NVC Resources on Mourning

Mourning is not just a process that happens after someone dies: it's an experience we go through with loss of any kind. Here, Shantigarbha offers us seven tips for working with mourning and healing.

In this practice group class, certified CNVC trainers Jim and Jori Manske are facilitating the exploration of the topic of Mourning using the three modes of NVC: self-empathy, honesty and empathic presence. You'll learn how to accept a loss, let yourself feel the sadness and all the emotions, and allow yourself to grieve.

Trainer Tip: Mourning enables us to heal the pain and gain clarity about how to meet our needs in the present moment.

Join Jori and Jim Manske to explore, learn and practice an NVC approach to mourning and celebration.

In a recent vacation in a Mexican village, I was surprised to find myself in the midst of a community in mourning. Two days before I came, a 21-year-old girl had died in a car accident. Everyone in the town knew her and was openly affected by her death.

Mourning, grief and celebration is a way to connect with what we love and want to honor. In this trainer tip we learn that these three things can become a way for us to understand our emotions regarding our losses and appreciations.

Integrating a full living involves grief/mourning and gratitude. Here we'll more deeply integrate inner and outer dimensions of gratitude and grief. In any experience there's the outer aspect, an event that occurs in life. And there's the inner response to the outer event. When we judge the outer positively or negatively we're in tension or resistance to our experience. Here we'll explore a...

Trainer Tip: Taking time to mourn our regrets and unmet needs can lead to a deeper self-connection and feelings of peace.

Often making an apology is not enough because people want greater depth of understanding and empathy. Instead of judging ourselves or feeling guilt we can "mourn" what we did that stirred up pain in others. This can bring about a sweet pain that leads to change. Then we can ask ourselves what we can do next time and make a commitment to do this and/or offer a regrets to the person expressing...

When something happens that we don't like no amount of resentment nor magical thinking will make it disappear. Instead, we can mourn to dissolve our own resistance, resentment, and numbness of resignation. Mourning can allow us to feel pain with acceptance, and without needing to be okay with what happened. Acceptance can bring us to a place where even all the anguish in the world is fully,...

As you witness injustices in the world, tension, anger, hopelessness, despair and more, may rise up in you. These feelings may lead to reactive thinking that doesn't contribute to healing nor wise action. Mourning is a universal need. If your culture pushed away grief and its emotional expression, you may have habits that block your access to the aliveness of grief. Read on for ways to give...

So many of us have a habitual response of trying to eliminate uncertainty and the arrival of what we don't want. Alternatively, we can embrace the irreducible uncertainty of life. This shift from resistance and helplessness to mourning allows acceptance of outcomes, reduction of stress, and opens the door to noticing and appreciating what's present and available amidst challenges.

Listen to John answer an NVC Library member's question about what we can do when we habitually place other's needs ahead our own. Healing and change can be reached through compassionate self-connection, needs awareness, mourning and mindfulness.

In parenting, Roxy Manning notes the tendency for self-judgment and external judgment. Roxy suggests that being a single parent or a working parent influences your ability to implement parenting strategies. The importance of assessing the feasibility of strategies in one's current life context is emphasized. Roxy encourages self-compassion and mourning the gap between desired and achievable...

You value generosity and you often give easily from the heart. There are those times, however, when you get snagged by a sense of obligation. You feel tense and resentful. You don't want to continue with this attitude, but how can you reconnect with the desire to give from the heart? Let’s touch on three essential elements that support giving from the heart: choice, mourning, and acceptance.

When faced with someone’s grief for the world, how do you engage with them in a way that is informed? In this session, Kristin suggests exploring what they might be grieving… what they’re afraid of losing… and what it is that they love.

We invite you to dive into this voyage, where you and Robert will swim ever deeper into the Spiral of Life, coming face-to-face with your divine Life Force – that essential living energy that permeates all.

This gentle, healing telecourse recording will assist you in unearthing feelings and issues that have become tangled up with loss, enabling you to face whatever is blocking your grief.

Jori and Jim Manske offer a process they call "The Zero Step," encompassing the characteristics of warmth toward self and other, care for the vitality of both yourself and other(s), wonder/interest, vulnerability and empathy, which leads directly to connection requests and an openness to outcome.

Inspired by a talk given by Marshall Rosenberg, Jim offers an interactive exploration of powerful strategies for making NVC an integral part of your everyday life.