 I'm Jodi Evans. I'm one of the co-founders of Code Pink. And I just appreciate everyone's interest and desires to divest themselves from the war economy and invest themselves in a future of peace. And we know to do that we need to break some habits and develop some new ones. I'm very excited to have our guest today, Sharon Abru who is gonna give us some tips on ways we can practice into connectivity. So you can always check out more at codepink.org slash peace economy to find out our 21 ways to divest. And all the inspiration that we have for those that are investing themselves in the peace economy. One thing that I've seen from everyone is, first of all, in the peace economy that giving, sharing, caring, thriving, relational regenerative economy that once you start entering in those practices, you're so surprised that like how generous the world is, how kind people are. And I just think that's always there. It's just we get in these practices that alienate us and make us believe in scarcity and we miss the signs and we miss the nourishment. So I'd like to introduce you to Sharon who was singing harmony by the age of three. When she was six, she learned Pete Seeger's song If I Had a Hammer and it sparked her passion for peace and social justice music of the 1960s. We also need to be making more of that music now. Sharon was studying singing in New York city when she joined the Hudson River slope clear water environmental group and started learning about her drinking water. This led her to understand the relationship between politics, the environment, people's health and inspired her to use her voice and songs to raise awareness. And it could pink music and songs and culture our core to how we get to peace. So welcome Sharon. Thanks so much, Jodi. It's a great, great pleasure to be with you here today. I am so stoked. Well, I wanted to start with my first question is how do you see the value of the local peace economy work in this time in the planet? Now you've been singing songs from the 60s. So I kind of think local peace economy works comes arises out of the 60s. It's the feminist, it's what we were trying to create when we were hippies. So how do you see this work right now? Well, in our efforts to build local peace economies, it's extremely helpful to have ways that we know we can communicate with each other in a healthy way and resolve conflicts easily and where everybody goes away feeling at the very least okay, if not really, really good. And so that's why I'm so very, I just feel so lucky and exposed to the practice that I'm now certified to teach called the connection practice, which I learned locally on Whidbey Island, which is, I live on Orcus Island in Washington state and Whidbey Island is very close to us. And a friend of ours had, I worked with on Dennis Kucinich's presidential campaign back in 2004, said, could you come and provide music for this course that's happening at the Whidbey Institute? And it's a four day foundations course and you can provide music and you can take the course as part of your remuneration. And I thought, well, this sounds great. You know, it's a way to teach peace and speak peace. And so we did the music for the course, my partner and I, and we were so impressed that we got certified to teach it. We took the course in 2011 and we got certified in 2012 and it's called the connection practice. And so how do you see that relate to the local peace economy? Yes, connectivity is core to the local peace economy. And so is practice. So take us into, you know, how that works. Well, just to give you a little bit of background on the connection practice and I wanna keep it tied to the local peace economy because it provides multiple opportunities for learning, for teaching, from no matter where you are, you know, it's ideal to be able to do things together in person when we can't and we have to do things remotely. We have actually excellent opportunities for doing that as well. And it's amazing, I think we're all learning how much we can connect, you know, when we have to using the internet. So I'm just finding how well that can work, even by phone, you can connect deeply with people. But keeping things local, I know where I live is very important. I live in a small community. We have one grocery store, we have a food co-op, we have an energy cooperative, we have a lot of progressive people here. We also have some people here who vote for Trump and most of the time it doesn't come up, it's not an issue, we don't talk about it, you know, it's that kind of conventionalism, you don't talk about religion or politics and you'll be fine but we know that we need to be talking about these things. So how are we gonna do that? If we don't talk about them, we can't say, you know, I don't think that's actually true. Can I give you some, can I share something with you that I think offers another scenario or framework or whatever? So when you're talking with people in your community, it's really close, we're doing a lot of things together, we're serving our community in a lot of ways, we're on boards together, in clubs together, we sing together in groups, play together, you know, in various ways. So to be able to say, wow, I really agree with you on this but I'm having an issue with that and I'd like to talk with you about it but also first and foremost, letting the person know, number one, that you're listening to them. That's the most important thing. How many of the tragic things happening in our world are happening because people do not feel heard, they don't feel that they matter, they don't feel respected and even if we vehemently disagree with something they're doing or something they support, we're all functioning from our emotions, you know? And I think it's so important to realize that, that our emotions just boom, they're just triggered right away. So how can we, I'm getting to this a little more but just keeping it local for a second, how can we communicate productively and constructively and compassionately with people in our own