Marshall is known for his use of animal puppets as props in his work to symbolise ways of hearing, expressing, listening, and receiving. He uses the giraffe as a symbol because this animal is known to have the largest heart." At an early age," he contends, "most of us were taught to speak and think Jackal. This language is from the head. It is a way of mentally, moralistically classifying people into varying shades of good and bad, right and wrong. Ultimately it provokes defensiveness, resistance and counterattack. Giraffe, on the other hand, bids us to speak from the heart, to talk about what is going on for us — without judging others. In this idiom, you give people an opportunity to say yes, although you respect no for an answer. Giraffe is a language of requests; Jackal is a language of demands."

Marshall comes from one of the most violent cities in the USA — Detroit, Michigan. His family moved to Detroit in 1943 at the height of the race riots. This provided a powerful lesson for him — as a 9 year-old boy who was beat up by school kids for being Jewish, he learned that people can hate you for the colour of your skin, or your name, or your religion. This caused him to become very interested in how, in similar situations, some people can kill for these reasons while others connect through compassionate giving.

Marshall admits that he himself wasn't educated to connect — the education he received was designed to maintain dominance structures in order to control others, where the whole game is 'getting it right'. The kind of education he had makes NVC quite difficult. It's rooted in jackal language. He learned to listen with jackal ears to authoritarian structures. After receiving his doctorate in clinical psychology, he humorously reflects that he became a 'professional jackal'.

1. We could take the words personally and get hurt, feel guilty or become depressed. (Pharmaceutical companies do well when this happens.)

2. We could judge the other person for judging us and become angry. (The arms folks do well with this behaviour.)

NVC shows us how to listen moment by moment to what's alive in us and what's alive in the other person. That's the spiritual basis of NVC — compassionate giving — where to keep our consciousness, how to live in harmony.

How though do you exercise compassionate giving when you live or work with someone who, for example, likes to use feelings in a guilt-inducing way?

To illustrate, Marshall introduced us to our first experiential exercise — "Think of someone who behaves in a way you don't like." He then asked us, 'What is your observation of the behaviour?'

All of the answers he got back, he pointed out, were jackal type answers that contained judgements and criticisms, and a jackal judgement or criticism implies a wrongness. What he asked for was observation not evaluation. It's not that NVC requires us to be nice or to stop evaluating; however, it does require us not to mix the two: observation and evaluation — we need to keep them separate. "While it may be an accurate diagnosis or evaluation (criticism), that kind of thinking is at the heart of all prejudice and it's dangerous," warns Marshall. “When we started thinking that way, that's when violence began on our planet.”

If we want to be honest with somebody, let's be clear about what they do without blame or judgement. Anything else is a suicidal way to communicate.

There are cultures that don't have this type of language — jackal language — and they live in peace. For instance, Marshall works with a Malaysian group that the surrounding cultures label as 'a primitive people', yet this group has had to call on Marshall to teach them the jackal language in order to communicate with the people who use it, who are now infiltrating their culture, and trying to dominate them and remove them from their land. The Malaysian group does not have any words that judge or classify, and they don't have the verb 'to be', so it is impossible for them to understand the language of the jackal.

Instead of coming from our heads, Marshall encourages us to come from our hearts. Ask 'what's alive in you?' (We do this already by asking, 'how are you?') It's the most natural thing to ask. When we ask, however, we need to sincerely care what's alive in the other person. Yet, this is contrary to the domination culture we've been living in. We live in a system of justice based on punishment and reward, with the role of a punitive God. It's an old game. Marshall wants to bring us back to our natural way. "Let's learn the language of life," he offers, "let's get rid of all the criticism, blame, insults. If you want to be miserable, think about what's wrong with someone else. If you want to be really miserable, tell them about it."

Being honest from the heart, Marshall teaches, requires two kinds of literacy that he didn't learn at school:

1. Feelings
2. Needs

When he was at school if you did what the authorities said, you were rewarded. He can't recall ever being asked what his needs were. In a domination society, this is not taught because people cannot be dominated if they are connected to life — to their needs.

Feelings
Feelings are mother nature's way of letting us know about the life within us, when our needs are being met.

Our pain tells us our needs aren't being met. There are four feelings that tell us we're not connected to life — to our needs:
* anger
* depression
* guilt
* shame

Continuing the exercise with the same person we focussed on in the previous question, Marshall then asked us, 'How do you feel when the person does the behaviour you don't like?' Use words that call attention to what's alive in you. And remember, what you see is what you get — it will perpetuate the behaviour.

Needs
Next, we began to state our needs. Marshall cautioned us to be careful when expressing needs not to mix up our need and what someone needs to do to meet our need. Needs contain no reference to who is meeting them.

All human beings have the same needs. One of our greatest needs is autonomy and freedom to choose, therefore we will resist 'should' and 'must' demands in order to protect our autonomy.

