Too often in life our aspirations are frustrated by the impasses we encounter through conflict with others. Conflict is human. So is transformation. Conflict transformation starts when we agree to look at our responsibility towards each other and ourselves, understanding each other's difference and sameness. Only then can we transform our daily disputes into growing relationships. This is a social contract for a viable future for all.

It is as an artist that Dorit Cypis arrives at Conflict Resolution. Her 25+ year career in the arts, exploring the social, physical and psychological aspects of who we are, how we represent ourselves and how we relate to others, brings a breadth of knowledge, experience and subtle tools of perception to her conflict resolution practice. To augment her study of aesthetics and a dynamic practice as an artist, Cypis has trained with professionals in the Somatic practices of Kinetic Awareness, Body-Mind Centering, Iyengar and Hatha Yoga, and Vipassana (In-sight) Meditation to learn skills of presence in the body, and interior reflection.

Foreign Exchanges brings together the best of Dorit Cypis' professional practices as artist, mediator and educator. She has trained hundreds of individuals in communication, perception, self-knowledge, social relations and context analysis to respond creatively to communication breakdown. Cypis offers perceptual tools from aesthetic practices of art, film and literature to recognize and decipher social context and identity, reflexive tools from the somatic arts for self-knowledge and communication and negotiation tools from mediation to creatively engage with and transform conflict.

Foreign Exchanges looks at the systemic conditions beneath each conflict to re-view and unwind the knots of identity shaped by social and psychological forces. Our ability to recognize the personal and cultural identity differences between us allows for new relationships of generosity and reciprocity. As identity is always relational, I am I in relation to you, reciprocity depends on each party having a clear sense of oneself and one's context. Who is this I? What are my intentions? From where am I seeing? There is a sameness to being human, but we will never be equally the same. Humanity hinges on the subtlety of our difference. When we look closer at the folds of our identity we become more conscious of our intentions and can more willfully steer our actions towards openly "seeing" the differences of others. From here we can build relationships of reciprocity, "bridging equality and difference."