communities so that we can trust each other more, you know, when it does come to difficult things like politics, you know, when we really need to be calling each other on misinformation or misunderstandings. Well, take me through it. Like, should we have a place of disagreement between us that you can create connective tissue with? Would you like me to give you an example from my own experience? I can do that if you'd like. Please. Okay, so a few years ago, I was on an airplane. I was on a three hour flight from Orange County, California to DC or actually to Denver, was connecting flight. And the young man sitting next to me, I guess he was probably in his early 30s. He, there was, I was in the window seat, he was in the aisle seat and there was an empty seat in between us. You know, that used to happen. In case I have that very occasionally. But anyway, so we got to talking and it turns out he's a church musician. He plays an abandonist church. It very quickly becomes clear that he is a Christian, fundamentalist Christian, very right-wing and he's got a lot of anger. He is so angry, not at me, but there's so much anger when he starts to talk to me that there are times he's actually leaning across that middle seat and he's right in my face. And so, you know, I'm kind of holding myself and staying in my heart there and listening to what he has to say. And at times speaking and just letting him know that I really get what he's saying. I get why he's angry. And one of the things he was saying was, I shouldn't, I have two children and I need to put them through college and I shouldn't be paying for single mothers with five kids so that they can have health insurance. Well, I get it. I totally get it. But as I listen to this, you know, I don't agree with him, but I understand where he's coming from. I totally get the stress that he's under. Because he's coming from fear. He's coming from fear, yeah. And he's working hard and he's under a lot of stress and he wants to see the best for his kids and he's married and he didn't have kids out of wedlock and, you know, he's not a welfare mom. And, you know, there's all these judgments going on. And, you know, you could say some of those things to some degree are legitimate. They're not. They're probably not. Or not. I mean, we can get into, you know, the deeper scenario and... That's the word economy creating lies that then make people unhappy. I totally agree with that. It's we don't have a support system and we have systemic racism and there's all this going on. But I was able to, after listening and giving him empathy, so I give him empathy by letting him know that I hear what he's saying. I really get what he's going through, you know? Then I was able to say, can I offer you a scenario from my personal experience that, you know, kind of gives a different take on this? And I gave him the example of my niece who has multiple sclerosis and she needs to be, she's married, she doesn't have children, but she needs to be on very expensive medication all the time. Well, she had worked for MCI WorldCom. You know what happens to MCI WorldCom? They went out of business. She lost her job and she lost her health insurance and her husband was also dependent on her health insurance, so he lost his. And I said, because her healthcare was tied to her job, she lost her insurance and she could no longer afford very expensive medication, she needs to be okay to treat her MS. And that's why I feel like everyone should have universal healthcare and it shouldn't be tied to your job so that you're in this precarious situation where if your job goes away, so does your healthcare. And look how much we're dealing with that now and look how many people are under so much stress now because of this. So that's just one example, but you know, I could have, you know, if I had been, I felt actually a little bit threatened in this situation. I really didn't feel like he was going to hit me or anything, but the energy was coming at me which was really scary. So, you know, to be able to go into my heart and do the connection practice, you know, which is two pieces, two great techniques that work really well to support each other. If I wasn't able to do that, I might have gotten triggered in a way that said, you know, flight attendant, get me another seat or why don't you shut up, you're a horrible person or whatever it is, you're wrong and you're bad, you know, whatever, the things that get triggered. You could have said something like that's racist or even more. Yeah, and I know people do that and it's really damaging because you're never going to connect with somebody when you do that, even if you're right, you know? So that's the thing, do we want to be right or do we want to connect with other people? It's not easy, it's a practice. And that's why we say, you know, learn the connection practice, go out there and practice it and we'll teach you. You don't know what we're practicing. What did you do inside of yourself in that moment? Okay, well, one thing is to pause. The pause is very, very essential and you learn this in nonviolent communication, which is one piece of this. The connection practice takes the basics of nonviolent communication, which was developed by Marshall Rosenberg and it takes the basics of the technique of heart-brain coherence developed by the Institute of Heart Math in California and using these two practices to support each other is so powerful because you can use one without the other, but when you put them together, wow, it is more transformative than you could possibly imagine if you haven't experienced it. But that pause is so important. It's like, whoa, okay, I'm having my amygdala in my brain, which is trying always to protect me. It holds all the memories of every bad thing that's ever happened to me in my life. And when something happens that is triggering or scary to me, the amygdala goes, wait, danger, danger warning, you know, like the robot and lost in space. And it starts to try to match up what's happening now with