Supporting Others’ Liberation:

In this session we plan to focus on the implications of making an uncompromising commitment to putting needs at the center when we accompany people on the journey of realigning with life again. This includes both how we first get disconnected from life through patriarchal socialization, the way capitalism creates conditions of alienation, competition, and individualism, and the absence of communities within which we can thrive. It also includes speaking about the mysterious and profound experience of creating the conditions for liberation to unfold. Arnina, Miki’s sister, who developed the Compass, which is part of what is used within the Nonviolent Global Liberation community when accompanying others, is joining Miki for this and possibly other sessions.

Some of the topics we may focus on:

• Distinguishing between relief, healing, and consciousness transformation
• How NVC can ground our human relationship with anyone we accompany
• Understanding trauma through the lens of NVC and nonviolence
• What practices and agreements can offer in supporting liberation
• The contribution of the systemic lens to empowerment, tenderness, and interdependence
• How our brains, early experiences, and cultural systems interact
• The power of questions to support movement from within
• What we can do to restore choice given the raw deal that patriarchal socialization forces on us: freedom or belonging, not both
• How we know when and how much healing is needed

You’re invited to sign up for this first session without commitment HERE.

Every baby is born knowing what they want and ready to do whatever is in their power to make it happen. It is only through coercion and shaming, two key mechanisms of patriarchal socialization, that we lose that vital access. Restoring choice starts with regaining the capacity to know what we want, the strength to move towards it, the trust that solutions that work for us and for others are possible, and the creativity to come up with specific steps that can take us there. In this session we plan to engage with these dilemmas and to introduce an approach developed by Sabrina Kley that we call “Empowerment Clinics”. Sabrina is joining Miki for this session.

Some of the topics we may focus on:

• How to connect with all needs even when taught to suppress some of them
• How to shift from responding to shoulds, rules, and expectations to discovering everyone’s needs and integrating them into a step that works for all
• How to recover from habits of submission or rebellion to choose from within
• How to find openings even when capacity is limited
• How co-holding dilemmas together with others increases empowerment
• Concrete steps and practices that can support empowerment
• The power of agreements to compensate for limitations

One of the tragic consequences of living within patriarchal societies for the last 5,000 years (or less in some other parts of the world) is what we call the “mistrust groove”: whenever someone does something that doesn’t work for us and we don’t have an immediate way of making sense of it, we are usually pulled into losing trust in them. As we develop painful narratives about others, we dig deeper into separation. As social animals, our power emerges from togetherness and separation reinforces powerlessness. The process of impact digestion supports liberation through discovering needs that are at the root of any impact from others’ actions, supporting fuller choice and nonreactive discernment, repairing inner tears into wholeness, and adopting a compassionate lens towards self and other. Ivan Sandomire, who’s been holding impact digestion every week after the Responding to the Call of Our Times course for the third year, is joining Miki for this session.

Some of the topics we may focus on:

• How NVC principles and practices support impact digestion (e.g. understanding all actions as arising from needs shared by all humans)
• Understanding the crucial place that narratives take in shaping impacts
• Why it is often essential to receive the person empathically before engaging with their narratives
• How challenging narratives can support healing and liberation
• Why we want to use naturalized NVC and what we call “needs poetry” instead of one-word needs
• How telling the other person’s story can support liberation

One of the core questions that arise when we lend our human capacity to others in support of their liberation is how much to lead and how much to follow the person we are accompanying. In this session, we plan to introduce some of the dilemmas that arise, especially as they relate to the power we have when we step into leadership. We then plan to apply these principles to the complex context of how we can call people back to life when they are in the thick of patterned behavior, including full trauma activation. Emma Quayle, who has experienced the power of being called back and also the potency of calling others back, is joining Miki for this session.

Some of the topics we may focus on:

• When do we guess needs and when do we ask open-ended questions? When do we offer framing, vision, or specific strategies and when not?
• How do we form a soul alliance with someone who is deeply distressed?
• What conditions within and around us are needed to actively interrupt patterns?
• What do we pull people towards? (e.g. vision, soft qualities, self-connection, seeing others’ humanity