Reality NVC: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Living Truth

A series of 9 lunchtime drop in sessions

Welcome to Reality NVC 

The Reality NVC program aims to bring stimulating and exciting themes into the realm of NVC, inviting a live correspondence in the moment for a more enlivening and connecting experience.  We will be bringing alive the poets, writers, artists, philosophers, community movers and makers, and the such like.  

The Experience

Through NVC lens and practice, we'll explore how these visionaries integrated inner work with outer transformation. Sessions include dialogue, reflection, needs exploration, and practices for embodying their wisdom in our own lives and communities.

Who's Welcome?

NVC practitioners at all levels, activists, change-makers, and anyone seeking to align personal integrity with collective liberation. Bring your questions, your struggles, and your longing for a better world.

When?

April 16 - 18 June 2026 (Thursdays 12.15 - 1.15)

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Kundera's great novel poses a question with no comfortable answer: if life happens only once, nothing leaves a permanent mark — and yet this lightness is unbearable. We long for weight: - rootedness, a love that binds, security and a place to rest our heads.

Over nine sessions we move through challenging and stimulating existential territories  — death, grief, aging, suffering, loneliness, love, and wounds that won't close — TOGETHER!   We bring NVC, in embodied presence to meet them with openess, sensitivity and care for forward movement and meaningful connection.

Reality NVC does not offer comfort that bypasses pain. It offers something rarer: presence that can accompany us into the places we may have found challenging — and find there, beneath the edge, a deeper aliveness and healing.

Core Themes We'll Explore Through NVC

•  Your Response — sensing into what this theme means for your own life and unlived moments
• Weight & Lightness — how we carry our lives, and what we set down
• The body as companion — felt sense as guide into what matters
• Tragic expressions of unmet needs — understanding avoidance, numbness, and flight
• Self-connection as ground — depth within as the basis for meeting others
• Empathy for the hardest territories — accompanying ourselves and each other through what is most difficult
• Life-serving strategies — creative responses when familiar ways no longer work

Session Titles and Dates

Session Dates and Themes

Each session invites you to meet these themes through the NVC lens — to sense the needs alive beneath the difficulty, to notice what resonates in your own life, and to practise the timeless language of human needs and values that connects us all.

Contribution and Sustainable based Pricing

(See 'Buy ticket' for actual costs, make sure you scroll all the way down).

These sessions require significant preparation, facilitation, and follow-through. Pay what feels true for your circumstances, honouring both your financial means whilst valuing this creation. Your honest self-assessment—supported by those who can contribute more—keeps this work available to all. I am of course delighted to receive what you give. My dog, Skye, and cat, Miss Pippin, will also wag their tails.

• Any Session: General Admission                   £15.00
• Any Session: Concession                                £12.50
• Super-save on All 9 Sessions                         £90.00
• Per Session Financially Strapped                  £6.00
• Per Session Beyond Financially Strapped:   By Donation

(See 'Buy ticket' for actual costs, make sure you scroll all the way down).

You might also like 

Reality NVC The Residential 

- a 3 day event at the exquisite Braziers Park

Living Truth confidently where Angels Fear to Tread @ Braziers Park

In the Focusers Guide Series, you might also be interested in:

What are you going to do with your one and only Precious Life? 

See also Focusers Guide to GREAT PHILOSOPHERS and INDIGENOUS WISDOM HOLDERS

Deepen your NVC and Focusing Training:

Focusing Skills Training and Events      Nonviolent Communication      

Embodied Empathic Presence Trilogy for Restorative Wellbeing & Community - 3 Residentials @ Braziers Park.

Meet Simon 'Ketu' McKibbin

Presence Guide, Mentor, Friend and Coach.

We are living in unprecedented times—both thrilling and unsettling with forces beyond our control at play on financial, global, environmental, and social levels. The lack of meaning in materialism has left our culture's social fabric empty, sowing confusion in our identities and a sense of lostness about what it means to feel secure, grounded in the natural order, and truly connected to others and the awe and mystery of the universe.

We live in a culture of atomization where technology promises connection yet alienates us further—moving from Cartesian "I am" to Apple "I-Phone," faces frozen and hypnotized by screens. The proliferation of information competes for our attention—it's hard to draw breath and sense our true identity as sovereign beings.

And yet... in every moment, the sun rises and stars offer their soft light. The ground remains ever faithful, lovingly supporting us. Birds continue to sing, trees remain rooted, oceans stay deep, and there is richness and beauty in every precious, tingling, vibrant moment. A silky breath slides into our bodies from the skies as the universe continues breathing through us, perfuming every cell with vibrancy and warmth. We are here now, alive—coming home to ourselves is the prayer of every star, every mote of dust. Something deep within knows how to return to its authentic original self—like a hidden gem stitched into a garment's lining, we had it all the time. Embodied Relational Presence offers a portal to true self-empowerment where we realize we are not foam buffeted by waves, but the ocean itself.

For over 34 years, I've supported individuals and communities toward greater personal and professional empowerment through Mindfulness, Nonviolent Communication, and Focusing—practices that unlock our capacity to live more fully, creatively, and courageously. My work bridges inner transformation with outer change, rooted in active commitment to ecological regeneration, social equity, and nonviolent living through grassroots organising and co-creation. I invite you into this portal of Embodied Relational Presence—where there is autonomous, sovereign, connected, and irrepressible life—to become both magician of your own wholeness and powerful ally for planetary regeneration and collective wellbeing.

Experience: CNVC Certified NVC Trainer | BFA Focusing Teacher | Breathworks Mindfulness Teacher | Associate Mindfulness Teacher, University of Cambridge (2017–2023) | Extinction Rebellion consultant, mediator & trainer | Møller Institute Cambridge University Executive Coaching Guest Lecturer | Mindfulness in Schools Project (MISP) teacher | Triratna Buddhist Order member | Samaritans volunteer

Contact Simon simon@living-presence.co.uk