For many, spending time with relatives over the holidays may be challenging. In addition to the love and care we may feel, family gatherings can bring up old hurts or expose painful differences. How many family meals have been marred by tense silence or devolved into harsh argument?

When Rita first learned about silent empathy she didn't know how soon she'd try it out. She was visiting her daughter and making comments about her life, analyzing her behavior, giving her unsolicited view on everything.

In a recent vacation in a Mexican village, I was surprised to find myself in the midst of a community in mourning. Two days before I came, a 21-year-old girl had died in a car accident. Everyone in the town knew her and was openly affected by her death.

Join CNVC Certified Trainer Mary Mackenzie to learn a few of her tried-and-true simple Self-Empathy techniques, especially focused on the challenges of the holiday season.

If you dread family gatherings because of family tensions, you can find ways to excavate through piles of hardened judgments and hopelessness, build on your inner strength, and engage with family conflicts with open-hearted curiosity, greater presence, and connecting with what really matters to everyone.

Find renewed aliveness and connection in your daily life through NVC and Buddhist Mindfulness practices. NVC can be lived as a Mindfulness Practice and consciousness that helps us be more present, open and loving to the flow of life within ourselves and in relation to others. Buddhist principles and practices can add depth and insight to NVC practice and consciousness.

Please join us as we remember the work and life of Inbal Kashtan. She offered this parenting Q&A session in NVC Academy's 2013 Parenting Conference.

Please join us as we take a look at what disrupts our joy during the holidays… and discuss the delicious possibilities that abound when we declare our intention to "Greet the Holidays with an Open, Joyful Heart."

This holiday, shift your focus from what disappoints you to the true whisperings of your heart. Compassion is an inside-outside process. In this telecourse recording, you will experience four simple tools for savoring your own precious needs, allowing you to experience greater compassion and harmony this holiday.

In this brief audio snippet, CNVC Certified Trainer and founder of the CNVC Parenting Project, Inbal Kashtan, explores observation in contrast to interpretation, and leads an exercise in observation skills.