Healing and Community Empowerment Centre

Thank you for visiting Embody to Evolve.  This blog has followed it’s own path of evolution over the past three years.  I began writing as a young woman in search of answers to questions about the world and the meaning of life.  Over the next few years, I engaged in a transformative process which I shared here in this blog.  Throughout the pages you can find resources and practices that helped me to grow into a more mature, compassionate and loving human being.

My vision and commitment now is to build Healing and Community Empowerment Centres.  If you would like to be involved, please contact us at embodytoevolve@gmail.com – we welcome your partnership.

Thank you for your ongoing support and continued work in the world.

If you want to go quickly, go alone.  If you want to go far, go together.

Beauty in the Darkness

Yesterday, June 21st, was the Summer Solstice, the lightest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.  My yoga teacher began our practice yesterday by very astutely saying that at the exact moment of greatest light for the North is greatest dark for the South.  The Earth, like the body, is experiencing two polarities simultaneously, holding both the dark and the light.  Our work is to incorporate these two forces, to honour both the light and the dark, to witness and welcome all aspects of our experience.

In the search for spiritual enlightenment and greater levels of harmony and peace, certain states of being can be idealized, and the complexity of our inner world, life and relationships can be suppressed.  Yet peace is not static.  The wellness, cohesion and unity we are longing for require a dynamic and generative relationship to ourselves, our community and our Universe.

Part of the beauty of life is it’s complexity.  It requires a very deep maturity to be with that complexity.  To be with weaknesses, limitations and fears.  To welcome young and vulnerable parts of ourselves with a loving and generous presence, that is deep enough to hold these overwhelming and uncomfortable feelings and needs.

That is the beauty of the light, it’s purity and honesty is capable of holding the dark.  The true light moves towards trauma and oppression, it listens to that which has been suppressed, it welcomes that which is “too much”, “wrong” or “bad”.  The light affirms the value of the dark, it is in relationship to it, listening, mirroring and extending a deep sense of loving presence.

It is from this place of deep relationship, of clear and conscious awareness, of embracing the complexity of all that is, can the fulfillment of our deepest desires emerge.  We can live in a space of acceptance and balance, in a field of love that is so profound, holding and welcoming the dark.

Sunnyside Summer Yoga Series

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Embody to Evolve presents a Summer Yoga Series at the Sunnyside Pavilion

Opening and Inspiring practices that Connect to the Heart and to the Elements

1755 Lakeshore Blvd West Sunnyside Pavilion

Tuesdays and Thursdays

8:15 – 9:30am

Classes begin Tuesday June 28th

$16 at the door, cash only

Questions?  Contact embodytoevolve(at)gmail.com

Uncertainty and The Great Turning

 

Joanna Macy is one of my most inspiring teachers, with great integrity and wisdom.  Enjoy!

Why Self Work Is Not Enough to Transform Reality

I came into my Masters degree with exactly one question: What is the relationship between personal transformation and social evolution.  I have one credit left to go before graduation and I think I’ve finally got my answer.

Personal transformation is holy work.  It is the process of evolving our own patterns, the ancient grooves in our own bodies and minds that create pain and suffering for ourselves and others.  It is the uncovering of deeper levels of peace and awareness, a closeness to our own divinity and a raw, piercing intimacy with our limitations.  Personal transformation creates individuals who are better able to contribute positively to society, who are connected to their life purpose and creativity, who care about the well-being of life.

Yet personal transformation is not enough to cause social evolution.  Why?  Because personal transformation is taking place within a highly oppressive social structure.  Some people have access to education, health care, water and opportunity and some do not.  This discrepancy in access is actually a major pillar supporting the existence of the structure.  I can’t have what I have unless someone goes without.  There is a dialectical relationship between privilege and oppression, poverty supports wealth, illiteracy supports literacy, unemployment supports profit.  So while the homeless man on the street may seem like he is living outside of normal society, he is actually very much a part of the system, contributing to it’s ongoing functioning.

So, we all care about the Earth, we care about healing, we care about doing something positive and meaningful with our lives.  But when we assign healing just to the level of the individual, we forget that there are structural impediments to human well being.  We see the potential in each being to heal themselves, but we also know exactly which bodies are getting sick.  It is determined by their gender, race and income bracket.  Illness, disease and poverty do not just occur because of beliefs in the mind.

Yet none of these structures, be they economic, political or social, are outside of the human mind.  So when we evolve our individual consciousness there is an impact on the collective.  But it is not sufficient.  The kind of change we need to access goes so far beyond evolving our own false beliefs.  It requires creating new ways of coming together, of making decisions as a community, of participating, listening, giving voice to those who are silenced and being willing to be humbled by what they have to say.  It demands new spaces, that support conversation, mutuality and shared agreements.  Social transformation rests on a new language, a new definition of profit, and a commitment to not know the answers.  We need to learn how to actively involve one another, to build processes that cultivate  group wisdom, that connect a human life to the community outcome.  We have to be willing to embrace one another’s trauma, to realize that healing does not mean erasing, that we each have a component to contribute to the whole, and that together we are something much greater.

