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Desire, it sounds so juicy right? Well today we will wiggle at, not so much the sweet, sticky or orgasmic, but, at how AR transforms the NVC principle of needs into something more interesting.

For those that learned NVC, you'll know that needs could some times be tricky to figure out. Are there even such a thing as absolute needs, beyond say oxygen? What's a need, whats a want? Whats a projection? Whats a coping mechanism, or self medication?

Now, speaking in a sweeping generalization, AR kind of tosses the whole concept of abstract needs out the window, and replaces it with the idea of desire.

Doesn't that sound nicer! So, desire is about: what do i want in this present moment. Do i want to be heard, do i want to reveal my experience, or to share impact. Do i want to ask a curious question, to seek consent, or to give it. Do i want to be held, not because i do or don't need it, but because it makes me feel better. Because its alive.

Some of us in the project have been experimenting with Betty Martins three minute game. This was originally invented by Harry Faddis of the Body Electric school. Martin distilled, what is essentially a game that you can play in 3 minutes, into an entire book, called The Art of Giving and Receiving, and indeed pretty much created an entire personal growth program around it. And its all about rekindling desire. Repairing our capacity to desire.

The game was originally designed for the purpose of teaching embodied consent for those in intimate relationships. And for that is was very cool. But Martin also offers a version of the game for those interested in conversational best practice. As we communicate getting more capacity for consent is very very cool.

Ok, so it's this conversational game that we explore today. The game consists of a pair of sentence stems:

• What would you like me to say to you?
• What would you like to speak to me about?

Short, simple. And yet somehow irritating, right? This game asks us to reach into our heart and figure out what i want right now. Actually i don't know about you, but somewhere in my rocky childhood i think i had whatever desire i possessed beaten out of me. So this is personally a significant growth edge for me. Tears tend to well up whenever AR has me start to craft a new story, that says yes, i am allowed to want things, to desire.

Another thing. The practice has us cleave the dance of communication into two very discrete transactions, serve and accept, and take and allow.

When we consciously set up these two frames, one at a time, it becomes very clear what each persons role is. In AR we know this from the duality: revealing my experience, and getting the other persons world. There is a sharer and a listener. This model goes further, it says as listener you are serving the speaker. The speaker is receiving a gift, that the listener is giving.

But it gets even more interesting, because we can speak for two different reasons, we can speak for ourselves, or we can speak for the other. The clearest way to understand this is with an example: speaking to vent, or speaking to appreciate.

In parting, that's all i want to say about it, its one of those things that can't be got from the reading. Its all, just like all things AR, got from the practicing of the thing. If you feel curious to play the game with us, watch out for a 6 session practice offering in October.