen name, or don’t add your voice to the call.)

If you are on a live call, you can also turn on the transcript at the beginning of the call, and save a copy for yourself at the end of the call.  This only works if you are on a desktop or some ipads/tablets, and is generally not possible if you’re on mobile devices.

Occasssionally, when someone offers a rich situation to the group and works with Yvette, we will gift a copy of the transcript to that person so that they do not need to take notes while working through their situation with Yvette.  However, pleae know that we do NOT send copies of transcripts as a general pratice to participants on calls.  On rare occassion, we do offer this gift when somene has contributed to our calls with their vulnerable sharing.

I’m an active supporter of Nonviolent Communication (NVC), and the content and process of this group reflects my integration of NVC principles into broader frameworks. It’s not representative of “pure NVC” nor “official NVC.”

You can learn more about me and my background here.