KPFA - Talk-It-Out Radio

In Nonviolent Communication classes, sometimes participants think the class is going to be about communicating with others. But what people often get most out of the class is how to communicate with themselves and how to speak more kindly to themselves. Host Marlena Willis plays excerpts from Buddhist teacher Tara Brach’s CD, Radical Self-Acceptance, while weaving Tara’s insight and wisdom on working with shame with Marlena’s own experience healing from trauma using meditation and Nonviolent Communication. (The CD is a pledge drive premium – PLEASE SUPPORT TALK IT OUT RADIO AND KPFA with your pledge!)

Tara Brach, PhD Is the founder and senior teacher of Insight Meditation Community of Washington, DC. She is a practicing clinical psychologist, a lay Buddhist priest, and author of the books In the Shadow of the Buddha and Radical Acceptance.

The post Love Yourself No Matter What appeared first on KPFA.

On Talk It Out Radio, our intention is to provide everyone with tools and practices that work to increase compassion and kindness in the world. We know that your relationship with yourself may be the most important relationship in which to practice these things. It turns out that each of us has ongoing measurable brain activity that happens between other tasks, that is primarily concerned with relating to ourselves. This is called “the default network.” It’s how we talk to, and listen to, and honor ourselves – or not. For some people, this “default network” can be cruel, and can be a source of ongoing pain that we barely notice day to day.

Sarah Peyton, international teacher and healer in the field of Interpersonal Neurobiology, and Certified Nonviolent Communication trainer, has collected her tried and true healing practices for our relationship with ourselves in a new book: Your Resonant Self: Guided Meditations and Exercises to Engage Your Brain’s Capacity for Healing.

Your Resonant Self synthesizes the latest developments in neuroscience, trauma treatment, and the power of empathy into an effective healing method that literally rewires our brain and restores our capacity for self-love, emotional regulation, and well-being.

In Sarah’s words, “You can learn to use compassionate language to transform your inner critic into your most compassionate advocate.”

In this Sunday’s show, Sarah helps you practice, with her warm and kind guidance, the age-old art of creating love and kindness for yourself as the foundation to creating the relationships we want to see in the world. Callers are welcome.

The post Building A Resonant, Kind Relationship with your Self Using Brain Science and the Compassionate Language of Nonviolent Communication appeared first on KPFA.

Nancy Kahn hosts a show on communication practices that support close relationships: family, partners and friends. Why do people find it so difficult to communicate with the people they have the closest connections with? Dr. Marshall Rosenberg said we lose all of our skill with the people we are closest with when we get triggered. What communication challenges and interpersonal dynamics are people experiencing in close relationships? How can people move beyond stuckness and the cycle of participating in ways that leave them feeling repeatedly disconnected and disappointed? What practices can reconnect people back to power in their world and provide liberation from responding out of habit, instead of by choice?

Nancy offers insights and practice with several examples. She is live on air with listener calls and excitement to hold empathic presence and hear what people are going through. She gives live coaching on the air for your relationships.

The post Communicating Within Our Closest Relationships: Building Emotional Intelligence Muscles appeared first on KPFA.

Martin Luther King Jr. taught us to attack forces of evil, not persons doing evil. His movement encouraged us to bring our indignation and confrontation to the ideas, the beliefs, the conditions, and the structures of injustice or violence, but to bring our compassion to the people caught in playing out these beliefs and structures.

Arno Michaelis, an ex white power movement organizer, says that his way out of hatred did not come from being screamed at or being told that he was wrong, but through compassion from the people he claimed to hate:  “They treated me with kindness when I least deserved it, but when I most needed it.”

Responding with compassion and integrity is difficult when we are faced with violent thoughts and intense emotion. We need training and practice to embody the values of kindness and compassion in these moments.

This edition of Talk It Out Radio offers guidance and practice with several examples. Host Timothy Regan is live on air with listener calls and willingness to practice the skills of empathy together.

The post Facing Dangerous Thinking with Empathy – A Practice Session appeared first on KPFA.

Hosts Timothy Regan and Nancy Kahn speak to the upset, fear and helplessness that many people are experiencing as a result of what we hear reported on the discussions between the leadership of the United States and North Korea. They offer their vision of what restorative dialogue sounds like and contributes to these discussions and to the full humanity of all of us.

The post At the Table with the US and North Korea appeared first on KPFA.