What we offer
We offer learning opportunities to delve into the principles we work with and learn what’s possible through live learning or our immense library of resources.
We offer tools to put into practice, immediately, to increase capacity.
We offer pathways to support us, join us, and experiment with us.
Learning opportunities
With the exception of extremely few people who still live in intact, indigenous, matriarchal societies, all of us have been socialized away from this way of being that is cellularly imprinted, and made to fit into societies that function on the basis of scarcity, separation, and powerlessness.
One of the foundations of our work within the Nonviolent Global Liberation community (NGL) is an unwavering trust that a different way of living is entirely possible and that we can make these shifts, both individually and collectively, and fully restore our capacity to live in flow, togetherness, and choice. Not in the sky, not in an afterlife, and not somewhere else: here, now, with each other, in ever widening circles.
Although NGL has only existed since 2017, a number of us have been experimenting and teaching for years before. The recent years have accelerated our own learning and our resulting toolkit, and we share all we know in courses that are all offered on a gift economy basis.
Here is what we have available:
- Learning Packets, Videos , Audio Recordings, Articles
We also have a wealth of resources, including audio and video recordings, hundreds of written articles, a few books, a few dozen learning packets covering the entire range of the NGL framework, and a self-study course in a unique approach to Nonviolent Communication. With the exception of all printed books and some of the electronic version of the books, all this is available on the Fearless Heart website on a gift economy basis, without a paywall, though we make requests for contribution for some of them.
- Monthly introductions to the NGL framework
These are 3-hour intensive dips on different topics each month, covering the entire range of what we engage with within NGL, from the most intimate aspects of individual living to grappling with questions about global governance.
They are offered by Miki Kashtan at rotating times and by others within their networks. You can learn more and register here.
- NVC for Liberation series
These are short-term ongoing series offered a few times a year. NVC for Liberation is an approach to sharing Nonviolent Communication that connects the basic building blocks of NVC to the legacy of nonviolence and brings in a systemic lens that supports learning and compassion.
They are offered by Verene Nicolas, Menaka Neotia, and several others within NGL. You can learn more and register here. You can also delve into some of the materials in the “NVC as a Path of Liberation” packet.
- Introductions to the Vision Mobilization
These are six-week introductions to this framework which are offered a few times a year. The Vision Mobilization (VM) framework is how we organize into one coherent whole all of the original work that came from Miki Kashtan and is now the NGL framework, as well as all that we have continued to work with and develop within NGL. This framework supports any of us in moving towards vision from wherever we are.
These are offered by Emma Quayle, Eddy Quinn, and A. Yaren Köse, with support from others within NGL. You can learn more and register here. You can also delve into some of the materials in the “Mobilizing toward Vision” packet.
- Monthly Conflict-Engagement Coaching Calls
These calls are offered most months and are hands-on accompaniment for those who want to be prepared to support their families, communities, movements, and organizations in attending to conflict, both interpersonally and systemically.
They are offered by Mariam (Mars) Gafforio. You can learn more and register here. You can also delve into some of the materials in the “Conflict Engagement Systems: From Consequences to Capacity” packet.
- Nonviolent Activism for Liberation
These calls are offered at least monthly and are an opportunity for people who are yearning for companionship to immerse deeply in the experience of nonviolence and the rigor of its implications for activism.
They are offered by Miki Kashtan and co-held with Madi Loustalot and Mariam Gafforio. You can learn more and register here. You can also find much that we engage with in two the “Nonviolence as an Orientation to Life” and “Working for Transformation without Recreating the Past” packets.
- Responding to the Call of Our Times: A Leadership Coaching Course
This is a yearlong course that is an opportunity for deep dive into what it means to step into the fullness of our power to act as leaders in times of great peril for humanity and all life. Participants are from all over the globe. In 2022, there are close to 400 people registered, of whom about 100 come every week. This may seem like a lot, and yet the sense of community and intimacy is palpable.
