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Looking for ways to keep up with NVC Academy news, get special offers, free resources, or words of inspiration? Here are five ways to stay engaged:
How to Navigate Holiday Conversations with Family
Practice Exercises • 6 - 9 minutes • 1/15/2024
While we can’t control other’s behavior, we can choose how we show up. With forethought and care, we can approach interactions with more clarity, love, and skill. Read on for practices that include: Choose wise attention, ask better questions, practice deep listening, structure the conversation, know your limits, speak your truth, share your personal stories, be present and recall permanence.
Whether its pandemics, climate change, damage to the environment or other massive challenges that humanity faces, what are we to do if we can't agree on even the most basic information and knowledge? From empathic understanding we can focus on shared, universal human needs (where there is no conflict or disagreement) underlying our perceptions, and feelings. Then we can see if there are ways we can agree on to meet those needs.
In uncertain times, when facing important life decisions, it's common to get caught up in imagining various scenarios and potential outcomes. The desire to predict and control the future often gives a false sense of security. The key is to make decisions based on the information available now, minimizing the number of irreversible choices. This approach maintains focus on what is known and prevents getting lost in the unknown. Rigor is essential, especially when familiar pathways don't align with desired values. In times of high stakes and uncertainty, such as dealing with a health crisis, the challenge is to resist the urge to speculate on countless possibilities and instead concentrate on the facts at hand. Miki Kashtan shares how staying in the present and acting on what is currently known provided a practical and grounded approach which allowed her to stay present throughout her sister's, Inbal Kashtan, journey with cancer.
Mindfulness
Trainer Tips • 1 - 2 minutes • 1/6/2024
Trainer Tip: Mindfulness, focusing on what's happening now, is the foundation of Compassionate Communication. The more present we are, the greater the chance we will be aware of our needs and meet them, thus the greater opportunity for joy. Connect to your feelings and needs at least four times today. Notice how differently you conduct your day when you are mindful.
Connecting in Conflict and the Art of Navigating Dialogue
(5 Session Course)
Multi-session Course • 5 Session Course • 1/3/2024
In Yoram’s 2021 course, participants delved deeper into their NVC practice so they were better prepared to meet conflict head-on. In this 5-session series, Yoram explores: the power of empathy to change the trajectory of heated conversations embracing the internal conflicts of the different parts of ourselves how to approach differing views peacefully the use of NVC to help let go of judgments how to confidently ask for what you want
Finding Your Way from Judgment to Discernment
Practice Exercises • 2 - 4 minutes • 01/01/2024
Judgment is an attempt to protect from hopelessness or insecurity, at high cost. Instead, check in with fear, grief, or hurt. Then wonder what needs are at stake for everyone. This makes space for grief instead of anger, for negotiation rather than control, and for "calling in" rather than excluding. Wonder: “For whom would this be life-serving or not?”, “What strategies would care for all needs?” or, “What can I contribute now?”
Tools to Support Relational Attunement
Video • 2 mins 30 sec • 12/27/2023
Yvette Erasmus shares Terry Real's grid as a tool for exploring a spectrum of emotional responses. We all have feelings and sometimes we get dysregulated or frozen up. How do you want to express and be in connection with other people? Can you attune to the relational context that you are in?
I See the Spirit in You
Trainer Tips • 1 - 2 minutes • 12/26/23
Trainer Tip: We can voice our upset about a situation and still see the higher self in the other person. Honest expression can deepen connection and bring us closer to resolution and connection, when we're not judging them. To know that they're a spiritual being, but think they're an insensitive slob or egotistical bore, is a contradiction. Instead, look for the needs they want to meet. See the spiritual being in everyone—even yourself.
Four D's of Disconnection
Diagnosis, Denial, Demand, Deserve
Video • 8 minutes 29 seconds • 12/22/2023
Mary Mackenzie shares how Marshall Rosenberg's Four D's of Disconnection live in her. Join Mary and learn how you can reframe the 4 D's to enhance connection.
