My name is Ranjana, please call me Ranji. I am the daughter of Lakshmi and of Ariaratnam, who came from the island of Sri Lanka to California, where I was born and raised, and went through grad school. I worked overseas for years in humanitarian aid with people displaced by conflict in over ten countries in Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia. Now, in addition to sharing NVC, I am a painter. I feel so grateful and blessed to live on Vancouver Island, where my husband and I share a home with my Ammah (‘mother’ in Tamil) as she ages.

My NVC journey started in 2005, when my partner, David, and I came back from over a year in West Africa where we’d been in our latest posting as humanitarian aid workers. We joke that Ammah met us at the airport with Marshall’s book, but I think she let us get home to her place first! She said she was so excited about the book and wanted us to read it so that she could discuss it with us.  It wasn’t until a few years later that David and I took a deep dive into NVC – taking time off to take every NVC class and program we could find for over two years, to learn as much as we could to be able to take this back into our work overseas. As humanitarian aid workers, we’d been increasingly disillusioned with the aid world. While that work could be life-saving and address immediate needs, it did not get to the origins of the conflicts we were witnessing.

When we deepened into NVC, I experienced how transformative a practice it can be and saw that it can help to address the roots of what leads people to resort to war, and thus to people being in refugee camps in the first place. In addition, or as part of addressing the roots, it can contribute to people strengthening their own inner resources and expanding their access to choice. NVC offers a different paradigm to what is prevalent in the world today for both how to conceive of and hold power and how to engage with those with structural power. Plus, its healing potential also contributes to social change as a healthy society needs to have healthy people.

In addition, decades ago I began my Vipassana Meditation practice. After I deepened into my learning of NVC, I realized that NVC made it possible to put what I got within myself on the meditation cushion into my interactions with other people, for which I am endlessly grateful. For me NVC, like my meditation practice, is a Presence Practice. It helps me to be with myself and with others in a deeper way, one that is led by curiosity. This helps me to approach life beyond my conditioning, to see the interconnections between all beings, and to be with what is as well as to access choice about creating change as well.

Since completing our intensely deep dive, I have continued to share NVC with families, teachers, activists, schools, social service organizations, and businesses via workshops, retreats, mediation, and coaching since 2009. I bring together approaches that are very healing in my own life – NVC, painting and writing, somatic practices, and Vipassana meditation, each addressing different layers of our being – with my experience from humanitarian aid work dealing with people on often opposing sides of wars, including managing diverse staff, along with graduate degrees in planning and human rights protection. I support people to find ways to communicate that hold everyone’s needs with care, and I am passionate about holding space for people who want to heal – themselves, intergenerationally, and the world.

As a Woman of Colour, I bring my life experiences into any space I am in, striving to ensure that voices that do not get heard in the mainstream have space to be heard and held and received. I continue to do this in my NVC work and sharing, thus helping to bring the approaches and consciousness of Compassionate Communication into more communities and areas where it is so urgently needed. I want to support people to consciously co-create the world we long to live in – one where everyone is seen and heard and knows care and belonging, and lives from a felt sense of our interdependence with one another and with the more-than-human world. For my certification process, being part of Roxy Manning’s GM (Global Majority) pod – with Alicia, Donna, Edmundo, Jackson, Keiko, and Mike – was a deeply lived experience of just this!

I would like to offer a deep bow of Gratitude to my foundational Teachers – my mother, Lakshmi, and her spiritual teacher, Yoga Swami; and in the NVC world, Inbal Kashtan, Roxy Manning, Kathy Simon, and Miki Kashtan. Love and Gratitude to my partner, David, for being on this journey with me – we did all of the NVC courses, retreats, and year-long programs together (except for the Women’s Retreat in 2009!), and I continue to be so grateful for his companionship and deep support on this path!