NVC Resources with Miki Kashtan

How DO we live our lives? What is an effective response to what is happening in the world? Listen in as Miki dialogs with a participant asking, "What is mine to do?", and honors the dissonance we feel when working to change.

What does nonviolence have to do with group facilitation? Miki Kashtan believes that nonviolence is a way of being and living that orients us in all our thoughts, words and deeds toward the integration of truth, love and courage. All nonviolent individual and collective actions are aimed at preserving what serves life and challenging what does not. Facilitation is one clear path for bringing...

If you answer yes to at least one of the questions below, then this course may be key to building the relationship you want with your children: Do you know in your bones that you want to build a relationship in which both your needs and those of your children are fully included? Are you tired of seeing yourself time and again using methods to get your children to "cooperate" that you don't...

Each of us has a range of capacities. Miki Kashtan describes this as a range from "floor to ceiling." Floor capacity is what happens when you hit your limitation, ceiling capacity is when you are closest to functioning in line with your values and vision. This video describes the need to work on both to prevent the gap from expanding.

Empathy alone can be unreliable in guiding compassionate action. As seen in historical events, military training, personal anecdotes, and scientific experiments, empathy alone may not prevent people from harming others. A sense of duty or obedience, often instilled through fear of punishment and shame, might inhibit empathic action. The antidote may be to fostering empathy without resorting to...

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.

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...

So many of us have been taught to solve conflicts by what is “fair.” However, Miki Kashtan states that fairness is a separating concept. In this video, she describes how when we do not have the conditions to care for all needs involved, when we live within separation, fairness is second best.

Read here about patriarchy as a system, its impact on men and women, how its rooted in separation and control, leading to dominance and submission. Under patriarchy, even men are brutalized. Instead, we can embrace nonviolence to challenge patriarchy and its offspring (eg. capitalism, child trafficking, etc). And to make a lifelong commitment to undo socialization, act within our influence, and...

Historically, work, education, resources, land, animals, and relationships were intertwined, shattered by capitalism and industrialization. We transitioned from communal self-sufficiency to individualism, industry, and smaller families. To avert extinction and thrive, we need to reconstruct social systems, emphasizing the commons, uniting communities with the land and resources in...

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...

Total inclusion is impossible: inclusion of all can often lead to exclusion of those who can't bear the behaviors of some. Many groups flounder and disintegrate because of too much inclusion. Limited resources and capacities may make it necessary to exclude. Keeping more coherent shared values and strategies may be another reason to place membership conditions so that what appears to be...

Most people want to punish perpetrators of sexual violence. Unfortunately, punishment doesn’t lead to lasting widespread change. Rather, we can identify root causes and conditions that sustain violence. That means shifting from individual to systemic lenses, and from punitive to restorative responses. It means collective learning about how such acts are nurtured and persist. This can reduce the...

Whether privileged or not, its not easy to see the humanity of others in different social locations, especially if their actions have unwanted impacts and have left behind our humanity. Aiming for “both sides hearing each other” empathically, and to focus on effect rather than intent when we have more privilege, may theoretically lead to liberation. Yet, in practice it can reinforce rather than...

The word "privilege" signifies the benefit to the person having it, and the relationship between that person’s benefit and others' lack of benefit. When privileged, there are incentives to not see this interdependent link. For instance, it's easier for the wealthy to think of the poverty of many and the wealth of some are unrelated. If the wealthy want to keep wealth they would need to continue...

Whether we have more or less power and privilege, anything without liberation for all is within patriarchal separation, and will continue cycles of oppression. To liberate ourselves and one another we need to increase our collective capacity through developing related knowledge, skills, research; build an understanding of patriarchal roots; confront lovingly; co-hold dilemmas about privilege;...

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.

When we have privilege, we can have access to resources resulting from legal or social norms related to membership in a group -- independent of any (in)action, awareness of the disparity, the potential benefits to us, or the costs to others. Unhelpful ways of engaging with privilege are: denial/invisibility, guilt/shame, defensiveness, and entitlement. Helpful ways of engaging are: owning...

Learn to speak NVC using your own voice and increase ease and flow in all your personal and professional conversations. This 7-session telecourse recording with renowned trainer Miki Kashtan is designed to help you integrate NVC into all aspects of your life by gaining fluency in your practice of NVC and by embodying the principles regardless of the words you use. This course is based on...

One NVC principle is "stimulus vs cause" - one may be the stimulus but never the cause of another's feelings. When we're upset this principle can help us express pain without blame. However, when others are upset it's easy to slip into blaming them using this principle. Instead, we can hear their pain with care and heartfelt mourning - without guilt nor defensiveness, and whether or not we...