A Workshop for Separating Adults
Mastering Your Separation
Change how you see the conflict and you change how you handle it. A workshop on shifting perspective, communicating better, and bringing inner peace to the outer conflict of separation.
Why This Workshop
The Legal Separation and the Emotional One
A separation is two separations running at once. There is the legal one, with its documents and deadlines and lawyers. And there is the emotional one, which nobody schedules and nobody explains. Most people are handed help with the first and left alone with the second.
This workshop was built for families moving through separation in a high conflict context, to give them strategies and resources to cope both practically and emotionally. It is not therapy and it is not legal advice. It is a day of tools, taught by someone who has spent decades in family law and years teaching mindfulness.
Most of the work is about perspective. Conflict is rarely the thing people think it is, and it is not, in itself, a bad thing. It shows up where something matters and where something has changed. What escalates a separation is not the conflict itself but everything wrapped around it: the attitude people bring, the assumptions they make about each other, and the behaviour that follows. That is where a hard situation turns into an unbearable one.
The same set of facts also looks entirely different depending on where a person is standing. When that view shifts, the communication shifts with it, and so does what becomes possible between two people who still have to raise children together.
Nicolle brings both sides of the room to it: a lawyer who has sat through the process many times over, and a mindfulness teacher who knows what happens in a body that is frightened.
Since 2020, Mastering Your Separation has been successfully delivered 15 times.
What You Leave With
Tools You Can Start Using Immediately
Practical strategies and accessible resources to help reduce conflict and communicate with greater clarity and calm.
A deeper understanding of the role conflict plays in separation, and how to respond to it in ways that support healthier interactions and outcomes.
Insight into how the brain functions under stress, and how that knowledge can guide more grounded, intentional responses.
A clearer sense of how internal conflict, emotions, and unprocessed narratives shape external conflict, and how shifting the internal experience can improve the co-parenting dynamic.
An understanding of how The Four Agreements can reshape perspective, support more constructive communication, and open a path toward resolution rooted in self-awareness and mutual respect.
The Curriculum
What the Day Covers
The order is deliberate. Understanding conflict comes before managing it, and managing it comes before the conversations that depend on it.
Conflict Is Not the Enemy
The largest part of the work, and the part everything else rests on. Conflict is not a negative thing. It appears where there is deeply held care, and where something has changed. Without conflict there can be no change at all. What escalates a separation is almost never the conflict itself. It is the attitude carried into it, the assumptions made about the other person, and the behaviour that follows from both.
In This Session
- What does conflict look like, and debrief
- Conflict as a signal of care and of change, not as a failure
- Attitude, assumption and behaviour: where escalation actually comes from
- Pivoting: the same situation seen from a different position
- Understanding resolution through the lens of perceived conflict
- What does resolution look like, and debrief
Emotional Intelligence and the Brain Under Stress
How the amygdala takes over in a moment of threat, what cortisol does to the body, and why the rational brain goes quiet exactly when it is needed most. Participants learn to recognise it happening in themselves.
In This Session
- Understanding the brain under stress
- The six emotional styles, drawing on the work of Richie Davidson
- Questionnaire and debrief
The Four Agreements and Your Communication
The philosophy that runs through the whole workshop, applied directly to the conversations a separating adult is actually having: the phone call, the email, the handover, the meeting. Be impeccable with your word. Take nothing personally. Make no assumptions. Always do your best. Four sentences that quietly dismantle most of what goes wrong between separating parents.
In This Session
- Working with the four agreements, drawing on Don Miguel Ruiz
- Assumptions, expectations, and the stories we fill the gaps with
- Exercise: bringing them to your separation and your communication
Mindfulness in Separation
Learning to notice the trigger before the reaction. The stories we tell ourselves, the language we use about our own feelings, and what changes when that language changes.
In This Session
- Recognising triggers
- Mindfulness superpowers
- Changing the language: not I am anxiety, but I am feeling anxiety
Strategies for the Moment
The practical part. Simple, repeatable sequences to reach for when the phone rings, the email arrives, or the court date approaches. Easy enough to use on the worst day.
In This Session
- Stop, Wait, Think
- Breath and tapping techniques
- Bringing inner peace to the outer conflict of separation
“Inner peace in the outer conflict of separation.”
- Nicolle Kopping-Pavars
What It Draws On
Grounded Work
Richie Davidson
The Emotional Life of Your Brain
The six emotional styles, and a questionnaire that shows participants where they sit on each scale.
Don Miguel Ruiz
The Four Agreements
The philosophy the workshop is built around. A way of communicating, and of holding other people's behaviour, that holds up in the hardest conversations of a separation.
What Participants Say
In Their Own Words
“Nicolle was great, informative and very knowledgeable.”
“Facilitator was intelligent, organized, compassionate.”
“I felt [Nicolle] navigated the session in a very sensitive and mindful way.”
“I found the various easy-to-follow tools like STOP, THINK, HALT, and WAIT, and the Four Agreements, good frameworks to access on the fly to manage emotional safety.”
“Content and presentation allowed you to internalise the messages.”
“The non judgmental space.”
“I really had a good chance for self evaluation.”
“Doing the activity as a group was great and broke up the day.”
“Great work!! We need more.”
“Please continue with the great job so that other people also may benefit from this.”
Practical Detail
Dates, Format and Fees
- Next date
- Monday, December 7, 2026, 9:30 am to 3:30 pm
- Location
- Jewish Family and Child Service, Lipa Green Centre, 4600 Bathurst Street, Toronto
- Fee
- $60 per person, with a sliding scale available
- Registration
- Through JF&CS: 416.638.7800 x 6234 or jfandcs.com
- Track record
- Successfully delivered 15 times since 2020
- Facilitator
- Nicolle Kopping-Pavars
Register or Enquire
You Do Not Have to Do This Part Alone
To register for Monday, December 7, 2026, contact JF&CS at 416.638.7800 x 6234 or jfandcs.com. If you have a question, would like to hear about future dates, or are a professional wanting to refer a client, use the form below.
Mastering Your Separation is educational. It is not legal advice, therapy, or a substitute for either, and attending does not create a solicitor and client relationship.