A deeper gratitude than ever before

I returned to the U.S. 2 days ago after 7 weeks in Japan and South Korea, and I have never in my life been more grateful to have access to foods that my body is used to.




Yesterday, I walked into Sevananda Natural Foods Co-op in Atlanta, GA, and bought over $200 worth of food! As I was shopping, and as I saw a food that I had not had access to for 7 weeks, I stopped and was overtaken by gratitude -- deeply appreciating the moment, as well as the foods available to me in the U.S.

In fact, some of my long-standing irritation and disgust with American culture faded, as I felt this gratitude. For all of my frustration with our culture, I am profoundly grateful for the natural foods revolution and the fact that in most cities now, I can purchase organically-growth, fresh, high-quality food -- something that, in spite of my best efforts, I was not able to do in Asia.

I am "grateful" to one of my teachers about gratitude, fellow NVC Certified Trainer Myra Walden, who, fittingly, walked into the store in the middle of one of my gratitude moments. Myra is also in Atlanta because we 2 of the 4 facilitators of a 7-day retreat called, "Cultivating Inner and Outer Peace" along with Cynthia Moe and Mark Feinknopf.

photos from teaching NVC in Korea

A collection of photos from September 2008 teaching NVC in Seoul, South Korea. This was a small group that I taught a foundation NVC workshop to. This was one of the few trainings I gave in English only (no translator), so each of these participants was fluent in English.

(this is me at the top, and below me is Hermie from the Phillipines, who is in Korea for 9 months teaching English, as many foreigners do).

Alternate views on evolution of NVC

Lately, I have been appreciating the views expressed by Conal Elliott, a member of the NVC community who lives in San Andreas, California, which is about 2 hours east of the Bay Area.

Conal maintains a blog called, "NVC Evolves: Explorations in evolving the understanding, living, and teaching of Nonviolent Communication." I highly recommend reading what he has to say about NVC -- I find his contributions to be stimulating and lead to expansiveness in me, even when I am not in agreement with what he offers (I am in alignment with him about 80% of the time).

Here is one of his recent blog posts: "Distracted by Faux Needs?" is particularly revealing to me.

Another topic I have seen Conal blog about is certification of NVC trainers, and my understanding of him is that he is very uncomfortable with certification, and suggests alternative ways to look at this issue.

Summoning up Empathy from Within (my only choice)

Last weekend, I led a 2-day NVC foundation training for 30 people in Kwan-ju, in the southern province of South Korea. There were 30 people in attendance, and aside from my interpreter, almost no one spoke English, and even the 2 or 3 who did, only spoke a little bit.

Although I started the training with lots of energy, before long I was reeling and in pain as a result of various stimuli, ranging from my difficulty connecting with people -- or even understanding what they were saying -- lots of background noise and interruptions, physical fatigue, and inner judgments about myself (example: I shouldn't be so sensitive!)

In fact, a few times I directly asked for empathy from others, and received in return almost every form of NON-empathy, including advice, being told I shouldn't feel the way I did, and even one participant admonishing me to stop talking in this way!

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention my favorite jackal response to my request for empathy: "It's not a problem for Koreans. You are only upset because you are an American -- we are fine with what's happening!"

Now, normally I have no expectation that I can depend on workshop participants for empathy, and often times I do not even ask for it; however, often I do bring that into the mix as a learning opportunity, knowing full well that I might not receive empathy and will have to rely on my own self-empathy anyway.

There was something about this experience, however, that was so stunningly non-empathic, that I am reflecting on it with great amusement!

At the time, however, I had to dig very, very deeply into myself to find empathy for how painful it was for me to feel lonely, and confused, and be needing compassion and experiencing exactly the opposite.

I am grateful that I have developed my skills for self-empathy sufficiently well that I was able to avoid jackaling anyone else, and even myself, for the most part. I took a couple of breaks, poured some pure empathy on myself, and remained present to the participants throughout the 2 days.

And I am happy to say that the feedback was mostly very positive, and I received plenty of gratitude afterward.

Are some needs really pseudo-needs?

The lists of universal human needs that are widely circulated among the NVC community vary somewhat, but most contain the same 90%+ needs.

My assumption is that the original list of needs was created by the founder of NVC, Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, and has been adapted and revised by various trainers.

There are a few needs that appear on some "needs lists" that are dubious as to whether they are actually describing a universal element of life for all human beings.

First, allow me to offer my own definition of "need" as we define it in NVC:

"A quality of life energy that arises from inside of me, and asks for attention and fulfillment. Needs are the basic building blocks of life that are required to sustain and enrich life. They are universal in nature, meaning that all human beings share the same needs."

