Welcome to The New Conversations Initiative, a resource center and network for self-help and mutual support in learning new communication skills.  We invite you to explore our free, open-source, workbook, a wide range of articles and training materials, plus an online bookstore, all to help you…

NEWS ITEM: How much difference does conversational style make in a person’s overall health?  Recent research indicates that, for married women in the U.S., it is literally a matter of life and death:

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES , OCTOBER 2, 2007:

A study of nearly 4,000 men and women from Framingham, Mass., asked whether they typically vented their feelings or kept quiet in arguments with their spouse. Notably, 32 percent of the men and 23 percent of the women said they typically bottled up their feelings during a marital spat.

In men, keeping quiet during a fight didn’t have any measurable effect on health. But women who didn’t speak their minds in those fights were four times as likely to die during the 10-year study period as women who always told their husbands how they felt , according to the July report in Psychosomatic Medicine. Whether the woman reported being in a happy marriage or an unhappy marriage didn’t change her risk.  ( read article )   [my emphasis in red]

A New Bookstore Section on Civility, Dialogue and Social Conflict

Guest Articles/Essays/Web Sites:

Active Listening for parents of toddlers (from the New York Times)

The Role of Dialogue in Resolving Community Conflicts (from PBS) Melinda Smith is a conflict resolution expert who has worked in Kalispell, Montana, to help the residents to come to an agreement about sharply contested land-use issues.

Positive Deviant is a magazine article about the transformative power of deep listening, as it occurred in a program to reduce child malnutrition in Vietnam.  It is one of the clearest examples I have ever read of what is now called "appreciative inquiry," which advocates that helpers pay disciplined and systematic attention to the strengths, capacities and past successes of those people they wish to help.

Citizens’ Coalition to Reaffirm and Extend the Geneva Conventions offers a way of addressing the global problems of violence and torture. Our latest article is The Trouble With Torture… Psychological and political arguments against extreme interrogation and preventive detention

Sandhi Institute Nonviolent communication training and community building in war-torn Sri Lanka.

[Please suggest great articles you have read / sites you have visited for this section. Submit suggestions through our Contact Page .]

Resources for Communication Skills Classes and Groups

Need conflict resolution and civility help right now? Try our Conflict Emergency Kit .

Invitations & suggestions on how you can participate today  in the new Conversations Initiative, a cooperative communication skills extended learning community  

Volunteer translators wanted: The Seven Challenges Workbook is now available in Spanish and Portuguese (in both printed book and free PDF file formats) thanks to the wonderful generosity of our volunteer translators, Ilia Morales Figueroa, Annette de Paz and Irene Schardijn.  We invite translation of our books, articles and teaching materials into all languages. (No language community is "too small.") We will be delighted to make your translation available free of charge as a PDF file and/or web page on this site, and to arrange for it to be printed on demand. If you are studying for an MA in translation, please consider translating one or more of our documents as part of your MA program.   (For more information, please send an inquiry using our Contact Form ).

web us/blog us/recommend us — Spread the word about free teaching and training materials. You can encourage the development of more cooperative communicating in families, organizations and nations around the world by placing one of the following links to the Seven Challenges Workbook and to our library of free resources on your personal, organizational, school, college, university or business web site and/or blog.  Copy one of the following links and insert it in the appropriate page on your site.  (Thanks and blessings)

newconversations.net free library of communication skills books, essays and training material

we recommend the free, Seven Challenges communications skills workbook available at www.newconversations.net

newconversations.net free library on communication skills

Free books, essays and training materials on how to communicate and solve problems more compassionately, more gracefully, and more creatively.

The newconversations.net free library

New Conversations Initiative Blog

January 2006 Issue A new translation, the next ten years, and you are already a communication skills trainer

July 2005 Issue Beyond the Hall of Mirrors Reflections on War, Terror and Human Interaction

The New Conversations Initiative Communication Skills Global Bookstore  (includes new entries on listening, question asking, and violence). Presented in cooperation with Human Development Books, Berkeley, CA, publisher of The Seven Challenges Workbook , and sponsor of this site. Books available in USA, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, India, China, Germany, France, and Japan through HDB’s Global Find-A-Book Service.  Your book purchases at the Communication Skills Global Bookstore support this site.

NewConversations.net is proud to be a participant in the following communities:

• Communication Initiative
• Research Community on Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies
• Cape Town Open Education Declaration