Welcome to the website of John Kinyon — co-creator of the Mediate Your Life Approach
The Mediate Your Life (MYL) approach helps you when you are in conflict with someone, or with yourself, in a way that creates empathic connection, collaboration, and new possibilities for resolution
Do you have a conflict in your personal or work life that you need mediation help to resolve or reconcile?
Do you want to receive MYL training to effectively navigate conflicts and difficulties in your life?
Do you want to receive training to be a mediator or conflict coach?
Mediate Your Life with Empathic Communication & Mindfulness
- What is Mediate Your Life (MYL)? The MYL approach integrates empathic communication, a conflict mediation framework, and mindfulness. It supports people to navigate conflicts in all aspects of their lives (inner and outer) using 10 conversation "maps." MYL is based in the international work of Nonviolent Communication (NVC).
- What is Nonviolent Communication (NVC)? NVC is a universal language of human communication that connects people with their natural empathy and compassion, and the capacity for cooperation and creating new, life-serving possibilities. It is often called a language of life, and a language of the heart. NVC was created and developed by Marshall Rosenberg, Ph.D. For more information, see www.cnvc.org.
- What about mindfulness? Responding effectively to life's conflicts and challenges in this approach is about how we use both language and our attention as mindful awareness. The combination of these abilities enhance wellbeing and wellness on mental, emotional, and relationship levels as well as physical.
Testimonials
“John Kinyon is one of our trainers of Nonviolent Communication and someone in whom I have a great deal of trust and confidence. John in my experience has a special gift for facilitating empathic understanding and communication between people. I highly endorse John's skills and abilities with Nonviolent Communication, and I strongly recommend him to anyone needing help resolving a conflict situation.”
— Marshall Rosenberg, Ph.D., creator of Nonviolent Communication (NVC)
"Nothing has enhanced my leadership effectiveness like John's training. I have integrated it into high stakes conversations such as contract negotiations, performance feedback, team decision making, conflict resolution, group facilitation and project debriefs. Connection has become the common thread that runs through my daily encounters. And from that connection arises a genuine spirit of collaboration that is central to the ongoing and dynamic process of creating something that works for everyone."
— Christine F, healthcare executive
“Before NVC and John’s classes, I braced for life’s impact. After, I am trusting and curious, open to outcome. Before, frozen and frightened. After, confident and capable. Before, withered and weak. After, self-acknowledged and compassionate. There is not one part of my life that has not been impacted by nonviolent communication and John’s trainings, all parts touched with the privilege of learning and living these principles. A warmth of gratitude washes across my heart and a sense of sharp joy pricks in my throat as I lean into John’s essence and all he teaches.” - Hope O
"Conflict is like fire. It can be scary and destructive. However, if we have the tools, skills, and structures to support us, this energy brings out new possibilities for the relationships and life we want. Conflict is how life has evolved on our planet. It's how we create the world we imagine, and beyond what we can imagine, through the Power of Conflict."
— John Kinyon
Mission-vision: A critical mass of people around the world with the ability to use empathic communication to respond to the conflicts and challenges they face personally and collectively, so we can work together to create a healthy, just, and sustainable world with all life of the planet.
Mediation
I have been a mediator since 2002 and work with organizations and adult families, particularly with leadership teams, business partnerships, executive coaching, family businesses, and with families dealing with issues such financial matters, sibling relationships, in-law and extended family relations, and care for aging parents. My work fosters understanding, connection, and cooperation, as well as reconciliation of emotional hurt, offering language and awareness skills and "maps" for navigating conflicts between individuals and in the family/organizational system. The approach is based in the work of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and Mediate Your Life (MYL) and gives the ability to have the important and difficult conversations that are essential for harmony, cooperation, success, and new positive possibilities in our lives.
Learning & Community
One of the most important things I have discovered in my 20+ years of work in this space, is that furthering this kind of learning works best in a learning community. To support you in skill development and help you build empathic community, I offer Mediate Your Life online community weekly group practice sessions, retreats, and advanced training, based in Nonviolent Communication (NVC), as well as an online community. The Mediate Your Life Online Course provides training in 10 "conversation maps" for navigating the conflicts, difficulties, and challenges of your life. The Weekend Online Retreat offers a deep, holistic dive into the MYL model and the power of conflict. The 9-Month NVC Mediation & Conflict Coaching Online Training Program provides training in all the skills and "maps" of the Mediate Your Life approach applied to mediation and conflict coaching. Empathy and Mindfulness in Conversation online community is a place online to connect with me and a community kindred spirits.
Events
I envision a critical mass of people around the world using empathic communication skills and structures in difficult and healing conversations, across personal, organizational, and social-political divides, for humanity to be able to work together to respond to the many enormous and daunting challenges before us. I see this as integral to the health and wellness movement and to creating a healthy and sustainable world for all people and all life on our planet. I offer online FREE weekly events to support this movement - Across The Aisle: Healing the Divides in our Relationships, Families, Communities, and Society, One Conversation at a Time, and Reconciliation & Healing Conversations: A Community Space for Practicing Mediate Your Life Maps and Skills (inner and outer). Bridging our Differences and Healing our Divides. And other announcements. Click on the button below for more information.
COMING SOON!
Mediate Your Life Mobile App
Achieve Health and Wellness
Mindfulness and meditation are recognized in the cultural mainstream and the scientific community as an important component of overall health. The next step is the ability for empathic conversation. You'll learn to speak and listen to yourself and others in a nourishing way that contributes to thriving and flourishing. Shift from disconnection and conflict to connection and compassion. Our neurophysiology is wired for care and bonding. Supportive community and belonging are woven into the core of our ancestral inheritance and memory. Bringing awareness, presence, and consciousness into conversation, including difficult conversations, opens new pathways to health and wellness.
Live Resiliently
Resilience is a quality that is key to your overall well-being. Bounce back from adversity, conflict, failure, embarrassment, heartbreak and loss, anxiety, stress and overwhelm with new tools to become resilient by having better quality conversations with yourself and others. There are dimensions of mindfulness that are integrated with distinctions and skills of empathic communication. You gain an increasing capacity and ability to tap into connection that is already inside you and all around. Through the synthesis of awareness and language, combined with practice in a supportive learning community, a foundation of mental and emotional resilience develops happiness and well being--and being able to respond to challenges with resourcefulness and creative solutions.
Unlock Your Creativity
Creativity. It’s not just about being artistic or a special ingredient of productivity in your work. It' a primary component of the core skill set for experiencing a happy and successful life. When challenges arise how do you get to wise solutions? How do you access creativity in daily living? This work offers a way to get there through mindful conversation with yourself and others. The journey of these conversations takes you into the field of infinite potential and possibilities. You'll gain access to information, ideas, and insights that transcend the limitations of the thinking you started from. This ability will be increasingly essential for you to be able to respond to the rapidly growing magnitude and complexity of the challenges before you, and to find a way for you to have healthy and sustainable living.
Deepen Your Connections with Empathic Communication
Relationship and working together. Whether personal or work related, there is an essential, underlying quality to all our relationships — the degree of empathic connection. Beyond the roles and contexts, the conversations we are in through the day have the potential for a depth, richness and power that is exquisite. These connections become a tremendous source of well being, support, and opening to creativity, insight, and collaboration. There is a way to reliably produce this experience, and return to it when it is lost, by how we speak and listen, how we pay attention and use words, and how we move with life’s flow and currents of innovation to create the relationships, work, life and world we envision.
