What’s Non-Violent Communication and the Magic of Empathic Listening?
Nonviolent Communication (NVC) helps connect us with what is alive in ourselves and in others moment-to-moment, with what we or others could do to make life more wonderful, and with an awareness of what gets in the way of natural giving and receiving.
I recommend you to join a workshop by Donal Gannon. He travels the world to offer amazing workshops for all levels.
The most important for me has been to distinguish my observations, judgements, needs, emotions in order to make clear requests.
His trainings in Nonviolent Communication (NVC) offer skills, practical tools and insights to support this shift; to deepen, enrich and transform all of our relationships, whether with loved ones, colleagues or ourselves through experiments and interactive exploration of how we communicate, using individual and group processes, games, exercises and meditations to integrate the teachings..
NVC language strengthens our ability to inspire compassion from others and respond compassionately to others and ourselves. NVC guides us to reframe how we express ourselves, how we hear others and resolve conflicts by focusing our consciousness on what we are observing, feeling, needing, and requesting.
During few days, the focus is on:
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The language we’ve been conditioned to use, how it disconnects us and how we can translate it into language that encourages connection
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Using honest expression and empathic listening to encourage a flow to and from our hearts
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Connecting with what’s really alive in us through self-empathy
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Establishing clarity and common ground by making non-evaluative observations
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Recognition of our common feelings and needs, and distinguishing these from thoughts, interpretations, and strategies
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How we can make life more wonderful, through making clear and effective Requests
What’s empathy? Why is it so important?
Empathy reduces stress and fosters resilience, trust, healing, personal growth, creativity, learning and nourishes connection.
It also transforms conflict, and supports sustainable collaborative action and positive social change. And if that’s not enough, it also feels really good. The pleasure centers of the brain light up when we are empathically heard and understood.
Empathy is a quality of connection wherein we reach to touch what is alive in someone’s heart of hearts at the present moment, the life energy moving through them.
We also use the word “empathy” to refer to the actions we take as we move toward that quality of connection: focusing our attention on sensing, understanding, and connecting with the person’s feelings and/or needs.
The gift of our empathy can be conveyed to another in several ways, some with words and some without. We choose the level based on what is available to us as well as our assessment of what is most likely to contribute to the quality of connection and understanding we are aiming for and the context within which we operate.
During the workshop, Donal facilitate the exploration on the following approaches:
* Empathic presence
* Empathic understanding
* Empathic reflection
* Empathic expression
* Empathic Action
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More materials on NVC
