This ongoing program is designed to support you in freeing yourself to find out what it means to fully step into leadership in all aspects of your life and play your part in making life work for everyone, no exceptions.

Leadership is not about your position in the world. No matter your life circumstances, your leadership is about taking responsibility for the whole, whatever that whole is, within your own sphere of influence: your own life, your family, your work, a community you belong to, an organization within which you are leading, or a social movement you are part of. 

As Miki says: "There are two steps to leadership. The first is to empower ourselves fully to know what we want and find pathways to care for what matters to us. The second is to risk our significance and do the same on behalf of the whole.” 

Leadership is an orientation, not a position. It is about how you engage with your circumstances, not what your circumstances are. Whoever you are, whatever your challenges are, this program is designed to support you in responding to the call of our times through ongoing coaching and support in the following areas:

• Stepping fully into your power and using it creatively and collaboratively; 
• Find the courage to collaborate with others fully in relation to a shared purpose – whether it's at home, at work, or within a community;
• Integrating nonviolence into how you engage with yourself, others, and life overall;
• Cultivating regular access to facing and mourning current reality as a source of greater choice and energy;
• Combining power and love in a way that transforms the legacy of scarcity, separation, and powerlessness into a livable future;
• Surrounding yourself with enough support to find baby steps in the direction of vision from wherever your current reality is; 
• Discovering the enormous power of integrating everyone’s needs and concerns (without forgetting your own!) to reach collective wisdom;
• Living from integrity in more and more circumstances within your sphere of influence; 
• Infusing your inner life with tenderness and acceptance. 

The purpose of this course is “To accelerate individual and collective liberation in times of global crises through live coaching and engaging actively in co-learning nonviolent leadership.”

This program gives you the opportunity to approach life from the driver's seat and simultaneously be more connected with others… more able to ask for what you need and simultaneously more able to choose wisely even when your needs are not met.

And all this with support and companionship along the way…

More about the program

This is the tenth year of this program. Many people come back repeatedly, and we have people who have signed up for all past years. We are awed by the groundbreaking success of this program in moving people forward in their leadership and establishing support networks that have been lasting for years. Year after year, the strength of the community grows, more people make unexpected leaps into strength and liberation, and many find the courage to take immense risks in order to live in line with their deepest essence. Many people experience this program as an oasis, a place of refuge from the ways our societies function, and a lab of exploration of how to be in this time in human history.

This course attracts many people and still manages to create a deep sense of community and intimacy every year. People stay after the weekly call is over in what is now called the “after-party”, and form temporary and lasting groups, some continuing well beyond the end of the year. This is not accidental: we need a lot of support when we step into leadership, especially when we want to lead in visionary ways.

“With Miki I witness consistent acknowledgement of and deep care for collective shared humanity, for all beings, for life itself. For me this rigorous, vulnerable, open-hearted holding brings me back from feeling separation, to being curious about new possibilities, opens my heart, renews my hope for the world.” - Liz O.

Our 2026 program includes:

• Forty-five sessions
  We meet every Friday from 12:00 - 2:00 pm Pacific (California) Time from February 6 through December 11, for a total of 45 sessions (recordings of all sessions are available to everyone who registers!). In each of these sessions, what happens emerges from what people bring to the class as questions, challenges, insights, or other requests along with Miki's detailed, attentive, challenging, and tender coaching. There's no set curriculum, and the class operates like a lab, or as one participant called it: an international think-tank about leadership. Miki leads the majority of the sessions and invites guest speakers at other times. We believe that the blend of Miki's laser-sharp focus and passion for supporting the emergence of a growing group of leaders who are oriented to making a difference everywhere they are, and the gifts and vision of the colleagues she personally invites, is a unique and dynamic combination.  
• Materials
  Since there is no curriculum and Miki doesn't do linear teaching, there are no official materials for this course. That said, Miki has thousands of pages of materials that can enhance and deepen your learning, including close to 2,000 pages in over 40 learning packets. (New ones still being created.)
• Modeling leadership
  How Miki shows up to this course is itself part of what the learning is about. Miki focuses on a fully human approach to leadership, full of humility and vulnerability and bringing forth the edges of her own living, active learning, and open  experimentation in her work elsewhere.
• Leadership and collaboration opportunities
  In addition to Miki’s facilitation, this course has an additional layer of support that grows year by year. Participants who return from previous years have consistently accepted the invitation to take on active leadership in support of Miki and all participants. This means both more support for everyone and more leadership and growth opportunities. In addition, both within the course and beyond, people from diverse backgrounds all over the world co-create lasting friendships, support networks, experiments, communities of practice, and form pods to explore co-holding and experiment with shared risk. These collectives build strength and grow trust in life while collaboratively applying their learnings to take on leadership in their communities and daily lives. While co-holding one another’s dilemmas, they embody the leadership they long to see in our world, with robust support to stay committed to nonviolence and liberation for all.   
• Vision mobilization
  Within this course you can receive support with aligning your life with your own vision using the Vision Mobilization (VM) framework, which offers a pathway for closing the gap between the luminous vision that each one of us carries in our cellular memory, and the erosion of collective human capacity we are born into and, tragically, internalize. It supports us to have:  
  • Deeper clarity about what we truly want, how we want to live, and what is ours to do
  • Infinite tenderness in relation to our own capacity limitations
  • Support in creating agreements, with ourselves and with others, that are within capacity and increase capacity to align with our deepest dreams
  • Understanding about what gives us energy to keep going in these difficult times
• Each participant who wants it can receive a template for their own vision mobilization structure, and, when available, the opportunity to participate in a peer-led group with support from those with more experience with this expansive tool.