what happened in the past. And the reaction is so quick, you don't have time to think about it. So this is part of the practice, is to catch yourself before you make that knee-jerk reaction and know that in that split second, you have a choice to make a different choice, you know, just to go into your heart and go, whoa, okay, wait a minute, I'm not gonna react yet, you know? I mean, there are situations where you gotta get the heck out of there. I mean, you know, and you will know, you know, when that is, but if you can stand in your, this really allows you to stand in your power and make a choice for yourself at that very moment. So that's part of the NVC piece. The nonviolent communication piece is we give empathy. Our motto with the connection practice is empathy plus insight equals connection. So the empathy piece is the nonviolent communication piece. We gotta figure out what are the feelings and needs? What are mine? I gotta give empathy for myself because how am I gonna be genuine and give empathy to another person if I don't know what's going on in me? If I'm not conscious of that. So that's right at the place where you determine whether the fear needs to be acted on or whether you can stay present. So that's the key for yourself is, okay, I'm triggered. Do I stay in this moment or do I leave? And then you notice, well, there's nothing, I'm on a plane. I'm like, he's not gonna hit me. And I'm like, okay, I'm okay. But witness, there was anger. And listening is the first piece of cultivating a local peace economy is listening because the war economy does not listen because it is driven by that greed that can't hear or recognize anything. So yes, that's that space of pause, of listening, of taking in our surroundings. So that's fantastic. Yeah, thank you, thank you. So yeah, so feelings and needs, what are my feelings? What are the needs underlying those feelings? Cause those feelings are being caused by needs. If we have positive feelings, our needs are being met. If we have negative feelings, our needs are not being met. And we're seeing so many people in our society right now whose needs are not being met. They don't know how to connect with people who might be able to help with that. You don't know how to connect with them. And one of the most instructive things I've seen in recent history is Bernie Sanders, doing a town hall with Trump supporters and showing them respect and listening to them and then being able to say, well, what if this could happen? Would you support that? It was a beautiful example of how to connect with people. So our first piece is identifying our feelings and needs, getting to our main need and identifying another person who we're in conflict with. Respectfully guessing what their feelings and needs are. We're only guessing, we don't wanna tell them what they're feeling or what they're needing cause we don't really know, we're not in their head, but we wanna respectfully guess and show that interest and help them to identify it. And then if we can get to their main need, that's wonderful because then we can work with that. So that's the feelings and needs piece. That's the nonviolent communication piece. Then the second piece is the heart-brain coherence piece from the Institute of Heart Math in California. And they're doing wonderful things, by the way, with global coherence project, you all may have heard of that. But the thing is that when you go into your own heart, what are you doing? You're getting out of your chattering brain, which is chattering at us all the time. And a lot of times when we're upset, we're like, ah, I don't know what to do. And that's what we call being a state of incoherence. So what does it mean to get yourself into a state of coherence is when your heart and your brain are actually working in harmony with each other. And that's a physiological thing, and we can make that happen. Through this practice called heart-brain coherence, the first three steps of that are called quick coherence, and you can do it very quickly. In fact, why don't we do that right now? I'll take you through a quick coherence. And it's three steps. There's a heart-focus, heart-breathing, and heart-feeling of appreciation. So for the third step, you wanna have something ready to go that you can bring into your heart center of your chest area that as soon as you bring it in there, it fills you with the feeling of joy or appreciation. It can be a pet. It can be a starry sky or a beautiful sunset. You say, I've got a sunset from my house here behind me. I often use my cat. And even though she can be a little on the wild side, she is my coherence kitty. And every time I think of her, I just break out into a big smile. I can't help it. So it can be another person. Sometimes you wanna be a little careful with that, because if it's a person that you might have something triggering with you right now, you might wanna choose someone else, or grandchild or whatever is usually working well. Oh, what it sounds like when I hear you talking about it is that something that triggers love inside of you, like right away. I think it triggers love inside of you. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm gonna lead you to heart focus, heart breathing. And then when we go into our appreciation, bring into your heart that pick one thing right now that's easy for you to appreciate. So here we go. I'm gonna invite you to sit comfortably. And if it feels comfortable for you, and it's safe, if you're driving, do not close your eyes. But if it's comfortable for you to close your eyes, I invite you to do that so we can go inside more deeply. If it doesn't feel safe to close your eyes, you can just kind of bring your gaze down and sort of just soften your focus a bit. And then if it feels comfortable to you, you can put your hand over your heart center of your chest area. That just helps to bring the focus to that part of your body. And then we'll let the focus drop down. So let's go with that right now. Sit comfortably, close your eyes if that's comfortable for you. And I invite you to put your hand over your heart center of your chest area if that's comfortable. And just let your energy drop now. Just drop down into your heart. Just let all that focus and energy drop way down into your heart now. And then let's breathe slowly and evenly as though we're breathing into our hearts and out from our hearts. Let's slow even breaths. And now let's bring in that feeling of appreciation, whatever that image is for you right into your heart. Let that fill you with joy, appreciation, love. And just stay with that for a minute. Okay, that is the quick coherence. And believe it or not, I actually have a little song about it. It goes, heart focus, heart breathing, heart feeling of appreciation, heart focus, heart breathing, heart feeling of appreciation. That's the quick coherence helps your heart and mind align. Now, what's awesome about the Sharon is just how simple it is. Yeah. So here, when I was in it, it's just that reminder of the work we do with the local peace economy is that the war economy's constant effort is to keep us ungrounded and incoherent. Exactly what you said. Its goal is to keep us incoherent. And some of the things you were talking about earlier, it's literally the culture it has created that we all suck at the tit of and think it's life. Instead of having those moments where literally what I felt is you just connected us to life. And when we are connected to life, we can make good choices. And even when we're at that place, we can learn because whatever happens, we can reflect and learn and iterate in ourselves or in whatever we're doing in the world. And I think we don't have enough opportunity to make the choices from that place too often they're set up to like to keep my job, to just if you talk about the insurance. So if your health insurance depends on you having a job, are you gonna be able to be incoherent at your job? You're gonna be in manipulation. You're gonna be in incoherence and anxiety. I mean, first of all, that will just create a constant condition of anxiety which is what we say the war economy does. It creates lots of conditions for anxiety and anxiety itself creates inflammation in the body that takes life, affects your life. So that's just a beautiful offering for so many things and it's so simple. It's so, that's the other thing is the war economy commodifies everything and that so much we learn in doing the local peace economy is there's so much that can enrich our lives and even take them out of that place of fear and anger that is exactly, I'm just curious, did you give the guy that practice when you were on the plane? No, I didn't. Sometimes it's better to not tell people that, and it's not like you're using the practice on them which people, I've heard that people have done that with NVC and that's why I think that the coherence is so important in that it really gets you into a place where you are calm and centered and authentic and it actually, you know, you can use the NVC first and then the coherence or vice versa. Like in that situation, it was important for me to go right into my heart and breathe. Let's talk about nonviolent communication being used against people. I think when we, because we're acculturated with these patterns of the war economy that, you know, that underneath it is the oppressive, destructive, extractive economy that those habits can come out even with these tools. And so I appreciate that, you know, where it's like, oh, I have a tool and I can bludgeon you with it and that's, you know, knowing what nonviolent communication is and so I'm gonna bludgeon you with that tool and that's a beautiful thing to arise that it's not about the tool. It's about all things can be used, you know, for good or for self-needs and grief. It's a matter of being conscious, you know. It's a matter of being conscious about what your state is right now, being honest with yourself and being responsible in that way to whoever you, you think you're trying to help, you know. If I haven't done my own work, I might be, you know, doing something passive-aggressive and I might not be aware of it at all. It's not that I mean to be, but I might be doing that, you know, I just came from something really crappy and I haven't had a chance to guess that I've been gonna try to use NBC on this person, you know. That's not what I wanna do. I really wanna connect with that person and NBC, yes, it's its own language and it takes practice and then when you're more skilled with it, you can go to street giraffe and what that means is you can use more normal language with people, you know. Cause it can be weird, you know, like when we first started our course and we did this with graduate students at the United Nations University for Peace in Costa Rica from these kids were from all over the world and they're very astute and they're like, this is really weird. Like it was a five day course. It was a five day intensive thing we were working with them and they're like, this is really weird. This language is just really weird, you know. And by the fifth day, they were saying, they brought the party. We were having a party. They brought the party to us by the fifth day when they had a chance to put the practice into action. And we were teaching this to them at the end of their school year and they're like, we should have had this at the beginning of the school year because it would have helped us with our schoolwork. It would have helped us communicate with our fellow students, you know. But even at the University for Peace, it's all focused on on peace building but it didn't actually have a practice like this that it was teaching. Right. And I think a lot what we're doing is playing at the edges of the tree's limbs instead of really getting to the roots. And one of the things that we really want to be doing with the local peace economy is getting to the roots. And I think you just brought up another really important thing to remember which is as soon as we start to break old habits and start