Linked with Center for Nonviolent Communication, with big-picture.tv BPTV, and with Raising Children Compassionately.
He says: “What I want in my life is compassion, a flow between myself and others based on a mutual giving from the heart”.
Marshall B. Rosenberg, born in 1934, is the creator of a method of communication called « Nonviolent Communication » (NVC) and director of educational services for the Center for Nonviolent Communication, an international non-profit organization. In 1961, Dr. Rosenberg received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Wisconsin and in 1966 was awarded Diplomate status in clinical psychology from the American Board of Examiners in Professional Psychology. (Read much more on wikipedia).
Nonviolent Communication training evolved from Dr. Rosenberg’s quest to find a way of rapidly disseminating much needed peacemaking skills. The Center for Nonviolent Communication emerged out of work he was doing with civil rights activists in the early 1960s. During this period he provided mediation and communication skills training to communities working to peacefully desegregate schools and other public institutions. (Read more on The Center for Nonviolent Communication).
Marshall B. Rosenberg – Switzerland & USA
Listen to his 9 and a half minutes video on Big Picture.
Excerpt: … Question: It seems that when you pursue that line of communication, reflecting back what is then said, your examples indicate that people seem to become less angry or less violent.
Answer: I would say it’s even more powerful than that. When you get people connected to with what’s alive in each other and you transform enemy images that imply wrongness, when you get people out of their heads in these enemy images, and you get them connected to what everybody’s needing, it’s amazing how people who earlier were wanting to hurt one another now want to contribute to each other’s well-being.
In our training I try to help both sides see the humanness of each other and the needs. All human beings have the same needs, so when people can see the needs of the other person they don’t see an enemy. We haven’t been taught how to communicate that. We’ve been taught how to be in touch with life. We’ve been taught a language of domination for about eight thousand years that’s designed to get people to obey authority. It’s quite a shift for people to move away from enemy images that define badness in the other person and to instead just express what’s alive in you – what are your needs that aren’t being met? It’s a radical paradigm shift. (Read the whole Interview on The natural child project).
Go also to the page of his main-publisher.
He writes (excerpt): … NVC guides us in reframing how we express ourselves and hear others. Instead of being habitual, automatic reactions, our words become conscious responses based firmly on an awareness of what we are perceiving, feeling, and wanting. We are led to express ourselves with honesty and clarity, while simultaneously paying others a respectful and empathic attention. In any exchange, we come to hear our own deeper needs and those of others. NVC trains us to observe carefully, and to be able to specify behaviors and conditions that are affecting us. We learn to identify and clearly articulate what we are concretely wanting in a given situation. The form is simple, yet powerfully transformative … (read all on thinking peace).
wiki for non-violent communication (in english, deutsch, francais).
Believing that it is our nature to enjoy giving and receiving in a compassionate manner, I have been pre-occupied most of my life with two questions. What happens to disconnect us from our compassionate nature, leading us to behave violently and exploitatively? And conversely, what allows some people to stay connected to their compassionate nature under even the most trying circumstances? My preoccupation with these questions began in childhood, around the summer of 1943, when our family moved to Detroit, Michigan. The second week after we arrived, a race war erupted over an incident at a public park. More than forty people were killed in the next few days. Our neighborhood was situated in the center of the violence, and we spent three days locked in the house. (Read all on Sentinent Times).
The Marshall B. Rosenberg Library.
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