Heart Unity and Needs-Based Perspectives
Long-time Metta friend Maja Bengtson recently did a workshop with our Nonviolence Studies cohort about the power of cultivating a “needs-based” perspective when we find ourselves in situations of conflict. After her workshop, we wanted to talk more about her vision. We sent her a few questions to help us better understand her approach, how it ties into principled nonviolence, and how to orient ourselves more actively toward needs-based care and perspectives. Here’s what she had to say…
What do you mean by heart unity?
Spiritual practices and philosophies along with modern quantum physics share a perspective about “unity” - essentially saying that at the core of each one of us, and of all of life, we are one.
Heart Unity was Gandhi’s term for this notion of oneness. Our hearts have the capability to open up to the heart and humanity of another person, and in doing so we can experience an unconditional connectedness that reaches beyond circumstance, preconceived ideas, or differences of opinion. Not uniformity; rather, mutual respect and shared vision.
Unity is not a theory for me, it is a lived experience that gets reinforced through practice: daily meditation, conscious dance, being in nature, and connecting human interaction. And yet, it slips away SO easily if (when) I get triggered: I can instantly loose trust in other people and in life itself. At those times, I have found that concepts don’t help at all, and meditation can have me stewing on “what happened” instead of finding the love and light in the heart. What works - every time - is connecting to Universal Human Needs.
Needs… Can you say more about that?
The concept of Universal Human Needs, and how to make practical use of it, was developed over decades by Dr. Marshall Rosenberg through his articulation and work with Nonviolent Communication (NVC).
When we say “Needs” (for short), I want to be clear that we are referring to the fundamental requirements that motivates human behavior. Not the common way of using the word “need” for expressing specific wishes, such as “I need you to pick me up at 3pm” or “I need you to clean up your room.” Needs in our parlance is the usually invisible layer underneath, what propels human action and interaction.
In the 1960-ies when his work began, Dr Rosenberg was inspired by Humanistic Psychology as well as the Civil Rights Movement. So all the way from the start, NVC had conflict resolution and nonviolence at its core.
In Peace Studies we also find the concept of Needs for example in Johan Galtung's discussion on violence on societal or systemic level: He linked “structural violence” to impairment of Universal Human Needs.
Also, in his later years, Dr Rosenberg would refer to Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef, who articulated nine core Needs that an economy (or society) could be organized around, for the good of everyone.
For the personal and interpersonal, I come back to Nonviolent Communication, which stipulates
1. Each action, including what we say, is an attempt to meet underlying needs;
2. All humans have the same needs, showing up at different times;
3. Each need (or combination of needs) can be fulfilled in many, many different ways;
4. Needs show up in the present moment, they “are alive” in the here-and-now.
One distinction for Needs is that they are universal - all humans share the same needs, and this seems to help us get a felt sense of understanding each other... Can you relate to these?
Acceptance
Belonging
Clarity
Relaxation
Sustenance
Or, Water?
When needs are naturally fulfilled - like we always have clean water flowing when we turn on the tap - we don’t give it much thought. What happens in drought? When we can no longer trust that water will be unlimitedly available to us? Then we become urgently aware of the need, don't we?
It’s the same with most needs, as long as we’re fine and enough needs are met to a sufficient degree we just putter along and don’t pay much attention to them. But what when the water stops flowing? Or, the flow and connection you feel with a near dear person suddenly dries up? When they say or do something that hurts, or they want something that is a clear no-no for you? At those moments - and myriads of others - we have the option of “connecting with needs” as a path to restore the connection and dignity.
If it’s physical water, we notice our need is not met, and we explore options such as inquiring with municipalities, or get buckets of it from a central location. Long-term we may be inspired to install catchment systems to secure sufficient water for our household.
What is the process of needs-based thinking as a pathway to "heart unity"?
But what if it’s interpersonal and emotional?
First, we notice.
We may feel something like “Ouch, that hurt”, or, “Oh! That felt off”.
Our feelings give us a clue and help identify needs. With time and practice, we can learn how certain feelings indicate certain needs being unfulfilled. Feelings are the overt clues to the less obvious Needs.
As we stay in the moment and the somatic experience, we can gently inquire within: “I am feeling hurt, what need is there?” For example that hurt can pair with unmet needs for care, dignity, and consideration. We bring genuine warmth and curiosity to this process: it's not purely intellectual, even if we use words. Interestingly, there is some strange magic to identifying and articulating - even quietly to oneself - what need is alive: we recalibrate the internal emotional charge, and hence become more available for interaction.
