You and your partner keep having the same fight.

You set boundaries with your mom, but wind up hating yourself if you don't answer her calls.

You value the team you're working with, but expressing your opinions feels like navigating a professional minefield. 

Here's the thing about communication.

It's not magic.

Communication is muscle memory.

Healthy communication, like all skills, are a matter of practice.

The skills you learned in your childhood are what your body knows how to do best.

And if you didn't have an ideal childhood (which many of us didn't), it can feel like an inner and outer battle to build relationships where our needs are valued.

Healthy interpersonal relationships lead to healthy communal relationships.

And healthy communal relationships lead to a world where we can collectively care and tend to each other. 

With better communication skills, we can build a world we want to be in.

You'll leave this course with:

  • A clear understanding of your most common triggers and deepest needs in relationships.

  • Language skills to communicate these needs and to understand the needs of others.

  • Confidence that you can break old relationship patterns and build healthy patterns that work for you.

Client testimonials

Laila Makled

I was able to learn tools that supported me in navigating my own interpersonal conflict, as well as supporting others in conflict with folks they care about. We learned so many tools that I will absolutely be using and reflecting on for a long time. Meendachi's facilitation style and ability to create spaciousness provided a soothing and supportive learning environment.

Aayaan

If you are called to one of Meenadchi's containers, trust yourself, because you are absolutely in the right place. They are a soft force, to be invited into your life and to resource your growth. Meenadchi's course on DNVC for BIPOC practitioners is the most authentic, balanced, grounding and nourishing course I have ever taken. I received a depth of knowledge, skills, practice time, and reverence for both expressing my needs and consent. Thank you, Meenadchi, for sharing your gifts and for inviting us to share ours.

Alli Myatt

After 10 weeks, I am walking away with clear tools to support myself and others to engage in conflict using NVC with a decolonized lens, I have increased my capacity for more empathy for others, and a better understanding how our relationships can support our needs. The greatest gift is one I didn't see coming - I have so much more compassion for myself and my needs.

Decolonizing Non-Violent Communication is a communication framework for people who believe that building healthy relationships is a pathway to collective well-being.

  • First we learn to listen to our bodies. Our bodies are ALWAYS telling us things. That gut feeling that told you not to order the meal that made everyone else sick? Call it gut instinct or intuition - but your body knew.

  • We acknowledge systemic conditions that have shaped our relationship to communication and to each other. Power dynamics are ever-present, which isn't inherently a bad thing. It's helpful when we are able to reclaim our own sense of agency within these dynamics, so that we can communicate our needs effectively.

  • We heal and understand our personal and ancestral traumas. Trauma disconnects us from our body, which is why the idea of listening to the body can feel strange to begin with. As trauma is understood and integrated, the words we speak become more authentically aligned to who we are and what we seek.

  • We develop an emotional vocabulary. Words are AWESOME. The more we have in our pocket, the more accurately we can explain our experience. And the more accurately we explain what's happening inside of us, the easier it is for people on the outside to understand.

  • We practice, we practice, we practice. This stuff isn't theoretical. It is practical and real-life oriented. We learn a tool, we try it. We see what fails, we see what works. We get better at being authentic in relationships that matter to us. And we get better at choosing relationships that value our authenticity.

