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Marriage can be seen as a limit on freedom. Ideas of compromise collude with this view. Instead, notice when your "yes" to your partner is laden with obligation, duty, guilt, fear, or an attempt to win love or approval, and how it's not a truly free "yes". True freedom is different from compulsion, and doesn't conflict with other needs. When have you experienced true freedom? What conditions support your access to freedom?

In this amusing and inspiring video, CNVC Certified Trainers Kelly Bryson and Christine King engage in a role play about a parent talking to a seven year old daughter who is feeling bored.

Our everyday personal experiences of diminishment, and the destruction of our planet has a through-line. Societal traumas lead to us shutting down to avoid pain, and this limits us. The avoidance shifts our brains so we don’t see other beings, species and our planet as wondrous, precious and irreplaceable. Thus, we meet others with diminishment, oblivion, or abuse; trauma keeps passing on. This leads to being blind and mute, and to othering based on social location, and to destruction of our planet.

We can get stuck in our heads. All kinds of thoughts float into our minds. We then get thoughts about those thoughts, they might even make you feel a certain way or change a behaviour. But what happens when we connect our feelings with the physical sensations in our bodies? As part of our teaching at NVC we have incorporated movement work to help us connect with where we hold emotions and how we can process them effectively.

Want to expand your needs vocabulary, and build your capacity to identify needs — even when you’ve been triggered? Check out Mary’s powerful teaching on Self-Empathy.

To help you stay connected to yourself and the other person when in challenging discussions about COVID-19 vaccines or other hot issues, without labeling others as reactive or otherwise, you can begin by tracking signs of your own reactivity to bring mindfulness onboard, then shifting your attention to universal needs; and asking to connect about it later. Read on for more.

Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed – or locked into passivity? This course offers you a way out. Learn to change the way you perceive leadership, and you’ll help yourself respond more powerfully and proactively every day of your life – wherever you are – and whomever you’re with!

What do I do when I'm leading an NVC group and get emotionally triggered? Mary Mackenzie offers tips to respond with care and connection from her extensive experience leading NVC groups.

Here are some guidelines and agreements for creating empathy buddy sessions. Includes a list of blocks to empathy.

A challenge is an expansion of making a clear, positive doable request — and, when given, the person feels deeply seen by the challenger. A challenge isn't just about getting someone to take action on something important to them; it's a fierce form of empathy that supports people in connecting with their life force, and integrates it into their lives with action. A real challenge is tied to the receiver's goals, passions and dreams -- and expands their potential.