Improvisation and Mindfulness

One of the founders of the improvisation and mindfulness movement talks about improvisation as a life practice, the connection between spiritual practice and improvisation. and what it means to live an improvised life.

Back in 2013, Ted DesMaisons assembled a group of improvisors at a San Francisco Zen monastery to explore the many connections between spirituality and improvisation. That event helped spawn the creation of a worldwide coalition of mindfulness improvisors and an array of improv-based practices for enhancing mindfulness.

In this podcast, DesMaison explains why some people have difficulty improvising, the importance of play for both spiritual practice and improvisation, and why the appreciation of mystery is central to both. He also shares the improvised path that led him from teaching English to becoming a professional improvisor, shares his own definition of spirituality, and plays a live improv “word-at-a-time” activity.

“We’re improvising all the time,” DesMaisons says. “Why not learn to do it well?”

DesMaisons is the author of the new book, Playful Mindfulness and the founder of Anima Learning. He holds an MTS from Harvard University and an MBA from Stanford University. He’s taught mindfulness with renown meditation teacher Jon Kabat-Zinn, taught and performed improvisation internationally, and studied acting and voice with Patsy Rodenburg.

Links:

• Anima Learning business site
• Diversity and Spirituality Network's site
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Self-assessment @ Hierarchies of the Collective conference.

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Religion in an Increasingly Secular World

What does society lose when religion no longer is a safe topic for discussion in public spaces? How has the role of religion changed in parts of the world that are increasingly secular? What are the unexpected consequences of laws designed to prevent discrimination based on religious preferences?

These questions are explored by Coreene Archer and Mark Argent, two UK-based organizational development consultants with deep roots in faith traditions. Although they both understand why governments feel compelled to pass religious nondiscriminatory laws, they believe such laws have unexpected consequences.

“Faith for me and lots of people is a core value,” says Archer, Principal Leadership Coach and Organisational Development Consultant at the Tavistock Institute for Human Relations. “To have to have a work face and a private face is a bit of a shame. It damages all of us if we’re hidden and can’t speak to who and what we are.”

“Carl Jung came up with the very useful idea that progress in the West has come about at the expense of our ability to feel,” says Argent, a spiritual director, organization development consultant, and Elder in the UK's United Reformed Church. “If you compare the West with bits of the world that are often described as underdeveloped, you see something very rich going on (in these less developed countries) that we’ve sort of lost sight of. There’s a price we’re paying for our technological progress.”

In this podcast, Archer and Argent talk about their faith traditions, challenges of working both in secular and faith organizations, and their sense as how religion plays out in the public sphere.

Links:

• Mark Argent’s site
• Coreene Archer at the Tavistock Institute
• “Religion: Hard to Talk About” event
• Diversity and Spirituality Network's site
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Improv and Spirituality weekend in Buckinghamshire in Spring!

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New edition includes my Introduction!

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Live in the UK and want to experience a dynamic approach to mindfulness? Join us this spring for Waking Up!: The Improvisation and Spirituality Weekend. http://bit.ly/2SvXIg5

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Teaching diversity as Miss North Dakota (podcast) http://bit.ly/2VHf7ji

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Teaching diversity as Miss North Dakota (and beyond)

Rosie Nestingin is an African-American woman who grew up in North Dakota, one of the whitest states in the U.S.  Because she grew up in a multiracial household, and went to daycare with international children, she was shocked to discover that hers was one of the only black faces in her elementary school. As a result of this, she began at an early age to start to observe, respond and dispel false assumptions others made about her based on her appearance. From a very early age, she became, in effect, an exemplar of inclusion,  teaching her classmates and teachers what she had already learned about diversity growing up.

After graduating college, she won the title of Miss North Dakota. Her platform was “Celebrate Diversity: One Nation, All People,” and she she spent a year traveling throughout the state, carrying the message of inclusion. In this podcast, she shares some of the insights she gleaned during this process.

Nestingin credits her deeply religious parents with instilling her with a commitment to welcoming everyone with love.  These days, she  continues to embrace and extend this commitment, while at the same time forging a spiritual path.

Links:

• Diversity and Spirituality Network's site
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The Delaware River, On the border between New Jersey and Pennsylvania

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Jules Munns on Improvisation Jules Munns, the Artistic...

Jules Munns on Improvisation

Jules Munns, the Artistic Director of the UK’s Nursery talks about improvisation in a presentation for the Diversity and Spirituality Network’s monthly online community exploration. Munns is one of three facilitators of Waking Up! The Improvisation and Spirituality Weekend, to be held in the UK in spring 2019. http://bit.ly/wakeupimprov
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"What Color is Your Soul?"

Cultural Agility Strategist Niambi Jaha-Echols talks about the roots of racism, why it’s historically been difficult to dismantle, and the role of ancestral healing in curing its wounds. 

Racism, Jaha-Echols says, is a sickness that can’t be cured by that operating on the same vibrational level of its cause. Eradicating it requires understanding its causes, engaging in ancestral healing, and a willingness to embrace that part of us that is vested in spiritual healing and reconciliation.

Author of the new book, What Color is Your Soul, Jaha-Echols here describes her childhood, what led her to found the African-American girl-power Butterfly Movement, and the influence of Native American spirituality on her understanding of ancestral healing.

Jaha-Echols is the principal of Cross-Cultural Agility, LLC,  the author of Project Butterfly, Inspiring The Souls of Our Girls, and her new book, What Color is Your Soul.

Links:

• Niambi’s main site 
• Her business site
• The Butterfly Movement
• Diversity and Spirituality Network's site
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Bodhisattva Maitreya @Rubin

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This Saturday, explore the "space between" or liminal space, where your multiple identities intersect and how they show up within us and between us. http://bit.ly/DSNEVENTS

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How Millennnials find meaning (podcast) http://bit.ly/2MANHrN

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(Diversity and Spirituality Network)

(Diversity and Spirituality Network)

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How Millennials Find Meaning

When Casper ter Kuile and Angie Thurston began their research on their fellow Millennials in 2014, they discovered there were a lot of people who were just like them. Like many of the people they interviewed, neither were affiliated with traditional houses of worship. ter Kuile was a former activist who’d grown up in a secular household, while Thurston was deeply influenced by the Urantia Book, a spiritual and philosophical book popular in New Age circles.

They and the people they studied were members of what demographers have labeled “the nones,” or people who said they had no religious affiliation. According to some studies, the number of Americans ages 18 to 29 who had no religious affiliation has nearly quadrupled in the last 30 years. 

But, as ter Kuile and Thurston discovered, Millennial disdain for traditional religion didn’t mean they’d abandoned the search for belonging and meaning. Instead, many were getting their spiritual needs met within secular organizations, many of which served roughly the same function as traditional churches.

But in a larger sense, ter Kuile said, “nothing has changed” in terms of people’s need to fulfill their religious or spiritual needs. “The way it’s expressed and the cultural context is changing.”

ter Kuile here shares his own story, what he and his colleagues discovered in their research, and his thoughts on what traditional religious institutions can do to support this emerging landscape.

Links:

• How We Gather - home of a series of reports created by ter Kuile and his colleagues
• Casper ter Kuile’s website
• The OnBeing Project
• Diversity and Spirituality Network's site
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Join Us Saturday to Explore the Improvisation/Spirituality Connection

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Join Us Saturday for a Different Take on Mindfulness

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The Diversity and Spirituality Network has been around (more or...

The Diversity and Spirituality Network has been around (more or less) since 1996. Because the group’s leaders wanted to move in a more “spiritual” direciton, they considered changing it’s name. This video explains our decision.

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