Welcome to this free study community of compassionate communication. You will find recordings from workshops and presentations by Marshall Rosenberg on this site, organized according to principles that should facilitate learning and make it easy to find certain materials, when you need them for organizing workshops of your own of if you want to get inspiration from Marshall’s way of presenting this path to open-heartedness and aliveness.
Compassionate Communication
I prefer the term compassionate communication to nonviolent communication, because it names the positive intention and the impact of this way of communicating – unblocking compassion, access to life energies inside us and therefore the nourishing of a more peaceful and joyful world for all of us.
The NVC Gang
Marshall B. Rosenberg started out as a psychotherapist in the beginning of his professional life.
As he discovered the power of compassionate communication to heal personal relationships as well as interpersonal relationships, and even relationsships between conflicting groups of people, he travelled around the USA with his friend Al Chappele and helped communities to find more understanding across their differences. He applied compassionate communication as a tool in restorative justice and also in mediations world wide. He started his own ‘gang’ – the CNVC – Center for Nonviolent Communication.
As I understand it Marshall had a rather conflicted relationship with that organization from the start. This was not really a project of the heart. It developed almost inspite of him. This is my perception.
For example, Marshall would give his blessings to other people, who wanted to share this method of communication simply by following his intuition – sometimes after just one meeting with them. That caused irritation with others, who maybe would appreciate more transparency or understanding of his process. I heard people say that Marshall certified many women. Maybe they wanted equal rights for people independent of gender perceptions?
Let us be free to joke a little, yes?
By the 2020s the CNVC gang has evolved and in my view has lost its connection with the original beauty shared by Marshall Rosenberg. Some people in that organization act in a way that has little connection with leading from vulnerability and connection seems to take a back seat for them. They seem very much in love with social change intentions, but I miss the energy of play in that.
Needs may be the same, but strategies differ.
I guess all of us who have been touched by the teaching of Marshall Rosenberg find an individual gift in it and that gift is what we hopefully can share with others. We learn to care about others in the way that we learn to care about ourselves. Those shadows and wounds we can meet with compassion in our own life, we can also help others to meet with compassion. Social change from compassion is inevitable, while social change from violence is doomed to fail. We are invited to humility and perseverance with joy.
I hope you find the value of the teaching of Marshall Rosenberg inside yourself when you make time to view some of his presentations on this site and – for the rest – may he speak for himself to many – as I collect ressources on this site, in order to make available core principles and teachings for further sharing.
Requesting help and inviting feedback
I wish to make clean transcripts from the English subtitle transcripts over time, which then in turn makes it easy to provide higher quality translations into many languages of the world.
I found the videos on this site for the most part online, on youtube. The automatic machine translations can be supplemented with punctuation and with some corrections, when the machine got a word wrong from the recording. I do that activity as I find fun inside of me to do this. And I appreciate any help anyone wants to give from their heart, if you like my intention and want to join in this activity.
Another community effort I invite you to join is made on a related site – giraffe-n-jackalfriendship.uk. Here our focus is on translating – jackal by jackal – words into the language of the heart, into giraffe. We pick up a simple expression in daily life – from the news we read or the words we say or hear elsewhere and put on our giraffe ears. Practice, practice, practice and make it fun. Check out the site and write to me in the comments section there, if you like what you see and want to join.
Also let me know any irritations when I make these recordings available to the public on this site. I want to make things work for all and I appreciate you bringing to my attention how I can make your life more wonderful as well. Write to me in the comments section below, if this is you.
With care,
John Gather
