Cultivating the Strength to Love (Nonviolent Communication)




​Next training:
Sat 26 and Sun 27 May 2018                     
2 day foundation trainings in NVC focussing on Choice, consent and creativity


​Each 2 day workshop will cover the Foundations of Nonviolent Communication - NVC (What are these?) with particular focus on one topic. 

Workshops are designed both to introduce the path of nonviolence as well as to provide opportunities for deepening practice.

​Workshops are experiential and embodied, involving movement, stillness, voice and silence.

Come to one or come to all.

Series topics:
Sun 28 Jan and Sun 4 Feb 2018                Authentic relationships
Sat 26 and Sun 27 May 2018                     Choice, consent and creativity
Sat 8 and Sun 9 September 2018            Addressing power dynamics in relationships and groups
Sat 6 and Sun 7 October 2018                  Transforming conflict
Sat 3 and Sun 4 November 2018             Grief, mourning and gratitude
Sat 15 and Sun 16 December 2018        Just what you want in Winter … Winter gathering


Recent News

Relearning Grief


A new series of Grief circles

You are invited to a series of listening circles to remember people or things that have been lost in our lives, including innocent parts of ourselves. The circles will be a collective time for sharing and being witnessed compassionately in our grief.

Grief as a response to loss and death is part of life, but is often seen as something to be fixed or avoided, as if there was something ‘wrong’, if you are feeling sad about the end of a relationship, the loss of a job or of failing health, or if you are still grieving a parent, sibling, partner or child who died a while ago. You may feel pressure to ‘move on’ to the next thing rather than acknowledging the pain of the loss. These circles are also a space for acknowledging empathic pain of tragedy not in our immediate life; war, violence, pollution, loss of any life.

In my journeying with grief, I am learning how to witness the 'felt sense' of my own grief, how to be notice, welcome and allow the experiences of grief in my body. This practice draws on Nonviolent communication (from where I learnt that grief and mourning is a human need and without it I suffer), and Focussing. I will offer practice in this and we will also have time for sharing in a circle.

The circles are open to everyone. You can come to one or all. 
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Nonviolence -
'Systems Savvy' Study Group

In 2005, Maria Arpa asked Marshall Rosenberg, the founder of Nonviolent communication (NVC) who will take this work forward in the future. Marshall responded something like 'Those with bucket loads of compassion and equal amounts of political savvy."  (What does 'savvy' mean? )

I love this story that Maria tells. Those of us who practice NVC do well in terms of increasing compassion, how well do we fare in terms of awareness of politics and systems that we operate in?

​Kit Miller, the Director of the Gandhi Institute, also describes, in her Conversation series  Creating Peace in Troubling times  how we need to upgrade our systems thinking to be effective in this post-Brexit, post-Trump world. 

​In response to this, and in response to my own desire to upgrade my own systems thinking, I will offer a 'Systems Savvy' study group, at a central London location in 2018.

What's the focus?

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Creating experiences and practice in developing Empathy in London, online and in the brain. Understanding what gets in the way, sharing 'Tools for Tense situations'.