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John Cunningham provides support to deepen your understanding and practice of NVC, including a sketch of the participatory and onlooker modes of consciousness, lists of feelings, needs and sample dialogues.

Trainer Tip: Take a moment to consider feelings, our conditioning about expressing or even feeling emotion, and the value of re-evaluating our relationship to feelings.

Every interaction with children contains messages about who they are, who we are, and what life is like. By engaging attachment parenting and NVC we give them rare gifts in society: to know their parents well, to discover the effects of their actions without being blamed for them, and to experience the power of contributing to meeting others' needs, and the power to move towards mutually satisfying outcomes.

Here's guidance on how to approach your inner experience when triggered or stuck in a distressing life experience. Self-Compassion in life can be experienced as: "There is room for life experience in me. There is an open space for ‘what is’ to be fully present in my inner experience". This exercise is more about tracing your felt experience than verbalizing it.

Trainer Tip: Every time you criticize yourself, you cause yourself to feel shame and guilt, which promotes depression and stagnation. Instead, bringing in more self compassion can increase opportunities for change. Do this by acknowledging your needs (or values) that aren’t met by your actions. Read on for how to do this.

Interested in bringing NVC consciousness to your workplace, but want to use a natural and conversational way of speaking? Listen in as Jeff describes three specific skills you can apply immediately: #1: How to express your understanding of a co-worker’s needs; #2: How to apply the three dimensions of needs in a business setting; and #3: How to make a Symbiotic Request that acknowledges holding multiple needs.

Here are two practices for connecting with "request energy". One of them helps us practice in the moment (7 steps). The other one helps us connect to ourselves (11 steps).

With this exercise you'll choose an experience you had with someone where your needs were not met. You'll work with the related feelings, judgements, values, and feeling the fullness of the need even though it was not met, plus any sadness that may arise.

Is it tough to see a loved one go through hardship? May you have tension building up inside and draw a rigid boundary, or feel the urgency to swoop in and try to “rescue” them with advice, consoling, cheering up, analyzing, or explaining? Instead, relax your body. Invite your emotions to flow with acceptance. Notice inner peace and expansion. See this person as someone on a journey to awakening with all its painful and joyful twists and turns.

• Learn how to cultivate a consciousness of compassion
• Embark on a journey of compassion-based self-discovery
• Become more alive and present with yourself and others
• Liberate yourself by meeting your fears and distress with an open heart

• Strengthen embodied awareness
• Integrate inner and outer worlds to create a connecting "corridor" 
• Identify projected images that prevent connecting 
• Embrace fear and transform reactivity
• Create a support network where you can express and be heard 

Blame is a misguided habit that's used to avoid pain and suffering, offering only a momentary distraction and oversimplifies complex histories. It also disconnects us from choice and agency, blocks us from discovering more about ourselves and others, and can keep us from having compassionate, self responsible conversations. Instead, we can practice speaking in terms of impact and notice our experience without trying to escape it.

Getting "feel good" empathy can become an addiction. Even to the point of seeing people who don't offer empathy as "not being NVC". Rachelle urges us to notice how this view of NVC can be seductive, and even dangerous. In this article, she explains how we can expand our compassionate awareness when we go beyond equating NVC with harmony and empathy. She asks us to become more open to noticing others' experiences even if it challenges our personal and collective belief systems -- and especially when it upsets us to consider it.