Navigating Conflict with Grace [Ep.978]

Topic: Utilizing Non-Violent communication in handling disagreements and conflict.

Hi everyone and welcome back to our Thursday Q &A show. I hope you’re having a lovely day. Thank you so much for tuning in to be with us here today. Our topic is around the hormone DHEA and how to create youthful vitality. I’ll talk about some, shall we say, non-mainstream ways to elevate your DHEA and to feel more of this youthful vitality, which I believe is our birthright, and that we can start to really foster and elevate no matter what our biological age is. So this is a show about elevating your life force, feeling great in your life and some really practical tips and tools and strategies to do so such as…..

Episode Summary:

In this episode, Kimberly discusses the importance of navigating conflicts with grace and effective communication. She emphasizes that emotional well-being is just as crucial as physical health, and that poor communication can lead to stress and health issues. Kimberly introduces the concept of nonviolent communication, sharing practical tools to improve communication skills and foster connection in relationships. The episode provides insights into how to express needs clearly and compassionately, ultimately leading to healthier interactions and personal growth.

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Episode Chapters

00:00 Navigating Conflicts with Grace
04:09 The Importance of Heart-Centered Communication
11:19 Nonviolent Communication: A Path to Connection
16:35 Practical Steps for Effective Communication

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STUDIES AND RESEARCH

In 2017, a study published in USF Scholarship: Nursing and Health Professions Faculty Research found that Nonviolent Communication (NVC) training significantly improved empathy and conflict resolution skills among Latino adults and youth by enhancing their ability to understand and express emotions constructively. Participants reported a shift from avoidance, yelling, and aggression to calmer, more empathetic communication, leading to stronger family and community bonds. Many adults emphasized breaking generational cycles of ineffective communication, while youth showed increased awareness of emotional cues in others.

A 2021 meta-analysis published in the Family and Health International Journal examined studies on the ethical principle of nonviolence and the use of NVC and demonstrated its effectiveness in enhancing empathy and improving conflict resolution skills. The analysis found that NVC training significantly increased empathy among participants and improved their ability to resolve conflicts constructively

In 2014, a study published in the International Journal of Listening examined the effectiveness of active listening in initial interactions. Researchers found that active listening responses made participants feel more understood compared to advice or simple acknowledgments. Both active listening and advice improved conversational satisfaction and social attractiveness, though no significant difference was found between them. The study highlights that active listening enhances perceptions of understanding, making it a valuable tool in communication.

A study published in the International Journal of Listening found that active listening can reduce conflict escalation by up to 24%, leading to more harmonious relationships in both personal and professional settings. The research highlighted that companies implementing active listening training saw a 32% decrease in workplace disputes, showcasing its transformative impact on conflict resolution outcomes.

In 2022, a study published in Current Issues in Personality Psychology examined how active listening and mindfulness influence relationship quality and conflict resolution. Researchers found that being fully present, using dialogue-based conflict resolution, and avoiding reactive responses led to higher relationship satisfaction, while active listening helped reduce miscommunication, escalation, and withdrawal behaviors.

In 2015, a study published in Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology examined how owning emotions plays a crucial role in conflict resolution.The study challenges the idea that emotions should be suppressed during conflicts and instead highlights how emotional ownership—recognizing, naming, and regulating emotions—can turn conflict into a constructive process. It introduces a fluid conflict resolution model, incorporating self-awareness, emotional reframing, and cognitive control to help individuals navigate disagreements with clarity and accountability

A study conducted by Alejandra Suarez, published in SAGE Open in 2014, examined the impact of combined NVC and mindfulness training on 885 male inmates at the Monroe Correctional Complex in Washington. The findings revealed a significant reduction in recidivism rates from 37% to 21% among participants. Additionally, the training led to increased equanimity, decreased anger, and improved abilities to take responsibility for one’s feelings, express empathy, and make requests without imposing demands

TRANSCRIPT

Kimberly Snyder (00:01.304)
Hi everyone and welcome back to our Thursday Q &A show. Today we’re gonna be talking about navigating conflicts with grace. And I’m gonna be sharing some really specific communication tools that I think are so important to our wellbeing. When we think of wellness, we often think first of our diet and our exercise and using non-toxic products.

