Trainers & Organizers
Team of three core trainers and two organizers are commited and excited to creating a supportive, inclusive and empowering environment for learning and growth, while also not forgetting how to have fun during the process.
Core Trainers
Intensives & Workshops
Pernille Plantener – A
Coach PCC and coach-instructor, trainer in Nonviolent Communication
I love my life. When I walk my dog in the morning and see dewdrops on the grass reflecting the whole world, and when the grandchildren laugh at me, I am happy. But it was not always so. I have left the prison of hopelessness and despair that loneliness, a resulting eating disorder, and then an abusive marriage built.
Many helpers provided the steppingstones to my life today. Thanks to 12-step programs, Nonviolent Communication, psychotherapists, coaches and not least Sarah Peyton and her ground-breaking Resonant Healing, today I am a person who can feel, breathe, dance, and make healthy decisions. And I support others on the same path.
I got CNVC certified in 2011, certified coach in 2012, and Resonant Healing Practitioner in 2020. I’ve been self-employed coach and trainer since 2013.
Morning intensive trainings: @ 10:00am – 1.00pm
Afternoon workshops: Check the schedule.
David Weinstock – C
Certified trainer with CNVC, coach, therapist …Denemark
David Weinstock is an international trainer of Nonviolent Communication, a Somatic Coach, and author of “Becoming What You Need”: Practices for Embodying Nonviolent Communication”. He has brought his leadership, community, and team-building trainings to a wide audience in schools, prisons, organizations, and businesses around the world. He is a respected master goldsmith(www.goldmuse.net). He is an Aikido instructor and co-founder of Peace Dojos International, an organization that works for peace and justice by means of community service and training for self-mastery distilled from the martial arts.
All of David’s work–in particular his present organization, Liminal Somatics(www.liminalsomatics.com)–is committed to developing our capacity to value what each of us brings to the circle, to reclaim community and appreciate the necessity of honoring diversity for the sake of creating a nurturing world for generations to come.
David and his wife Judith co-founded an intentional community with eight other families in 1990. We came together committed to developing our capacity to value what each of us brings to the circle, to reclaim community and value diversity for the sake of creating a nurturing world for generations to come. To this day the community has practiced consensus decision-making and embraced NVC foundations. We are now a four-generation community with adult children that were born and raised here.
Morning intensive trainings: @ 10:00am – 1.00pm
Afternoon workshops: Check the schedule.
Trainers – Workshops
dr. Dmitriy Kopina – D
Certified NVC Trainer – Slovenia
Being human at first, finding a precious gift of Life in me and any other living being, thru connection and empathy, is the main aim of Life in me. Deeply connected with mother Nature I’m in my quest toward exploration, joy, growth, care, love, and admire the beauty of needs and feelings Life brings to us.
My mission and my goals involve activities that are supporting individuals finding their authenticity, the fullness of life and awareness; connecting people, building “power with” communities based on equality of all needs, and using forms of communication and full embodiment to support connecting individuals and groups into their essence, conciseness and spirituality.
Working as a trainer, expert, adviser, manager, father, and teacher for over 30 years I gathered a broad variety of experiences and I’m very keen on sharing them with other individuals, couples, in business environments and especially enjoying reinventing teams, organizations, and communities.
Afternoon workshops: Check the schedule.
Marša Jović – E
Candidate for a certified trainer with the Centre for Nonviolent Communication – Slovenia
Other than being in the process of NVC trainer certification, Marša is also an English and Montessori teacher, and co-founder of a homeschooling community in Slovenia, called KAJŽICA. She loves to discuss, explore and experience the structures and the ingredients of relationships and languages, especially relationships between partners, close friends, and parent-child and teacher-child relationships. For some years now she has been exploring how language influences our awareness and is working towards bringing the NVC philosophy into parent communities and particularly into her community of homeschoolers. She has been a Montessorian for a decade and has a wide range of teaching and training experiences. Her life’s purposes are empowering children in relationships with adults by living NVC, educating parents and teachers as well as other adults working with children, creating communities that support healthy relationships among families and employees who support these communities, and finding the balance between work and relaxation. Marša works as a teacher, trainer, translator, and mediator. She is a mother of three little wonders of life: Lukas, Evita, and Uma. She loves to spend time outdoors exploring the world and the people in it.
Afternoon workshops: Check the schedule.
Anita Gomezel – F
Certified trainer with CNVC, coach, therapist …Denemark
Anita Gomezel is a social pedagogue, a TCT® (Transpersonal Cognitive Therapy) therapist, and a trauma therapist using the N.A.R.M. (Neuro Affective Relational Model) method. She is the founder of the Zaživi Sebe® (Live Yourself) personal transformation program.
Anita has been in Nonviolent Communication since 2011 and has been teaching it for eight years. For the past 17 years, Anita has been leading various workshops, courses, and seminars for personal spiritual development. She aims to help people return from alienation back to their true selves, a path she herself has walked.
She says she is a student of Life and has earned what she has learned through difficult experiences. She knows what it’s like to be at the bottom, to not know who you are, to not feel emotions, not even a body… when your way of life is self-destruction, driven by countless negative patterns. She knows what it’s like to get out of the grip of deep complex traumas and stand on your own two feet. To go from nothing, to – piece by piece – live yourself until you really are who you are.