This course has been offered by Miki Kashtan annually since since 2017. You can learn more and register here.
- Convergent Facilitation Intensives
This course is an intensive introduction to Convergent Facilitation, a method developed by Miki Kashtan to support groups in making collaborative decisions that work for everyone even when significant divergences or even conflict are present.
This course is offered a few times a year by different individuals, often by Roni Weiner and Magda Baranska. You can learn more about these intensives, along with other Convergent Facilitation introductory workshops the next one here, and about Convergent Facilitation in general here. You can also download the book The Highest Common Denominator by Miki Kashtan or buy a physical copy here.
- Convergent Facilitation Coaching Calls
For people who have taken the intensive or have read the book, we are offering ongoing coaching calls in support of actually implementing and facilitating decisions for groups.
These are offered by experienced Convergent Facilitators as often as possible. You can learn more and register here.
- Introduction to the Maternal Gift Economy
This offering is not yet available.
We are beginning to design these offerings, in which we can share with others the principles and practices we have been using within NGL to do everything we are doing. We aim to do everything within NGL based on willingness and within capacity. This means uncoupling giving from receiving and flowing resources to where they are needed, without any coercion. We have no bosses and no employees. And about 30 people are sustaining themselves in whole or part based on money freely gifted to NGL and shared based on needs. All this is what we want to support others in beginning to use and experiment with elsewhere.
- Liberation for All: Power, Privilege, and Our Collective Future
In December 2022 Miki Kashtan, Aurélia Saint Just, and Menaka Neotia offered our first course in this area through the NVC Academy. The particular focus of that course was on integrating this lens into the sharing of Nonviolent Communication. We are planning more courses in this area over the coming period.
- Introduction to Organizational Systems
This offering is not yet available.
Since 2012, Miki Kashtan has been working with organizations using an approach that focuses on aligning five organizational systems with purpose and values: decision making, resource flow, information flow, feedback flow, and conflict engagement. When the Vision Mobilization framework was synthesized, this approach became an integral part of it, both for individuals and for groups, teams, organizations, movements, and communities, supporting them in moving, as a whole, towards their own vision. The course is intended to support people who want to learn how to work with groups and organizations, either those they are part of or those they serve.
Tools
Something basic is not working in how our current systems function. Many of us, all over the globe, know it. And yet most groups and organizations continue to function in the exact same ways that we have inherited from thousands of years of scarcity, separation, and powerlessness. We do this even when we have large visions, when we tell ourselves we will manage to do things differently, or we are actively mobilized to create change.
One of the reasons is that most people don’t know of alternatives.
Here’s where we come in based on our own experience, both within NGL and in working with other organizations and communities. We want to support you in creating the structures that will allow your entire organization to take a leap in the direction of your own vision.
Here’s what it can look like:
- Working with your organizational systems
If you truly want to align your work with vision, we can support you to articulate your vision, discern your values from within it, name your purpose based on actual capacity as it exists within the organization, and then align everything else with these foundations. This is careful and delicate work that is based on deep accompaniment, voluntary participation, and a commitment to truth-telling and discovery. It is likely to take many months and move slowly from system to system so that you can keep functioning and attending to purpose even while the deep realignment is unfolding.
- Practical implementation support
Beyond setting up organizational systems, being able to function in a visionary way requires specific and ongoing practices that re-groove how individuals and teams function. We can support you here through facilitation, accompaniment, and coaching in multiple areas, such as:
- Converting principles to practical steps for the implementation of new systems
- Reaching collaborative outcomes in areas of high divergence
- Speaking more truthfully and with utmost care
- Sharing impacts usefully, including across power differences
- Integrating the shift to functioning based on needs and willingness
- Hands-on customized capacity building
Almost all of us are very far from being fully alive, empowered, creative, and collaborative selves. This is because of how much we have internalized “business as usual” approaches. Shifting to a new way of functioning can often accelerate when the capacity to do so increases instead of only relying on agreements to fill the gaps in capacity. Here are some specific training topics that other organizations have found useful, and we can engage with you in finding others that are more precisely tailored to your needs.
