Luckily, the study of evolution shows us that species can make transformative adaptations when faced with a crisis. So, this is the time to write a new story of what is possible for humans, and we are the people to do it.

Here's an alternative to denial, overwhelm or despair: join us for this series. In supportive community, let's admit we've never been here before and don't know what to do. From that fertile place of humility, let's listen together for practical and collaborative ways forward.

6:30 - 9:00 pm on these Monday evenings:
- Sept. 29 (College & Spadina), Oct 27 & Nov 17 (St. George & Bloor)

Suggested donation $10-20/session.

We explored these questions through powerful videos, dynamic group processes, and active conversations, using top-quality materials from the Awakening the Dreamer Symposium (and its youth adaptation, the Generation Waking Up Experience, or "WakeUp" for short). We looked at what's meaningful and possible for the world right now and our role and best contribution to the thriving, just and sustainable future we want to see.  

Whether you made it to our session or not, you can watch the Symposium online on your own time or buy the DVD. If you feel inspired you can help host a WakeUp or Awakening the Dreamer Symposium for your friends, organization or community. GenUp and the Pachamama Alliance give you everything you need.  You can contact us to bring us in, or facilitate it yourself!
 
If you want to go deeper into these questions, sign up for the Game Changer Intensive. This seven-week online course by the Pachamama Alliance educates, inspires and equips you to be a pro-activist leader and a game changer in your community. The next one starts in January. 

And if you’re feeling overwhelmed by the uncertainty of the times we’re in, you might enjoy this 2.5-minute video of Joanna Macy. 

Facilitators: David Burman, Natalie Zend, Rebecca Dehmassi and Mickey Juranka
Snacks provided by Manjit Dali Mann and Rebecca Dehmassi, support with set up by Bethany Zack.
 

In this session, we delved into Joanna Macy's The Work that Reconnects, a theoretical framework for personal and social change as well as a powerful set of group processes for its application. This work is about finding, and offering, our best response to the crisis of sustainability unfolding in our world. It offers tools that help us face the mess we’re in, as well as find and play our role in the collective transition, or Great Turning, to a life-sustaining society.

In the realm of this work, there is much more available for you to explore if you're curious. Joanna's latest book (co-authored with Chris Johnstone), Active Hope, guides you through the process, with exercises you can do on your own or in a group. Her book, Coming Back to Life, which has just been republished in an updated edition, empowers you to share the work with groups. 

If you want to live (or relive) the Spiral of the Work as a 10-minute daily practice, here's how you can do it. 

If you're looking for a simple way to continually open to your dark and light feelings about the times we're in, you might enjoy the simple practice of "Breathing Through," which you can do in the midst of your daily life. In this 10-minute video, Joanna guides you through the practice.  

And if you want to explore this work more deeply, set up an "Active Hope" reading group with your friends. This can become a shared process to deepen community, support each other and become more resourced in addressing concerns about the world. This online guide will give you all the resources you need. Contact us if you'd like support in this.

Facilitation by Natalie Zend; snacks and flower arrangements by Zora Ignjatovic; welcoming and space holding by Jessica Vogt and David Burman; facilitation support by Susana Ochi. Sponsored by the Transformative Learning Centre or TLC (with thanks to Edmund O'Sullivan, Blake Poland and Natalie Abdou).

In this final session, we will focus on envisioning a fun, beautiful future society in harmony with the natural world. We'll explore tangible feet-on-the-ground actions and vote-with-your-wallet strategies for co-creating a future worth looking forward to. The session will be inspired by Kaia's latest book, Visions: Co-Creating Our Future.

Facilitator: Kaia Nightingale   

In this fun, interactive session, participants expanded their capacity to embody a state of being that creates inclusiveness, empowerment and connection.

We explored ideas that energized a relationship with the contrast we experience in our personal lives and as part of a movement toward greater support of life on this planet. We explored ways to uncover and express our values and relate to them in a way that supports their manifestation. Through exercises, we anchored the association of personal values, global vision, and embodied manifestation. Multiple senses were engaged to clarify a reality in which respect for the earth and unique, creative expression manifest in individuals, systems and projects that benefit everyone involved.

