Non Violent Communication: Making Life More Wonderful
Empathic connections
In my last two posts, I wrote about Theory U and Sociocracy. Today, I want to share another approach which helps create richer, more joyful relationships and which has been helpful for me personally. For a year, I was part of a small group of friends who met weekly to study and practice Non Violent Communication as outlined in the book by Marshall Rosenberg who initiated the process.
https://nonviolentcommunication.com/
We read a chapter at a time, did the exercises at home and then came together to share how things had gone for us that week. Over the course of the year, we all felt that we made progress from week to week - our interactions with others improved.
I had first heard about Non Violent Communication from my daughter who at the time was doing a practicum on a biodynamic farm. Because of some interpersonal friction, the farmers and their apprentices asked a Non Violent Communication facilitator to come and help them. The Non Violent Communication process helped them to better understand each other and they were able to resolve their issues.
Why am I writing about better approaches to communicating with each other on a blog focussing on Threefolding? Threefolding looks at our societal structures, but perhaps it is easy to overlook the obvious fact that within the social structures are people who are trying to communicate with each other. Many of us are perhaps unaware of what we are feeling and what we are wanting when we speak to others. Many of us have been raised in environments where developing understanding for ourselves and for others was not cultivated. The person who is communicating might not be very aware of what is fuelling their own tone of voice, body language and facial expressions and how that affects others. Non Violent Communication is a way of developing awareness and applying that awareness in our communications with each other.
In this four minute video, Marshall Rosenberg, who died in 2015, shares a compelling story illustrating the effectiveness of his approach.
Marshall Rosenberg has a compelling story to tell about his own life and how he came to develop Non Violent Communication. In the first few minutes of the audio file posted below, he gives an introduction to how he developed the NonViolent Communication process, sharing its purpose and giving an outline of it. At about 3 minutes, he shares childhood experiences that affected him deeply. This audio file is part of a series.