Browse the NVC Library

Ask the Trainer: "Could you explore why people 'talk too much' and how I could connect with them and myself empathically when I'm also talking too much?"

Trainer Tip: Mary reflects on the nature of happiness and its relationship to presence.

CNVC Certified Trainer Miki Kashtan helps a man whose ex-spouse reacted strongly to his attempt at empathizing with her. Miki shows us how it’s possible to hide behind our empathic expression, creating less rather than more connection. She suggests instead that we be vulnerably authentic.

This exercise brings forth presence, awareness, and witnessing regarding what you observe. And also the inner form of experiencing: thinking, feeling, sensing, longing, and noticing any inner resistance. This exercise is designed to allow self-compassion to clear the inner space, and to help you feel it as a flow of energy, presence to the other, and bring in a more relaxed experience and more availability to vulnerability.

Listen as Liv shares her experience of mediating conflict between two groups: using NVC to ascertain the needs of both sides, raise awareness, and diminish polarization.

Join Jeff Brown for a provocative fishbowl discussion about how privilege and lack of privilege white people.

When building successful relationships, it can be very helpful to see yourself as a collection of different inner parts that developed due to various life experiences. Without empathy and acknowledgment, our inner parts tend to work against us. That's when we're called upon to build and develop our inner leadership...

The more we can support an interdependent flow of resources and energy in society and the economy, the greater we can increase both natural abundance and the chances of averting extinction. Accumulation is a strategy born of mistrust. It’s an attempt to control the flow of life to guarantee that we will have enough for the future. Accumulation and exchange has blocked this interdependent flow. We can transform this blockage by uncoupling giving from receiving, and shedding excess as much as we can, so that energy and resources can travel further to those in need.

Whether privileged or not, its not easy to see the humanity of others in different social locations, especially if their actions have unwanted impacts and have left behind our humanity. Aiming for “both sides hearing each other” empathically, and to focus on effect rather than intent when we have more privilege, may theoretically lead to liberation. Yet, in practice it can reinforce rather than transcend power differences -- unless there's specific ways to focus attention and choice. Here, its important to transform expectations into working with willingness, and within our own terms and timetable.