|
|
|
BayNVC - Bay Area Nonviolent Communication
Deepening Understanding and Embodiment
from BayNVC trainer Oren SoferI feel incredibly fortunate to be able to say that I've had the experience of "coming home" to a path and a practice not once, not twice, but three times in this life so far! The first time I felt this instantaneous recognition, this sense of deep alignment and trust that I was home, I was sitting in a meditation hall late at night in Bodh Gaya, India, in 1997. I had just heard my first Dharma talk (the Buddha's teachings), and I felt as if everything in my life was finally making sense. It took some doing for my heart to convince my mind to trust what the body already knew - that I'd stumbled upon was something I had been waiting for, and had known inside all along.
It was another five years before I crossed paths with Nonviolent Communication. And yet, from the very first time I heard someone explain, "Everything we do, we do to meet a need," I realized that I'd found another practice that would be with me as a companion and teacher for the rest of my life. I've been studying and practicing NVC for almost eight years now and the closer I look, the more subtle and profound I find the practice to be. Its role in my life has shifted over time from a communication tool for improving relationships to a living practice of awareness that transforms perceptions and actualizes values.
Since completing the Leadership Program in 2007, I've had the joy and honor of teaching with BayNVC as a collaborative trainer, facilitating trainings for groups and businesses, offering classes and workshops to members of our community with a background in meditation. There's little else I could have imagined fulfilling me more than teaching about these two passions at the same time, to others interested in transforming their consciousness and integrating their spirituality into their relationships!
And then, just about two years ago, I fell in love again - this time with a form of healing known as Somatic Experiencing (SE). Based on a biological understanding of our nervous system, I found in SE yet another powerful path to support the natural unfolding of human awareness and healing. Having completed the first two years of a three-year training program, I am choosing to take a hiatus from teaching NVC for the rest of 2010 (save one prior commitment at Spirit Rock Meditation Center) in order to focus on deeply learning and studying SE in the final, advanced year of training. After completing the SE training this September, I'll be sitting a 3-month, silent intensive meditation retreat on the east coast.
Life is rhythm - a primordial beat pumps blood through our bodies; the breath rises and falls just like sun; the heart opens and closes. Expansion and contraction; doing and being; birth and death. For this next year, I will be following a slow but steady movement inwards, to listen and learn, to deepen my own understanding and embodiment of this strange and mysterious event we are all sharing, called life. I look forward to reconnecting in 2011.
-- Oren Sofer
[links for article]
Interview with Oren Sofer in SF Examiner, on NVC and Dharma:
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-28587-SF-Buddhism-Examiner~y2010m2d3-Buddhism-and-Nonviolent-Communication-an-interview-with-Oren-Sofer
Interview with Oren Sofer on Empathy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYaSPZoWIhE
Mindfulness, Wise Speech and Compassionate Communication Retreat at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, June 28-July 5th, 2010:
http://spiritrock.org/calendar/display.asp?id=361R10
|
|