Authentically Us - A Weekend of NVC Workshops With The RMCCN Community - Spring 2025

Description:

Our problem-solving strategies often reinforce the patterns that keep us stuck. In this session, we’ll explore how the drive for self-improvement can pull us away from what truly matters—and how shifting our approach can help us move toward what we genuinely value and long for.

Description:

In this session we'll discover the impact of social conditioning that inhibits the expression of grief. Participants will be invited to explore experiences when they have expressed grief and received a response that stimulates disconnection, even when the intention behind the response was to offer support and care.

We'll consider how to decide whether to risk sharing our vulnerability and consciously choose how much to reveal with another person based on our capacity and willingness. Using a real-life story when I had a distressing interaction with a neighbor following my cancer diagnosis, I'll demonstrate how NVC language can help us access our choice and reclaim our power and agency.

Come learn how to speak your truth and at the same time hold care for others, even when their words stimulate hurt and distress. This session will include a slide presentation, interactive discussion, and practice in small groups.

Description:

Even before the relentless stress of the pandemic, trauma was recognized as “a widespread, harmful and costly public health problem” and addressing trauma “an important component of effective behavioral health service delivery” (*SAMHSA).

This session addresses multiple trauma-informed concepts including relevant definitions, how a person might be impacted by trauma, a brief overview of the ACES study, what happens when the nervous system is activated (five different types of reactions to environmental clues or “triggers”) and an overview of person-centered trauma-informed care principles that participants can utilize in their personal and work settings.

I’ve been studying and teaching these topics for about five years and have presented multiple times to state and national healthcare and mental health organizations. I’m very passionate about this work and believe that understanding the cumulative effects of trauma across a lifetime is crucial to fully integrating NVC consciousness and practices. This knowledge can also help us to create new meanings and move toward healing.

It’s important to know that this is not a “typical NVC-style” presentation with lots of interactivity and breakout exercises. While I do plan for discussion and Q&A time at the end, the pace of this presentation will move quickly. My intention is to provide you with content that I hope stimulates curiosity and understanding of how trauma might be showing up in your life and provide you with a fresh perspective. I hope to normalize trauma reactions and that you may even experience a sense of relief to see the connections as I do.

* Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

Description:

What does it mean to practice Observation, Feeling, Need & Request when NVC parenting? What does it mean to prioritize connection and trust with your child?

This session (open to parents of all kinds, grandparents, teachers, and all other caregivers) will begin with a brief introduction to NVC parenting and then dive into two discussions addressing challenges to the basic steps of Observation, Feeling, Need and Request. First, we will look at how common parenting terms (tantrums, mischievous, messy) may unwittingly hinder our ability to make neutral observations about children’s behaviors. Second, we will look at common parenting behaviors (turning off the screen, taking cookies out of a handful, turning off the lights) may go beyond the nonpunitive-protective-use-of-force.

Description:

We are making all kinds of decisions daily. However, are we only selecting from the limited option list, and meanwhile still have an even longer list of unmet needs?! Have you ever thought about these ~ Observation is a way to expend your option list. No choice might not be the true cause of your frustrated feeling but that you believe you are. Choice could even be your need and/or strategy. Choice is always there, we simply request to see if the options are available at this present moment!At this session, we will deep-dive into our conscious being, the essential self, that we are actually the choice! Choice comes with no-submissive surrender that all happened met the needs the best it can be. Choice is the openness to accept that we believe that we have no choice, and also to transform this belief.

Description:

Once you know
That nobody
Can take from you
What is really yours
You stop trying
To protect it.
~ Ruth Bebermeyer

Vulnerability is an expression of deep connection to self. It bespeaks a confidence that whatever happens I can handle it and I do not have to orchestrate circumstance to get my needs met. Vulnerability is an act of trust in the "natural giving" that Marshall Rosenberg spoke of - we have an innate capacity for compassion and a desire to contribute to life, when free to do so.

When we have deep connection and confidence, when we can trust and know that who I am and who you are is enough, then we can express profound compassion, being present to what is without leaning forward in an effort to fix or leaning back in an effort to avoid.

The relationship between vulnerability, courage, and compassion leads to fulfillment and service, to meaning and peace. Come explore how we can nourish and cultivate that relationship.

