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Please join us as we remember the work and life of Inbal Kashtan. She offered this parenting Q&A session in NVC Academy's 2013 Parenting Conference.

Grieving reminds us of the preciousness of life, it helps us integrate loss, and it opens us to deeper compassion, inspiration, and joy. We need to create space in our lives to grieve fully.

Trainer Tip: It's impossible to value other people’s needs and remain compassionate if we simultaneously harbor judgments. If we're willing to shift this behavior we can translate our judgments into acknowledging how something affects us. Once I got into the habit of this, my judgments began to subside dramatically. It became easy to love people and feel compassion for them, and I experienced a freedom I had never known before.

Trainer Tip: The very process of giving someone space to talk about their issue without our judgment, to be truly understood by us, and to be deeply heard is very healing, enough so that most people will organically find their own creative ways to resolve their issues. Rely on this process and you will lose all desire to fix people’s problems. Try this out today.

Trainer tip: Do you get into “right fights”? You know you’re in one when you’re arguing with somebody in order to be right or because you want to win. What needs do I hope to meet from winning or being right? Notice if you enter into a right fight today and shift your focus to your needs and connecting with the other person's needs.

Trainer Tip: Here are four Stages of Emotional Maturity, also known as Stages of Emotional Liberation. Be aware of what stage of emotional maturity you are in today. And, celebrate it.

One thing that makes empathic understanding difficult yet valuable is that it can be humbling. If I really open myself to hearing and understanding, while trusting my inner strength of self-knowing, I may be changed by what I hear. My core beliefs or understanding might change and grow. This openness could be key to transforming the energy of conflict into new possibilities for greater connection, creativity, and well-being.

Read how an American Buddhist NVC teacher with Jewish roots reflects on how any dehumanization in the Israel-Hamas conflict can be used to justify all kinds of violence that can escalate for generations. With acknowledgment of the complexities, his desire is for us to bring in respect, dignity and peace -- for both Israelis and Palestinians. He emphasizes compassionate advocacy of all humanity amid the ongoing crisis.

Welcome to June. It’s the beginning of summer in my area of the world and I usually find myself moving at a slower pace; spending more time outdoors and with friends, more time reading and gardening. I really enjoy the beginning of summer especially because the sun brings just enough heat to feel good, but not so hot to be uncomfortable.

• Increase your sense of connection and compassion, even in the heat of conflict
• Deepen your access to needs consciousness and the powerful energy of gratitude
• Learn how to make powerful requests that support the flow of connection
• Expand your self-empathy skills to help you shift away from reactivity

Anger and resentment can signal unmet needs. Through mourning those needs and practicing self-empathy, we may let go of blame, embrace reality, and reclaim responsibility for fulfilling our own needs. This process may lead to emotional transformation through conscious reflection, and a new outlook.

Inbal answers a parent's question about praise and offers a perspective on how praise translates into the NVC framework.

Join Linda Mia Mukte (formerly Rysenbry), CNVC Certified Trainer, for this uniquely powerful telecourse recording that blends NVC with Dr. Sue Johnson’s empirically validated work on adult love relationships called EFCT: Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy.

When asking for support from another, you are most likely to enjoy receiving that support when the person giving support is giving from the heart—from a place of joy or delight. Inviting them to say "no" is a way of encouraging an authentic response, a response you can trust more fully.

In our fast-paced, busy lives it is tempting to practice NVC mostly with the left hemisphere of the brain, thinking through the steps quickly without slowing down to connect more deeply with feelings and needs.  Don't miss an opportunity to integrate the hemispheres of the brain and the valuable information from the neural networks in the heart and gut.

When you or anyone is upset, what could underneath the trigger?  There may be more than is immediately visible.  This article invites us to explore what it looks like to inquire deeper, take self-responsibility, examine our assumptions, attachments, interpretations, and "certainties" that could be hidden behind the needs that are aching to be attended to...

Some people in the NVC community consider the words "privilege" and "power" triggering and/or evaluative. From this perspective, how can the concepts of "privilege" and "power" be considered part of the NVC teaching?  This writing piece examines the power and privilege debate.  It also discusses what the author sees as Marshall Rosenberg and Gandhi's stance on the subject...