Giraffe and Jackal ears exercise

A month ago I did an exercise with a group of participants on a training in Stourbridge, UK, famous for its Rudolph Steiner connection and the Camphill Trust. The purpose of the exercise was to get clear about the choices I have when I hear a message. I asked the participants if they were fed up with hearing blame and criticism, and suggested (playfully!) that they need never hear blame and criticism again!

I gave the example of a situation from my life: I arrive for a regular appointment with a friend and he says, “You’re late again.” Sometimes he doesn’t actually say the words, he just looks at me in a certain way and I interpret the look as, “You’re late again.”

I pointed out that it was important for them to realise that lateness is hereditary in our family. I was born late, and with any luck, I’ll die late. Be that as it may, the message I’m hearing is, “You’re late again.” Through Nonviolent Communication I’ve come to understand that I have a choice how I hear this message.

There are four ways, two of them more life-serving than the others. (To maximise learning, I suggest you select a message from your own life to go through as I explore my example.)

I put on my ‘Jackal ears’ facing outwards (my habitual response) and replied to this message in terms of judging and blaming the other person. This sounded like:

Who are you calling late? You should stop being so self-righteous. If you give me a hard time about this I’m going to stop coming.

Then I put on my ‘Jackal ears’ facing inwards and heard the message in terms of judging and blaming myself. This sounded like this:

He’s right. I’m always late for our meetings. I just can’t get it right. I’m so inconsiderate – I just don’t care about my friends.

So these are two ways of hearing messages with ‘Jackal ears’ on: 1. hearing them in terms of judging and blaming the other, and 2. hearing them in terms of judging and blaming myself.

Then I asked the participants: would you like to live in a different kind of world? A world in which people relate compassionately to each other based on respect for needs? In this kind of world, again there are two ways I might hear a message like “You’re late again.” First I put on my ‘Giraffe ears’ facing inwards and hear the message in terms of what is alive in me – what feelings and needs are touched in me when I hear this message. Here’s how it sounded:

When I hear you say “You’re late again.”, I feel, well, disappointed, because I’d like acknowledgement of the effort I made to get here, and understanding that it’s important for me to honour agreements.

And as I really got in touch with my feelings and needs in this way, I found that I had space to listen to what is alive for him when he said, “You’re late again.” Putting my ‘Giraffe ears’ on facing outwards, I said to him:

Are you exasperated because you’d like respect for your time?

Notice that in NVC I make a guess (ask a question) rather than make a statement. I’ve found that a question is easier for the other person to hear. I guess what he’s feeling and what basic human need isn’t being met in the situation. I’ve found that my guess doesn’t have to be ‘right’ to make a connection. As Marshall Rosenberg says, ‘You can’t guess ‘wrong’, only human!’ If my guess turns out to be inaccurate, I’ve found that the other person usually tells me what’s really going on. In this case, my friend said:

No, it’s not that. We just don’t see each other as often as I’d like. When you’re late, we spend less time together.

OK – so I guessed it was about respect, and it turns out that it’s about valuing our time together. So I didn’t need to guess ‘right’ to get the understanding and connection I was looking for. And I’m confident that when we connect on
this level, on the level of basic human needs, that it will take only a few minutes to find a solution that we’re both happy with. Here’s what I came up with:

For the next month, would you like me to ring you, if I think I’m going to be more than fifteen minutes late, and discuss arranging another time to meet?

Yes!

Then it was the turn of the Stourbridge participants to practise with their own messages!

We’ve all hurt someone: NVC in prison

This time I felt excited and curious about visiting the men of the ‘Khanti Outreach’ Buddhist meditation and study group at Concord state prison. Though I hadn’t been for nearly a year, I’d often thought about the men and how they were getting on with their lives, so it wasn’t a shock to see the walls and razor wire of the prison, or to be standing outside the reception waiting for a uniformed guard to find my name on a list and let me through a colossally heavy motorized magnetic door.

