For many, spending time with relatives over the holidays may be challenging. In addition to the love and care we may feel, family gatherings can bring up old hurts or expose painful differences. How many family meals have been marred by tense silence or devolved into harsh argument?

Among NVC practitioners, empathy can be superficial. How open are you to being influenced by what others are saying? Do you reflect back and then guard and remain within your position of being right, even as you say otherwise? Only when we're eager to be influenced by what they say can we connect, expand our world and thus, shift the field. Without such openness we fool ourselves into thinking...

Kristin Masters explores how to approach goal-setting and self-reflection with compassion and mindfulness grounded in NVC principles. She encourages you to examine how conscious choice plays a role in how we treat ourselves and others.

Kelly Bryson, CNVC Certified Trainer known for teaching people how to live authentically, focuses this audio on honesty: how to express what you're most afraid to say, when honesty is the best choice to support connection and how to employ "naked" honesty.

Ask the Trainer: "I feel a lot of fear or nervousness about approaching a neighbor who uses 'wastebasket talk.' Once she's engaged, there are only two techniques that interrupt the flow: leaving or interrupting."

Sharing more vulnerably provides opportunities for fulfilling connection. As social beings we rely on feedback to see our effect on others. We can get that feedback through body language, facial cues and words. To expand your capacity to share more vulnerably you can create supportive conditions and timing. You can ask for feedback by making in-the-moment requests of others and yourself before...

When we ask something of a person and threaten negative repercussions if she doesn’t comply, we're making a demand. Demands limit the possible responses and reduce joyful participation. Instead, look to find mutually satisfying resolutions. And look for ways to change your demand into a request. Read on for more.

Before you make a request you can connect fully to a time when your need was met. Notice how your request feels and sounds different from this place of aliveness. Excitement about meeting a need implies confidence and trust about moving forward together. Offer an invitation to find strategies that work for both of you.

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.

Trainer Tip: When I am in resistance to what is happening in my life, when I'm having a very difficult time enjoying or just being with what is occurring, I like to offer up my gratitude.

Trainer Tip: Anger can be an opportunity to hear the "Please" behind the words and create a path to resolve conflicts compassionately.

Ask the Trainer: "I have noticed that sometimes when I am in a story-telling mood I am usually trying to prove that I am right and once I connect with a need the urge to give all the information goes away."

Let this inspiring video guide you through exercises as if you are actually present at the workshop with Mary Mackenzie! The video opens with Mary leading you through an exercise that generates a physical experience of the NVC consciousness.

Ask the Trainer: "In trainings I say our jackals are thoughts and now I've come to wonder if all thoughts are jackals...?"

Please join us as we take a deeper look into this mysterious word, “community.” In this Trainer Dialogue recording, we explore the living process of creating, uniting and nurturing NVC communities so that they transcend yet sustain and empower their members.

Trainer Tip: Mary shares how staying present to our anger and finding the underlying feelings and needs can lead to deeper connection and more satisfying outcomes.

Miki explains the distinction between the language and the underlying consciousness of NVC, and the pitfalls of failing to do so.

Through your dialogues at home, where the stakes are often very high, you can increase your ability to meet the challenges of life everywhere with empathy, goodwill and authenticity. Please listen to this inspiring recorded telecourse with Miki Kashtan and learn how!

In June, 1996, I had an epiphany. In a motel room in Indiana, the night before returning home from a solo camping trip in Michigan and Canada, I discovered how much I had lost in my life because of so fiercely protecting myself. Up until that day, bringing forth my vulnerable self was to be avoided at all costs, which kept me numb much of the time, disconnected from myself and from much of...

In this brief video, CNVC Certified Trainer and Inner Relationship Focusing Guide and teacher, Gina Cenciose, teaches that our inner relationship is the basis for both Focusing and NVC work.