Attending to Our Need for Love
Trainer Tips • 1 - 2 minutes • 12/19/2023
Trainer Tip: Sometimes you might find yourself in a situation where your need for love is not met. Consider ways in which a partner or friend could meet your need for love. Be sure to request something the other person is capable of doing. Whatever the situation, it is our responsibility to clarify how we can meet our need for love, while also considering the abilities of our loved ones to comply with our requests.
Why Do I love Restorative Circles?
Video • 1 minute • 12/18/2023
Duke Duchscherer shares that Restorative Circles have the ability to transform relationships. Groups may start with feelings of worry, anxiety, fear, anger, and even hatred. The dialogue process supports a shift to more ease, connection, and trust.
The Mechanics Of Intention
Practice Exercises • 6 - 9 minutes • 12/16/2023
Goals and purposes can arise from intentions, but are different. Intentions arise from what's authentic, alive and aligned for you. Intentions can give you a sense of expansion, ease, and flow -- and are an essential part of any change process. Clear intentions can support decisions, management of resources, plus it can direct your attention effectively and with integrity. Read on for practices to find and implement your intention.
The Gift of Conflict
Video • 4 minutes • 12/13/2023
How do you solve a conflict? By not trying to solve it! Yoram suggests building your conflict resolution muscles by practicing connecting to the needs behind the conflict instead. Check out this excerpt from Session 1 of his 2021 course, Connecting in Conflict and the Art of Navigating Dialogue. Listen.
Observation, Feelings, Needs, and Requests (OFNR) Communication Components
Learning Tools • 2 - 3 minutes • 6/14/2023
Observation is the awareness of our sensory perceptions and thoughts, separate from evaluations and judgments. Feeling involves bodily sensations and emotions, distinct from "faux feelings" that mix thought and emotion. Needs encompass universal human requirements for survival and wellness, while thoughts and evaluations express needs. Requests are rooted in connection and invite true willingness, rather than demanding compliance.
Accepting Our Vulnerability to Consume Less
Articles • 23 - 34 minutes • 12/6/2023
The pandemic has unsettled deep patterns of consumption. There’s a fear, and with it comes the mindset that is the heart of rampant consumption; habits which are essential to the market economy’s “economic recovery”. High consumption is also the most direct cause of environmental degradation. What do we need in order to significantly reduce consumption for our greater resilience and freedom, and to increase our planetary and human sustainability?
Using Right & Wrong Language
Video • 2 minutes • 12/04/2023
Yvette Erasmus shares that we can translate or shift how we hear right and wrong language. We can use the cue - What is needed? I wonder what they are needing? This helps direct my attention to more relationality.
Choosing Your Response
Trainer Tips • 1 - 2 minutes • 12/2/2023
Trainer Tip: We have four choices of how to respond to someone, even when they say things that are hard to hear. We can blame the speaker, blame ourselves, we can self empathize by acknowledging our feelings and needs, or we can empathize with the other person's feelings and needs. Be aware of these options and consciously make your choice based on the needs you want to meet.
Love as a Feeling and a Need
Trainer Tips • 1 - 2 minutes • 12/2/2023
Trainer Tip: Love can be both a feeling and a need in Nonviolent Communication. It can be seen as a need if we do something to meet our need for love. We can also experience love as a feeling, just as warmth, affection, and excitement are feelings. Often, but not always, we can feel love and meet our need for love at the same time.
When Someone Doesn’t Appreciate Our Honesty
Trainer Tips • 1 - 2 minutes • 12/2/2023
Trainer Tip: When we withhold our truth or lie, we can create emotional and physical distance in our relationships. By being honest, we can strengthen relationships. And when someone doesn’t appreciate your honesty, try empathizing with them. It can help to notice how your actions stimulate feelings in other people -- even as they are not the cause of their feelings.
Israel - Palestine, And - And
Articles • 14 - 18 minutes • 12/2/2023
Amidst the Israel/Palestine war we see polarizing media portrayals and the battle for public opinion. Read how one person shares his deep, personal connections to the Israel/Palestine conflict, expresses the trauma and viewpoints of both Palestinian and Israeli experiences -- in a way that aims to transcend polarizations, hold compassion, and understand the complexity on both sides. Despite the immense challenge that defies easy resolution, he holds hope, noting historical reconciliations such as the ones between Germans and Jews.
