





New Programme
Feeling inspired? You might also enjoy the recording of the launch session and Q&A, held on 7th December 2022!
This programme and emerging community of practice are for all who are interested in social change and cultural transformation, fostering a more just, equitable, and sustainable world. Join us for the first cycle of a journey into the living dynamics and experiential heart of holistic change facilitation. Responding to the turmoil and imbalances of our time, the programme opens an opportunity to come together and explore how we can synergise our energies and nurture joint inquiries into the big questions that confront us, such as:
Inquiries into these questions require not only a theoretical appreciation of the holistic, interconnected nature of our world, but a deep and ongoing commitment to engage experientially with our individual and collective interior conditions. Experienced holistic change facilitators, transpersonal coaches and mentors will accompany us on this individual and collective journey.
“Many of us have begun to appreciate that purely external, technical solutions are insufficient in addressing the multifaceted problems of our time, because they are bypassing the inner dimensions of the crises we have been experiencing. There is a growing recognition that our global challenges are rooted in dysfunctional mental states and social dynamics, and that we need to engage in inner work to evolve our capacities and skills in addressing world-wide insecurities and volatilities” (Nurturing the Fields of Change report, p.12).
Dear all,
We are delighted to invite you to join this emerging community and programme, co-created by members of Alef Trust’s Conscious Community Initiative, and to share the story that has brought us together to this present moment. Imagine that we are all seated around a campfire, feeling the warm glow and dance of flickering flames, beneath a starry sky that stretches into the mystery of the vast unseen cosmos. Let us breathe together a moment as we lean closer towards the fire and listen to the wind whispering in the surrounding trees.
Community has always been at the heart of Alef Trust, a not-for-profit global learning provider active in higher education, research and community development since 2012. Alef Trust delivers Master’s and PhD programmes in consciousness studies, spirituality and transpersonal psychology which are validated by UK universities. Our work is about cultivating balanced ways of being, as well as activating the potential of rigorous whole-person learning and inquiry for the betterment of human habits, cultures, and systems. The programmes and courses offered continue to evolve in response to the intensifying complexities and urgent needs for sustainable and ethical human development.
In early 2020 we received funding to launch the Conscious Community Initiative, which supported a growing community of holistic facilitators associated with Alef Trust who contribute to individual and collective transformation around the world through their diverse professions and communities of practice. Initial approaches and findings from 2020-2022 are presented in our report Nurturing the Fields of Change. These include the significance of working skilfully with intention and attention whilst cultivating curiosity, open awareness and self-care. We found that holistic change agency thrives through collaboration and supportive community. Community building and connection are at the core of enabling sustainable and lasting change. Peer communities help us in our practices and enable us to engage with the unknown in more courageous and resourceful ways. With the support and encouragement of our peers, we feel accompanied, seen and validated in our work; and we grow in our relational capacities and in our ability to hold multiple perspectives.
And so, Nurturing the Fields of Change was born, and will be launched in February 2023 as a community and programme that responds to the needs of our day, co-creating resources and relational structures that help strengthen our individual and collective change agency and that empower us to prepare the soil and sow seeds for change, wherever we are based in the world. We are grateful to have received further funding which has enabled us to develop its infrastructure and significantly subsidise programme costs this year.
If you decide to join this community, your experiences and insights will contribute to the collective tapestry that we intend to weave between us. We look forward to sharing the journey.
The Alef Team
Nurturing the Fields of Change is a living programme and oasis of practice for effective change agents in today’s world. It will be held entirely online and is hosted on Sutra, an online community platform which shares the values and ethos of Alef Trust.
The programme will unfold over a year-long cycle from February to December 2023. It features a structure of nested circles, with the outer circle being accessible to the largest number of people. This outer circle includes a monthly programme of topical presentations and dialogues, which will grow into an evolving library of digital resources to which you will have ongoing access. The inner circles focus on accompaniment in smaller groups, resourcing you more substantially with facilitated reflective meetings, case clinics, one-to-one coaching, and theoretical and experiential content explored in greater depth.
What we are offering here is not a conventional training programme. Whilst we will be exploring many ideas, theories, models, and practices in this programme, when it comes to the big questions of our time, no one map or model reflects the complexity of the challenges and uncertainties we are navigating. What we intend to do together may be best described as collaborative sense-making, relational deepening, and playful remembering, releasing into the present moment, making space for emergence, and honouring the sacred by following the promptings of the deeper sources that animate and enliven us.
Essentially, we are seeking to co-create an inquiry community with you. This means that we are not assuming that we, the facilitators of this programme, hold all the answers. Instead, we pledge to create safe spaces for deep attunement, so that we can together honour the edges of our knowledge and live the questions that call to us.
“We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking.”
