Forgiveness is a long term process that promotes release from painful events of our past. In that respect, it is a skill to be learned and to be practiced over and over. The lack of forgiveness is a major component to ongoing chronic stress, reflected through emotions such as resentment, hatred, fear, shame, or/or guilt.

Thus, forgiveness is an important factor to physical and mental health and the recovery from disease. This course strives to integrate both the traditional, (and largely mental/emotional) and the alternative, (and largely body-based) approaches to forgiveness, making the point that true forgiveness requires work in all domains, and thus is more complete when the body/mind is all part of an ongoing process.

• Objective No. 1: Define what forgiveness is and what it is not.
• Objective No. 2: Associate abuse or harm with a loss of personal power.
• Objective No. 3: Identity how power moves within the disempowerment triangle of the perpetrator, the victim and the rescuer.
• Objective No. 4: Recognize how our judgments trigger power loss.
• Objective No. 5: Identify five domains that usually become part of the neuro-net of power loss, demonstrating the multiple layers of forgiveness work required.
• Objective No: 6: Consider forgiveness as a mental process, reviewing the descriptions of leading authorities in forgiveness research.
• Objective No. 7: Recognize the value of helping the victim reframe the story.
• Objective No. 8: Support the process of discovering the characteristics of our internal self-talk, and chose an internal dialogue that allows growth and healing.
• Objective No. 9: Recognize internals beliefs about the situation that are disempowering, and become aware of your true beliefs that will create a nurtured life.
• Objective No. 10: Recognize features of self-concept that support victimization and choose to enhance self-love.
• Objective No. 10: Explore guilt and shame as erosive to self-concept and to the boundary building process.
• Objective No. 11: Identify the features of a good apology and its effects on the forgiveness process.
• Objective No. 12: Consider unmet needs as a motivation for attacks, and resolve to develop internal resources that would allow greater responsibility for personal needs.
• Objective No. 13: Consider common difficulties people have processing emotions and learn to allow emotional expression.
• Objective No. 14: Consider how the body holds memories and emotions as tension, or stores unconscious feelings in deep tissues.
• Objective No. 15: Identify how body-based therapies help the process of forgiveness.
• Objective No. 16: Recognize the potential growth that acceptance allows and the benefits of sufficient personal power.