And all of this is so important. These all fit into our cornerstone philosophy, which is food, body, emotional wellbeing, and spiritual growth. But if we have drama, if we don’t have good communication skills, I am totally convinced that this is just as inflammatory in our body, in our system. This produces cortisol. This weakens our collagen. This weakens our digestion. As much as, you know, not eating less than ideal oils or having some junky foods. Everything is energy and everything works together. So I can say in my own life that learning some of these tools and I’ll share about how they came into my life. There’s a beautiful story about synchronicity and how much it’s really helped me stay in my heart. And so what that means is day to day feeling more of that steady heart energy, feeling more peaceful and light, feeling more creative just feeling like there’s this greater flow through the day. And this is a surefire way to increase your vitality. So this is a really important topic. And I really hope my intention for this show is that you are able to take away some really practical tools that you can use in your everyday life and across all your different relationships. Because let’s face it, we’re human, there’s different points of view, we have different perspectives, different backgrounds. So we do have to navigate conflict. or different opinions and ideas from time to time, and almost all of our relationships. Before we go further in, I wanted to remind you that our hub for all our information, our amazing digestion products and courses is mysaluna.com. If you haven’t been over there, I highly encourage you to do so to join our newsletter so you stay in touch with all our different happenings and information. Please also leave us a review.

Kimberly Snyder (02:20.396)
If you haven’t yet for our podcast, it’s such a wonderful way to support wherever you listen to the show. I thank you in advance. And also please share the show with anyone that you think would benefit. Maybe it’s this episode on navigating conflict or any other one, because I really feel like we’re here to share, to feel more of this oneness energy, to pass on information that could really potentially elevate someone’s life. And so much of the information that I’m sharing here.

has come into my life and I’m grateful for it. I pass it on to you. So I encourage you to also follow that same philosophy of passing on. All right, let’s get right into our show today. And this show in particular about conflict, I think spans all of the cornerstones, especially the emotional wellbeing. And also there’s a spiritual aspect to communication as we start to come more into our hearts and into our true self, we realize that we don’t want to have any sort of violence in our life. And what I mean by that is this yogic concept of a himsa, which is nonviolence. And this can happen in many ways. Unknowingly, sometimes we can make comments or in our communication style can feel abrasive or can actually create harm. And we don’t mean to, especially with our loved ones, right?

So there’s this quality of allowing our heart energy to come up more into our throat, into our literal expression in the world, and our heart to flow out through our hands, which is how we type emails and text messages. So there’s many forms of expression, and we want to remain heart-centered through all of them.

So our question today comes from Jordan who lives in London. Thank you so much Jordan for being in our community, sending you so much love there across the ocean. And you write, hello from London, love the podcast and your blogs. I would love to hear you speak about how to be a better communicator and not be so fiery and upset when I get into heated conversations with my partner and friends. What can I do to be a better communicator? So.

Kimberly Snyder (04:38.222)
I want to start off by saying that, you know, many of us, and I could say for myself, did not grow up with, you know, learning really great communication skills. I think our caregivers are giving their best, but a lot of this can get passed on intergenerationally. And I feel that thwarted conversation and an inability to adequately express our needs can create communication blocks such as, you know spouting off a hidden need, but it can feel like we’re attacking another person. Or sometimes we say the same thing over and over again, and it can come across as nagging, and we’re not really allowing someone to hear us, or in a way that person can really take action, and it’s not really clear. And there’s just a lot of frustration on both ends. Right? So a couple years ago, this would have been around

you know, I always think of time in terms of when books came out or my children’s ages, because I don’t think, just in terms of years or my age, my biological age per se. So anyways, my son, my older son would have been quite young, I would say like two or three. And my older son, or my younger son who was born when my older son was four, wasn’t yet born. So we’re looking at about, you know, six, seven years ago.

