What is Nonviolent Communication?
"What I want in my life is compassion, a flow between myself and others based on a mutual giving from the heart." Marshall Rosenberg
- Imagine connecting with the human spirit in each person in any situation.
- Imagine interacting with one another in a way that allows everyone's needs to be equally valued.
- Imagine creating organizations and environments that honour and respond to your needs.
Nonviolent
Communication (NVC) is sometimes referred to as compassionate communication.
Its purpose is to strengthen our ability to inspire compassion from others
and to respond compassionately to others and to ourselves. NVC guides us
to reframe how we express ourselves and hear others by focusing our consciousness
on what we are observing, feeling, needing, and requesting.
We are trained to make careful observations free of evaluation, and to specify behaviors and conditions that are affecting us. We learn to hear our own deeper needs and those of others, and to identify and clearly articulate what we are wanting in a given moment. When we focus on clarifying what is being observed, felt, and needed, rather than on diagnosing and judging, we discover the depth of our own compassion. Through its emphasis on deep listening - to ourselves as well as others - NVC fosters respect, attentiveness and empathy, and engenders a mutual desire to give from the heart. The form is simple, yet powerfully transformative.
Adapted from Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D. Published by PuddleDancer Press, available in the UK from www.GnB.org.uk
For more information visit www.CNVC.org
