NVC Resources on Observation

Join Jim Manske as he leads you through a self-connection exercise to guide you toward welcoming whatever enters into your awareness.

Join Jim and Jori Manske in a thought experiment exercise designed to help us become more aware of our conditioning, allowing us to make more conscious and connected choices in the face of conflict.

Jim and Jori Manske share strategies for employing gratitude to create more joy in life, jettisoning the fear of asking for what you want, and welcoming feedback no matter how it is delivered.

Join LoraKim Joyner to investigate how merging science, the social and emotional intelligence of humans, animals and other species and Nonviolent Communication can bring a greater sense of belonging and wholeness to your life, and care and justice to the lives of others.

Bring your inquisitive mind and open heart to Miki Kashtan's Theoretical Underpinnings of NVC and learn the principles that underlie the NVC practice.

How does change take place? In this brief segment, Miki explores the three key ingredients that make change possible for individuals as well as for societal change.

Jim and Jori Manske offer insight into blame, how it arises and how do we handle being blamed and our own blame of others.

Often patients need enough emotional space to reduce any inner stuckness in their situation. They need to do this before they can adequately absorb information or effectively take next steps. Empathy can help with this. Empathy requires an intention to connect non-judgmentally. This gets better with practice. Read on for examples of how a situation can play out with, and without, empathy. And...

Listen as Mary Mackenzie shares an eight step path to create your own NVC learning activities, based on your own NVC learning experience. In this session, Mary uses the value of requests and observations as teaching examples.

Why is it so difficult to change our patterns even when we want to, even when we experience shame or despair about them? Arnina Kashtan offers some of the common pitfalls and concrete steps to overcome them in the future.

Listen to the Universe is a fun group exercise to explore how we focus our attention and interpret what we experience.

NVC Mingle is a fun group exercise to practice NVC principles and create quick connections with others.

This exercise is most often the first activity in a beginning level workshop after the usual logistics/history/check-in. Penny Wassman experiences it as an opportunity for people to build connection with one another.

It's important to make requests specific and doable. Also, without a swift request immediately after we state our observation, feeling, and need in regard to the situation, the other person is left guessing what we want. Instead, a swift request can bring clarity and lessen the potential for the listener to become defensive or argue.

Here's a five-step 30 day practice to cultivate gratitude, using the practice of observations, needs, feelings, presence, vitality, awareness of contribution, sharing power and interdependence.

We can shift from being absorbed and identified with our inner chatter and feelings to being the space of awareness of these things. Observe your breath. Then observe your mind generating thoughts. Next, feel sensations of your body, particularly the difficult ones. Now, connect with the underlying energy of needs. Ask your unconscious mind for universal needs words related to what you now...

Practice making requests for feedback, clarity, and action. Opportunities for making requests might be when you expected something different from what you got, were treated undesirably, and noticed inner constriction or reactivity. Identify observations, feelings, and values to support finding the request. Ensure your request states what you want, is specific, names the present-tense action,...

In this exercise choose a situation in which you got a “yes” to your request but you are not confident that it was agreed to freely or joyfully. Then explore your response to their “yes”, and possible unexpressed "no", with related observations, judgements, feelings, needs, requests, and alternate strategies that come up.

Self responsibility is owning what's yours. It involves identifying your observations, evaluations, feelings, longings, and more. When we identify what's truly ours we are unlikely to mistake it as coming from outside of us. Self responsibility is not self blame. Without self responsibility, we project, blame and judge. Self-responsibility is central to clarity and full self-awareness. This...

Based on your observations of "power with" interactions choose a specific, do-able to practice so that you're prepared the next time you're in a power under/power over dynamic. Keep the practice simple to do in a difficult moment. Then reflect: identify what you did (internally or externally) or said that (de)escalated the dynamic. This practice requires noticing what went well, self...