Description:

Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is a profound and beautiful practice that has transformed lives, offering a pathway to deeper connection, self-awareness, and healing. However, because we are not culturally conditioned to recognize and engage with intersectional power dynamics, NVC is sometimes applied in ways that unintentionally cause harm—such as bypassing accountability, pressuring premature harmony, or overlooking the structural and systemic forces that shape our relationships and communication patterns. This is rarely intentional. More often, it stems from an unconscious aversion to discussing power—rooted in past experiences of being harmed by those in positions of power, as well as a deep fear of harming others with our own power. Without a shared language to make power dynamics explicit and observable, these unexamined forces can lead to unintended ruptures and harm, even when using the compassionate, connective tools of NVC.

How do we honor the transformative power of NVC while ensuring it aligns with justice, liberation, and relational integrity? How can we navigate power dynamics in a way that fosters genuine connection rather than unconsciously reinforcing systemic patterns of harm?

This 2-hour workshop introduces Power-Conscious Nonviolent Communication (PNVC)—an evolving approach to NVC that integrates The Right Use of Power™, an embodied framework for ethical awareness, to cultivate greater clarity, care, and responsibility in how we engage with power in our communication and relationships.

Participants will explore:

• The ways intersectional power dynamics shape communication and conflict

• How NVC can unintentionally cause harm when power dynamics are unacknowledged

• A framework for making implicit power dynamics explicit using an observational lens

• How to hold both boundaries and connection in a power differential with both responsibility and heart

This workshop is designed for those who love NVC and want to ensure their practice supports personal and interpersonal healing as well as collective liberation. It also serves as an introduction to Ki’s 12-week course, Language for the Open-Hearted Warrior: Power-Conscious Nonviolent Communication for Collective Liberation.

Who should attend this workshop? NVC practitioners, facilitators, and anyone committed to deepening their relational skills with a deeper awareness of power dynamics at the personal, interpersonal, and systemic levels, and how this enters into our relationships.

Description:

Is there a routine you've been struggling to start, or a habit you've been trying to let go of?

Maybe it's eating healthier, getting more exercise, going to bed earlier, or meditating regularly. Perhaps it's reaching out to friends, keeping commitments, or cultivating discipline. Or it might be letting go of habits like overworking, procrastinating, arguing with a partner, engaging in addictive behaviors, or falling into familiar emotional loops that leave you feeling disconnected. Whether you're trying to begin something you deeply value or stop something that no longer serves you, you may find yourself caught between the pull of the familiar and the call of the new.

These inner tug-of-wars may feel like conflicts of needs - but in Nonviolent Communication (NVC), we learn they're actually conflicts between strategies. The needs behind each strategy are not in opposition; they are both real, valid, and worthy of understanding and care.

In this experiential NVC workshop, we'll explore the emotional undercurrents and life-serving needs that give rise to the habits we want to release and the routines we long to establish. Through self-inquiry, structured inner exercises, small-group engagement, and sharing in the larger group, you'll clarify what truly matters to you, recognize the needs served by both change and resistance, and engage in a process of internal dialogue and reflection to develop strategies that honor all of those needs with compassion and creativity.

You'll leave the workshop with a renewed sense of clarity about the changes you want to make, a deeper understanding of the needs behind both the drive and the hesitation, a self-crafted strategy that respects your whole experience, and a personalized self-connection practice to return to whenever you feel off-track or uncertain.

Whether you're letting go of something that no longer serves you or stepping into a life-giving commitment, this workshop invites you to reshape your patterns from a place of connection, clarity, and care - allowing your next steps to arise naturally from inner wisdom rather than external pressure.

Description:

In uncertain times, fear can feel like an isolating force. Yet, when we pause and lean into that fear with curiosity, we uncover what matters most to us. Fear becomes a signal, guiding us toward the values we hold dear and inviting us to take brave, meaningful action in our communities.

In this workshop, we’ll explore how acknowledging our fears can become a catalyst for connection, empowerment, and change. Through guided reflection, journaling, and discussion, we’ll cultivate a deeper awareness of the role fear plays in our lives. Together, we’ll practice making compassionate requests of ourselves—choosing how we want to show up in the world with greater clarity and intention.

As parenting educators, we’ll also hold space for how parents may experience unique fears that ripple through their families and communities.

When we meet these fears with courage and curiosity, we don’t just move through them—we transform them into bridges that strengthen connection and resilience for ourselves and those we love.

Description:

All registrants will automatically be enrolled in this closing celebration and learning harvest. We will have opportunity to share our takeaways and inspirations and to acknowledge what matters to us.