the art of communicating is a powerful tool
I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may never complete this last one, but I give myself to it. –Joanna Macy On July 19, 2025, Joanna Macy died at the age of 96. She was an author, teacher, eco-philosopher, and Buddhist scholar and practitioner. I had the privilege of participating in a workshop with her in January 2000 and have read several of her books. Today, I … Read more…
Alan Briskin and I are writing a book about “fields:” personal, social, and noetic. I have written several posts about them including one on the personal field. The piece below (a five-minute read) continues to explore the value and practices for perceiving and influencing the personal field. Thank you for your interest. Given the plethora of distractions and diversions at our beck and call, perhaps it is time for all of us to learn or … Read more…
Alan Briskin and I are working on a book about “fields.” I have written several previous posts about them. The map to this territory is becoming clearer and more detailed as we, along with David Sibbet, Gisela Wendling, Karen Buckley, and Philip Bakerlaar share our ideas and experiences about and with fields. We are also investigating the work of those who have explored social fields before us like Mary Parker Follett, Kurt Lewin, Pierre Bourdieu, … Read more…
“Every feeling, thought, movement, and encounter is simultaneously an inner and outer event.” —Arnold Mindell Alan Briskin and I are working on a book about “fields.” I have written several previous posts about them. The map to this territory is becoming clearer and more detailed as we, along with David Sibbet, Gisela Wendling, and Karen Buckley, share our ideas about and experiences with fields. We are also investigating the work of those who have … Read more…
Some of you know that Alan Briskin and I are working on a book about “fields.” I have written several previous posts about them. The map to this territory is becoming clearer, more detailed as we, along with David Sibbet, Gisela Wendling, and Karen Buckley share our ideas and experiences with fields. We are also investigating the work of those who have explored fields before us like Mary Parker Follett, Kurt Lewin, and Otto Scharmer. … Read more…
My husband has a wicked sense of humor. For years, I often misperceived his dry wit as criticism, especially if I had been silently rehashing what seemed a less than sterling something that I did or said in the past with a client. If I didn’t pause to check and notice his expression or ask if he was criticizing me, I was off to the reactive races moving into some form of criticism of him … Read more…
You might have heard of the indigenous South African philosophy of ubuntu, “I am because of who we all are.” Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, in a conversation earlier this year with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, she described the meaning of ubuntu as “a person becomes a human being through other people.” As a clinical psychologist who worked alongside Bishop Desmond Tutu on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, Gobodo-Madikizela witnessed firsthand the invisible threads … Read more…
“What do you think we should be talking about more?” I heard myself recently say to a friend, “The world is just too much for my soul these days.” I had just read an announcement from the Wiyot Tribe on whose unceded ancestral lands I live that they had declared a State of Emergency on the Wiyot’s ancestral rivers due to extreme low flows and drought conditions. The Wiyot Tribe are my neighbors. Some of … Read more…
john a. powell, professor of Law, African American and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, made the astute observation that in times of stress, societies either break apart or build bridges. In addition to the stress from accelerating changes in globalization, technology, environment, and demographics, we now add a global pandemic and an economic free fall. All of this is hard for the human brain to process. Because the brain evolved to keep us safe, it … Read more…
The first time I was listened to, really listened to, was a revelation. It happened in my mid-twenties while talking with Grace, a close colleague and friend. She did something deceptively simple. She paid attention. She restated back to me what she understood me to say. Then she asked a question to increase her understanding of what I was trying to convey. Hearing my words reflected back to me was revelatory. I felt seen and … Read more…