NVC requires a radical shift in consciousness.

Requests
When stating requests, use clear, positive language — state what you want, not what you don't want. And be exacting. The words 'hear' and 'listen' are too vague, for example, 'I want you to listen to me or I want to be heard.' To listen is not a 'doable' action. But if you add, 'and when I'm finished, I want you to tell me what you heard,' then it's doable.

Four Step Process
So to recap, the NVC model is made up of these four steps or components:
1. Observations
2. Feelings
3. Needs
4. Requests

and these two parts:

1. Expressing honestly through the four components.
2. Receiving empathically through the four components.

Marshall pointed out that we hide a lot of oppression in our relationships through our vaguely expressed requests. Here he used the humorous example of a wife making a request to her husband: 'I want you to guess what I need before I even know......and then I want you to always do it.'

You need to be clear with the other person that you are no longer playing the game of the oppressor. You also need to include in the request that you only want them to do it if they can do it willingly, with joy, to meet their own need. The test here is this: Can you respect the person even if they do not do what you want them to do? Anytime we do anything feeling forced to do it, everybody loses.

It's a precious gift to know what we're doing that doesn't meet the other person's needs.

One of our strongest human needs is to enrich life. However, if somebody has killed a member of my family, then it will take me time to resolve my own feelings before NVC can take place.

The need needs to be clearly stated first, then the request can be made and understood.

In Giraffe schools the parents, teachers, and students all learn NVC language and the students also learn how to mediate using the 4-step process of observations, feelings, needs, and requests. The one who's listening repeats back what he has heard. The mediator asks the one who spoke if the listener interpreted their need correctly, then they switch roles. This is a tremendous step forward for social change.

Marshall next showed us how to evaluate from the heart and how to express ourselves to another person and speak in a way they might resonate with. For this we returned to the person we had focused on in the previous two exercises.....

Marshall instructed us to imagine ourselves with that person, applying our NVC skills to the best of our ability. Let's prepare for the worst - what would be the worst possible reaction you can imagine? Some of the participant responses included:

* Bugger off.
* Don't NVC me.
* Silence.
* I'm too busy.
* I don't care about your needs or feelings.
* Yea, yea, yea.
* Get real.
* Thank you for sharing.
* Stop pussyfooting.
* It's all your fault.
* I don't know what you're talking about.

What can we do in a situation like that, with a reaction like that? Instead of thinking we're afraid of the response, Marshall pointed out that we have a choice. We actually don't have to worry about the other person's response — what we do have to be concerned with is how we respond to them. If we think we're afraid, we put all our security in the other person's hands. We become 'nice' dead people. Marshall suggests a second option and the good news about this option is that it puts our security in our own hands. If we know how to empathically connect, we don't have to worry about their response.

A 'no' is a tragic expression of a 'yes'. Responding to a refusal is a four-part process rooted in empathy: 
* Describe the situation 
* Guess the other person's feeling 
* Guess the reason for the feeling, together with the unmet need; then let the person verify whether you have correctly understood 
* Clarify the unmet need.

"In situations such as these," Marshall assured, "you'll learn to see the beauty of the other person because you'll see the truth. You'll see the gift — how the person is feeling — what they're needing." If we do it sincerely, it shows that we care about what they're feeling and needing. People are often not used to someone connecting with what's alive in them. When you come from the heart, the person cannot not communicate. And if you stay with it, the other person will eventually join you. Even in silence, try to connect with what's alive in the person.

Marshall then turned to the topic of working with people who've done terrible things (rapists, murderers, child molesters). Before he can see their humanness, he needs to really understand and work through his own feelings before he can empathically connect with their needs and feelings. The person he has spent the most time trying to empathise with is Adolph Hitler.

Marshall noted that there are times when we need to use what he calls the 'protective use of force' when we don't have time to communicate (for example, in situations of violence). He'll talk more about that later on in the workshop.

Empathy, the way he's using it, means presence to what's alive in the person. It's really important not to confuse sympathy with empathy. Empathy is not understanding — it's connecting. It's also not correcting or advice giving.

Empathy is most precious gift we can give another human being. When in pain, people need empathy most. So be fully present. If the person goes to their story, bring them back to the moment, to connecting with what is alive for them in the moment.

If, when empathising, you guess wrong and the person corrects you, it's okay — they're just hungry to connect — as long as you are genuine. It's often difficult because the person doesn't necessarily have a language for what's inside them.

"Most of us," Marshall concluded, "are more brutal with ourselves than with others, so over the next two days, we'll also learn how to do NVC with ourselves."

Join us tomorrow as Marshall teaches us how to learn from our mistakes without losing respect for ourselves, how to mourn without blaming ourselves, how to forgive ourselves and how to celebrate life.



Photos Sverre Koxvold