Course curriculum

    1. Welcome

    2. Who is this work for?

      FREE PREVIEW

    3. Body Sensations, Feelings, and Needs Lists

    4. DNVC Framework Part 1

      FREE PREVIEW

    5. DNVC Framework Part 2

    6. Foundational Principles of DNVC

    7. The chili pepper scale

    8. Grounding Strategies

    9. Two more tings 🐣

    10. Intention Setting

    11. Collective Altar Invitation

    12. Live Q&A

    1. Body Sensations and Needs

    2. Gratitude for the Body

    3. Journaling Prompt: Gratitude for the Body

    4. Neurobiology of Safety

    5. Body Sensations 101

    6. A note on rage

    7. Building a Somatic Practice

    8. Getting to Know Your Body Sensations

    9. Connecting the Dots Worksheet: Body Sensations, Feelings, and Needs

    10. Wind Down Reflections

    11. Collective Altar Invitation

    12. Live Q&A

    1. Defining Empathy

    2. Somatic Empathy

    3. Journaling Prompt: Empathy and Your Body

    4. Verbal Empathy

    5. 4 Ways of Listening Overview

    6. 4 Ways of Listening: Compliments

    7. 4 Ways of Listening: Critical Feedback

    8. 4 Ways of Listening Game

    9. Connecting the Dots: 4 Ways of Listening Worksheet

    10. The Empathy Guess

    11. Connecting the Dots: Self-Empathy Worksheet

    12. Live class discussion and role play

    13. Wind Down Reflections

    14. Collective Altar Invitation

    15. Module 2 Q&A

    1. DNVC Framework Review: Needs and Strategies

    2. Map of Conflict

    3. Differentiating Needs and Strategies

    4. Journaling Prompt: Needs and Strategies

    5. Healthy Relationships are Healthy Strategies

    6. DNVC Needs Mapping Activity

    7. Wind Down Reflections

    8. Collective Altar Invitation

    9. Module 3 Q&A

    1. Observations and Interpretations

    2. Activity Prep

    3. Observations and Interpretations Storytelling Activity

    4. Systemic Injustice and Observations

    5. Interrupting Enemy Image

    6. Interrupting Enemy Image Flowchart

    7. Wind Down Reflections

    8. Collective Altar Invitation

    1. DNVC Framework Review: Requests and Boundaries

    2. Defining Requests and Boundaries

    3. How to Make a Request

    4. How to Set a Boundary

    5. What Happens If...?

    6. Journaling Prompt: What Does Your Body Tell You?

    7. Saying No Activity Demo

    8. Round 1: Saying No Activity

    9. Round 2: Saying No Activity

    10. Round 3: Saying No Activity

    11. Flip the script: Round 1 Saying No Activity

    12. Flip the script: Round 2 Saying No Activity

    13. Flip the script: Round 3 Saying No Activity

    14. Wind Down Reflections

    15. Collective Altar Invitation

About this course

  • $350.00
  • 91 lessons
  • 9 hours of video content

  • All recordings are captioned.

  • 2 year access to content

  • Certificate of Completion

Client testimonials

Vanessa C.

I am so grateful for how Meenadchi creates spaces where learning skills and experiencing transformative connection are simultaneous. In every session, I received both practical tools and a sense of the ineffable beauty that comes when people take care of each other.

Nakia

Meenadchi's knowledge of DNVC, antioppressive lenses and deep love for humanity combine to create a space in which people can be seen, held, practice vulnerability, honesty connection, and reflect on their own truths in embodied integrity. They are a spectacular guide and their workshops will change your life & the way you relate to yourself and others. You might even be lucky enough to make and keep new friends from the class. Whatever dollar cost you invest in this class will be worth it.

Kimberly Joy

Learning the language to talk about needs and feelings and recognizing those in my body has been transformative. I feel like I am able to give myself more space and be more patient with my needs and in turn be more patient and give space to other folks.

LE

I loved being a part of Decolonizing Non-Violent Communication! Meenadchi holds space in a way that invites deep safety, clarity and depth.

About me:


My journey with Non-Violent Communication (NVC) has been a fortunate one.

I was introduced to the tools by Jeyanthy Siva in 2002. We share a home country and a mother tongue. The tools I learned from her kickstarted a change for me and my own mother, as we both began to study NVC and saw how it transformed our relationship.

As I was studying NVC in the United States, something felt off to me. I didn't have language at the time to name it. I left conventional NVC spaces in 2011. I kept the tools close to my heart and used them in my personal and professional life. I began working in suicide prevention, rape-crisis advocacy, and direct crisis response for system-involved youth.

Around the same time, I began going back to my home country, and I was lucky enough to work with my mentor (whom I call Jeyanthy Acca, which means big sister) in NVC trainings she was leading. She introduced me to the concept of Decolonizing Non-Violent Communication (DNVC) by delivering the tools in a culturally responsive way and acknowledging the contexts and histories that shape our understanding of violence and oppression.

Fast forward to 2017. I had completed my master's degree in occupational therapy and continued serving populations impacted by system oppression and the corollary mental health fallouts - serious mental illness, substance abuse, and gender-based violence.

Jeyanthy Acca invited me to assist an NVC retreat she was at, which included a specific focus on power and privilege. It was my first time attending a training of this kind, and it prompted me to realize that I had been gatekeeping my own offerings. 

This is where my DNVC framework was born.

The work focuses on acknowledging our individual and collective trauma while uplifting our brilliance and capabilities. The work is inherently queer and oriented towards possibility.

The relationships we have with each other and ourselves will create the future we want to be in.

Client testimonials

Win-Sie

l have felt safe and open to explore nonviolent communication and family constellations through a decolonizing lens, to sit with grief among likeminded folks in nuanced and tender ways. This is possible because of Meenadchi’s intuitive facilitation—a rare blend of empathy, sass, and lived wisdom that is at once practical, potent, and pithy.

Mike

I have been receiving a space to practice how I use empathy so that I can more clearly and intentionally extend or withdraw it from others in the future when relationships or situations are not well aligned with my needs.

Janae

Over the course of the series, I have been deeply affirmed in my relationship to play and seen really tangible ways that play is a strategic tool for communication.