Sometimes, something needs to be said. Sometimes, we ask for a concrete action that would begin to fulfill that unmet need. Most of all, this practice of reorienting towards feelings and then to need helps reestablish connection - to self, and to others.
The emotional flare-up can obviously be with the other person in a conversation, too. The process is similar: we turn our loving attention towards them, and wonder: “Oh, are you feeling hurt? Are you missing some degree of care and consideration?”
We wonder this silently or out-loud, depending on the situation. Either way the resonance and caring guesses have the power to orient us towards what unites us, ie. Needs.
Once identified, both parties’ needs inform what comes next, the ongoing conversation and resolution to conflict.
When you're in conflict with someone, what happens internally when you start focusing on your own (or the other person's) needs?
What I have found is that the moment I'm able to remember "Needs" - and pause long enough to attend to them - it changes the whole energy of the interaction. It doesn't really matter if I pay attention to what needs are alive on my end or the other person's for the shift to happen.
This pause and re-orienting to Needs helps ground us in the present moment. How many conflicts are really about old grievances or preconceived ideas? Especially if we're stuck in a negative perception of the other person or their group.
Also, it's important to stay clear of insisting our needs be fulfilled in particular ways. This first step of re-orienting towards Needs is for awareness and connection, and not yet about "how needs are to be met." That comes next, when we collaboratively seek solutions that include and respect all needs that have surfaced to be articulated and included.
What tips do you have for someone new to this practice? How to avoid weaponizing needs?
For the decades I have been involved with NVC and increasingly basing my life on “needs consciousness,” I have also witnessed people get SO enthusiastic about it, they want it to be the one and only method that "should" be applied everywhere, by everyone.
By insisting on others “using NVC” we stray away from “using NVC” ourselves.
If we attend to Needs as a path to Heart Unity, we take it upon ourselves to do the heavy lifting: to learn Needs vocabulary, and practice guessing what Needs are alive (in self and others) over and over and over until we are effortlessly fluent. That is very different from telling others what to do or how to say something.
Also, for our thought process, we can turn to needs based thinking as a potent tool for shifting away from judgments and prejudice. We want to pay attention - and self-correct - when right/wrong thinking sets in, especially about how others communicate.
There’s another aspect of “weaponizing” I've heard from critics of NVC, and that’s that people can experience NVC as manipulative and self-centered. I have two recommendations for this:
1. Power-with
If all of life is one unified whole, and what we are up to in dialogue and discussion is to maintain that sense of connection while also being authentic and honest, then the best mental model I have found is to be vigilant in our care about the needs of others. All needs are equally valid and there really isn’t such a thing as “my needs”.
When I ask for something, am I 100% open to hearing “no”? ⁃ Having received “no”, am I willing to take interest in what need is up for the other person; how doing/giving what I asked for is not meeting needs for them at this time?
In conflict, am I giving equal attention to, and do I proactively surface all needs of all parties relevant to the situation?
2. Expanding concept of Needs
In NVC, even in how Marshal Rosenberg taught it, we often use language that objectifies needs. (This is kind of hilarious, come to think of it). Anyone who has attended an NVC session anywhere will have heard the phrase “I am feeling [fill in the blank] because MY NEED for [fill in the blank again] is / isn’t met.”
The way I have come to see it, is that we are mere channels of needs, conveyors of what life seeks to fulfill, and the exploration of needs is for the benefit of all: for the sake of grounding our discourse in the universal, and re-connecting. For identifying and articulating needs that are alive, so they can be known and attended to.
There is a kind of magic to discover when staying with (or sitting with, or “hugging”) a Need that shows up as “unmet.” For the most part, once identified, connected with, embraced and validated, needs will quiet down as if fulfilled - without any practical action being taken. Exceptions include Needs around physical sustenance, but even there this loving embrace of how needs show up can support flexibility around "how" those needs can be fulfilled.
Is there a relationship between needs-based thinking and principled nonviolence? What is it?
Needs-based thinking… perhaps we don’t call it thinking, because just like “notion of unity” is an axiom that changes how we see everything, so does looking at life, other humans, interactions and one’s inner life through this lens of universal human needs.
Needs perspective changes everything, and aligns with nonviolence principles as being part of our nature. In NVC we often refer to this as "Needs Consciousness".
Most concretely, re-orienting towards Universal Human Needs is a potent and reliable pathway for the “Nonviolent Conversion” where we utilize our loving awareness of needs to help shift our perspective from “me to we,” from enemy to fellow-human, from separation to Heart Unity.
Maja Bengtson
2026