​Cultivating the Strength to Love: 2 day training in Nonviolent Communication. Transforming conflict in relationships and groups

Conflict is feedback that hasn’t happened.
 
How many times have you noticed an unease inside of you about something that is happening that you don’t want to be part of, or something that someone is doing that you don’t like, or something that you are being expected to do?
 
This is happening all the time on a micro level in interpersonal relationships, at work and on a bigger scale in our shared reality of living in this city together, in this country, on this planet. Things are happening that we don’t like, and we very often don’t even acknowledge this to ourselves, let alone speak up about what is happening, let alone find support to collectively transform the situation.
 
One of the skills needed is the capacity to give and receive feedback.
 
The parts of this skill include having compassionate understanding of:

• what stops us speaking our truth or giving feedback to people

 

• what happens to us when we anticipate or receive feedback that is hard to hear.

 

• What happens to us and what alternate strategies can we utilise when our attempts to give feedback aren’t received.

 

• How to strengthen our sense that our experience (whatever it is) matters and that our experience and response is valid and vital.

 

• power differentials (there is rarely a ‘level playing field’ when it come to giving and receiving feedback. For example, a child speaking their truth to a parent or adult is unlikely to be heard)

 

• what support is necessary to deal with power differentials.

 
This 12 hour Foundation training will give you a solid overview of the tools of Nonviolent Communication that support giving and receiving feedback, speaking truth, self-care and compassion.

This workshop will transform your potential for speaking your truth.

​Book here.
 
What is Nonviolent Communication? And this series of workshops Cultivating the Strength to Love?
 
Nonviolent communication (NVC) is a process, skill and consciousness which can be learned. NVC strengthens practices of:

• nonharming
• truthtelling
• courage and compassion
• inner peace
• ​interdependence

Learning to express your needs at the risk of or with the reality of dealing with the displeasure of other is a COURAGEOUS ACT.
 
The African American Bishop Curry transformed the energy of the Royal Wedding with his sermon. He flagged up what "The Rev Martin Luther King said, We must discover the power of love, the redemptive power of love. Love is the only way. There is power in love. Don’t underestimate it."
 
Cultivating the Strength to Love is about learning how to cultivate love for self, others, community and the world. The Strength to Love is one of Dr Martin Luther King's most famous sermons and this training is designed to help you cultivate this power of love. I evoke the memory of Dr Martin Luther King with care. As a white person, I want to be aware of the tendency of white people to appropriate words (and resources) carelessly. I don’t want to be appropriating his words without also integrating the vastness of his vision and practice around racial justice; something he lost his life for.
 
So far in this series Cultivating the Strength to Love (NVC Foundation Trainings) we have looked at Authentic Relationships and the systematic blocks to authenticity and ways we can transform these with different structures, acknowledgments and practices.
 
We have looked at Choice, Consent and Creativity and how the practice of NVC can begin the generative cycle of empathy and choice, alongside support and collaboration so we can tackle larger systemic challenges.
 
Why these themes? I know that I’m caught in a ‘cycle of violence’ when I get scared, confused or stuck. We don’t exist in a vacuum, so the systemic cycles of violence appear in our personal lives insidiously as we go about our daily interactions. Very often, if we have more privilege we are blind to them, or if we have less privilege, we are numb, angry or relentlessly caught up in the violence of them.
 
 
This is what Marshall Rosenberg, who built on the nonviolence of Dr Martin Luther King and Gandhi, called ‘Domination culture’, and since the time that Rosenberg was writing and attending to social change, we have even more understanding about trauma responses and about systems thinking for social change.
 
“If you are not aware of how you are part of the problem, you can’t be part of the solution.” David Peter Stroh
 
 
 
 
 
And about money ...
I work in a creative way with money ... pay what you can and what meets your needs.
 
People pay what they can, considering their needs and mine. Some people pay more. Some people pay nothing. It's a fascinating journey towards a needs-based approach to money.
And I like working with different levels of experience so while this is a foundation training, I welcome people who have more experience in NVC.
 
In the course of my training in NVC, I repeatedly attended and assisted on Foundation trainings, where I revisited again and again the foundations of nonviolence. As paradigm shifts or changes in habits and patterns take a long time to take root, the repeated practice was very important to create change.
 
 
Come and join me for 2 days of learning and connection. Book here
 
If you haven’t encountered NVC before, have a look at these 4 pages of Information
 
Or what Marshall Rosenberg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4tUVqsjQ2I  NVC Training course with MR 9 hr vid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEqmZ2E1o64  The purpose of NVC (3 hr)