Non-Violent Communication (NVC)

Culture

Talking about Money and Privilege

By Miki Kashtan | October 4, 2012

Some time ago I was sitting with a group of Nonviolent Communication enthusiasts on a cold winter night, watching the fireplace crackle, eating, laughing, and talking. The group invited me to support their development as a leadership group of their community. A few years before they had gotten together to make NVC known and visible in their town. When I was visiting, they were celebrating their success, as more and more people in their town came to know about NVC through their efforts and have come to trainings they organize. Now they wanted to take their work to a new level, to break free of the social homogeneity of their group and its members, to reach into communities and populations they had not yet connected with.

Culture

The Extraordinary Challenge of Wanting to Create Change

By Miki Kashtan | September 14, 2012

In the last few days I’ve been almost haunted by realizing how often we want others’ behavior to change. We may want to see change in some small, annoying behavior that our child does, or a major harm created by the CEO of a transnational corporation. It has recently dawned on me that no matter the person or the behavior, creating change in another’s behavior is, in essence, a monumental task. And then again – why am I so surprised, when I know how difficult it is to create change within ourselves when we actively want to create such change? When, on top of how difficult creating any change is, we add the extra challenge that the other person may not want to create the change that we seek, it’s no wonder that we so often don’t manage to create the outcome we want outside ourselves.

A Ritual for 9/11: Breathing in Pain, Breathing Out Compassion

By Guest | September 10, 2012

I invite you to join me, on this day, in an act of peace. For one day, please put down your weapons of choice, whether that be your thoughts, words, your guns, your knives, you drone weapons, your bulldozers or other weapons that create destruction and suffering for any being on this planet.

Empathy

Who Benefits From Empathy?

By Miki Kashtan | September 7, 2012

When I am able to show someone a possible way of making sense of another person’s apparently inhuman acts, the relief, the restoration of possibility, are almost indescribable. Something melts that may have been encrusted for decades.

Culture

Some Thoughts about Trust

By Miki Kashtan | August 31, 2012

Trust, like safety, runs deep. When we don’t experience trust, as when we don’t experience safety, we shut down, protect, and hide our vulnerability. We also, in both cases, tend to place responsibility for our experience on the outside. It is extraordinarily challenging, when we don’t experience trust, to recognize it as our experience instead of assuming that whoever we are not trusting is simply not trustworthy. It is similarly difficult, when our experience tells us that we are not safe, to step outside of the conviction that “it” is unsafe to be where we are.

Culture

Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone – Sharing a New Post by George Lakey about Class War

By Craig Wiesner | August 29, 2012

During one of George Lakey’s train-the-trainer for social activist workshops, people kept mentioning that some tactic or other was a “high-wire” concept for them. After around the third time I heard that, I finally asked “What does she mean by high-wire?” George reached behind him, pulled out a soap box, and explained “What if I told you that I wanted you to take this soap box and walk over to 16th and Mission, stand up on the box, and just start talking to everyone who passes by?” “That would make me very uncomfortable.” I responded.

Culture

The Long Arc of Commitment

By Miki Kashtan | August 24, 2012

Once we recognize a core value, we draw an arc that extends from that moment to the end of our life, hoping and longing to have the integrity to live in line with that value.