One of the greatest strengths of Mindful Communication is almost impossible to notice. It’s invisible. Silent. Effective. And it comes when things get really difficult. It’s the power of “Stopping when the Light is Red.” This means one deceptively simple thing: not throwing fuel on a burning fire. Mindfulness Means Read more…
Susan Chapman’s approach to mindful communication showed up recently on CNN’s website, in an article on Tech Addiction by Amanda Enayati: When someone’s tech addiction causes you stress “….Communication is the essence of human relationships, says Susan Gillis Chapman, author of the book The Five Keys to Mindful Communication. “She Read more…
A psychologist probes how altruism, Darwinism and neurobiology mean that we can succeed by not being cutthroat. An interview of Dacher Keltner, director of the Berkeley Social Interaction Laboratory by David DiSalvo. Dacher Keltner, director of the Berkeley Social Interaction Laboratory, investigates these questions from multiple angles, and often generates results that are both surprising Read more…
In The Five Keys To Mindful Communication, I write about the ‘positive interruptions’ that come from learning to pay attention to the messages from our environment, from our felt experiences and from the wonder of not knowing what will happen next. This story from the New Work Times is the Read more…
This interview with teacher Greg Heffron from winter 2013 talks about the natural way we open to communication, and how we end up shutting down.
“…Tuesday’s gunman incident at an elementary school near Atlanta ended with no injuries or deaths. This is mainly thanks to Antoinette Tuff, a school clerk who spent about an hour calmly persuading the gunman to put his rifle down and surrender.” This is an extraordinary example of a real human Read more…
Susan Chapman’s The Five Keys to Mindful Communication has finally been translated into German. Please pass word along to German speakers you know! Susan Chapman ist Die fünf Schlüssel zur achtsamen Kommunikation endlich ins Deutsche übersetzt worden. Bitte leiten Sie entlang zu Wort Deutsch sprechen Sie wissen!
ALARM CLOCK EXERCISE Using a journal or in dialogue with a friend, talk about your own examples of “magic moments,” of shifting abruptly from a closed to an open mind. Examples: • Being interrupted by the environment or a sense perception • Being awakened by a flash of empathy when Read more…
From page 122 of The Five Keys to Mindful Communication: “To transform the roots of aggression—fear and self-doubt—we need to know the difference between the primary, green-light emotion of sadness, and the secondary, red-light emotions created by the racing thoughts and stories of an angry mind. In between, the fear-based Read more…
It’s been over a year since Susan and Greg conceived of online communities for Green Zone Institute retreats. It took longer than we thought, but on the other hand, web technology became more robust and flexible, allowing us to build the system we really wanted. We’re in the final stages Read more…