Nonviolent Communication (NVC)
3 minutes
Developed by Marshall Rosenberg
As a child in the US in the 1940s ands 50s Marshall was affected by interracial violence, and also experienced compassionate care-giving among his family members.
Out of this grew a burning desire to bring empowerment and healing to communities and individuals adversely affected by social structures, whether those structures were governmental, organisational, familial or personal (because people internalise the thinking of their culture).
Through the 1960s and 70s he experimented with a model of human interaction. By the mid 1980s the process had evolved to its current powerful form, and Marshall began being invited into Europe, and then around the world.
He worked tirelessly until the end of his life (2015) teaching workshops, training trainers, giving individual healing sessions, mediating conflicts, and encouraging an international network of trainers through the Centre for Nonviolent Communication.
My personal experience with NVC
Discovering and learning NVC, beginning in 1995, was a huge blessing in my life. I was in my early 40s and had already been working in the field of personal development for 15 years.
Yet after experiencing the quality of NVC-style empathic listening for the first time I literally felt my energy being re-arranged inside my body.
Soon after that I had a dream that I met a violent man on a street corner. I jumped behind him and pressed my thumbs deeply into the heart area of his back. I could feel him melt, transform, become able to live in a new way. That violent man was me, and everyone.
Going further into NVC training I was alongside two people from Rwanda. It was 2 years after the genocide that they had painfully lived through, losing family members, neighbours and friends. They found NVC so healing, and were convinced that if enough people had known this way of thinking and relating, it would have prevented the genocide.
The power of one apparently simple process to touch me in my 'safe' world on a very personal level, and people who had gone through the worst of horrors in a very different world, deeply impressed me.
I decided to put my energy behind NVC becoming better known in the UK (where I lived) and in India and Japan (where I was lucky enough to be invited to teach.)
I, and my colleagues, held a big vision. As with all visions the reality takes work, persistence, new learning, humility, time, and the collaboration of many, many people.
To find out more about NVC, in many languages, explore
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YouTube
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books
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podcasts
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all media
At this point NVC is shared around the world in the local language of over 65 countries, by over 700 certified trainers connected with the international Centre for Nonviolent Communication (CNVC).
In addition thousands of people integrate NVC into their working life, or share it informally: teachers, business people, counsellors, psychotherapists, artists, prison staff, soldiers, police, hospital staff, doctors, social change activists, and many more.
And millions are benefitting in their personal relationships from knowing the basics of NVC, having learned it in workshops, on YouTube, from books including Marshall Rosenberg's book 'Nonviolent Communication - a Language of Life' which has sold more than 7 million copies.
NVC also underpins powerful approaches to mediation, group facilitation, education, parenting courses, programmes for domestic violence offenders, couples courses, inter-faith connections, and serves in many other contexts to bring care for everyone's needs into a do-able, workable method.
The playful side of NVC
NVC can sound like pretty serious, heavyweight stuff - and indeed the process, when supported by a sensitive and experienced person, can meet and hold people in extremely difficulty situations.
However, a signature tune of NVC is laughter. Marshall Rosenberg had an amazing sense of humour, and to stir that up even more sometimes used giraffe and jackal puppets and ears in his workshops - for training and educational purposes.
Laughter helps people let go and learn deeply. It helps balance the pain of recognising how much we didn't know about human connection until now. It lightens heavy situations enough that we can bear to approach them. And it can be pure, simple. joyous fun.
This aspect of NVC was an essential ingredient in me deciding to take up this work, and I embraced it fully!
From the 'Basics of Nonviolent Communication' workshop, 2000