- Giving and receiving useable feedback
- Engaging in difficult conversations
- Group and dialogue facilitation
- Collaborative leadership as care for the whole
- Collaborating across power differences
Our experience is that not every organization is a fit for the approach that we use. Here are some questions for you to consider before approaching us:
- Are you open to aligning means with ends even if it may mean reducing or eliminating profits?
- Are you committed to functioning on the basis of willingness, without any direct or indirect coercive measures?
- Do you see the organization embracing the principles of radical transparency?
- Do you trust that the people working within the organization are open to being pulled towards more empowered choices even if it’s uncomfortable?
- Is collaboration deeply important to you?
- Are you open to aligning means with ends even if it may mean reducing or eliminating profits?
- Are you committed to functioning on the basis of willingness, without any direct or indirect coercive measures?
- Do you see the organization embracing the principles of radical transparency?
- Do you trust that the people working within the organization are open to being pulled towards more empowered choices even if it’s uncomfortable?
- Is collaboration deeply important to you?
If you answered “yes” to all or most of the above, let’s talk. You can contact us here, and one of us will be in touch.
Pathways
None of us know what, if anything, has the potential to turn around humanity’s march towards massive and unimaginable destruction on planet Earth. The complex, painful, and simple reality is that we don’t actually know, collectively, how to solve any of our global challenges. Beyond mourning this painful reality, we are each called, both individually and collectively, into deep discernment about what is ours to do in this context.
Our own discernment within NGL has led to identifying our purpose: “To integrate nonviolence into the fabric of human life through ongoing live experiments with truth focused on individual and collective liberation.”
Our work is leading us to learn and discover what is possible for humans and how we can function under optimal conditions of high togetherness and high trust, so that we can then share the results of our experimentation – through offering learning opportunities and tools – with others who are in contexts where the conditions are less optimal.
We are eager to grow our capacity to plant seeds, experiment, and gift the results. Is engaging with us in support of what we are doing part of what’s yours to do? Are you pulled towards putting the fullness of your life energy towards closing the gap between the current global crises and fully interdependent living?
Below we describe three of our experiments. Each of them relates to one pathway of engaging with us. Are any of them touching your longing for realigning humanity with life?
- Seeding a global maternal gift economy
NGL started in September 2017, and we have been experimenting, ever since, with how far we can go purely on the basis of the core principle of resources flowing from where they exist to where they are needed within willingness. At present, this means the following:
- All the work that happens within NGL is based on this principle, except where our own patriarchal conditioning interferes, something we engage with ongoingly. All our work is done within teams. We have no bosses. No one tells anyone else what to do. When capacity isn’t there, we don’t mask it with incentives or pressure and we mourn the voids that then exist. Decision making is widely distributed and our ways of functioning arise from organic learning.
- Every last bit of what it takes to sustain our work, both in terms of human capacity and in terms of financial resources, comes to us through gifting. Some money comes to us when people attend learning events or when we work with individuals, groups, organizations, communities, or movements. Then, three times a year, we ask for financial gifts in the following way:
- We make our needs known within NGL, as individual and as pods. At present, there are over 30 people who are invited to make requests based on their engagement with NGL who are living on three different continents.
- We make the totality of the needs known to our larger community, and then, as a whole, we ask our community for support.
- We distribute what we have aiming to give everyone their minimum request and, beyond that, prioritizing vital functions.
In all these ways, we see ourselves as bringing reverence to the material plane of existence, caring for everyone who works with us within capacity, and seeding a global maternal gift economy, starting with 30 people on three continents for whom all or part of our sustainability is dependent on what comes to us.
Much of what has emerged from these experiments is now available in various packets within the “Restoring Flow” category: “Restoring Flow Using NVC”, “Practical Aspects of Restoring Flow”, and “Working for Transformation without Recreating the Past”.
