Robert Gonzales, CNVC Certified Trainer
Based in the USA, Robert Gonzales offers courses and workshops around the world. He offers work of great depth and transformative power, supporting a lived, integrated and embodied practice of Nonviolent Communication, compassion and wholeness.
Robert’s work, Living Compassion, has evolved as an integration of embodied spirituality and Nonviolent Communication. It has emerged from a lifetime of inquiry into the intersection between spirituality and human communication. His influences include Dr. Marshall Rosenberg (founder of Nonviolent Communication), Stephen Schwartz (creator of Compassionate Self-Care), and other spiritual teachers.
Robert’s trainings offer ways to cultivate daily practices for living life fully and authentically, deeply grounded in compassion for one’s self and others.
Robert received a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology in 1989, and was a practicing therapist for many years, offering individual and couples counselling. He met Marshall Rosenberg in 1985 and began teaching NVC in 1986.
Robert has contributed to the work of the Center for Nonviolent Communication as a Certified Trainer, serving as a Certification Assessor, and as Board President. He continues to serve as a lead trainer for International Intensive Trainings (IITs). He was one of the co-founders of the NVC Training Institute and in 2010, he founded the Center for Living Compassion, a nonprofit organization through which he shares his work.
Contact Details
Email: info@living-compassion.org
Website: www.living-compassion.org
August 2014 – What some other NVC Trainers have said about Robert Gonzales this month
“I have learned a huge amount from working alongside Robert. For me he embodies the compassionate embrace that he teaches. I recommend all NVC practitioners, especially anyone wishing to
train others in NVC, to attend his events and benefit from what he has contributed, building on Marshall’s work.” Gina Lawrie, CNVC Certified Trainer, UK (and the first person to give NVC trainings in Australia)
“Robert Gonzales is a master at taking a seemingly complicated life issue and dissolving it down to the root cause, and thus revealing the Truth. Through his presence and simple tools, lives are transformed and spiritual depth is developed. His workshops are a life-changing, experience – every time!” Mary Mackenzie, of the NVC Academy
“Robert Gonzales has impacted me deeply with the approach that he calls “Compassionately Embracing”. This is now at the center place of how I relate to myself: I now strive to welcome and hold space for any thoughts or emotions that comes in my awareness, before processing it. This is life-changing.” Francois Beausoleil, BayNVC Leadership Program
Here are some testimonials from retreats with Robert and from LIFE Program participants
“The work I have done with Robert Gonzales stands out as the deepest, gentlest, strongest, most challenging and most long lasting, embodied emotional work I have come across so far in my life. I have done quite a bit of NVC training with various facilitators, touched on Hakomi and am currently in the midst of a 4 year Masters of Gestalt Therapy, and Robert’s work is still, for me, the most effective of processes when it comes to raising awareness of what’s happening within, and being able to work with that in ways that break habitual responses and create deep connection with another while holding one’s own integrity. It is exquisite to be in the presence of the balance of intelligence and heart in Robert. He is a deeply inspiring living example of what it is to be uniquely fully human.” Jacinta Foale, Australia
“Robert’s work is the deepest and most profoundly transformative I have experienced in NVC, other communication, spiritual and personal development modalities and trainings. It offers a truly effective and exquisitely beautiful framework for cultivating deep compassion, presence, authenticity and freedom. It is a gift for the healing of our world.” Tracy Adams, Australia
“I went into Robert’s program wondering what I had left to learn about myself, since I’d been working on self-awareness for thirty years. The LIFE Program took me deeper than I ever thought possible and revealed a beautiful tenderness inside of me. I’m more self-compassionate than ever before and my relationships are so much more authentic.” Kristen R. 2012 LIFE
“The deep work of the LIFE program continues to live in me, continues to nourish me. With Robert’s guidance, we co-created a community that vibrated with aliveness, connection, compassion, and healing energy.” Susan Glogovac, 2007 LIFE
“‘To meet yourself with gentleness and compassion is a courageous way.’ This was one of the first sentences Robert said in our training and these words touched my heart deeply. I responded to this challenge and now my life is changing towards more understanding and acceptance for myself and also for others.” Conny
“‘Could there be more? Can we really go deeper than this?’ I asked Robert, wide-eyed after the second week. He just smiled and said confidently ‘Yes.’ He was right. The embodied experience of Living Compassion reverberates within and beyond every cell of my being. I experience myself as that and more.” Barbra E
“If I want to describe my personal experience of Robert’s LIFE Program in one or two sentences, I can say this: I have felt an enormous encouragement and space that allowed me to (re-) discover the connection to the heart – my own and that of others. From that place the world becomes a very different place, it’s full of love and abundance beyond words.“ Gabi
“The environment of the LIFE programme helped me to find my own voice and passion. I am grateful for having learned how to love myself.” Annett Zupke, 2010 EURO LIFE
“Attending this program was truly life changing for me. I deeply appreciate Robert’s ability to so clearly give a cognitive representation of a universal and at the same time very personal experience to contribute to healing and learning at the same time while enhancing self-responsibility.” Simon
“From the Life program I received: Wonderful contact and precious community, wonderful understanding and bodily experience of the Life Energy in Needs. Increased ability to be with myself when I’m in pain and to fully savour my joy.” Ida
“I am so grateful to each of us to having come together on this journey to LIFE. Thinking about us as a community, my heart gets wide and soft and it seems so easy to get in touch with this variety of qualities such as ease, depths, gentleness, mourning, touch, mutuality, play, creative self-expression, wholeness, belonging, adventure, friendship, intimacy, companionship, LOVE, care, life, beauty…” Annette
“The LIFE program, for me, is the drawing out and freeing of the inner most part of who I am, in an atmosphere of Compassionate Presence.” Simone Anlike, 2008 LIFE
“Living from my heart and let you enter my heart. Thank you for the openness, the will to connect, the honesty.” Monie
“I remember loving you for who you really are I remember loving me for who I really am & I know that all of those moments I know that all of you will stay with me and walk with me throughout my all journey.” Yoann
“I was deeply moved by the depth of our work together in this year’s Combined LIFE retreat. The deep work of the LIFE program continues to live in me, continues to nourish me. With Robert’s guidance, we co-created a community that vibrated with aliveness, connection, compassion, and healing energy. We offered our radiant beingness to one another, exploring presence, destiny, intimacy, and vulnerability. We were as one, present to life as it arose in our midst, holding space for our joy and suffering, our laughter and tears. I bow to our beloved community.” Susan Glogovac
“Life changing! Now I truly feel life ebb and flow thru me. I can embrace it fully whether joy or sadness and accept all that life brings.” Susan H.
“Robert Gonzales and the LIFE program invited me to explore and step into a different awareness of how the beautiful ‘LIFE force’ energy lives in me and how learning to “be with that”, i.e. embracing all I feel in each moment…. impacts the connection I have with myself and everyone else around me! The LIFE program for me was: restorative, challenging, encouraging, educational and connecting (as I now have 28 new friends who also value this authentic kind of connection). I am feeling “severe gratitude” for the LIFE program, and how much better aware I am now of how the LIFE FORCE ENERGY continues to flow forth and do its perfect work in each one of us.” Ann H.