Communicating With Compassion & Clarity

Heart-centered giraffe language is the essence of compassionate communication and includes the four steps and four foundations found within NVC. In this session, we explore the flow of the 'giraffe dance' and how it leads to connection. We expand our understanding of NVC beyond the awareness and skillful use of language. It is also a model of communication, a compassionate consciousness, and a powerful means of influence in the world. The meditation practice today recognizes the interdependence of the mind-body and uses the seven points of a meditation posture to connect to the beauty of giraffe consciousness.

The willingness to observe without judgment is a high form of intelligence and one of the key capacities we develop when communicating compassionately. The observation step in NVC speaks to what you experience through your senses - the facts of a situation or event. In this session, you’ll explore why focusing on the facts can be challenging, especially when you are triggered. We consider the benefits of separating observations from evaluations and offer ideas for processing your experience before communicating your observations to others. A practice of pure mindful observation, without judgment, offers you an embodied experience of this session’s learnings.

In this session, you’ll explore feelings as the second step of non-violent communication. You will have an opportunity to develop awareness around feelings and distinguish them from interpretations. In exploring this relationship to feelings, you will sense how they show up in the body, learn to express them without blame, and use them to help you connect to your needs. The body is an ally for us when working with feelings, and the practice in this session allows you to become more familiar with physical sensations and the associated emotion, to help you identify your feelings with greater ease.

“You can search the whole world for someone more worthy of compassion than yourself, but no such person exists.” These words from the Dalai Lama invite you to explore radical self-compassion and this is the focus of our sixth session. As you open more to your feelings, this session offers encouragement, reassurance, and comfort. Self-compassion is a way to allow for a deeper understanding of your feelings and needs. The meditation practice will support an attitude of loving-kindness towards yourself by allowing you to experience how to create a container within which to hold your wide range of feelings.

This session is all about needs. Everyone experiences needs and our actions are usually in service of our needs. There are many available strategies to meet your needs, although you may not always be aware of them. NVC suggests that, at the level of needs, there is no conflict, but the strategies we use to meet them often creates conflict. You will explore questions and non-violent principles to reveal your needs and build the courage to express them. Today’s practice brings an awareness to your body, touches into the present moment and allows you to recognize your needs.

The question, “What would I like to request of myself or others to enrich my life?” is the final step of NVC. Dr. Rosenberg taught that the clearer we are about what we want, the more likely we are to get it. This session offers ways to make skillful requests, composed of positive action language. Our intention is for others to contribute to our well-being because they want to. There is a big difference between a request and a demand. Our practice will explore how to make requests of yourself first and then be open to the possibility of making requests of others.

In this session, we’ll explore the quality of empathy within the NVC process. We revisit the three points of connection symbolized by the infinity sign and consider how to practice empathy for yourself and others within this flow. The heart’s consciousness leads the way. The self-empathy practice allows you to drop into a feeling of safety, name what’s present in your body, emotions, and thoughts and hold even the difficult or uncomfortable experiences. The practice gives you an opportunity to feel the transformative capacity of the heart when you bring compassion to yourself and your experience.

In this final session, Felicity and Lucy share their personal golden threads of insight. These include the heart qualities of compassion and kindness, the contemplative, mindfulness, and somatic practices that support the steps of NVC, and the steps themselves. We see how the steps can become a ‘friend’, a way to check in with yourself repeatedly, building your capacity for self-awareness and self-compassion. Our closing practice traces the steps of NVC and transforms them into a beautiful meditation, allowing you to drop into a feeling of peace, ease, and comfort as we end our time together.