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When you want to be heard, first check if your listener is available. This honors yourself, and the other person’s choice about listening. You need to be clear about wanting a particular quality of listening, and that you are willing to wait if that isn’t available in the moment. Read on for how to ask for listening in a way that can build trust that your request isn't a demand.

Have you ever had the experience of being truly heard and understood by another person? Or felt the astounding, breath-taking connection that arises when someone sheds all preconceived notions, gives you their full presence, and really sees you?

We call this The Amazing Power of Empathy – and the power does not stop there.

• Cultivate thriving interpersonal relationships
• Discover paths to move beyond anger, blame, and judgment
• Connect with the Divine essence in other people
• Experience greater ease and joy in all your interactions

Ask the Trainer: I feel overwhelmed thinking of writing to someone with cancer. What can I do?

CNVC Certified Trainer Arnina Kashtan talks about what she calls "witnessing humanity," touching on the gift of presence, empathy vs. identification and staying present in the face of intensity.

In this telecourse recording, you'll learn to differentiate between cerebral empathy and intuitive empathic listening. Awaken your sensitivity towards body sensations and inner feelings to recognize the clear inner clues to your empathic connection.

For many people, attempting to connect with others across differences can feel akin to walking through a minefield. With humility, tenderness, and courage, Roxy challenges your perspectives and encourages you to open your heart and mind. Roxy uses concrete examples and visual tools to illustrate complex concepts.

Are you finding yourself grappling with the NVC model despite your familiarity or practice? Do you often feel stuck or find it challenging to make it feel natural or authentic in your interactions?

Let CNVC Certified Trainer, Dian Killian, guide you towards embodying the essence of NVC—a mindset of connection and collaborative engagement. Through her expertise, you'll discover invaluable insights tailored to make your NVC practice truly your own. From uncovering intuitive methods to discern feelings and needs, to seamlessly integrating NVC principles into your everyday speech, Dian empowers you with insider tips for authentic connection.

In this, the second in a series on applying NVC to daily life, Shantigarbha offers five tips for recognizing where communication is likely to go awry.

Trainer Tip: Empathy is a process in which we acknowledge and understand others' experience without judging or bringing up our own life experience. It can defuse a violent situation and anger in seconds, plus provide a clarity that catapults someone to a deeper level of understanding. The process is simple; listen for their feelings and needs. It can be healing for them to be deeply understood.

Listen and learn how to:

• Talk about NVC in a way that has meaning and relevance for companies and organizations, showing a clear ROI (return on investment).
• Draw on different applications of NVC for the workplace: addressing change in management, management issues / styles, morale / teamwork, employee retention, etc.
• Create a value-based training proposal (with different service and product options) based on the needs of each specific client.
• Structure meetings with potential clients to move agreements forward.
• Custom design any materials, activities and languaging for each client.
• Develop your own marketing materials to increase your outreach and build your business of sharing NVC

Listen as Miki works with participants. Topics: how small requests serve interdependence; NVC process vs purpose; how to respond when empathy is used to create distance; coping with verbal aggression, and more!

Working for racial justice is a shift in perspective—a shift in understanding and empathy that leads to a change in our actions: to listen instead of talk, to follow instead of lead, to yield rather than dominate. And to accept that I will continue to mess up. Part of working to undo racism is having the humility to know when our own understanding is limited. Read on for more this, and how it relates to meditation -- plus personal and collective liberation.

Listen as Mary Mackenzie shares an eight step path to create your own NVC learning activities, based on your own NVC learning experience. In this session, Mary uses the value of requests and observations as teaching examples.

Trainer Tip: Whether we listen to our own or the other person’s needs first, connecting to needs can help us release judgments of others, see their humanness, help us to begin to hear them and ultimately connect to them. Be aware today of times when you are judging someone. Then be aware of your own needs to improve your connection to them.

Listen to Jim and Jori ask each other about the role of gratitude in their daily activities as they share how gratitude can be a primary tool to help us stay present and at peace.

Listen to Mary Mackenzie as she focuses on her opening premise for group participation, which lays the foundation for developing vibrant groups and then defines the facilitator’s role, which is often not known or incorrectly defined.

Listen to Miki discuss two strategies for bringing NVC into the workplace in ways most likely to be well received. First Miki explains why it's best to focus more on needs than feelings in business environments. Second, she talks about unpacking needs into phrases as a way of enhancing workplace connection.

In most business environments, purpose holds a higher priority than connection. Listen to Miki discuss the strategy of using minimum connection to remain true to the purpose at hand, and how the purpose of empathy may differ in the workplace.

Listen to Miki talk about the value of participating in groups, recognizing our inherent nature to do so, how industrialization has hindered our skills and the value of participating in a time when it's most needed.

Listen to Miki make an important distinction between giving feedback, which is grounded in a desire to contribute to another, and our own need to be heard.