Anita likes to help people walk this path to authenticity, and then go even deeper, into transpersonal levels because she believes that the path of personal spiritual development is always worth everything it brings.
She connects all psychological knowledge with spirituality in the desire to create a holistic view of Human development. Her guidelines are compassion, support, aliveness, depth, and awareness.
In her spare time, she likes to spend time with her daughter, meditate, dance, read, walk in nature, and bake cookies.
Afternoon workshops: Check the schedule.
Judith Weinstock – G
Certified NVC Trainer – USA
Judith Weinstock
I teach somatic practices and embodying Nonviolent Communication through the mediums of food, community, art, education, and activism. I am a certified international trainer of Nonviolent Communication and have co-led workshops around the world in schools, prisons, intentional communities, and businesses, and offer mediation for families, parents, and children, siblings, and couples. Over 40 years I partnered in/owned four restaurants and published two cookbooks. I’ve been teaching my original curriculum Connective Culinary Arts, to young people and adults for over twenty years. The premise of this curriculum is that “food is the connective tissue for all life on the planet”, and integrates history, ethics, food politics, science, chemistry, and nutrition through food and the art of cooking. The premise recognizes that the strategies humans employ to answer to our hunger–three times a day!– is pivotal in the healing of the planet and living in harmony with all species. My focus is on the reclamation and celebration of our empathic faculties with the life on our plate that feeds the life that we live.
I am a singer-songwriter I love to teach voice and guitar as a profound medium for “finding our voice” to shape the world we wish to live in. With David, we raised our children in an intentional community that they co-founded with 8 other families and where consensus decision-making has been practiced since 1990.
Afternoon workshops: Check the schedule.
Peter Ulrik Jensen – H
Certified NVC trainer – Denemark
My name is Peter, I am 52, live in Denmark, and have been a certified trainer with CNVC since last year.
I am passionate about daily life and daily interaction, just how complex it can be between people, and yet very simple. There is lightness for me in finding the little element that can turn and then everything turns. I find a lot of humor in it, just how it is between us humans. I love to play with words, and I love to learn where a specific word comes from, and what the root of its meaning is.
I am at the beginning of my certified trainer career and am looking very much forward to offering fresh and new workshops in this training. And be part of the community throughout the week! In my daily life, I work as a priest in the Protestant Lutheran church in a small town in the countryside in Denmark. The Lutheran church is also the state church, a big organization. I was educated
MA Theology at university in the year 2000 and keep having a passion for philosophy and faith. Alongside this, NVC has enriched my life since 2011.
Afternoon workshops: Check the schedule.
Jaka Kovač – I
Certified NVC trainer – Slovenia
Jaka is a non-formal education trainer, facilitator, and youth worker. Since 2005, he has conducted over 400 trainings with Slovenian Philanthropy on topics such as communication and conflict resolution, group dynamics, intercultural dialogue, mentoring, intergenerational cooperation, participatory group management, refugee integration, youth work, and more. He is an active member of the Slovenian Association of Facilitators and the international movement “Art of Hosting Conversations That Matter,” bringing innovative methods of group processes to Slovenia. As a trainer, he often leads international trainings within the Erasmus+ programme.
Jaka says, “What excites me most about my work is exploring the collective wisdom of groups and opening up new fields of possibility. I try to create a safe and creative space that allows participants to get in touch with themselves and helps them to become aware of their own and the group’s potentials.”
He regularly participates in training in Nonviolent Communication (according to Marshall B. Rosenberg) and is certified as an International Trainer. He has studied and practiced group dialogue (following David Bohm) for several years.
Afternoon workshops: Check the schedule.
Organizers – Event
During the retreat, a team of organizers is available to provide operational, logistics, and other information as needed. They are also there to ensure that participants have a comfortable and enjoyable stay.
dr. Dmitriy Kopina
Certified NVC trainer, organizer – Slovenia
Being human at first, finding a precious gift of Life in me and any other living being, thru connection and empathy, is the main aim of Life in me. Deeply connected with mother Nature I’m in my quest toward exploration, joy, growth, care, love, and admire the beauty of needs and feelings Life brings to us.
My mission and my goals involve activities that are supporting individuals finding their authenticity, the fullness of life and awareness; connecting people, building “power with” communities based on equality of all needs, and using forms of communication and full embodiment to support connecting individuals and groups into their essence, conciseness and spirituality.
Working as a trainer, expert, adviser, manager, father, and teacher for over 30 years I gathered a broad variety of experiences and I’m very keen on sharing them with other individuals, couples, in business environments and especially enjoying reinventing teams, organizations, and communities.
Meta Kolenc
Organizer – Slovenia
Working and living in an international environment enriched my appreciation for the diversity of the world’s people and their cultures, making me improve and deepen my communication skills. My natural interest in interpersonal relationships and the inner world of each individual has led me to discover NVC. Since my first NVC retreat, I have gotten a completely new perspective of myself and the way the force of Life is expressed through me. Needless to say, it has also changed the way I communicate with others. My wish is to guide by example and to help others not only to discover their needs but also to find a unique way to authentically actualize them. When I started walking this path I began accepting who I am and what my needs are – now my mission is to support those who decided to go on that journey too. Organization of NVC reatreats and workshops is a small step of making a social change.