So, here are a few so-called "needs" that I call into question:
* validation
* approval
* emotional safety
* shared reality

Validation and approval are pretty clear-cut for me -- they are not really universal needs, because they have more to do with someone else telling me I am OK, rather than acknowledging my value from the inside-out. No problem here.

Emotional safety is a little bit more difficult. If, by emotional safety, you mean that everything and everybody has to be really nice to you all the time, and whisper sweet nothings in your ear every time you express yourself, then no, obviously emotional safety is not a need -- far from it!

I would guess that someone who says they have a need for emotional safety might have a need for acceptance (perhaps self-acceptance), or self-worth, or something like that.

Shared reality is even more dicey, to me. This one can go either way -- either a genuine universal need (in my eyes), or a pseudo need that takes us very far off track, even dangerously so. To me, shared reality is a need if you mean having companionship with others who you resonate and connect with -- people who share your interests, your lifestyle, etc.

On the other hand, shared reality can mean a very different thing. If a person or organization with authority -- take the Chinese government, for example -- says they need, "shared reality," and when their citizens do not comply with their view of the world and what is "right"... and then imprison them for speaking out, then most certainly we are not talking about a need.

Some other trainers even call into question needs such as trust (as in, "trust in what?") or respect, believing that respect is almost always an externalized need, rather than being sourced form within.

I enjoy this topic very much. Are there any other needs that, for you, are pseudo needs?

OFNR gets a bad name, but is revolutionary

Over the course of my nine years in and around the Nonviolent Communication (NVC) community, many times I have heard people refer to OFNR (Observations, Feelings, Needs and Requests) in a disparaging way, in my evaluation.

By OFNR, I am referring to the structured approach to using NVC, namely by expressing ourselves through these four primary components of the process, as described by NVC's creator, Marshall Rosenberg.

The idea is that when we use the formal approach to NVC in this fashion, it can sound phony and mechanical to others, and actually impede connection from occurring... which is the goal of NVC to begin with.

Over the past 3 or 4 years, I have been exploring how to use and teach NVC without explicitly including these four ingredients of NVC, with some success. And yet, at times, I find myself getting so "fancy" that my power of expression is diminished by trying to "dance around" the essence of OFNR.

I had recent experience teaching NVC in Japan alongside fellow certified trainer, Francois Beausoleil from Canada, in which OFNR appeared to be an absolute revolution for the participants.

We were working with an audience with very little, if any, background about NVC and furthermore, our work was being translated from English into Japanese, so for all of these reasons I elected to keep it simple this one particular day -- essentially, I taught them OFNR.

And from the looks on their faces, and the feedback they gave to me through the translators, they were awed and inspired to discover that they could live their lives through a new lens -- that of OFNR -- and express themselves to others in this way.

This was a pleasant reminder to me of the power of OFNR -- obviously not to be applied in a stiff, mechanical way -- yet beautiful in its own way. I remember Inbal Kashtan (another NVC Trainer from California) sharing a few years ago that in spite of how hard people try to AVOID using OFNR, to her, it's a beautiful language.

Jeff teaches Nonviolent Communication (NVC) at university in Tokyo, Japan

On Thursday, I gave a 1 hour, 45 minute lecture to students at the International Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo. I was invited by Professori Mori, who teaches a class on international relations.

Hideayaki and Haruno, two of my Japanese friends, made this connection with ICU, and I am grateful.

(photo taken by Ken Anno-- thank you, Ken)

In preparation for the lecture, I reminded myself of something very useful I learned from Miki Kashtan a couple of year ago -- that people who attend an introduction to NVC are not necessarily interested in, or committed to, learning the skill sets of NVC (e.g. Observation, Feeling, Need and Request).

And I have found this to be especially true for groups -- such as this university class -- who do not deliberately choose to attend a training, but instead it is selected for them. The most extreme case of this is when I have been invited to give a training at a workplace, and the employees are "required" to attend -- this often creates an attitude of resentment and resistance even before I arrive, which I then am faced with once I get there.

In this class, obviously, the students had some degree of "buy-in" because they voluntarily signed up for the course as a whole. And to my extreme delight, my needs for receptivity and partnership and inspiration were very, very deeply satisfied.

The students, while they did not speak very much, seemed very engaged, and I sensed this based on their eye contact, facial expressions and nonverbal communication, including whenever I asked them to do something, they all agreed (which met my need for trust).

From the start, one of my favorite places to share NVC is in a university setting, which strikes me as somewhat odd -- even to myself -- because sometimes the institutional structure of universities sometimes makes it harder to establish heart connection.