Here are some resources to check out:

Walk Out Walk On

The Structure of Belonging

Learning and Violence

Co-Creative Partnership

I am now reaching the end of the nine month Feminine Power program, this July I’ll be travelling to Los Angeles for our Live community gathering with over 500 women from around the world.  Needless to say, I am very excited!

These past few weeks, we have entered Power Base 3 – evolving relationships with others.  It has been an area of great learning and awareness for me and I thought I would share one of the key skills from this power base.

One of the core shifts in power base 3, is to shift from seeing one another as objects in the fulfillment of our needs, to co-creative partners in the unfolding of our deepest desires.

So what does that really mean?  Well, it means that when we are sourced in the universe, when we are profoundly and radically connected to the goodness of life, we trust that our needs will be met in creative and resourceful ways.  We can invite people into partnership with us, be very clear and empowered in what we need from them, but should it not work out or should we experience a sense of uncertainty, we do not hold others hostage to fulfilling our needs.

We all have many noble and good needs.  We need love, money, respect, support, care and well-being.  In order for these needs to be met, for the full flourishing of our lives to unfold, we must shift from seeing one another as objects that are either in our way, or are the source of our satisfaction.  We must honour one another’s subjective experience and hold a tenderness for our shared vulnerability.  From that place, we can begin to explore partnership, working together to fulfill both of our deepest desires.

Transformative Learning Centre

The Transformative Learning Centre is an interdisciplinary centre at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.  Every year, the TLC puts together a Summer Institute, a participatory learning event that brings together Canadian and international activists, academics, practitioners and community members to share ideas and facilitate learning.  Throughout the three weeks, participants take part in interactive short courses and workshops combining theory and practice, on topics such as laughter yoga, popular theatre and creative nature connection!

Last year, my mom and I hosted a 5 hour workshop on “Understanding Personality Using The Enneagram”.  The workshop was a great success and we are happy to be hosting it again this June.

For more information, including dates, time and registration…click on the link below.  Everyone is welcome to join, we look forward to seeing you there.

Enneagram Workshop

{this moment}

{this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.-soulemama

Peace Education Summit

Today a team of our Mindfulness Without Borders facilitators are leading workshops at the Newark Peace Education Summit.  The summit is a collective of leading thinkers, activists and practitioners, including His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Marianne Williamson.

Mindfulness Without Borders brings best practices in social-emotional learning and mindful awareness-based education to conflict and post-conflict communities. It is recognized for its peace and leadership education programs for youth and their educators in Rwanda, Uganda, Nigeria, and Israel since 2008, and most recently in Canada and the United States. Our educational programs integrate ideas and insights from the foremost experts in education, psychology, neuroscience and human development.

Mindfulness Without Borders is based on the premise that one of the best ways to break the cycles of individual and cultural narratives, forged by histories of hatred, violence and fear, is to create a domain where personal mastery of emotions and behavior may be reclaimed, hard lines dissolve and where minds and hearts meet and flourish. Through teacher training workshops and youth-centered activities, we address vital life and leadership skills that individuals need to tackle the challenges that affect them—social, economic and environmental.

Finding the Purpose of Community

When I was in Rwanda, I noticed that in conversation people were very modest in representing themselves.  There wasn’t a lot of emphasis on sharing about your job, education, position in life, goals and ambitions.  In fact, a lot of these important details were often spoken by friends and colleagues, who would represent your achievements and qualities.  Last night, I attended a talk by an Indigenous woman, from Vancouver Island, who said that the “purpose of community is to make you look good”.  Rather than competing, judging, assessing and comparing, in a healthy community with vibrant relationships, you help each other to look good.  You support one another, you give help before needing to ask, you protect one another, you speak well of each other’s attributes and capacities.

In Western culture, we are so oriented towards individualism that we often relate to those that we cherish most as objects.  Particularly, our social networks, which we cultivate in order to fill our needs, rather than for the joy and companionship that comes from authentic human interaction.  We can even relate to ourselves as objects, seeing our success, achievements and impact as proof of our value.

So, in the spirit of embodying to evolve, I am making a commitment to bring my own tendencies towards competition, judgement, inauthenticity and objectification into balance.  To focus on the inherent value of relationships, rather than their utility.  To speak well of my community members, to hold an awareness of their lives and their needs, and to promote their well being as though it were my own.

The feminine power teachings say that everything you desire for your life comes through the gateway of relationship.  The desire we hold for our lives are all relational.  A woman cannot be a mother without a child.  We need each other to become most fully ourselves and to learn how to honour one another as holding the keys to our most sacred destinies, the callings on our lives and the reasons for our existence.