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  • 5

    Days

  • 8

    Hrs

  • 48

    Mins


Robert Gonzales

CNVC Certified Trainer from Portland, Oregon, USA (1949-2021)

CNVC Certified Trainer from Portland, Oregon, USA (1949-2021)

"All my life, I have yearned for practical ways to integrate the depth and richness of spirituality with the realities of daily life and relationships. As a psychotherapist and teacher, I worked to develop and offer effective pathways to the most enriching and authentic experiences of life."  --Robert Gonzales

Robert's passion was in the spirituality of the Nonviolent Communication (NVC) process. He saw NVC both as a process that helps people connect more authentically with themselves and others, and as a spiritual practice and way of living.

The worldwide NVC community mourned when Robert died in 2021. He left behind a legacy of work that emerged from a lifetime of inquiry into the intersection between spirituality and human communication.

People across the world who learned from him express that they could not have done their own work without having experienced Robert's presence and compassion.

"Robert Gonzales was a beloved teacher with an extraordinary ability to awaken compassion and insight in others. He articulated profound truths about life and relationships with eloquence and simplicity, transmitting his energy, love, and vision so powerfully that he changed the direction of thousands of people's lives...including mine. Robert's energy continues to touch the world through his recordings, reminding us of our own inherent goodness and empowering us to live passionately and compassionately in every moment." --Lynd Morris, Certified Trainer

Background:

Robert Gonzales received a PhD in Clinical Psychology in 1989. He met Marshall Rosenberg, was introduced to NVC in 1985, and offered NVC training in some form from 1986-2021. His original professional background and training was as a licensed psychotherapist.

In the year 2000, he established the Prescott Center for Nonviolent Communication. In June 2010, he relocated to Portland, Oregon and re-formed the organization as the Center for Living Compassion, a nonprofit organization through which he shared his work.

Robert's work, Living Compassion, evolved as an integration of embodied spirituality and NVC. His trainings offered ways to cultivate daily practices for living life fully, grounded in compassion for one's self and others.

Robert worked with the Center for Nonviolent Communication in a number of capacities, including: past President of the Board, CNVC Certified Trainer, International Intensive Training (IIT) trainer and North American Assessor.

Robert's Legacy Lives On

With the help of Robert's wife, Ruth Joy, NVC Academy is proud to house the complete body of his life's work -- all together, in one place! In this way, his profound work and life-changing lessons can live on even if he is no longer with us. Visit Robert Gonzales Training Legacy.

"As an NVC community, it is a treasure to have these teachings available through the NVC Academy.  I encourage anyone curious about his work, or disappointed that they did not participate in his programs during his lifetime to take advantage of NVC Academy's offerings and the technology that allows us to still learn from him."
--Rhonda Freeman, Certified Trainer and friend who worked with Robert for many years

Robert's Website: Living Compassion

Here's a daily self-acceptance practice you can bring into your life whenever you are experiencing pain, tension, contraction, lack of fulfillment, or unmet needs or values. Giving your often undesired experiences space can be a path to greater inner connection and peace.

In moments where we would like to see change, personal growth or spiritual transformation, rather than immediately acting to make a change, Robert suggests we practice unconditional self-acceptance through a spacious presence to our inner experience. Robert asks us to give our attention and spacious awareness to our own judgments, inner contractions, and other experiences we often regard as undesirable.

Here are some questions to support you in exploring your connection to life, your life purpose. Here we briefly touch upon what blocks you, your gratitude, strengths, passions, and what you are committed to.

Integrating a full living involves grief/mourning and gratitude. Here we'll more deeply integrate inner and outer dimensions of gratitude and grief. In any experience there's the outer aspect, an event that occurs in life. And there's the inner response to the outer event. When we judge the outer positively or negatively we're in tension or resistance to our experience. Here we'll explore a more integrated mode of experiencing.

With this exercise you'll choose an experience you had with someone where your needs were not met. You'll work with the related feelings, judgements, values, and feeling the fullness of the need even though it was not met, plus any sadness that may arise.

Your needs and your values are your Life Force: the river that flows through your spirit and your life, giving life and light to your being. Explore this river with Robert, and map out routes that support your growth. Gain a deeper understadning and acceptance of the spirituality and beauty of needs and values.

Living Compassion, for Robert, represents the spirituality that resides in every aspect of Nonviolent Communication. Its foundational principles are represented by three primary qualities or states of being: clarity, compassion and empowerment.

In this course you’ll explore – and practice – how the unfolding of inner clarity opens your way to compassion, which further unfolds into empowerment. Throughout this unfolding process, Robert will include maps and tips for shifting your everyday life from one that is relatively limiting to a life that is both transformative, healing and liberating.

During this course, you'll deeply examine this process of blending and integrating your inner and outer selves. Not only will you explore various states of being, such as defensive / protective and being / essence, you'll delve into the primary levels of relationship: to others, to the world and to life,  acquire tools for transforming resistance into unconditional acceptance, and much more.

Here's guidance on how to approach your inner experience when triggered or stuck in a distressing life experience. Self-Compassion in life can be experienced as: "There is room for life experience in me. There is an open space for ‘what is’ to be fully present in my inner experience". This exercise is more about tracing your felt experience than verbalizing it.

This exercise brings forth presence, awareness, and witnessing regarding what you observe. And also the inner form of experiencing: thinking, feeling, sensing, longing, and noticing any inner resistance. This exercise is designed to allow self-compassion to clear the inner space, and to help you feel it as a flow of energy, presence to the other, and bring in a more relaxed experience and more availability to vulnerability.