Every step is the destination...every point is the path. Make a point to step into the path as creator and adventurer. You and I are perfect as the center and beginning of this story we are living. You and I are expressions of unconditional love in this journey we are being.  - Ryan Genereaux

June’s Unify Toronto Dialogue hosted leadership educator, facilitator and Juno-nominated pianist Michael Jones, inspired by his forthcoming book: The Soul of Place: Reimagining Leadership through Arts, Nature, and Community. The book is expected shortly, and will be available in August’s Design with Dialogue as Michael returns to OCADU with a second session for the book launch proper.  In the meantime, his brief brief article titled Recovering the Soul of Place:  Reflections on Place-Based Leadership is available here.

Michael’s approach to placemaking is radically different than the current trend in urban planning and city-building. His book and view is a platform for community leadership grounded in the essential humanity of understanding place, nature, and creativity.

We are shifting from the industrial age and the age of information and technology to the age of biology. We are now asking, “how do we create spaces for life?” “How do we align our thinking with how nature thinks?”  He asks us to create places as living systems inspired by biology and interconnection.

We explored the four patterns in Michael’s book that underlie the soul of place

• Homecoming  – Where is home and how do we find our way there?
• Belonging  – How can the connective tissue of life-giving relationships align us with the essence of nature and how nature works, connects, and thinks?
• Regenerativity - What does it mean to make the invisible visible, to contribute to the conscious evolution of life?
• Carnival - How can we gather together on the square or in the commons, bringing together diverse energies, democratic spirit and upturning the old for the new?

The event was uniquely facilitated to engage multiple modes of experiencing and presencing the patterns. Michael Jones told several stories about his experiences in embodied leadership and his musical learning journey. He played several pieces while participants listened, contemplated, moved or held small group dialogues. Our gathering hosted dialogue around the four themes and patterns. An integrated sketch by Patricia Kambitsch formed a visual story of the experiences and dialogue in the room:

Michael is a leadership educator, dialogue facilitator, writer and Juno-nominated pianist/composer.  His most recent book, The Soul of Place, is the third in a series on Re-imagining Leadership.  Others in the series includeArtful Leadership and the award-winning  Creating an Imaginative Life.  Michael has also been a thought leader with the MIT Dialogue Project and Dialogos and other prominent leading edge universities and centres. He has co-chaired several place-based initiatives and spoken on the leader's emerging role as   placemaker in a variety of forums including The Authentic Leadership in Action Conferences (ALIA), The Society  for Organizational  Learning (SoL) and many others. As a pianist/composer Michael has composed and recorded fifteen CD's of his original piano compositions and performed as a solo pianist across North America  as well as Korea and Japan.  He has been integrating his music in his leadership and dialogue work for over twenty years. See www.pianoscapes.com to learn more about Michael and his work.

In our view great leadership is not much different from being a really good human being. Leaders build real trust within a group or community, pointing toward a new future and advancing with confidence into the inherent uncertainly of unknown realms. When you actually have capacity to face breakdowns, breakthroughs, unplanned opportunities and defeats without loss of confidence then we say you have “embodied” the essential components of leadership. First you have to be the leader of your own life - then and only then will people choose to follow you.

Arising out of the traditions of martial arts and the "human potential movement” that inspired the founding of Esalen in California during the 1960’s, “somatic practice” (embodied action) has proven amazingly successful as a way for people to awaken their awareness of their “authentic selves.” It has been adapted for personal, institutional and business transformation.

When you speak authentically, from your core, then what you say and how you say it matters. You will need to be able to use language effectively. Human beings are creatures of language, and yet we know very little about how language actually works. The field of “ontology of language” opens up enormous realizations about how we have been creating our own obstacles, when we could be moving through them. Leaders use language to create possible futures and then have them realized.

Session 1 – February 24
Introduction to the practices of embodied leadership: finding center, accessing energy in the body, training our attention, moving from center, facing and blending with opposing energies.

