Peace Talks

PEACE TALKS: Nonviolent Communication (KUNM Airdate: June 27, 2003)

"Whether we are speaking of warring couples or nations, it is an extraordinary challenge to move from blaming people, toward understanding patterns and our own part in them. It is a similarly huge challenge that our wish to understand the other party be as great as our wish to be understood."---------- Harriet Goldhor Lerner

The monthly series on peace making focuses this time on a verbal technology for exchanging information and resolving differences peacefully. It's called Nonviolent Communication. We talk with Jorge Rubio, a trainer in Nonviolent Communication, about how this communication style helps to resolve conflict. We also ask him to help members of our studio audience develop solutions to conflict scenarios using the principles of Nonviolent Communication.

Click here to hear the program in Real Audio.

CD copies of PEACE TALKS programs are available. This is EPISODE #005. Each CD also includes over 15 minutes of bonus questions and answers from the recording session. For more information, e-mail: info@peacetalksradio.com or send a check made payable to CEDAR CREEK STUDIOS in the amount of $14.50 ($15.33 for NM residents includes local tax). The price includes postage and handling. Mail your check to Cedar Creek Studios, PO BOX 35442, Albuquerque, NM 87176. Expect delivery in 2 to 3 weeks. All proceeds go to production costs for this and future shows.

NONVIOLENT COMMUNICATION - WEBSITES AND RESOURCES

WEBSITES

The Center For Nonviolent Communication

PHONE NUMBERS and EMAILS

FOR INFORMATION ON NEW MEXICO NONVIOLENT COMMUNICATION WORKSHOPS

505-982-8362

OR E-MAIL nvc(at)cybermesa.com

BOOKS RECOMMENDED BY OUR GUESTS

NONVIOLENT COMMUNICATION: A Language of Compassion by Marshall Rosenburg

NONVIOLENT COMMUNICATION - SUMMARY FROM CNVC WEBSITE

The purpose of Nonviolent Communication(SM) (NVC) is to strengthen our ability to inspire compassion from others and to respond compassionately to others and to ourselves. NVC guides us to reframe how we express ourselves and hear others by focusing our consciousness on what we are observing, feeling, needing, and requesting.

We are trained to make careful observations free of evaluation, and to specify behaviors and conditions that are affecting us. We learn to hear our own deeper needs and those of others, and to identify and clearly articulate what we are wanting in a given moment. When we focus on clarifying what is being observed, felt, and needed, rather than on diagnosing and judging, we discover the depth of our own compassion. Through its emphasis on deep listening—to ourselves as well as others—NVC fosters respect, attentiveness and empathy, and engenders a mutual desire to give from the heart. The form is simple, yet powerfully transformative.

While it is taught through the use of a concrete model, and is referred to as “a process of communication” or a “language of compassion,” Nonviolent Communication is more than a process or a language. As our cultural conditioning often leads our attention in directions unlikely to get us what we want, NVC serves as an ongoing reminder to focus our attention on places that have the potential to yield what we are seeking—a flow between ourselves and others based on a mutual giving from the heart.

Founded on language and communication skills that enable us to remain human, even under trying conditions, Nonviolent Communication contains nothing new: all that has been integrated into NVC has been known for centuries. The intent is to remind us about what we already know—about how we humans were meant to relate to one another—and to assist us in living in a way that concretely manifests this knowledge.

The use of NVC does not require that the persons with whom we are communicating be literate in NVC or even motivated to relate to us compassionately. If we stay with the principles of NVC, with the sole intention to give and receive compassionately, and do everything we can to let others know this is our only motive, they will join us in the process and eventually we will be able to respond compassionately to one another. While this may not happen quickly, it is our experience that compassion inevitably blossoms when we stay true to the principles and process of Nonviolent Communication.

—Adapted from “Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Compassion” by Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D. PuddleDancer Press (available from CNVC

MORE ABOUT PEACE TALKS

Peace Talks is a series of public radio programs that investigates how people can make peace and pursue nonviolent solutions to conflict - within themselves, their families and communities, and the world. In addition to the KUNM half-hour series, a national series is in development. Each episode of Peace Talks national series would be recorded before a live audience in a town hall format at venues across the United States and will feature a renown leader in peace studies or negotiation as well as a peacemaker chosen from the host community.

In these tumultuous times on the planet, the Peace Talks series intends to offer listeners around the globe a chance to learn useful skills to address the conflict in their own lives. Peace Talks will bring them in contact with some of the leading proponents of nonviolent conflict resolution - individuals who have made the pursuit of peace their life's work.

The proposed format for each show will include

• the peace expert making a short prepared statement,
• an interview by show host Suzanne Kryder, Ph.D.,
• a question and answer session with the audience,
• a prerecorded report, prepared by a top producer, profiling a peacemaking effort in the host community,
• a brief interview with a person involved with that local effort,
• more questions from the audience, for both guests, to round out the hour.

Peace Talks promises to be at once realistic and uplifting - and ultimately - a source of hope in troubled times.

Peace Talks is produced by Paul Ingles, a 28-year veteran radio producer and Suzanne Kryder, Ph.D., a leadership coach and longtime group facilitator.

Peace Talks is currently in the development and fundraising stage. To learn how you can help, send an e-mail to paul@paulingles.com or call 505-771-8295.