And I was doing a lot of work projects, speaking videos at this time with Deepak Chopra. And we were starting to work on Radical Beauty together. And I remember being in his office and there was so many books. This is when he had his office in, he had the Chopra Center, which was a couple hours south of here near San Diego.

And I remember being in his office and there was many of his books and there was this book. If you’re watching this on YouTube, I’ll hold it up. This exact copy of Nonviolent Communication written by Marshall Rosenberg. And he said to me, read this book. It’s going to really help you. And Deepak had actually written the forward of this book. And my first thought was, you know, this title of the book is a little strange, nonviolent.

Kimberly Snyder (07:03.768)
communication, made me feel like, you know, violence in a really extreme way where people could be, you know, attacking each other on different sides of a political, you know, situation or something really extreme. But as I started to read this book, I realized how relevant this is for most all of us. And he was talking about things that many of us can do unknowingly, for example, making moralistic judgments.which really don’t feel good to someone else. So let’s say you really want something to shift or change, you have a need, but if you say something like, it’s not appropriate to do that, that can come across to your partner, know, speaking here to Jordan and to all of us in the community and to myself, I had to learn this, saying that’s not appropriate to, you know, say that sort of thing in front of our kids can really feel this sense of violence attacking.

And in the purest essence of a hymnsa, which is one of the, you know, in the limbs of yoga, there’s these yamas and there’s these niyamas, which are codes of conduct, any way in which we speak or eat or act in any form of violence, sense of vibration, which is not in alignment with our hearts. So yes, we want to create boundaries. And yes, we will have needs that we want to express. But when we’re making moralistic judgments,

It really does create separation instead of connection with other people. Also making comparisons doesn’t feel good. It can also create separation. Well, you if you say to your child, well, you know, when Molly was your age, you know, she had already learned to do this, means we’re sort of dehumanizing that person and their experience. And again, there’s a sense of separation or someone tells a story and then you start to, and we talked about this on a recent podcast for the radical listening book, which is such another wonderful guide to increase communication is this concept of radical listening. So I really encourage you to check out that book as well and our show and interview with these guests, which actually their book is coming out. If you’re listening to this.

Kimberly Snyder (09:24.61)
Show in real time, I believe will be coming out in the next week or so. And those authors are also really amazing. So another thing that we can do is use the words should, right? Like you should have done that. And it’s sort of this, know, Dr. David Hawkins talks about how all hypotheticals calibrate as not true, right? There’s no truth in saying, you should have done this because it’s not reality and it’s not what’s present.

And then it makes people feel a sense of shame or that you’re wronging them. And so that really does feel disconnected. So what we’re talking about here before we get into some actual tips is that connection feels good. It feels good to us. It feels good to our loved ones, to our children, to our friends. And so we can stay connected to our hearts and to ourselves and still get our needs met through

communication tools. And again, this is very efficient. This is very different than attacking, pushing, forcing our way, not really listening, hearing someone out maybe, but just thinking about how we’re going to keep saying our way and our opinion. And then what we do is create again, just more of this, the rift between us and others, which isn’t a way to get our needs truly met. Someone may begrudgingly give in to our

requests, but it never feels good and it does not elevate the quality of our relationships. So what we’re really talking about here is a really powerful way to live a more heart led life. And that means that we are able to once again, express from our hearts and to honor other people on their journeys and where they are and their perspective.

but to also communicate what it is that we need and what we would like and to find a medium between not just forcing our way, but to navigate in a loving way, finding a middle ground with us and others, whether that’s at work or that’s at home. And so I did read the book, Nonviolent Communication that Deepak gave me that day, and it really did affect me. And I did sort of…

Kimberly Snyder (11:46.956)
to be honest, forget about it a little bit at some point. And then we have all these bookshelves in our living room. Sometimes my kids randomly pull off books or I’ll be stretching near a fireplace and I’ll, you know, yeah, my yoga mat and a book will catch my eye. And it’s something that I may have read a year or many years prior. And so in the last few months, I pulled non-communication off my shelf.

