I started learning Nonviolent Communication (NVC) in 2006 when a friend lent me Marshall Rosenberg’s book, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. I was relieved and excited by how it shed light on confusing and painful experiences in some of my relationships.

I began to understand much more about the reactivity in myself and others and the underlying dynamics in difficult conversations. So began an ongoing exploration into why people say what they say and what they might mean from a compassionate perspective.

NVC has become a powerful way for me to connect to previously unfelt feelings and unconscious needs. It has shown me how to speak the unspoken and live more in tune with what matters to me and be more in harmony with others.

I began offering NVC courses in London in 2010. In 2014, I qualified as a Certified Trainer with the Center for Nonviolent Communication (CNVC). As well as leading public trainings, I coach individuals and couples and hold regular immersive residential workshops including dance sessions to support the embodiment of NVC. I also train NVC in organizations, including for example, Tate, Citizens Advice Bureau, H&M, and NVC Matters CIC.

I have regular peer supervision and ongoing CPD. In the last few years I’ve completed a Needs-Based Coaching Certification and deepened my trauma-awareness on a yearlong course in Polyvagal Theory with Deb Dana.

I have a PGCE in adult education and was an ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) teacher in Further Education for eighteen years. I trained and worked as a journalist for business and human rights publications. My first job was as a residential social worker for children in care.

For about nine years, Vipassana meditation was a daily practice for me and I participated in long retreats in Asia and the U.K. It was on a meditation cushion that I realized my body needed to move, more than to sit, and shortly afterwards I discovered 5Rhythms dance. I’ve been dancing and making connections between different mindfulness and compassion practices ever since. I am now a qualified Open Floor Movement Practice teacher. Along the way I completed a foundation training in Core Process Psychotherapy.

For years I’ve worked regularly with Movement of Being, which is hard to describe but essentially about becoming aware of and relaxing into the experience of each moment. It’s an acknowledging and welcoming of every thought, feeling, and state, a compassionate getting to know ourselves as imperfect human beings as well as spiritual beings.

These are some of the experiences that have supported my integration of an NVC mindset.

I am extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to travel and live in East and Southern Africa and Southeast Asia as a teacher in Kenya, a partygoer in Goa, a hiker in Nepal, and a pilgrim in Myanmar.