Rahima writes: There's a rapidly growing interest within the Waldorf community in Nonviolent Communication (NVC), developed by Marshall Rosenberg, PhD. I've been privileged to take several training sessions with Marshall, Lucy Lew and others and find it life-transforming. NVC is designed to help us stay connected with other people by listening with empathy to their underlying feelings and needs. It also encourges us to get in touch with our own feelings and needs and to replace domineering modes of communication with an observation, how this makes us feel, the underlying need we have, and a request to see if the other person would be willing to help us meet this need.
To learn more about NVC, I recommend starting with Marshall's book Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life avaible from the NVC website, www.cnvc.org. We also have two videos available by John Cunningham, who was a Waldorf teacher for 14 years and is now a certified NVC trainer, bringing NVC to the Waldorf community. Both his keynote address, "Fostering Genuine Social Development in Our Children--And Ourselves" and his workshop on "The Chaniging Nature of Authority: Integrating NVC and Waldorf" present valuable insights on NVC in action at home, in the classroom, and in John's method of presentation.
There will also be an opportunity to learn more by attending the annual NVC Educators' Institute for teachers and parents, which will be held this year from July 29-August 3, 2005 in Jamestown, Colorado (near Boulder). For further information on this 5-day intensive training, see www.livingschool.org and link to Educators Institute.
