Practicing Change

It has been clear throughout the 30 years of working in the field of conscious practice and guidance, that the cultivation of wisdom, compassion and presence has the power to evolve not only ourselves, but our work in the world,  our communities, our society, and the way we attend to the critical issues that face us as a collective. The "Conscious Social Change" movement, at the intersection of personal and societal transformation, has been building during this time. My dear friend, Gretchen Steidle, Founder of Global Grassroots, has been a force in this movement, and together, we organized TEDxWashingtonSquare.

Our theme was Practicing Change, highlighting the intersection of inner change and outer change; how conscious practice serves, supports, and furthers systemic social change. In fields as diverse as education, policing, law, business, and gender and race issues, to name a few, we have seen a growing movement that is bringing mindfulness and other conscious practices to the work of social justice and transformation. We gathered an extraordinary community of speakers and special guests around this theme, and explored our common ground at the intersection of mindfulness, inner transformation and social innovation. We are thrilled with the responses from audience members, who have shared with us that they felt deeply moved by the experience of the day and the power of the talks. Many have shared that they feel inspired, hopeful and motivated to practice transformative change in their own lives and work. We are continuing to cultivate and support the energy that is emerging from our convening.

We are currently exploring a dedicated platform to profile more ideas that work and the stories behind them, and a community-based emergent dialogue project and solutions-building process that applies a mindful approach to solving local and national needs at a range of intersections.  Our commitment is to bring this work, as a model of social transformation, to light; to make transformative practices and training accessible to a broad spectrum of change agents, from grassroots initiators to business and non-profit leadership; and to support practitioners, researchers, scholars and funders in finding each other, developing the field, and substantially impacting the complex and painful social issues of our time.