Workshops
Speaking Peace & Living Nonviolently
What is Violent Communication?
If “violent” means acting in ways that result in hurt or harm, then much of how we communicate—judging others, bullying, having racial bias, blaming, speaking without listening, criticizing others or ourselves, name-calling, reacting when angry, or judging what’s “right/wrong” with people—could indeed be called “violent communication.
What is Nonviolent Communication?
Nonviolent Communication is the integration of 4 things:
- Consciousness: a set of principles that support living a life of compassion, collaboration, courage, and authenticity
- Language: understanding how words contribute to connection or distance
- Communication: knowing how to ask for what we want, how to hear others even in disagreement, and how to move toward solutions that work for all
- Means of influence: sharing “power with others” rather than using “power over others”
NVC serves our desire to do three things:
- Increase our ability to live with choice, meaning, and connection
- Connect empathically with self and others to have more satisfying relationships
- Sharing of resources so everyone is able to benefit
About
NVC Boston & the Art of Empathy
Learn how to use language to connect and re-connect
Do you want more harmony in your family? More authenticity with your partner? Help with resolving ongoing conflicts?
NVC Boston is dedicated to sharing nonviolent communication (NVC) as a way to contribute to more connection and harmony in the world.
Workshops, Classes and ongoing Empathy Sessions
- Nonviolent Communication Mediation
- Conflict Coaching
- Facilitated Couples Empathy
- Customized Empathy Workshops and Seminars
- One-on-One Deep Empathy Sessions
NVC Boston Trainers
Gail Carroll
Gail is a CNVC Certified Trainer bringing 15 years of personal practice and application of NVC to her teaching. Professionally, Gail co-organizes NVC programs, including the East Coast Mediate Your Life Immersion Program, which trains mediators and others on how to use NVC to better resolve personal and interpersonal conflicts. Gail also produces and organizes the week-long New York Intensive in Nonviolent Communication, an annual residential intensive held in New York State for all interested in the practice of NVC.
In her private client practice and in the numerous workshops and classes that she leads, Gail focuses on relationships, mediating conflict, and empathy. These concentrations stem from her own life experiences. Gail grew up in an often-chaotic environment and found that she did not know how to handle conflict. She would choose to avoid it altogether but when that wasn’t possible, her coping methods tended to be “freezing” or “lashing out.” Gail explains it like this: “I was all confused emotion and just didn’t know how to navigate conflict or frustration.” Later in adulthood when was faced with the challenge of raising a young daughter by herself. she sought out skills for understanding and communicating emotions. When she discovered NVC, she knew that she had found something life-changing.
Gail practiced NVC for several years before she graduated from Bay NVC’s intensive year-long leadership program in 2006, after which she launched her own practice and established NVC Boston. Through her practice of NVC, she has developed a stronger relationship with herself and a deeper understanding of her own emotions and needs. She has also fostered strong communication-based interpersonal relationships, including those with her daughter and partner.
As a teacher, Gail is known for her compassion, practice, and care. Her strong commitment to the transformative power of NVC and her own story of how it has brought authenticity, clarity, and compassion into all her relationships inspires both clients and students. One fellow teacher says, “Her commitment and integrity in living the process in her own life have met the needs for connection, peace, love, and support for so many of us.”
To contact Gail, email her at gcarroll@nvcboston.org or call her at 617-840-4898.
Paul Merrill
Paul has been teaching the principles of NVC for over ten years on a variety of learning platforms both here and overseas. Largely as a result of his own life experiences and growth path, he has focused his NVC practice on mediation and relationships. He was a founding board member and co-trainer at Brooklyn NVC. Together with his partner, Gail Carroll, he designed and has led a series of relationship-focused workshops, The Alchemy of Relationship. He has also been a co-facilitator of Mediate Your Life’s East Coast immersion program as well as NVC events held at the United Nations, and in Belgium and Poland. In addition, he regularly serves as a host trainer at the immersive week-long New York NVC Intensive.
What People Say
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