Trainer Tip: Even if we don't agree, acknowledging others' realities can help demonstrate that we're including their feelings and needs in the conversation. Creating space for your reality and theirs can also bring a sense of connection, understanding, inclusion, abundance and fullness in life. Try it today. Read on for an example.

Listen as Mary Mackenzie shares an eight step path to create your own NVC learning activities, based on your own NVC learning experience. In this session, Mary uses the value of requests and observations as teaching examples.

Sylvia Haskvitz offers a practical and effective approach to making requests. Learn the two questions that can clarify your motivation for making a request, three ways to discern a request from a demand, and five possible reasons for meeting requests.

Puzzling about needs and feelings? Check out this excerpt from Dian Killian's course, Embracing the Body: Somatic Self Empathy, where she leads participants through an exercise that demonstrates how our physical sensations connect us to our feelings and needs.

The notion of "micro-aggressions" may be levied by those in the dominant class - for example white folks may talk about receiving micro-aggressions when a (legitimately) angry BIPOC references them as "white". This shuts down the conversation and feeds a myth that everyone's pain about race is equal. It doesn't foster dialogue that moves us towards a more equitable, compassionate world. Read on for more about the complexity.

Someone may give more weight to your ideas, decisions, and directives based on your experience and what you've learned. This could influence them to project their ideals, fears, hopes, and more onto you. In this case, you can help transform this and contribute to their connection to their own agency, authenticity, and self-trust -- while supporting their ability to learn from what you have to offer.

Sometimes the empathy you offer may stimulate disconnect or a sense of boundary crossing for the other person. To identify what might have contributed to the disconnect you can look for the signs, the level of attunement and the context, and examine what's happening in you. Read on for more.

Read on for a demonstration of self empathy -- all generated within the context of both the COVID-19 pandemic, and the changes to Bridget's life that have arisen as a result.

When you experience an emotion, your body send a message to your brain that lights up the amygdala. Then what? Watch and listen as Sarah Peyton demonstrates of the NVC practice Naming the Feeling and Need, which calms the amygdala and enables you to move into relational space.