Welcome to the NVC Library

Learn tools to help you reconnect and repair your relationship with your adult children. Whether the issues are estrangement, lack of trust, conflict, dependence, miscommunication or any other challenge that impacts you with your grown sons and daughters, your heart will find comfort and ease through this course.

Join veteran Mediators and Facilitators, Jori and Jim Manske in using Nonviolent Communication and mediation skills for transforming conflict into connection between yourself and others.

In general, criticism is a reactive response discomfort. When someone criticizes, they are not yet able or willing take responsibility for their needs. All criticism is a tragic expression of feelings and unmet needs. When you meet that criticism skillfully you not only care for yourself, you can facilitate clarity, and constructive communication, about what the other person is truly asking for.

Trainer Tip: Our inner critic judges ourselves and other people; and it is the most likely to get scared when we begin to make a change. It holds wisdom for us if we are willing to listen. When we acknowledge our inner critic and empathize with its need, we gain insights into ourselves and we clear the way for resolution.

We're in difficult times - possibly at the brink of extinction. What can we do in response? Some nonlinear steps: A.) Notice what isn't working; B.) Mourn so that we can move "towards" from an expanded space inside; C.) Analyze to bring a fuller understanding of what's happening and what's needed; D.) Reframe our inner and outer narratives; E.) Discern what we can contribute; F.) Care; and G.) Bring in support for more resilience and creativity.

This 5-session telecourse recording is designed to support you in learning what makes giving and receiving feedback challenging and how you can turn these experiences into opportunities for learning, connection, and effective functioning.

Finding your power in seemingly powerless situations doesn't mean denying what happened, your feelings, your needs, nor the behavior of others that didn't meet needs. It does mean reexamining those situations with the intention to compassionately look for your contribution and for clues to your hidden perceptual biases. Read on to learn about about finding these clues, and more.

Trainer Tip: When we try to make another person fit into a reality that we prefer in order to meet our own needs everyone suffers. Instead, bring your focus back to yourself. Notice which of your needs are met or unmet when you spend time with someone. Don’t judge them; just focus on your feelings and needs. Then, decide whether continuing the relationship will meet them.

How is empathy in the workplace a professional skill? If you are ready to learn why and how empathy is the critical factor to more productivity, profitability and collaboration in the workplace, this recording is for you!

For each reactive pattern there is a perceived threat to a tender need. Knowing these tender needs helps us figure out how to interrupt these patterns and creating new ways of perceiving and relating to life. In addition to knowing the need, knowing the healing response and the primary reactive behavior helps with transformation.

This exercise will help you resolve situations in which you have two needs which seem to be in conflict with each other, transforming inner conflict into peace.

If you're stuck when making a decision with someone, it's likely that you've skipped hearing and connecting to one another's needs. Slow down and listen for what's really important underneath the content. This allows you to make decisions that are more fulfilling and harmonious.

Trainer Tip: Commit to doing one thing right now that will bring you closer to meeting a need today. Do it today. Don’t put it off. This is your life.

Do you want to increase your capacity to identify and connect with feelings and needs?  Would you like to enhance your ability to translate judgments? Join Miki for this deep dive into feelings and needs.

When someone's in immense pain and uses words that are hard to hear, see if you can bring in as much attention and compassion as you would to someone who was cut with a sword. Focusing on what's important to them, and not so much on how it was said. This may support greater understanding and healing. Otherwise, we risk prioritizing needs, norms, and inequities of the dominant culture, over caring for people who bear the invisible brunt of such norms.

During this session, Giorgos will walk you through a series of short, meditative practices and exercises designed to help you practice noticing, experiencing, and bringing shame to light — transforming it from a burden to a playful fellow as well as a portal to self-knowledge and internal freedom. You'll discover how the deep power of human connectedness can dilute the fogginess of sensitive issues, bringing them higher into your consciousness, and enabling the flow of life to pass right through them!

Trainer Tip: Be aware of opportunities to be honest holding the intention to connect with people. If you do this with the elements of brevity, directness, and respect, you can increase your chances of being heard. If they don't like your honesty, consider switching to empathizing with them by listening to their feelings and needs.

How do we address historical and present challenges regarding the invisibility of privilege and power? What can we do, especially if we are people with privilege, to transform these conditions?  However challenging these kinds of situations are, and whatever our position, we can move towards more inclusivity by learning and doing significant inner and outer work.

In groups, relationships and society we may not want to dominate or take away from others’ access to power, to choice, to participation in decisions, nor to shaping the vision and direction of the dynamic. And yet how do we do it anyway without knowing it? Discover how privilege operates on a societal level and becomes so invisible in groups. Learn why the conversation is usually excruciating for members of both privileged and under privileged.

Some arguments stay stuck because each person thinks it's about the content of the argument, rather than the needs each person is attempting to protect. When the needs get attached to the strategies a "no way out" scenario gets created. Instead, fully step into one another's worlds and connect to the feelings and needs behind the strategy each party is putting forth. Read on for six elements to creating empathic connection.