Do you feel called to support us financially? Click here.
- Liberation from socialization
From the start, we have been actively investigating deep questions about what needs to be in place for us humans to be able to recover from individual, intergenerational, and collective trauma which gets internalized through patriarchal socialization into scarcity, separation, and powerlessness. We are concerned that the path of individual healing from trauma is too slow for the gravity of what we are facing, and we are exploring when such healing is truly necessary.
Here are some of the questions we are looking at:
- How much capacity can a cohesive, high-trust group have to integrate people with significant trauma and still continue to function in togetherness and attend to purpose?
- How far can any of us continue to move towards leadership, aligning with values and purpose, authentic relationships, choice within togetherness, and whatever else we imagine as part of visionary functioning without needing to put significant resources into doing healing work?
- To what extent can anchoring our commitments behaviorally support us in staying the course even when we are challenged because of trauma?
- How far does being part of a community serve, in itself, as a path of liberation? Is it enough for us to be held in full? Does it shift our baseline functioning when authentic expression is a baseline and care and empathy are woven into how we work together? Is in-the-moment support about how to respond when any patterns arise sufficient to support us in finding choice in difficult moments?
- How can we develop trauma healing modalities that are oriented to the moment and to purpose and are systemically rather than individually grounded?
In all these ways, we see ourselves as challenging deep norms and developing our own principles about what care means within the context of a rigorous commitment to liberation, how to integrate purpose focus with deep intimacy, and about how to co-discern, within the focus on vision and liberation, whether and when it makes sense for someone to be part of a group.
If these questions are of interest to you, this is only the tip of the iceberg. We have a section in the website that we are affectionately calling “the Nerdy Corner” where you can find out much more about us: the over 40 principles that we are articulating within our values; the practices and the many voids that they point to (coming soon); the detailed version of our gift experiments (coming soon); documentation about our work; what we learned from a community experiment in 2021; and more as it gets added over time.
- Inverting corporate structures
In our experimentation, we question everything we’ve been told is true, necessary, or inevitable. We have no taboos or limits on what we are willing to explore. What guides us is the depth of our commitment to nonviolence. We want to create a field of love strong enough to surround the patriarchal field of scarcity, separation, and powerlessness, and bring humanity again to live in flow, togetherness, and choice. Even as we don’t know what it will take, on the practical plane, to generate so much love, we keep humbly taking the next step in our experimentation. Since early 2022, this has meant, among much else, that we are re-learning how to put caring for vital functions at the center of what we do. This is our response to seeing that with all of our conditioning, and in the absence of bosses, coercion, should, and incentives, more people get involved with supporting someone in distress than with note taking in meetings, uploading recordings, or responding to people who contact us.
We are learning that the implications of this pathway of seeding and experimenting are immense. We are still quite early in this exploration, and the questions are already many:
- How do we mend the mind-body split enough to hold vital functions with reverence and joy?
- How do we seed a culture of participation in vital functions without pressure on anyone to do it?
- Being primarily an online community, what is our equivalent of washing dishes and maintaining the house?
- What is a pathway that will support us in learning how to invert the logic that prioritizes those who sell and manage, so we can, again, bring reverence to those who take on the work of tending the fire?
- What would a pathway of engaging with NGL look like that integrates service with liberation and will support all of us in attending to the many voids we have in our basic functioning?
If you are called to experiment with us, becoming an active NGL Friend may well be your next step.
At present, we are experimenting with asking people who want to join us to start by supporting existing teams with note taking, tracking, and whatever else any team needs to be able to do its work.
We also invite you to consider joining a Liberation Pod or a Purpose Pod, to engage with our Vision Mobilization offerings, and in whatever other way you see possible, to build a home for yourself within NGL.
Your liberation, our liberation as NGL, and the liberation of all of humanity are all intertwined.