Description
In this course we’ll learn ways to better connect with ourselves and others. Skills include: 1. Ways to connect, heart to heart, before saying or doing anything. 2. Discovering what is alive in us each moment; 3. Making observations without evaluations; 4. Exploring how feelings reveal beautiful universal needs, values or dreams; 5. Empathizing with ourselves and others when strategies do not satisfy our needs; 6. Expressing challenging feelings, like anger, in a safe way; 7. Receiving and giving compassion to ourselves and others; 8. Making do-able requests that lead to mutually satisfying (yes! yes!) resolutions. Each week we will read at home and explore in class 2 chapter from Marshall Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication: A Language of Life.
Michael Koran trained people in “Non-Violent Communication” at Newton Community Education, at Tufts University Osher Institute, and in his home. He has explored with his students “Religions For The World” for over 10 years at The Cambridge Center for Adult Education. He has taught over 100 different classes at adult education centers including: “Love and Friendship,” “Story Telling,” “Guidelines to Extraordinary Writing,” “Poems Inspiring Poetic Lives,” “Blessings From Abraham To All, “The Koran,” “Psychic Skills For A Psychic Life,” “Great Scenes From World Theatre” and “Defeating Self-Defeating Behavior.” He has self-published Verse to Better: A Poem for Each Day of Our Year and has performed as a stand-up comic: “Relationships are Hard—Especially with Other People.”
At Boston University for ten years, Michael taught imprisoned men and women in a B.A. program. He taught “Introduction to Philosophy” for 20 years at The University of Massachusetts at Lowell. He has written and performed one-person plays: Prose and Cons: Liberating Stories From Prison, and Inaudible Laughter Forever. He has hosted an award-winning television show: “Getting Out of Prison.” For over 25 years at Cambridge Community Television, he has invited viewers to discover with him, on his show called AHAH, ways to be “A Human Among Humans.”
