The Connection Path Course
The Connection Path Course, taught by Rita Marie Johnson, is a comprehensive, online program that equips participants with the skill necessary for resolving difficult conflicts through deep empathy and profound insights. These five 90-minute modules include stimulating lectures and live demonstrations as you learn to walk the Connection Path. This ensures a thorough and transformative learning experience.
Why Take This Course?
In today’s fast-paced world, misunderstandings and conflicts are inevitable. The Connection Path Course offers a structured approach to navigating these challenges with empathy and honesty. Whether you’re looking to improve personal or professional relationships or to cultivate a deeper connection with yourself, this course will provide meaningful, lasting change. Participants also report healing long-standing trauma from childhood.
- Develop Deep Empathy: Understand yourself and others on a profound level, which transforms relationships
- Enhance Communication Skills: Learn the art of expressing compassionate honesty and communicating your needs without creating conflict
- Handle Difficult Situations: Practice giving empathy in challenging situations
- Address Core Needs: Work through deep-seated issues and unmet needs that stem from past trauma
- Celebrate Growth: Reflect on and savor your transformation and healing
Prerequisites
Before beginning this online course, you must complete the prerequisite/s that lay the foundation for your learning journey. There are two options: Either two live, online courses (Inner Wellness for Success and Emotionally-Safe Relationships) or one self-study course, (The Connection Practice). Learning the basics prepares you to fully benefit from our advanced courses.
Maximize Your Learning Experience
Course Overview:
Week 1: Skillful Empathy Deepens Connection
In the first module, Rita Marie introduces the four steps of Nonviolent Communication. Participants will learn to use these steps when they walk the Connection Path. This foundational session sets the stage for the transformative journey ahead.
Week 2: Empathy First: Honesty Second
The second module emphasizes the balance between empathy and honesty. Rita Marie demonstrates how to express compassionate honesty and provides real-life examples. Participants also witness a live demonstration of the Connection Path, showcasing its application in a real scenario.
Week 3: Empathy Under Fire
In the third module, Rita Marie offers tips for expressing empathy in challenging situations. Participants learn how to quickly diffuse the energy of a tense situation while staying connected to their own feelings and needs. A live demonstration of the five ways to respond to hard-to-hear messages, such as “I’m not going to pay you back,” is presented.
Week 4: Healing Core Needs on the Connection Path
The focus shifts in the fourth module to healing core needs, needs formed out of trauma that feel as if they have never been met. Rita Marie shares a personal example of overcoming a core need challenge. Then she presents a live demonstration of a Connection Path on a core need issue. This session gives participants the ability to heal deep-seated, emotional wounds.
Week 5: Celebrating Our Transformational Experiences
Rita Marie demonstrates using the Connection Path for a celebration in the last module, which is dedicated to reflection and celebration. This session emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and savoring growth, which fuels our energy for future accomplishments. Course participants share their transformational experiences and celebrate them collectively.
Join the Movement
Embodying connection gives each person’s life a greater sense of purpose. It is practical, inspiring, meaningful, and rewarding. Rita Marie shares the challenges she has encountered and overcome on her journey, preparing participants to meet and conquer their own.
By joining this course, you are becoming part of a dynamic movement toward greater connection in the world. Addressing the true cause of chaos and suffering — inner and outer disconnection — the Connection Practice has been uplifting individuals for more than 20 years. There is no need to wait any longer. Learn how to be completely connected and share this vital skill with the world.
Meet the instructor
Rita Marie Johnson
Educator, author, and award-winning innovator, Rita Marie Johnson has been sharing her wellness skill worldwide for over 20 years. In 2024, she was named 1 of 10 Most Promising Women in Healthcare and Wellness by Global Healthcare Magazine.
She discovered a synergy between empathy and insight that maximizes social-emotional intelligence, eliminates unnecessary suffering and leads to life enriching choices. This epiphany resulted in the Connection Practice, which transforms confusion into clarity and conflict into connection for people of all ages and all walks of life.
Rita Marie’s implementation of the Connection Practice in Costa Rican schools earned her the Ashoka Changemakers Innovation Award: Building a More Ethical Society, chosen from 79 projects in 32 countries. She has certified over 300 Connection Practice Coaches and Trainers, who have taught it to over 100,000 individuals in more than 20 countries. Her book Completely Connected: Uniting Our Empathy and Insight for Extraordinary Results won a Nautilus Award in the Psychology category of Better Books for a Better World and is an Amazon bestseller.
Rita Marie taught the Connection Practice for credit at the United Nations University for Peace, a graduate school for international leaders. In addition, she brought the Connection Practice to professionals at Stanford, Harvard and Minerva Universities.
A seminar leader and keynote speaker, Rita Marie has presented in the USA, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Europe and Central America, Some highlights include:
- Women in Leadership Summit at Stanford
- INCAE Business School (considered the Harvard of Latin America) for the Annual Reunion of Rectors and Deans of Latin America
- Central American Leadership Initiative (CALI), a think tank sponsored by the Aspen Institute
- Global Summits for Ministries and Departments for Peace
- Rotary International Peace Through Service Conference
- Peace Alliance Conference in Washington DC.
In 2006, Rita Marie and her nonprofit, Rasur Foundation International, initiated a bill in Costa Rica’s Legislative Assembly to establish a Ministry for Peace. It passed in 2009. Now this Ministry for Peace serves as a model for other countries to replicate.
Johnson is an Instructor in Executive Education and an Advisory Board Member for the University of California Santa Barbara Extension, Professional and Continuing Education (PaCE), Women in Leadership Certificate Program.
Registration
Register now for lifetime access to the course.
- Investment: $85 USD
Upon completing your registration, you will have immediate access to the course. If you have any questions, please email info@connectionpractice.org.
Purchase Self-Study Bundle
Register for lifetime access to all three self-study courses (Parts 1, 2, and 3)! Bundle includes The Connection Path Course plus:
CP1: The Connection Practice (details here)
CP3: Connection Mediation (details here)
- Investment: $240 USD
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