Trainers/Facilitators

Jody Bellant Scheer, MD has offered classes and trainings in NVC to parents, medical, business, and community groups since 2004. She is a pediatrician whose dream is creating healthy relationships and peaceful co-existence within all families, institutions and communities of the world. She has worked since 1982 with sick newborns, premature infants and their families in Portland, OR. She is co-founder of Medical and Educational Relief International Association (MERIA), Inc, a nonprofit working to provide essential medical and educational services worldwide.

We are a NVC teaching space located in inner SE Portland! Our primary Trainer is CNVC Certified Sandra Amiry. Our mission is to increase access to peace and connection within our community by supporting our clients in resolving both inner and outer conflicts. We strive to make our courses accessible through sliding scale pricing and limited scholorships. We are honored to support the NVC movement in the world, and hope to continually find new ways to uplift our community.

LaShelle Lowe-Chardé is passionate about helping people express their deepest values in their relationships and creating clarity and connection with self and others.

She began her professional career with a master’s degree in school psychology. In addition to nine years in public schools, she spent several years facilitating group healing work for adolescent youth labeled “at-risk”. During that same time she led leadership and teamwork trainings for businesses and organizations around Portland, Oregon.

Along the way she found Compassionate/Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and began training with Marshall Rosenberg and other internationally known NVC trainers. She immediately knew that Compassionate Communication was the missing piece. It offers a deep and broad yet simple understanding of human nature along with a concrete set of tools to help us act and live from a place of clarity and compassion. For LaShelle, Compassionate Communication is the hands and feet of spirituality. In 2006, she was certified as a NVC trainer.

In addition to certification in Nonviolent Communication, she has completed a three year training in Hakomi - Body Centered Therapy and introductory trainings in Emotionally Focused Therapy and with the Gottman Institute.

In 2004, she founded her business, Wise Heart (www.wiseheartpdx.org). Since that time she has served as a trainer, private coach, and mentor for the learning and practice of Compassionate Communication and mindfulness. LaShelle teaches locally as well as through video conferencing online. She has offerings for couples, women, and the general public in addition to trainings for local nonprofit organizations. Her offerings focus on combining NVC with mindfulness and a subtle understanding of reactivity and relationship skills.

In 1999 Kathy chose to move her work focus in a new direction and she became executive director of an organization mentoring troubled teens. In order to better support the youth and families served by the organization, Kathy searched for a communication tool to build and sustain respectful relationships based on trust. In 2000 she was ecstatic when she discovered Compassionate Communication and recognized its power to transform lives. She began training with Marshall Rosenberg and has since dedicated herself to living and sharing the principles of NVC. She now supports others in the practical day-to-day learning and application of the process.

Drawing on her prior management experience, Kathy also designs and delivers trainings to diverse organizations and businesses. Compassionate (Nonviolent) Communication (NVC) provides a simple yet effective framework to ask for what we want with clarity and authenticity. By facilitating the practice of Compassionate Communication in work environments, Kathy has taught individuals, executives and business leaders to connect in ways that unify and create effective work teams.

Kathy facilitates quarterly courses as well as workshops for individuals new to NVC. For more than 15 years she has led practice groups for those wanting to deepen their practice of NVC through her ongoing coaching and support in a small group environment. Whether you are stuck in a disconnecting communication pattern within your family or are feeling challenged to express yourself with clarity and honesty in your workplace, learn how to apply this powerful tool.

I first encountered Compassionate/Nonviolent Communication (NVC) in the late 1990s.

Learning that feelings were pointing to needs met/unmet was like a lightning bolt for me; it was the missing piece that finally made everything make sense. I'd always believed that Thriving was our birthright. NVC showed me that our feelings guide us to the Life-Needs that are our pathways to thriving.

NVC also helped me understand that my anger was just letting me know I had long-unmet needs aching to be met. There wasn't anything wrong with me, and I didn't have to feel ashamed of my feelings. I just needed to learn how to answer the Call to Thriving.

