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Please join us as we take a look at what disrupts our joy during the holidays… and discuss the delicious possibilities that abound when we declare our intention to "Greet the Holidays with an Open, Joyful Heart."

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?

If you're unpleasantly triggered during the holidays you may find yourself responding in ways you don't like. Start by acknowledging how affected you are to bring in more curiosity, mindfulness and eventually, authentic and discerning choices.

During the holiday season we may find ourselves taking responsibility for other's feelings, which can lead to guilt, shame, depression, and resentment. These feelings are exacerbated by the habitual pattern we call the "Vortex of Submission" (being hooked by a sense of duty and obligation). Read on for ways to recognize and break the pattern.

This holiday, shift your focus from what disappoints you to the true whisperings of your heart. Compassion is an inside-outside process. In this telecourse recording, you will experience four simple tools for savoring your own precious needs, allowing you to experience greater compassion and harmony this holiday.

Join CNVC Certified Trainer Mary Mackenzie to learn a few of her tried-and-true simple Self-Empathy techniques, especially focused on the challenges of the holiday season.

The pandemic asks us to examine the way we have always done things. It asks to try something new and notice what happens. This is an opportunity to ask why you have done holidays in a certain way and what needs it met to do it that way. Perhaps it is an opportunity to experiment and see what new things might arise. Read on for questions to ask yourself that might help you process your triggers, "should's", feelings, needs and dilemmas.

In this telecourse recording, you will learn and practice self-awareness skills to fine tune your attention to met needs; savoring feelings of well-being; expressing these feelings to others; and receiving other people's messages of joy, gratitude, inspiration and more!

While we can’t control other’s behavior, we can choose how we show up. With forethought and care, we can approach interactions with more clarity, love, and skill. Read on for practices that include: Choose wise attention, ask better questions, practice deep listening, structure the conversation, know your limits, speak your truth, share your personal stories, be present and recall permanence.

Using real-life examples from class participants, Sylvia Haskvitz demonstrates the life-changing results of clarifying the needs underlying "shoulds." Some of the situations covered in this audio are:

• A grandmother shares how she was able to spend time with her grandchildren even when experiencing estrangement from her daughter
• A father examines how to repair a conversation with his daughter
• A woman explores her "should" thinking about her financial stability, her job and grief regarding her husband's death
• A woman connects to her deeper needs that arise with the statement "I should do my taxes"
• A woman perceives that she has conflicting needs for family harmony, relaxation and comfort when deciding whether to spend holiday time with stepchildren

If your life is fraught with "shoulds," this resource will support you in translating them into needs and, in some cases, to let them go entirely.

Have you been nice? Well then you must be enjoying the reward: depression, intermittent explosiveness, job meaninglessness, ambiguous anxiety, low resentment and subtle self hate. The antidotes: honesty, passion and compassion.

CNVC Certified Trainer Miki Kashtan talks with radio show host Hollis Polk about strategies for communicating with family members whose political views oppose our own.

If you dread family gatherings because of family tensions, you can find ways to excavate through piles of hardened judgments and hopelessness, build on your inner strength, and engage with family conflicts with open-hearted curiosity, greater presence, and connecting with what really matters to everyone.

No one on their deathbed wished they worked more. Working is unlikely to bring a meaningful life. And yet greeting friends with survivalist expressions, such as, "I'm dead-tired", can feel like affirming our own worth. Taking time off can bring inner spaciousness, ease, rest and consequently time to meet life, to really meet it. Which brings more clarity into the question of what we would like to celebrate on our deathbed.

When avoidance coping or positive thinking sidesteps challenges, internal and external injustice and unrest also rises as we sidestep our values and integrity. It leaves us in sadness and distress. What's unacknowledged impacts ourselves and others undesirably. To live nonviolently we need to be in touch with what's real. With resonance we can more likely be with what's true, and trust our resilience and inner alignment.

NVC is a process. It’s the willingness and effort to empathize with both sides of a conflict, encouraging each side to empathize with the other, and then seeing what solution can arise, working together to meet the needs of both sides. Empathy is the experience of being not separate as well as being an individual. It's seeing we're all part of the one ever-flowing consciousness of being, all unique expressions of this unity.

The American mythos of Independence Day is that liberty, equality, and opportunity are for all. Yet since the country's formation, these needs have been for some at the expense of others. It started with the brutal robbery and genocide of Native Americans and slavery of Africans. And this theme continued for generations in various forms, including how we related to other peoples, countries, and the ecosphere. To achieve true justice, liberty, and opportunity for all we may need to overcome the ego's sense of separation. Compassionate noncooperation may also be key.