new ones, it's super clumsy and feels really wrong. And so how do we know which, I always say it's like we feel upside down and we don't know which way's up. And so it's hard to know which to pick like the old way or the new way. And to remember what the commitment was to for the new way so that you can take yourself through that space of discomfort. I always say it's the birth canal of a new way and birthing is messy. And so that was, of course, when you start to take on new things, it's all a new language because the body, the psyche, the heart, that all of us, our histories are in another pattern. And these habits, these new habits are so important. And being able to offer practices that are not only simple like what you just taught us but I think, if someone works in the practice, don't they learn much more that helps it have a deeper. Yes, and I encourage people to get in touch with me. I would love to do coachings. I offer a five and a half hour intensive in the connection practice. I would love to share with people what more is involved with the connection practice and how it can be applied in our personal and professional lives. There's a mediation piece which I was able to use in practice and actually help a situation I was having with my own father who I had a lot of conflicts with. But we say it's about connection, not perfection, right? So it's a practice. It requires practice. It's life. I'm very happy to help with that. Life is a practice. So tell me about your life. How are there tangible ways that your life has changed since you started the connection practice? Oh, yeah. And you know, my relationships with people are so much better. I can talk with people that I disagree with in ways that I couldn't before. And it's not easy. I'm still practicing the practice. Sometimes I have to go away and process. I have my connection practice worksheet and I gotta write it all out. And then I do my practice. I go through the feelings and needs, mine, the other persons. I go through the quick coherence and then there's a fourth step in that heart-brain coherence practice which is heart-brain insight. After I get myself into the coherent state, I go and ask myself in my heart center of my chest area, what do I need to know about this? And then I just wait for an answer because the answer is not always boom right there. I can, most of the time I can listen right there and take it in. I may not wanna respond right away. But sometimes I just, sometimes I fall off the wagon and I go blah, blah, blah. And then I can come back later and say, you know what, it's okay to apologize. It's okay to take responsibility for not being my best self in that moment and say, I really wanna understand this. I wanna understand you. If we don't prioritize the connection part of this, we're not gonna be able to get past it to the changes that we wanna make. Well, I think that was it right there. I mean, you're talking about things like taking time, taking time to connect. And if we are not connecting, I mean, it's the core of the local peace economy work. If we look out and we say that the war economy has destroyed the planet and it's created this great inequality and so we have to be ready that that if we can develop connective tissue in our communities, that is what will get us through whatever's gonna be thrown out is right now, it's a pandemic, but we don't know what the next thing is. The structures have failed. The things that should have been there for us like universal healthcare, like not privatizing water, like not having greed be what everyone celebrated for. Instead having caring, COVID has pulled us back and let us reflect on what it is that creates the connectivity we want, what is essential to life. And it's not the war economy. It is not essential to life at all. It is actually destroying all of life. And this practice, which is like what we wanna be able to offer people is so valuable because connectivity is how we make that fabric. We weave back the fabric of society, which has been ripped to shreds by the war economy. So Sharon, thank you for your commitment and for teaching us a little today and how does everyone reach you? Well, I can be reached by email at Charmuse-S-H-A-R-M like Mary, U-S-S-M-E at gmail.com or also, what's my official one? ConnectionPracticeCoach.com, right? That's ConnectionPracticeCoach at gmail.com. That's my other, that's my official email address, but you can get me at either one and you can check out the Connection Practice Online at connectionpractice.org. My website is connectionpracticecoach.com and I would love to share this and get more deeply into it with a lot of people. We say, learn piece, speak piece, teach piece by our own actions and words. So did you wanna sing us out? Like, is there a song? Oh yeah, you know, thank you for asking that. Well, Rita Marie Johnson, who I was gonna talk about, she's the woman who actually put this practice together having studied both of the essential pieces of it that complements each other so well. Rita Marie Johnson wrote a book which I also highly recommend called Completely Connected and I wrote a song for the book launch that we did back in 2015. So it goes, when we're completely connected, we're in tune with the song. The world around is singing and we feel that we belong when we're completely connected. Our hearts and minds align and the words we say pave the way for trust and peace of mind. Pass it on, pass it on, learn the art of connection. Pass it on, a simple practice, it's true becomes a part of you. So enjoy the new view and pass it on. And it goes on like that. That's fantastic, what a perfect way to end. Thank you so much, Sharon. That I felt, that was everything that you said and in the music I felt, thank you so much. Thank you. I just love Code Pink. I've been active with Code Pink for many years and I really deeply appreciate this opportunity that you've given me to share the connection practice with more people. Thank you. Onward to peace, everyone. Thanks for joining us. Yeah.