But it got even better. In 2013, I learned essential elements of Relational Neuroscience and Attachment Theory that, when integrated with NVC and my Thriving Life principles, finally explained some of the stuff I'd been struggling to understand for decades, like:

* why we can't "do NVC" when we're upset
* what "stress" really is, and why it's so dangerous for both our physical health and our relationships
* why compassionate, authentic, resonant community is essential for our well-being, and is central to our capacity for growth and genuine fulfillment
* what really, truly dissolves our automatic reactions and restores authentic presence and choice
* why it's so dangerous to have compassion for others without also developing healthy boundaries and care for ourselves
* down-to-earth ways we can expand our capacity for presence and authentic choice, regardless of circumstances
* how to connect with our deepest authenticity and natural power and genius, and become free to make the difference we long to make in the world

This work has helped me come home to being human, and given me the unspeakably precious gift of being able to share "this being human" with you and others in a way that fulfills all my dearest dreams for authentic, attuned, healthy, harmonious connection.

I live and practice everything I teach. My deepest passions are profound authenticity, compassion, and responsive accountability, offering a deeply safe, gentle living model of how we -- as both flawed and transcendent human beings -- can co-create a deeply nourishing world and relationships that recognize the practical realities of being human, while truly honoring and supporting everyone's thriving.

There is no pain that we can't turn into food for the heart and medicine for the soul, if we just keep practicing what works, in human healthy connection.

I'm been so blessed to be a part of my Thriving Life community, where we welcome everything we are -- from what's most magnificent to us, to our "warts and farts and ugly crazy parts" -- and get to experience our birthright of being fully Seen, Heard, Respected, Connected ... and Celebrated.

Welcome home. We've been waiting for you.

Sarah Peyton, CNVC Certified Trainer, offers trainings focused on learning and using resonant language to transform the brain. She brings together depth work and self-compassion that integrate Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) with the healing potential of Nonviolent Communication's verbal and non-verbal empathy. She is delighted by the self-compassion that arises from understanding how language and resonance change our brains, heal trauma and give us new energy, well-being and choice. She teaches and lectures internationally, teaches communication at the college level, and she has been published in North America and Europe on NVC and IPNB. Her work focuses on how we hear and understand one another, effective ways to connect hearts, and developing self-compassion and clarity. Her passion is watching people's self-understanding deepen into warmth. Her book Your Resonant Self: Guided Meditations and Exercises to Restore Your Brain's Capacity for Healing, published by W.W. Norton & Co. in 2017, is the first book from a major publisher to significantly feature Nonviolent Communication.

Carlos Sathler is a volunteer mediator with the Beaverton Center for Mediation and Dialogue and an NVC trainer at the Columbia River Correctional Institution. He has been a Nonviolent Communication (NVC) practitioner for over fourteen years and has led teams at volunteer and for-profit organizations for over twenty-five years. Carlos is currently a candidate for certification as a trainer by The Center for Nonviolent Communication, a global organization that supports the sharing and learning of NVC worldwide. He is deeply committed to NVC and enjoys regularly contributing to Oregon’s NVC community as an Oregon Network for Compassionate Communication board member.

Karl is passionate about co-creating learning experiences and communities that contribute to peace, justice, and sustainability. With over 20 years of experience teaching and facilitating groups, he has helped catalyze learning in settings ranging from companies and university classrooms, to ecovillages and intentional communities. As a CNVC Certified Trainer in Nonviolent Communication (NVC) he leads trainings in conflict resolution and communication across North America, Europe, and Asia, and serves as a CNVC Assessor supporting candidates on their journey to becoming CNVC Certified Trainers. In addition, he facilitates Restorative Circles, a community-based approach to restorative justice.

Beyond his work with NVC and conflict resolution, Karl is actively involved in co-creating communities that embody values such as sustainability, transformational learning, and consciousness. With academic training in Anthropology (B.A. Dartmouth College; M.A. U of Michigan) and Environmental Policy (M.S. U of Michigan), Karl enjoys practicing & sharing ecovillage design, Permaculture, aikido (a nonviolent Japanese martial art), Buddhist meditation, and yoga.