“This is my third year in RTTC. I have watched myself shift in many ways: from a place of conditioned submission and powerlessness into having the ability to clearly see my own power; from being incapable of seeing my strengths to seeing them clearly and celebrating them with humility; from self-doubt to self-trust. The choices I make from these internal shifts ripple out, tenderly touching my family, my friends, my colleagues, and my community in ways I never envisioned previously. I understand leadership more deeply and my capacity for aligning my life with my values is growing. What I have described doesn't seem to sufficiently match my experience and yet I hope it's enough to encourage someone else to enroll and experience this course for themselves.” - Nadine Robinson  

“I love everything about the NGL framework and all the trainings available. They all hold pieces of puzzles I've struggled with for decades. But what I love specifically about RTTC is that it's one of the places where what's emerging for Miki and the work overall starts to breathe. Whatever is 'up' tends to feed into the RTTC context, and I love getting those early glimpses of what's in development.” - Christine Capra

Is this course for me?

Only you can really know whether Miki's course is a good fit for you and we offer a few points that may help you make your decision:

• Although this course is designed to support deep application of the principles and practices of NVC as Miki (and others) live them, it is not focused on practicing observations, feelings, needs, and requests. Instead, it focuses on deep questions about how we live from within the commitment to nonviolence and to caring for the whole through the lens of needs.
• Although this course emerges from a huge body of work that Miki created over many years, with clear processes and areas of practice, it really isn't structured, and most of the teaching happens in dialogue and interaction with individuals, in response to whatever arises.
• Although the environment is dialogic and collaborative and what happens emerges from all who participate, this is also a led environment; a laboratory for what collaborative leadership can look like.
• If you would like to have a more detailed sense about the course, we invite you to check out the Vision Mobilization structure for it that holds all who participate. In this document you will find the vision, values, and purpose that are the foundation of the course, the mission elements which form the focus of what happens, and all the details about how the course actually functions. 
• And if all this isn’t enough, the first session is entirely free and without any commitment, allowing you to experience for yourself what happens before the sense of community has formed. After that session, participants from previous years are also available to answer questions.

“Joining the RTTC calls has helped me carry my yearning for a peaceful and just world in a healthier way. I still feel passionate about creating that world, but now that feeling is grounded in love. The calls are helping me to get more articulate in relating with others in that way, rather than projecting lack onto them. It's inspiring to see others doing similar work.” - Yannic Kuna

What would it be like to walk through 2026 in accompaniment with like-minds, each month pausing to reflect, realign, and renew your intention to live from the heart?

This year-long program with Mary Mackenzie is a step-by-step journey into mindfulness and Nonviolent Communication (NVC), grounded in her book Peaceful Living: Daily Meditations for Living with Love, Healing and Compassion.

This course is not about piling on more “learning.” It’s about being — about living and embodying NVC in your everyday life. 

Life offers us joy and heartbreak, astonishment and pain. What would it be like to meet it all — with compassion, presence, courage…. And with the support of like-minded companions. 

This journey offers you a beautiful and sacred opportunity to slow down, listen inward, and explore what it means to stay awake, compassionate, and true to yourself — even in the midst of life’s challenges.

Each month offers a new doorway: into forgiveness, into love, into trust, into the mystery of being fully alive.

What to expect:

• Monthly live sessions with Mary — each includes meditation, teaching, check-ins, and breakout rooms for integrating the learning
• Daily reading of the Peaceful Living Meditation of the day
• An online community forum for sharing ideas and encouragement
• Small group “pod” calls each month for continuity and year-long support (optional)
• Connection with an empathy buddy (optional)
• Weekly videos, insights, and reflections from Mary in between sessions

Mary’s in-between -session videos and forum post teachings touch on everyday struggles and awakenings: how to lighten up when life feels heavy, how to distinguish empathy from sympathy, how to observe without judgment, how to nurture your emotional “bank account” when it feels low, and so many more.

What participants are saying:

"At such a hard time in the world, it has been life-giving to feel connected with others from so many different countries in this year long class - all holding the same care and longing for meaningful connection. I've especially felt this in our smaller, 4-person pod. Four people, four countries, four different degrees of NVC exposure, all experiencing the sweetest of connections through our sharing and NVC skill building. The Peaceful Living daily meditations and Mary's videos have been beautiful tools."
— Melissa

“These meetings inspire me, and they give me a moment of thought and rest. And that's the same when I am with the pod or seeing Mary’s videos. Every single thing we are doing is making the puzzle complete for me. Thank you.” — Judith

“For me, Compassionate Communication was conceptually easy to grasp but not straightforward to make a habit. A Journey from the Heart has made the transition from conceptual understanding to lived practice more real because of the structure of the program - concise daily meditations, monthly classes, and a monthly smaller group session to go even deeper into my personal challenges. I am very grateful to have attended the program.”
— Alex

The journey month by month:

The year unfolds in a natural arc:

1. Setting Goals for 2026
2. Forgiveness and helping others better express their love for us
3. Meeting our need for trust
4. Understanding what’s underneath the commitments we struggle to maintain
5. Self-Empathy
6. Living in the observation
7. Making requests
8. Meeting our need for love
9. Making friends with your inner critic
10. Needs Analysis: Do your strategies support or deter from meeting your needs?
11. The Magic Powers of Empathy and Silent Empathy
12.  Integration: Bringing it all together

Why this course?

Because change doesn’t come from ideas alone: it comes from practice, support, and gentle accountability. With Mary and a caring community beside you, you’ll have the structure you need to grow in self-understanding and compassion.

Who it’s for:

This program is for anyone who longs to live more authentically, with support. Whether you’re brand new to NVC or have been practicing for years, you’ll find encouragement, structure, and companionship here.

The journey of the heart begins with a single step. 

Join us in weaving love, trust, and authenticity into the fabric of your daily life.