And I read it while I was at my older son’s chess tournament a few months ago. And it reminded me at this new phase where I’m at with even more devoted heart energy flowing through me that I can really bring these skills back in. And I’m so excited to share them with you because I think that they’re really needed in the world today. I think that many people could benefit from these skills because they’re simple. And the more we learn them, the more we realize that they work.

They create connection and everything just flows better. think about where there’s a sense of conflict in your life currently, right? Let’s, we can make this really tangible and relevant. It could be, you know, I’ll say personally, sometimes, and I wrote about this in the Hidden Power of the Five Hearts, but my husband can have a tendency to leave his clothes. He takes them off.

across the bedroom or in the bathroom, wherever he happens to be, and he drops them on the ground. It could be his dirty socks. It could be his shirt, his sweatshirt, his pants, whatever it is. And I, in the past, have gotten really frustrated and I’ll say to him, know, who do you think is going to pick up those clothes? you know, you know, just can you do it? Can you do it? And it doesn’t get done consistently. Right. So that’s one source or

You know, recently I communicated with my team. There were just too many meetings and podcast interviews being scheduled in a week. And I was feeling really depleted and that I couldn’t keep up with reading this many books. And so there was a need that I had that had to be expressed. And I could say for myself in the way I was raised in the past, I would feel this almost helpless feeling and then annoyance and frustration might rise up.

Kimberly Snyder (14:13.738)
And I might bubble out in a conversation that would feel on different levels of violence on the other side and just like I was attacking them and feeling like they had done something wrong, where actually they hadn’t done anything wrong. They were trying to schedule things and get ahead. And in their mind, wasn’t, we can create this personalization, like this person is doing this to me.

But then we start to take ownership as we come into our hearts and our perspective can grow as we come into our heart’s power. And we see this widening, zooming out effect of this isn’t so personal. This is, I just have to step in with clarity and boundaries and really express my needs. So nonviolent communication was even studied. In 2017, there was a study published in the USF Scholarship Nursing and Health Professionals Faculty Research.

And it found that non-violent communication training significantly improved empathy and conflict resolution skills. Participants reported a shift from avoidance, yelling, and aggression to calmer, more empathetic communication, leading to stronger family and community bonds. So there’s so much that we can gain from learning some really simple, basic communication skills to improve our everyday life.

And as I mentioned at the top of the show, it’s a really powerful way to improve your health and vitality. Because when we’re in conflict, our body feels that there’s stress hormones that are created. Certainly energy is pulled out of our immune system and our digestive system. It flows into what’s perceived as a threat, what’s perceived as a, you know, there’s a reaction in our nervous system. And so it weakens other systems.

And so nonviolent communication is another tool to increase heart coherence because we can stay really centered right here, right now. And there’s a sense of entrainment of making energy systems really more efficient in our bodies and we can flow more through our day. So the first, the first part of nonviolent communication is to make a factual observation.

Kimberly Snyder (16:35.026)
not an interpretation, as I mentioned, not saying, hey, it’s really inappropriate how you said that or how you did that. Like a moralistic judgment is an interpretation. A factual observation is I noticed when we started speaking, you checked your phone a few times, right? That’s the fact instead of, hey, you never listened to me or you’re being so rude. We break it down.

towards a witnessing and observation. I noticed we started having a conversation and you checked your phone, right? So pairing it down, pairing it down, taking out the emotional reactivity and remembering that this will be heard and received much better, even though it may be true that this person was doing something that, you know, felt rude to you. It does feel like an attack if we present it that way. So just the observation, you know.

I noticed that when you were talking to our daughter, you raised your voice, something like that. And then the second part is expressing your feelings without blame. So this is such a huge part. I feel like blame.

creeps into a lot of relationships in different ways. And it’s really a projecting out of our emotional state, instead of taking responsibility for I own my emotions, I am not a victim. So what this could be like, I feel I this ownership, I feel frustrated. I feel sad when I am when I feel like I’m not being heard.

instead of feel how differently this sounds to you make me frustrated. You are so rude, you upset me. Right? It’s ownership. So again, this very neutral observation. I noticed since we started speaking, you’ve checked your text at least three times. I feel frustrated when I don’t feel heard. And then the third is to identify the needs.

