Conflict is human. So is resolution. It takes a wide range of skills to design new paradigms of relationship building. Foreign Exchanges integrates perceptual skills from Aesthetics to develop critical seeing, sensorial skills from the Somatic Arts to develop self knowledge, communication and negotiation skills from Conflict Resolution/Mediation to build recognition of difference, empathy, and conflict transformation.

Aesthetics
Perceptual strategies from art, literature, film, music and dance

• Build critical thinking
• Uncover social, historical, mythological, fictional narratives
• Recognize one’s identification with an image, character, or event
• Witness one’s patterns of perception
• Understand others through their identification
• Perceive the details of form
• Become comfortable with uncertainty and change
• Design new paradigms of engagement

Somatic Awareness
Interior reflection with focus, movement and breath

• Expand attention and awareness
• Open to oneself and to one’s surroundings
• Experience through the senses
• Restore the mind to present time 
• Interrupt judgment
• Notice attachments and aversions
• Become flexible
• Trust intimacy

Mediation
Engagement with conflict through communication and negotiation

• Design an environment of trust
• Learn active listening skills
• Reframe the conflict story
• Question underlying interests
• Recognize differences in each person's capacity
• Develop empathy
• Negotiate creative options
• Transform the relationship