In the room, there was already a speaker’s lectern set up and some men putting chairs out in rows. I asked them to put the lectern against the wall and arrange the chairs in a circle. When all twenty of them were full, I introduced myself and the topic: ‘How to be honest and safe’. As it was a meditation group, I started with an ‘Arriving Exercise’ – leading them through the different parts of their body, then their feelings, then their intentions. I guessed a few of their intentions – perhaps to develop their communication skills, perhaps to be true to themselves and stay safe; perhaps to create the kind of environment they’d like to live in, perhaps all of these, perhaps others as well.

Then I got the men to check in with each other, in pairs: ‘How you doing? What’s up?’ I wanted them to start connecting with each other stay engaged, so I suggested two minutes each way. I was satisfied with my choice when the room was filled with talking that didn’t die away towards the end of the exercise.

Then an Opening Round: your name and what’s up for you? Then I went straight into the topic of how to be honest and safe. I described a conflict that I had heard about on a previous visit. Most of the inmates are in eight-man bedrooms. In this particular room, there’s one man who wants to do his homework (college degrees are very popular among lifers), and another who is listening to his music, on headphones, but loud enough to disturb the man doing his homework. As I described this conflict, several men agreed that it was a typical situation. I guessed, “Is it hard enough to get on with the seven men in your room, even before thinking about food or work?” I saw at least ten men nodding in agreement. One said, “If you’ve got eight men in a room, you can guarantee there are ten or 12 different personalities.” I laughed, and immediately felt uncomfortable with how loud I had laughed. I wanted to be sensitive and I was pretty sure from seeing people’s eyes that at least one man in the room was on medication.

To bring some humour and playfulness in, I asked the guys on one side of the circle to role-play ‘Jim’, the guy doing his homework, and the other side of the room to role-play ‘Michael’, the guy using his headphones. I learned this particular sequence from Jeyanthy Siva of the Sandhi Institute (NVC training in Sri Lanka), and she learned it from Miki Kashtan (Bay Area NVC)! This is how the dialogue went:

Jim: Could you turn that down?

Michael: I can’t hear you!

Jim: Turn it down! That’s awfully loud.

Michael: It’s not loud. I’ve got a right to be here too.

Jim: I’m just trying to do my homework.

We paused there and I asked everybody what would be the effect of this conversation. Short answer: less trust and cooperation. And whose side were they on: Jim’s or Michael’s? All those who had role-played Jim took his side, and all those who had role-played Michael took his side.

Then I asked what would happen if we looked at the ‘deeper motivations’ on both sides. What might Jim be feeling, and what did he want? We looked at each of their sentences in turn. They guessed that he was probably feeling frustrated at first, then angry because he was wanting respect, consideration and dignity. Then to be heard. And finally support and understanding (“I’m just trying to do my homework.”)

And what might Michael be feeling, and what did he want? They guessed that initially he felt frustrated, and that he wanted space to himself, some time to relax. Then he wanted understanding, then respect and dignity (“I’ve got a right to be here too.”)

I asked again: Whose side are you on, if any? Several of the men said ‘Well, if they could just listen to each other, maybe they could find a way to work it out.’ I asked the men to go through the conversation again, expressing the ‘deeper motivations’ on both sides. They did, repeating the feelings and deeper motivations (or ‘needs’). I asked if this was more or less likely to lead to trust and cooperation? They said more likely.

Then a man who was in jail ‘for an indefinite period of time’ spoke up: “I don’t know how many times a little bit of kindness or consideration has been interpreted as weakness.” I empathized: “Are you saying that it’s deeply difficult to be true to yourself and at the same time avoid a bigger battle later?” “Yes,” he said. “You need to get to know a guy, to see him over a period of time, before you could trust that he won’t try to control you.” “Do you need to be careful about how you act, to protect yourself?” “Yes.” He went quiet for a few seconds.

I drew two stick men, facing each other, close up, and talked about conflict the way that I’d seen Marshall do it. Usually we listen to each other’s thoughts – what the other person is. Labels, blame, judgements. Or shoulds, threats and can’ts. I’d like see what happens when we get connected at a heart level. And I drew hearts on the stick men and an arrow going between them. How do I connect on the level of our ‘deeper motivations’, what’s in our hearts. That’s what connects me with other people – that’s what we have in common. I paused for feedback.

