---
title: "Mindful counseling - Center for Nonviolent Communication"
description: ""
url: "https://www.cnvc.org/learn/research/mindful-counseling"
date: "2026-09-19T12:40:21+00:00"
language: "en-US"
---

#  Mindful counseling

#  Nonviolent communication as a Mahayana skillful means

Master’s Thesis by **Hulley, W. C.** in English (2006)

 Naropa University

In this paper, I describe a Mahayana counseling approach based on Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication process steps, including:

- Definitions of counseling and suffering that establish the basis for an approach I call
    Mindful Counseling,
- A normative model of Nonviolent Communication that describes its view, practice and result,
- A demonstration that this model is practically congruent with Mahayana view,
- A description of several ways in which Nonviolent Communication is used within
    Mindful Counseling.

My focus is twofold: providing a rationale for offering Nonviolent Communication as a basis for a Mahayana counseling method - which I call Mindful Counseling in this paper - and suggesting ways in which it might be used to help relieve client suffering. Because this is a new area of study' my emphasis is on establishing a theoretical ground for Buddhist chaplains who want to use Mindful Counseling. While I do attempt to demonstrate utility by providing several examples of techniques and their intended results, an in-depth examination of the method in practice, along with other research, remains to be done; this is the subject of the last section of this paper.

 [ Read Article ](https://www.tibetanbuddhistencyclopedia.com/en/index.php?title=Mindful_Counseling_-_Nonviolent_Communication_as_a_Mahayana_Skillful_Mean)