Kimberly Snyder (18:53.164)
So what is it that we’re really needing right now? Because sometimes, and Jordan, for you and for many of us, we think we’re being clear, but we’re not. Hey, you are being rude here. You’re a horrible listener or you frustrate me so much, but what’s really the need? So the need in this case could say,

Can we please have five minutes of uninterrupted time to speak? That’s the real need. Or can we continue this conversation without you looking at your phone one more time? Can we speak to our daughter calmly and not raise our voices while we’re trying to talk about cleaning up her closet? Right? This is not the same.

as saying, you know, stop ignoring me, be a better listener. You know, stop being rude, which is very vague. We want to be very specific about what it is that we need. And the more clear we are, the easier it is for our needs to be met, which leads to the fourth point, which is making that actual, you know, clear, actionable, compassionate request.

So it’s again, it flows one to the other. We’re observing, Hey, you know, my case, I’ll give my personal example. You know, I noticed that there’s a pile of your clothes on the floor in the bathroom and also next to our bed. It makes me feel frustrated, because I have a need. When we think about the need here, and then we think about what we’re actually requesting. I need.

to feel I need to have our common areas kept more tidy. So the request comes, please, could you be more mindful? Could you be more thoughtful in just picking up your clothes as you take them off? And I know sometimes you’ll forget, but if you can just remember that it’s important to me, that would be wonderful. So I wanted to just…

Kimberly Snyder (21:16.214)
Make sure it was clear there was a need. And then there’s the request. which, you again, the steps just so we’re ultimately clear is the factual observation. Socks are on the ground. The feeling, I feel frustrated. And then the need is, I need our common areas to be tidy. And the request is, please just put your socks in the laundry or in the hamper. So there is this feeling.

the frustration, but there’s also a need underneath, which we really want to get clear and discern. And then there’s a request that comes out of the need that’s actionable. So I’ll give another example about the, let’s go back to that phone example. So it’s really clear. And I think this is a tangible example. Let’s say you’re talking to your teenage son, not there yet in my phase of parenting, but I have seen friends who have teenagers and I’ve seen this out in public. So the observation is,

Hey, you know, we’re in a conversation right now and I’ve noticed that you keep going on TikTok. Observation, feeling, I’m feeling quite frustrated. The need, because I really, I need to feel heard when I’m speaking to you. So the request is, can we continue this conversation for the next five to 10 minutes while you put your phone away?

And then after the conversation, you can get your phone back out. Right? So it’s very clear. And the other person doesn’t feel attacked because you’re not saying you’re being rude. You should always know to do this. Right? There’s that blaming that really, which makes that sense of separation. We’re owning our feelings. We’re owning that we have a need and we also have a request.

It just, at first it starts to, like when I started doing this, it started to feel like a little bit, you know, like what’s the next step? It’s like when you’re learning the heart aligned meditation, right? You may have to think about one step to the next, but then eventually, you you tense the body, you come into your heart, you do the breaths, you start to recall something that makes you feel appreciation and there starts to be a flow. And it’s the same thing with nonviolent communication. At first, we may start to realize and observe how much

Kimberly Snyder (23:36.386)
We actually are unknowingly using violent communication. Like, you made me feel this way and you are so upsetting and you should have done this, right? And we say that with compassion because again, many of us haven’t learned these skills. And we realize as we observe and as Paramahansa Yogananda says, we continue to introspect and go within. We realize with compassion that we are hurting ourselves. We are creating that sense of separation. So it’s something that we just can continue to navigate.

and develop and improve over time. So there’s another research study. was in 2021, a meta-analysis published in the Family and Health International Journal. And let’s go back to this again for just a moment.

Navigating Conflict with Grace [Ep.978]

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