“Yes, but you can’t go around here telling people what you’re feeling all the time.” “Is it ‘Safety first?’” I asked. He nodded. I went on, “I don’t want to get all touchy-feely about this. For me, feelings are feedback about my deeper motivations – what I’m calling my ‘Needs’ (CNVC’s list of basic Needs). They are telling me about what I need to give attention to.” He looked around and said, “There are 1500 men in here, and I reckon that 1200 of them are disconnected from their feelings.” “So you’re pretty unhopeful of connecting with them?” “Yup.”

I paused for a few seconds and then said, “I make a distinction between basic needs, which we all share, and the ways we try to meet those needs. I can stay connected to someone if I can understand what need they are trying to meet, even if I’m not happy with how they are going about meeting it. I don’t need to agree with someone to have a connection with them. For example, since I’ve been here, I’ve heard people mention the needs for safety, respect and consideration more than ten times each. I can connect on this level – doesn’t mean I agree with how everybody is trying to meet these needs.”

The conversation turned to other difficulties of sharing a room with seven other men. One guy said that there will always be one who likes to read late, and another who gets up early. Another guy said that he likes to stay up all night on Saturday and watch the TV until 4:00am. “I’m the same,” I said. “I’m a night bird. And my partner likes to go to bed early and get up and go to work early. It’s a daily source of conflict for us. But you’ve got seven other people to deal with.” I looked around and it hit me like a thunderbolt: of course there were no women inmates. In fact, some of the men I was looking at hadn’t slept with their wife (if they still had one) or a woman for more than a decade. I felt a reeling sense of shock and sadness. Then I was slightly embarrased and deeply grateful to connect on this level. And no-one said anything.

I told them I had an exercise – to practise staying connected at this deeper level. I asked them to find someone to work with and to speak for a minute about ‘something on their mind’. Then I asked the other guy in the pair to guess what was important to the speaker. This went on for five minutes then I asked them to swap over. I was delighted to see some of the men leaning towards each other in a way that I would describe as ‘confidential’, receiving their partner’s words.

In the ‘Closing round’, people expressed appreciation of the exercise they’d just done. “It’s not often you get a chance to talk and somebody really listens.” Several said that they were very glad to meet me, and invited me to come again. Another person thanked me for the perspective I’d talked about – how to stay connected at the level of what we have in common. This sparked a man to recall what someone else in the circle had said at meditation group a couple of years previously: “We’ve all hurt somebody. We’ve all hurt someone.” He said that it had really struck him at the time, acknowledging that they were all ‘in the same boat’. I listened without speaking, trusting that it was a moment of acknowledgement and awareness rather than an attempt to provoke feelings of guilt. Another (the one I had previously assessed from the look in his eyes as ‘on medication’) said, “We need more people like you to come – people with insight into what’s happening.” I thanked him, and said that I was glad to meet and connect with ‘fellow human beings’. The last man in the circle thanked me for calling him a human being: “That’s the first time anybody has done that in here.”

As I was packing up to go about ten of the men came up and shook my hand. I was deeply touched and amazed with the connection I felt. And as I walked out through the magnetic doors I surprised myself by feeling some sadness about leaving. I got in the car with my companion from the Khanti outreach group. She turned to me and said, “I’ve never seen the men so upbeat as that.”

I’d love to hear your comments!

Light and love, Shantigarbha

Further Reading: See also Shantigarbha’s magazine article onTeaching Nonviolent Communication in a US Prison in the Downloads (General NVC) section.

Back from India and Sri Lanka

Hi All, I just got back a few days ago from India and Sri Lanka. I’d been out there for three months since early December, when Christa and I ran trainings at Bhaja retreat centre, near Pune - photos below…

After Bhaja, Christa went home to Germany and I went down to Auroville in Pondicherry to run trainings at the NVC Camp there. I worked hard running trainings for seven days, and then had a holiday! I found Auroville to be a great place for a holiday (including swimming, dancing and hearing the Dalai Lama talk)! I deeply appreciate L’aura and Jason hosting the camp at their College Guest House, and I wish them strength in developing their dream of the Joy NVC Living and Learning Center

.

