When we are most vulnerable, we are most alive…

When I began teaching, I met weekly with a very wise mentor. For me, teaching has always been about growing into my deeper, higher Self and uncovering my own gifts. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to not have this space that I could turn to for inspiration, ideas, support, and growth. So when someone asked me recently to offer a consulting group for teachers, trainers, coaches, facilitators and so on…I knew that it was the right thing for me to do. I feel grateful to be at a place where I can give back.

Also, I’ll be teaching at Esalen Institute in March and would love to see you there! I’m offering a free one-hour consulting session for anyone who registers by February 28th. Detailed descriptions of the consultation group and Esalen workshop can be found below. I hope you can join me!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with my work, “teaching” is broadly defined as any situation where we are responsible for helping another person or sharing what we know with others. I’d love it if you would please forward this link to anyone who might be interested. Thank you!

Transformative Teaching: A Consultation Group for Teachers, Trainers, Coaches and Facilitators

Teaching, in any form, brings up our vulnerability. On the one hand, there is professional vulnerability: Do we know enough? Are we good enough? But there is also personal vulnerability, because we are usually sharing the most tender part of our selves when we teach. Indeed, the most effective teachers are those who love what they do and are sharing what they care deeply about. Not surprisingly then, there is little that is so powerfully transformative as teaching. As Peter Kingsley once wrote, “the teacher is a point of access to something beyond the teacher.”

The purpose of this group is to support and inspire your work, helping you deepen what you do and expand into new territory.

• Discover innovative ways to respond to challenging students or situations
• Receive feedback and creative solutions to your curriculum challenges
• Develop new tools for your teaching “tool kit”
• Gain more confidence as a teacher
• Learn to recognize the creative wisdom in the room

During each session we will set personal commitments for our work. Participants will use a portion of the group time to report on their progress, as well as to share personal challenges, issues, visions and questions, and receive feedback from the group. Anyone who does any form of teaching or training, in any professional setting, is welcome.

The cost is $300 for five sessions and includes a copy of my book, Getting Messy: A Guide to Taking Risks and Opening the Imagination. See the Events page on this website for further details.

Awakening Wisdom: Transformative Teaching, Training, Coaching and Mentoring
Esalen Institute Big Sur, California

In this experiential workshop, we will explore the concepts “third space” and the “imaginal world” in the teaching, training, facilitating, coaching, and mentoring relationship. Third space and the imaginal world are places of expanded knowing and intuitive wisdom; they are the great unknown of inspiration and possibility. We could define the imaginal as a realm that is just beyond our ordinary, every­day rational intellectual capacities. When groups of any size come together in meaningful ways for a shared purpose, there is a larger wisdom available to draw upon, a wisdom that lies within the center of the group itself. Themes will include:

• • structure and structurelessness
  • using creative expression as a way toward expanded group knowing

working with other people as a creative process of embracing the unknown

• teaching from a place of higher vision and intuitive knowing
• embracing group resistance and conflict

 

Each participant will connect with and develop his or her own voice, personal vision, and unique leadership style. This workshop is recommended for all in the teaching and helping professions, and it will also be useful for those who are preparing to teach, coach, mentor, or facilitate for the first time. It may be particularly helpful for those who sometimes experience resistant or “difficult” audiences or clients, as well as for those who simply wish to lead groups with more skill, heart, and integrity.

To register, call Esalen at (831) 667-3005 or visit their website.

A friend of mine recently sent me this Rumi poem, telling me it reminded her of my work:

There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.

There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,
and it doesn’t move from outside to inside
through conduits of plumbing-learning.

This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.

Hope to see you soon!