Article Intro
Trainers are invited to write lessons, tips, and experiences with NVC.
Trainers are invited to write lessons, tips, and experiences with NVC.
Genesis Young and Sulara James have created a petition to teach Non-Violent Communication in Schools which they believe will help stop violence and create a more peaceful society.
“Us vs. Them” is the poison this American culture is pumping out and ingesting on every level of our society and we are all ill from it.
When there were no policy changes after the Sandy Hook murders, where 20 six- and seven-year olds and six adults were killed at the end of 2012, I felt angry, then worried, then numb. I thought, if elementary school students being mowed down can’t provoke sweeping changes, what will?
One of the most empowering aspects of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is discovering that you have needs and learning how to make requests regarding them. Unfortunately, a new found enthusiasm to say what is true for you can sometimes overshadow the purpose of NVC. When the purpose of NVC is lost, your "Honest Expression" can slide into a platform for expressing judgments and reactivity.
The purpose of NVC is to create a quality of connection in which there is a natural giving from the heart. To cultivate this quality of connection both you and the other person are working to be...
more...When a friend begins to angrily talk about someone else, you likely feel torn. On the one hand, you know that under the anger, your friend is feeling some version of hurt, scared, and/or sad and so you want to offer support. On the other hand, your own integrity and care for others comes up when you hear harsh judgments. You don't want your willingness to listen to be construed as agreeing with judgments of others or the situation and you don't want encourage violent speech.
The most helpful place to start is with self-connection. Ask yourself if you have the resources to be a...
more...Although it certainly is helpful when the person I am communicating with has some Compassionate (Nonviolent) Communication skills, I find that I can usually connect with someone by what I call “translating” what they are saying to Nonviolent Communication (NVC). Translating means I guess their feelings and needs. If my guess isn’t accurate, the person will let me know, and then I can connect with whatever feelings and needs they are experiencing.
For example:
Them: “She’s impossible to talk to. Everything’s a fight with her.”
Me: “Frustrating?”
Them: “Tiring!”...
I grew up in the interior of Alaska. The colors there are beautiful and strange: dusky black-teal spruce trees, brilliant orange and pink sunrise and -set, white snow, and blue-black-gray shadows from the moon. I know the forest floor there, the bright red berries, the different mosses and lichens, the peeling birch bark and bursting aspen, the dirty-cream of puffball mushrooms, the curling fuschia of fireweed and then their white seedy fluff. I know what it feels like to step on the peat, to dig in red-brown clay, to sink into the powder of the snow up to my calves. It is the landscape of...
more..."I have learned that human beings are not searching for philosophies, even though it may seem that way sometimes. We are searching for something we can trust. And when we find ourselves in the midst of change, the philosophies are like a broken crutch. They do not hold us up. What supports us is a force, an energy, a vortex of love that expresses through us as warmth, creativity, service, and compassion." -- Stephen Schwartz
My deep inquiry in life has led me to develop practical pathways of living in the fullness and flow of life as a daily spiritual practice--what I call...
more...Your survival depends on intimacy. As Thomas Lewis talks about in his book, "A General Theory of Love", an infant's life depends on intimacy with a caregiver to regulate basic physiological and emotional functioning. This regulation through connection continues throughout life.
However, if you are like most people, you have had formative experiences in which you moved toward intimacy and got the message that it wasn't okay and possibly that it was dangerous. At some point in becoming more and more intimate with a partner or other close person in your life, these previous experiences...
more...What does it take to foster compassion in men? To find out, Kozo Hattori interviewed scientific and spiritual experts.
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I recently felt compelled to print a couple of thousand business-size cards featuring a quote...