Then I went over to Sri Lanka to work with Jeyanthy Siva and the Sandhi Institute. To our surprise, as the Sri Lankan army closed in on the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) up in the north of the island, we found there were more and more requests for NVC trainings. On some days we were running three parallel trainings in different locations! I really enjoyed the sense of community of being part of a team of trainers. When we finished, I facilitated the Sandhi Institute team retreat at the beautiful beach resort of Unawatuna and swam among the brightly coloured, fluorescent fish in a tiny coral reef - what a highlight!

After that, I caught up with my meditation practice on a silent, solitary 10-day retreat at a jungle retreat centre in the Sri Lankan mountains. What to say? I stayed with some Sri Lankan ‘forest’ bhikkhus (monks), ate with them and followed my own routine of meditation, resting, sleeping, eating, walking and stretching. I found it intense - enjoyable to have the space to connect with myself, and uncomfortable because of the lack of familiarity in my surroundings. I was in silence for seven of the ten days. I found it a great relief not to be talking, and I managed to get fairly concentrated for a few days in the middle. Then I went back to India for the Western Buddhist Order / Trailokya Bauddha Mahasangh convention at Bodhgaya, where Gautama the Buddha became enlightened. The highlight for me was doing ‘puja’ (chanting mantras and reciting devotional poetry) under the Bodhi tree at night. I felt inspired and delighted to be among other Buddhist practitioners. I loved the connections I made through NVC in India and Sri Lanka (and avoiding the winter in Europe!) so much that I’m planning to go out again for three months in December. Love and life, Shantigarbha

Off to India & 2009 Training Dates Confirmed

Hi All,

We’re excited to be off to India tomorrow morning. Christa is with me for the first month, then I stay on for another two, taking in Sri Lanka. Here’s our schedule:

• Dec 12 - 28, trainings at Bhaja retreat centre, near Pune, India
• Jan 7 - 21, trainings at NVC Camp, Auroville, Pondicherry, India
• Jan 22 - Feb 9, trainings in Colombo, Sri Lanka
• Feb 9 - Feb 21, Solitary retreat, Sri Lanka
• Feb 22 - March 1, Western Buddhist Order / TBM Order Convention, Bodhgaya, India

For more information about any of the trainings, click here

And we’ve confirmed some dates in the US and the UK for when I get back. Here they are:

In the USA:

• March 21-22: Indianapolis, USA: ‘Deepening + Anger’ more info
• March 27 -28: Newmarket, NH, USA: Basic Training more info
• April 4-5: Portsmouth, NH, USA: Deepening + Anger more info

In the UK:

• April 25-26: Birmingham, UK: Foundation Training more info
• May 1: Stourbridge, UK: Evening Introduction more info
• May 2-3: Stourbridge, UK: Foundation Training more info
• May 16-17: Bristol, UK: Foundation Training for Parents more info
• June 20-21: Birmingham, UK: Deepening + Conflict more info
• June 27-28: Bristol, UK: Deepening + Empathy for Parents more info
• July 11-12: Stourbridge, UK: Deepening + Empathy more info

And I hope to find some time to work on my book next summer.

Love and light, Shantigarbha

PS Fun training photos below.

Obama on Empathy

Hi there,

A few days ago I read something inspiring on empathy on the CNVC trainers’ email list. It was a passage from Barack Obama’s ‘The Audacity of Hope’ on the importance and nature of empathy. Gratitude to Alex Censor for posting it there.

There was also a link to a compilation of text and video clips of Obama speaking on the critical role of empathy in personal and international relations:

http://progressivespirit.com/empathy

Scroll down on that page for the video links. (This link may not be as useful as I thought: I’ve been told that one video clip that lasted 20 mins contained no reference to empathy!)