Session 2 – March 17
Incorporating language: distinguishing interpretations, declaring ourselves, creating possibility and managing breakdowns.

Session 3 - April 28
Deep Listening: Listening deeply invites us to practise mindfulness and the skill of focusing one’s attention.  In this session, Gary Diggins will facilitate experiential interactions that help us to remain present to what we hear through the media of sound, word, music, and even silence.
 
Session 4 – May 26
Leading for Real: an Inquiry into, “What are you facing in the world that is calling for your leadership? What are we as a human family facing in the world that is calling for our leadership? And how can/will we respond?”
 
Participants in the series will get most value by doing all four sessions, but attending even one session on its own will be valuable. Each session will be highly participative, with activities involving movement, group interactions, dialogue and contemplative reflection.

Jon Love has 25 years of consulting, coaching and leadership training, and has experience as an executive in corporate and non-profit organizations.

He is the Founder and Senior Partner of Leadership for Social Change Jonathan has been a practitioner of Organizational Transformation for over 25 years. He has assisted dozens of companies to develop leadership at all levels of the organization, ensuring that breakthrough results are accomplished by the people of the enterprise. Using a model of leadership that incorporates effective practices derived from diverse and eclectic sources, grounded in somatic, linguistic and emotional competence. Jonathan guides participants to discover and then realize commitments that have been suppressed and gone unfulfilled until now.

As an executive with The Pachamama Alliance, a non-governmental organization in San Francisco, CA. he was a key member of the development team that created a multi-media educational Symposium delivered by volunteers. In the first five years over 3000 facilitators were trained to lead the Symposium and over 200,000 people attended.

Satya Narayani Robinson is founder of WEB3, co-founder of JLS Global and employed by Caledon Centre for Recreation and Wellness, with 15 years of practitioner and teaching experience in numerous fields of Health and Wellness including Yoga, Pilates, Meditation and Visualization, Reiki, Reflexology, Massage, Therapeutic Touch, Thought Field Therapy and Card Readings. She offers individual counseling as a Soul Contact Specialist and is an Awakening the Dreamer facilitator. 

Satya is a 22 year resident of Caledon and a blessed mother of 4 children who she declares are her greatest teachers.  She has volunteered for the past 20 years in a variety of initiatives from schools to community gardens. She is currently a member of ecoCaledon and co-founder of Unify Caledon. She is committed to empowering embodied leaders to become a powerful presence in the world and to building communities to take a stand for creating a just, sustainable and thriving life for all, honoring individual process and taking action for personal development and somatic experiencing. 

She is devoted to serving the greatest good by taking on transformation at four levels; Unify Home, Unify Caledon (our local community), Unify Toronto (our metro area) and Unify World, actively seeking to bring harmonious evolution into maximum development in each of these arenas.

Jon and Satya’s training comes from the Institute of Embodied Wisdom in Ojai California and working with Sage Alliance Partners.

Gary Diggins has worked Internationally for the last three decades as an expressive arts therapist, performing musician, and group facilitator.  Before moving to Guelph in 2013, Gary maintained a private practice in Toronto combining counselling with musical forms of therapy.  He continues to serve on the faculty of Fleming College’s Expressive Arts Therapy department.  Gary is passionate and curious about human communication and the universal practice of listening to sound, word, music, and silence.  His recent book, Listening as a Mindful Practice, will be available in 2014. 

Gary has worked in post-conflict communities in Africa including Rwanda, Uganda, Nigeria, and Angola. Some of the multi-national organizations Gary has worked with include: Nestlé Global, General Mills, William Wrigley Jr. Company, Schlumberger, Bell, BP, TD Canada Trust Bank, Procter & Gamble, and IBM.
As a recording artist, Gary appears on dozens of musical projects including six solo albums.  Some of 2013 appearances included the Guelph JazzFest and the Hillside Festival.  In 2011, Gary collaborated with Cirque du Soleil and world music artists from around the world to present a special performance staged in Las Vegas.