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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:
Experiencing Feelings Outside of Right & Wrong
Video • 7 minutes • 10/09/2023
Many of us have been raised within a right/ wrong culture. From very young ages, we are asked, "What is wrong?" Yvette Erasmus shares a different view where emotions can be seen as expansion and contraction, where they can help us identify our needs.
Parenting for Connection
Articles • 5 - 7 minutes • 10/5/2023
By guessing our child's feelings and needs we open the door to understanding what's behind their behavior, and can better suggest solutions that meet both their and our own needs. In this way we build trust and their desire to seek us out in times of need. Expressing our own feelings and needs also allows us to help them understand the value in fulfilling tasks or requests.
Being Compassion or Doing Compassion
Trainer Tips • 1 - 2 minutes • 9/30/2023
Sometimes I hear people say things like, “I didn’t do Compassionate Communication this week.” Or “I tried Compassionate Communication when I was arguing with my wife last week.” Compassionate Communication is not a thing to do, or to pull out of our bag of tricks once in a while. Compassionate Communication is a consciousness of valuing everyone’s needs and of valuing connection more than being right, winning or protecting ourselves. It is a way of living.
Feelings Awareness
Audio • 45 minutes • 9/30/2023
In this intriguing audio, Jim and Jori Manske create a framework for growing your feeling awareness, and offer daily practices for working with your feelings. Listen to this audio if you’d like to expand your emotional vocabulary!
Life-Serving Boundaries
Video • 6 minutes • 9/30/2023
Join LaShelle Lowe-Chardé as she shares a story that beautifully illustrates how boundaries are akin to consciously directing our precious energy. She artfully expands upon this concept by highlighting that life-serving boundaries embody the wisdom of discernment.
Making Your Empathy Guesses More Natural
Video • 3 minutes • 09/20/2023
Join Mary Mackenzie, Certified NVC trainer, as she offers ways to incorporate NVC empathy guesses, feelings and needs into everyday conversations. This approach is geared towards adding deeper connection to the natural flow of conversations. The technique has become known as Street Giraffe.
How Anger Can Help or Hinder
Practice Exercises • 2 - 3 minutes • 9/25/2023
We can use anger as an important signal to let us know that we perceive a threat to a universal need or value, directing our attention to something so that we can take effective action, and avoid harmful thought patterns. For example, instead of dwelling on a "should," focus on addressing unmet needs through boundaries and effective communication.
Exercise: Connecting Sensations to Emotions and Needs
Video • 12 minutes • 9/24/2023
Puzzling about needs and feelings? Check out this excerpt from Dian Killian's course, Embracing the Body: Somatic Self Empathy, where she leads participants through an exercise that demonstrates how our physical sensations connect us to our feelings and needs.
Connecting with Others
Trainer Tips • 1 - 2 minutes • 9/21/2023
Trainer Tip: Do you sometimes feel lonely and disconnected from others? If so, look at how you may be participating in supporting that outcome and what you can do differently. For instance, if you want support or connection - but prioritize looking composed no matter how sad, hurt or angry you feel, you may shield yourself from authentically and vulnerably asking those things. Instead, make those requests.
The Radical Implications of Staying Within Capacity
Audio • 17 minutes • 9/21/2023
The human species is trained and habituated towards separation. This model encourages humans to either give up on their needs or fight for their needs. In this short video, Miki shares how increasing capacity shifts habits of separation and supports holding of all needs. Through intensive lifelong practices we learn to increase our capacity to receive and to increase our capacity to be generous supports our overall capacity to hold all needs.
Beyond "Evaluation"
Articles • 10 - 15 minutes • 09/20/2023
The question “Is X an evaluation?” (where “X" represents whatever word is under discussion) has taken up some controversy in the NVC network. Often, context changes the meaning and assessment of words (eg. use of the term "domination" as in "You’re trying to dominate me!” vs. “domination societies”). Read on for several questions that can support understanding whether a term is evaluative, and reflect on the results it produces.
In Robert's Words, A Journey of Gratitude
Video • 12 minutes • 9/14/2023
Robert's passion was in the spirituality of the Nonviolent Communication (NVC) process. He saw NVC both as a process that helps people connect more authentically with themselves and others, and as a spiritual practice and way of living. The worldwide NVC community mourned when Robert died in 2021. He left behind a legacy of work that emerged from a lifetime of inquiry into the intersection between spirituality and human communication.
Make Peace With All Your Feelings
Video • 5 minutes • 09/12/2023
Yvette Erasmus suggests that making peace with our feelings reduces suffering. Sometimes we want to hurry through our feelings and just feel better.
Living Compassion in an Ever-Changing World
(10 Session Course)
Multi-session Course • 15 - 16 hours • 09/11/2023
Living Compassion in an Ever-Changing World is the last course that Robert Gonzales offered before his passing in November of 2021. It is an intermediate course whose purpose is to deepen our conscious connection to our own vital life force, to develop skills that support inner healing, and to grow and strengthen daily practices that allow us to truly live life to the fullest.
Money and the Web of Love
Articles • 9 - 14 minutes • 9/10/2023
Our ability to reduce our reliance on money, or even exit the logic of money and exchange in our own thinking, is limited by the degree of trust we have that our needs will be met without it. The more we can enter into sufficient trust, the more we can enter into a web of sharing resources -- borne from a place of love. Read on for more.
How to Respond to People Committed to the Punitive System When Organizing a Restorative Circle?
Video • 2 minutes • 07/26/2023
Duke Duchscherer explores responding to people who are committed to a punitive process rather than a restorative process. He suggests looking for what needs are met by the punitive process. Could those needs be met in a restorative process?
Complex Truth-Telling And Empowered Change
Articles • 3 - 5 minutes • 09/05/2023
When avoidance coping or positive thinking sidesteps challenges, internal and external injustice and unrest also rises as we sidestep our values and integrity. It leaves us in sadness and distress. What's unacknowledged impacts ourselves and others undesirably. To live nonviolently we need to be in touch with what's real. With resonance we can more likely be with what's true, and trust our resilience and inner alignment.
Accountability, Love, Shame, and Working for Transformation
Articles • 8 - 12 minutes • 9/5/2023
How can we hold love, understanding and compassion -- and still confront people about the harmful impact of their actions, hold them accountable, take action, speak truth and advocate for change... all in a manner fully aligned with our values and vision? Read on for how we can do accountability; what kind of action we take and with what motivation; and what our movements for change can look like from this lens.
The Gift of You
Trainer Tips • 1 - 2 minutes • 9/1/2023
Trainer Tip: Next time someone asks how you're doing, you can check in with yourself and offer an honest answer. It doesn't need to be 15-minute response. You could say, "I’m feeling tired and overwhelmed by this project. I’m sure it'll work out. I’m just worried about it now. How are you?” If you're ready to do that, then you can be honest with yourself. Doing this can help you be present to how you are, and hold your experience as a gift to self and others.
Tools for Mindfulness of Impact in Dialogue
Practice Exercises • 4 - 6 minutes • 8/27/2023
If you want a better connection it's crucial to be mindful about how your communication affects your partner. This means noticing and keeping eye contact, observing body language, and checking for their reactions. You can also share in small increments, check in before sharing vulnerable thoughts, and express what you notice. Give yourself empathy when you notice that you want to be right more than you’re wanting to be connected.
