 Love is the only force capable of
transforming an enemy into a friend.
- Martin Luther King, Jr
Explore Heart-Centered Communication with the following options:
Programs can be offered in half-day, whole-day or multiple day formats designed to best meet the needs of your group or organization.
Heart-Centered Communication
bringing body, soul & spirit to our moments of meeting
Communicating from your heart
Connecting with your heart and connecting heart to heart with others are core intentions for a communication joining the expansive nature of consciousness with the loving warmth of compassion. Heart-centered communication brings the wholeness of our presence to each connection through the sensing nature and life energy of our bodies, the moving emotions and experiences of our souls, and the wisdom, mindfulness and free choices of our spirits.
Heart-centered communication is a way of truly connecting from your heart, both with yourself and with others. It will expand your capacity to offer and to receive the warmth of empathy and compassion in your relationships with family, friends, colleagues and all others. It is about responding, rather than reacting out of familiar old habits one may not take the time to think about in the moment.
Considering the potential of your heart
The heart is a vessel, carrying awareness of life's experiences along the streams of emotional waters. Sometimes, wisdom may be clearly mirrored upon the surface of the waters as unclouded, unbiased observation. Feelings may flow with the gentle rocking of rippling waves or with the sharp pull of swift currents. The most beautiful treasures of the heart may be discovered when one dives into the inner depths where they gleam like pearls reflecting the preciousness of unseen, yet intrinsic and universal human needs. These pearls are common ground to all of us. As we come to know and understand them, we develop empathy and deepen connections, we build bridges between differences, and we nurture the power of transformation both within us and between us.
Pausing to notice what is alive in the present moment
When beginning from the place of one's heart in communicating, first, one takes a moment to pause and check in with one's self about what is happening within, what feelings are present, what thoughts and body sensations are alive. We also take a moment to do the same in observation of the person we are with. Being aware increases our consciousness and is a significant spiritual aspect of the practice of heart-centered, compassionate communication. It is about connecting with a part of ourselves that observes, carrying a loving intention, and abiding primarily in the center, in the energy of our hearts. We respond compassionately by choosing to return to this part of ourselves again and again.
Journeying from the center
Journeying with your heart is an opportunity to deepen awareness in the connections you make with your self, with others, and with the sacred (however you might choose to name that reality for yourself.) The heart is at the core of each of those relationships. Entering is centering. The heart is the center of yourself, the center of your relationship with other beings, and the center of your relationship with your sacred source, higher power or divine energy. Being centered in these sacred connections is an invitation to return home, to rest in the center, to trust in the nature and wisdom of the heart, where both the spark of the divine and the loving nature of the human abide.
Connecting to the heart
Connecting to your heart or connecting heart to heart with another human being is an expression of loving, a way of being and a spiritual intention to expand compassionate relationships within us and between us. Coming home to the wisdom of your heart is a path toward peace. Walking this path to peace is supported by the learning and practice of heart-centered communication and compassionate connections serving life and love. To serve life and love are primary values which are also highly regarded at the core of religious traditions and spiritual paths.
Four esstential tools: observations, feelings, needs and invitations/requests
The practice of heart-centered communication offers four essential tools to translate the conflicts and wars of opposing forces in one's self and in one's relationships into the peace and harmony of life energies that any one of us can tap into at any time we consciously choose to do so. These tools are gifts from Marshall Rosenberg’s “NVC–Nonviolent Communication.”
They are practical aspects of an intentional discipline which involves:
(1) translating evaluations and judgments about experiences into the clarity of real observations (2) deepening awareness of feelings in response to a stimulus or stimuli (3) identifying needs that are met or unmet (4) entrusting needs to the gift of an invitation or request asking for an active response of ourselves or of others, which may invite creative strategies to meet needs in life-giving ways At any given moment in our connecting, we are either in the position of authentically and honestly expressing what is alive in us or in the position of listening to and receiving the other with presence and empathy. This movement shifts back and forth in a delightful rhythm of attentiveness and awareness about what is dynamically alive within us and between us. Learning how to move with this dynamic flow is a process and a practice of truly coming to befriend ourselves and others with gentleness, compassion, and presence.
Heart-centered communication teaches:
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