Welcome to the NVC Library

If you’re interested in improving your relationships, advancing in your career, or enhancing your capacity for change in life in general, communication is a powerful lever. Presence, listening, bringing curiosity and care, focusing on what matters, and pausing with silence, are all key. Read on for five foundational and advanced core practices you can start using today to improve your communication.

Trainer tip: Why do NVC practitioners sometimes use the giraffe as a metaphor for NVC consciousness? What can it help us understand about NVC consciousness? Read on for more.

Using the example of being met with chronic lateness, here are three steps to setting boundaries early in a dating situation or relationship.

This exercise explains four stages of the "Need Cycle": Fulfilled, Emerging, Urgent, Satisfying. It asks us to consider, connect and identify needs, feelings and where we are in the Need Cycle. Then it prompts us to remain mindful of the need for sustenance as we move through the cycle, noticing the subtle shifts in your physical sensations and emotions.

In the face of stress you can find ways to be present for what’s happening, rather than being pulled or pushed around by anxious thoughts or fearful feelings. Here are some strategies to return to and maintain expanded awareness.

"All humans share the same needs" -- tragically, this idea can hide the reality that some people with less power in society have needs that go unmet to a greater extent, much longer, and with more dire consequences. Often, when the marginalized bring up experiences related to their membership in a certain group, their pain isn't acknowledged, and focus shifts to the listener's discomfort. The concept of universal human needs can be used to silence and minimize their pain. Read on for how to proceed.

Trainer tip: When you tell yourself that you have to do something, you're more likely to disconnect yourself from the needs you’re trying to meet, and also diminish the joy in your life. Instead, experiment with translating your “shoulds” and “have tos” into the need you are trying to meet.

We can't alone (nor with lone communities) transform the hidden structures of violence and domination. Dialogue alone isn't disruptive enough. We can easily be in dialogue with Trump supporters while the planet burns up, millions are still hungry, and we go extinct. NVC seriously risks reinforcing vast inequities and abuses if we're not radically engaging systemic constraints, and impacts of our choices that go beyond our immediate circle. Read on for ways to leverage NVC practices to expand true social change.

Trainer tip: Judging others can affect our ability to communicate effectively with that person, or enjoy the relationship. Translating the static judgments (enemy images) we have of others into our own and others' feelings and needs can help us move into greater understanding, healing, and relief -- which can foster compassion and connection. Read on for more.

This pandemic is an immense opportunity, and a dire catastrophe in the making. It’s a crisis within many planetary crises — during which, our habits as individuals, and as a collective, are challenged because they don’t sustain us. Now we are pushed to respond freshly and join forces in ways that seemed impossible before.

Trainer tip: Various life circumstances that can seem to be something that we don't want, and we may think of them as bad. And then later the situation may reveal that it's a circumstance that we do want, and we may think of it as good. Instead, of evaluating our day as good or bad we can acknowledge the feelings and needs that are present. Read on for a few anecdotes that illustrate this.

Our world is facing stressful times. And the more stress you experience, the less resourced you can become. But consider that you're not messed up, but rather, the challenges you bear is a response to manufactured environments and culture that are more hostile than they are kind towards our human souls and bodies. And so, let’s be clear. Let’s be discerning. Let’s be compassionate. Let’s pay attention.

As social beings we thrive with social contact and community. Thus, with the social isolation and a loss of routine that is happening in the COVD-19 pandemic, there are three critical areas to keep in mind everyday: emotional-physiological regulation, self-empathy for fear and anxiety, and meaningful engagement. 

During a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic, we can draw upon inner and outer resources: gratitude, awareness of our senses and breath, plus compassion for self and others. We can also expand our understanding to curtail fear -- and limit the amount of time and energy we spend fighting and resisting the truth of what’s happening.

Here's a five-step 30 day practice to cultivate gratitude, using the practice of observations, needs, feelings, presence, vitality, awareness of contribution, sharing power and interdependence.

Trainer Tip: If you make a specific and doable request as soon as you notice your needs, you'll have a better possibility of getting them met. It's also more likely your request will support the other person to contribute to your life. Make at least one specific, doable request of someone today as soon as you notice your needs.

When faced with someone’s grief for the world, how do you engage with them in a way that is informed? In this session, Kristin suggests exploring what they might be grieving… what they’re afraid of losing… and what it is that they love.

When someone wants to speak angrily about another, do you want to move away, try to calm them, argue, set a boundary, or offer empathy? What supports you to stay self connected? You can set boundaries regarding listening so that you're less likely to defend the other party, or attempt to talk your friend down from their judgments, thereby escalating the situation. Disagreements can also ignite curiosity and celebration. Read on for more.

How much money to pay? And how much money to ask for? The supply and demand logic basically say that we ask for the most that “the market can absorb” and pay “the least that we can get away with.” We can instead, we can engage in experiments that focus on connecting to and satisfying needs. We can also engage with our varying degrees of access to resources within the existing economy and consider how we want to make choices about resources, especially when we have access to power.

Trainer Tip: With empathy, ponder one area of your life that you are unhappy with today. Consider whether you can take action to change the experience and meet your needs.