"Out beyond ideas of right doing and wrong doing there is a field;
I'll meet you there."
~Rumi~

What is Nonviolent Communication?

Nonviolent Communication, founded by Marshall Rosenberg, is a language of life, an approach to speaking and listening, that leads us to give from the heart, connecting us with ourselves and with each other in a way that allows our natural compassion to flourish. The teachings are based on the premise that we have been educated from birth to compete, judge, demand and diagnose. We have been taught to think and communicate in terms of 'right' and 'wrong', 'good' and 'bad', basically to speak in a language of moralistic judgments and demands. This language alienates us from our natural state of compassion and supports the belief that human beings are basically selfish and evil and need to be punished to set things right. This way of thinking and speaking often creates misunderstanding and frustration along with causing anger and pain that may lead to physical and emotional violence. Gandhi interpreted the term "nonviolence" as our natural state of compassion when violence has been fully purged from the heart. Nonviolent communication fosters that natural state to emerge.

 

What are the principles of Nonviolent Communication?

The NVC process is made up of the following components:

•	Observing concrete actions that are affecting our well being without making evaluations or judgments.
•	Identifying how we feel in relation to what we are observing,
•	Getting in touch with our needs, which are at the root of our feelings.
•	Making requests not demands, by formulating concrete actions that are motivated by the desire to make life more wonderful.
•	Listening and seeing with empathy, without passing judgment or trying to mold or fix the person.
•	Understanding that all actions are based on human needs that we are seeking to fulfill.

 

How can Nonviolent Communication make life more wonderful?

Nonviolent or Compassionate Communication teaches us to reach beneath the surface to discover what is alive within us. We do this by getting in touch with our feelings and basic human needs. When we can come from that place of awareness and can honor and understand our needs and feelings we open to the possibility of creating more satisfying relationships, relationships that allow for a deeper and more intimate connection with others and ourselves.

Over the years I have heard many of Rosenberg's stories of how this thinking and language has turned around the behavior and thinking of even the most dreaded gangs. The gang images coming from the ghetto, feuding tribes, our government, justice system or schools. My intention for teaching Nonviolent Communication is to share with others this language of compassion, a gift that gives us the opportunity to witness the beauty within others and ourselves and to live life more harmoniously.

Nonviolent Communication helps us:

•	To begin changing the negative perceptions we have in exchange for empathy and compassion.
•	To learn how to better express our needs and feelings in a way that allows us to be heard and seen.
•	Create communication that allows for everyone's needs to be met.
•	Break patterns of thinking that leads to conflict and depression.

Nonviolent Communication benefits all populations by its simple yet profound potential for healing old wounds and cultural conditioning along with the capacity to foster peace. Change begins one person at a time and that change has a ripple effect.