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To learn to identify and speak from your needs requires specific tasks and practices. Here's a list of 10 learning tasks and practices for you to choose from. Some of these ideas include using needs cards and lists, working backwards from strategies and ideal scenarios, reflecting on past experiences and relationships, and asking for/offering/exchanging empathy.

In moments where we would like to see change, personal growth or spiritual transformation, rather than immediately acting to make a change, Robert suggests we practice unconditional self-acceptance through a spacious presence to our inner experience. Robert asks us to give our attention and spacious awareness to our own judgments, inner contractions, and other experiences we often regard as undesirable.

This guide features three activities that use feelings and needs cards: two verions of "Feelings and Needs Poker" and one for "Self-Empathy". Great for practicing alone, with a partner, or in a group.

Trainer Tip: Have you ever noticed that some of your behaviors ensure that your needs for peace and relief won’t be met? Take judgments for instance. The more we have, the less peaceful and happy we feel.

If withdrawal is your stress pattern, you likely want to belong and yet have habits of expression that others find uninviting. Instead, soften, relax, and open your posture and energy. Find something that will bring you to smile. Engage with others -- make eye contact, smile, walk towards others, say hello, and sit in an open posture. Let others know that you're a bit overwhelmed, but want to connect and are glad to be here.

To tell the difference between empathy and investigation, watch for distinctions along four different dimensions: energy, subject, intention and trust. These distinctions can help us engage awareness and skill to meet your needs and respond to others’ needs in more direct ways. The more you meet your needs in conscious and direct ways, the more present you can be for others. Read on for more about how to do this.

There are ways to reduce obstacles to setting boundaries. Notice unconscious ways you sacrifice yourself in order to avoid boundary setting. List of signs that a life-serving boundary is needed, but you're denying this. Realizing you consistently abandoned your needs may require time to process and mourn before you can set boundaries consistently. With practice, you can recognize boundaries care for yourself and others.

Reflect on a time when you were either expressing gossip or participating passively. What feelings and needs were up for you at the time? How might you have interrupted the gossip with connection? When interrupting gossip it can take a few rounds of empathy and honest expression to bridge understanding, and create a space in which mutual care and curiosity arises. Read on for an example.

During this session, Giorgos will walk you through a series of short, meditative practices and exercises designed to help you practice noticing, experiencing, and bringing shame to light — transforming it from a burden to a playful fellow as well as a portal to self-knowledge and internal freedom. You'll discover how the deep power of human connectedness can dilute the fogginess of sensitive issues, bringing them higher into your consciousness, and enabling the flow of life to pass right through them!

LoraKim Joyner addresses the sense of overwhelm that can accompany holding the needs of the many. Practicing self-empathy is a pathway to living in the tension of mutually holding my needs and the needs of others.