I find it heartening that someone could get this clear on empathy and its importance, and apparently, is trying to ‘walk the talk’.

The extract on empathy from ‘The Audacity of Hope’ follows (publication details at end).

Love and life, Shantigarbha

Obama on Empathy

“…we long for that most elusive quality in our leaders—the quality of authenticity, of being who you say you are, of possessing a truthfulness that goes beyond words. My friend the late US Senator Paul Simon had that quality. Read the rest of this entry »

Bristol, UK: Foundation Training for Parents

As seen in Juno (natural parenting) magazine!

Would you like to learn how to transform your communication?

This workshop:

• Introduces you to the steps of the NVC process for use in expressing yourself to others, listening to others and listening compassionately to yourself.
• Gives you sufficient information and practice to start using NVC in your daily life.
• Is run in an experiential style working with examples from participants’ lives.
• Uses the NVC Dance Floors for integrated, dynamic learning.
• Is a recognised stepping stone to further NVC training

This workshop is for you if you would like to:

• Deepen the quality of connection with your children
• Stay connected in times of conflict
• Become a more present parent
• Learn how to take a ‘Time In’
• Learn how to shift from a paradigm of demands, rewards and consequences - to a paradigm of self-responsibility, connection, trust, mutual support and interdependence
• Learn about the value of journalling
• Find a telephone empathy ‘Buddy’

The trainer is Shantigarbha (Chris Warren), CNVC.org certified Trainer. Shantigarbha lives with his partner Christa Gronow and helps her bring up her two daughters, Lilli, aged 16 and Mona, aged 14. For more information about their approach to natural parenting, see their recent article in Juno (natural parenting) magazine at seedofpeace.org

Fee: We would like to receive £140 (business rates on application). Low wage: £100. We’d like to make this training available to all who need it. If you find it difficult to imagine coming for financial reasons, we are happy to negotiate.

Venue: a South Bristol venue to be confirmed

Info and booking: Contact Barry:
Email: barrydhill[at]blueyonder.co.uk
Tel: 07957 340689

Preparation: Please read Marshall’s book ‘Nonviolent Communication, A Language of Life’ or watch a DVD.

Deepening Empathy in Indy

Last weekend I enjoyed the company of the folks from Irvington Friends Meeting in Indianapolis, plus guests, for a Deepening + Empathy training. We reviewed the basics of NVC and explored various aspects of empathy. Things that particularly came up were:

• For some people, it was a revelation that you could empathise with yourself (they thought that empathy was only for other people).
• The natural shift that happens - when I’m fully connected to myself - to interest and curiosity in the people around me (”When I have space for myself, I have space for the people around me.”)
• Mourning (acknowledging, honouring unmet needs) is also a need, according to NVC

Here are some of the comments from people:

“I realized that it is hard to listen to others if I am not able to listen to myself. I’m feeling angry and sad, and, at the same time, I am starting to listen to myself.”

“When we did the ‘Learning to love your inner jackal’ exercise, you were able to help me to see more pieces of the puzzle than I had seen before. Now I’m feeling gratitude, lightness and hope of clarity, learning and growth.”

We’ll be practising empathy skills on our trainings this weekend in Portsmouth, NH, in India and Sri Lanka, and next Spring in the US and the UK (Birmingham, Bristol, Stourbridge and York). Would you like to join us? See our ‘Training Diary’ for dates and details.

Love and life, Shantigarbha

Hi Everybody!

Hi there!

We’ve been redesigning the seedofpeace.org website so that we can keep it up to date while we are on our travels (this picture shows us on a day out from our trainings in India last December - at Lohagaon Fort, near Pune, for those of you who were there).

We’re back in India this December to run some trainings, and in January I’ll be training at the Auroville NVC Camp, before revisiting Sri Lank to work with Jeyanthy Siva, Director of the Sandhi Institute, and have a solitary retreat. I’ll be back in the West in early March.

We’ll be adding the rest of the site in the next few days.

I hope you enjoy what’s here - please leave a comment!

Love and life, Shantigarbha