(Rohr, 1999)
Our multi-disciplinary and international team of practitioners and researchers look forward to this shared learning journey. Together we are co-creating the community that will resource and support us as we work on holistic change around the globe.
Dr. Jessica Bockler is an applied transdisciplinary artist and transpersonal psychologist specialising in embodied approaches to accessing creativity and imagination. She is a co-founding director of Alef Trust, and teaches across a range of courses in integral psychology, creativity & transformation, research design, and applied transformative psychology, bringing spiritual perspectives to activism and social change. Jessica’s research interests converge on the intersection between inner work and holistic approaches to social change. She believes that working with the deeper streams of consciousness, tapping collective unconscious domains, is critical to enabling human beings to come into a more holistic and wholesome relationship with nature and earth. Jessica is on the academic advisory board of the Inner Development Goals initiative, and contributes to the UN’s Conscious Food Systems Alliance. She is also an active member in the global research network of the Presencing Institute.
Dan works with clients to facilitate growth, connection and healing at the fertile edge between transpersonal psychology, embodied meditation and permaculture. His unique background in deep ecology literacy and permaculture practice combined with training as a certified transpersonal psychology coach and embodied meditation teacher allows for a truly holistic framework of inner and outer process work. His focus is to help clients recognise their felt sense of aliveness and in doing so to recognise their true nature as a deeply grounded presence and their connectedness with all of Life as life itself. He is co-founder of www.earthbound.fi
After retiring from a career teaching psychology in schools Christine studied Consciousness and Transpersonal Psychology with the Alef Trust. More recently she has qualified as a Transpersonal Coach and has a private practice with a particular interest in the challenges of later life. She is also actively involved with her local hospice being on the chaplaincy team and also supporting the bereaved. Her great joy is playing the piano and singing in a number of choirs.
Through this evolving programme and community we aim to nurture between us the fields for paradigm change, honouring our deeper nature and embeddedness in the world, and galvanising our action potential by developing conscious, integrative, full-spectrum responses to our perceived predicaments and visions.
We approach holistic change facilitation with the awareness that our deepest inner nature is embedded in nature at large. Therefore, the core content of this programme is built around transpersonal, depth-psychological and ecological principles. Throughout our time together, we will attune to natural patterns and rhythms and listen to our intuitive, emotional, somatic, and vital intelligences and what they invite us to do or undo…
Immersion in the natural cycles and seasons of holistic change
Participate in topical presentations, join conversations, and feel inspired by different perspectives and ideas. We will be holding 10 interactive sessions, exploring the principles and practice of holistic change facilitation with Jessica Bockler, Francesca Hector and project leaders from the previous cycles of Alef Trust’s Conscious Community initiative.
All sessions 14:00-15:30 UK time (GMT: Feb-Mar & Nov-Dec /BST: Apr-Oct)
6th Feb What is holistic system change and how is it nurtured?
6th Mar Holistic change and its seasonal cycles
With Paula Staunton: Transforming land, transforming people
3rd Apr Engaging with deeper sources and listen to emergence
1st May Archetypal work and social change
With Ayesha Iftikhar: Journey to the self: Taking care of the care-takers
5th Jun How are mind, heart, body and spirit engaged in our work?
With Adi Vickers: Integrative practice for the heart-centred teacher
3rd Jul Structural and relational considerations
4th Sep How do we experience and approach the challenges we encounter?
With Lorraine Clewer: Yoga therapy with labour rights activists
2nd Oct Activating leverage points for change
With Tabitha Jayne: Developing an Earth-connected facilitation process
6th Nov How do we inspire coherent action for transformational outcomes?
4th Dec Community meeting, feedback, reflections
Registration fee: voluntary donation (fully subsidised)
Join a reflective circle, cultivate connections and resonances
Access to the Widening Perspectives circle, plus:
13th Feb, 17:00-19:00 GMT. David Nicol – Subtle Activism: Creating the energetic foundations of the emerging era
8th Mar, 16:00-18:00 GMT. Patricia A. Wilson and Paméla Overeynder – Engaging community:
Stories and practices for awareness-based change
14th Apr, 16:00-18:00 BST. Daniel Schimmelpfennig – Creative chaos lab
20th Jun, 15:00-17:00 BST. Dave Pendle – Imagination, spirituality and social change
5th July, 15:00-17:00 BST. Karen Liebenguth & Alister Scott – Ethical facilitation & leadership
19th Sept, 14:00-16:00 BST. Eva Pomeroy – The social field: Exploring the quality of our collective being
19th Oct, 15:00-17:00 BST. (tbc) Anton Baaré – Human insecurities & conflict resolution
15th Nov 16:00-18:00 GMT. Cassandra Vieten – Gamechangers for changemakers
13th Dec 16:00-18:00 GMT. Cassandra Vieten – What kind of changemaker are you?
(Session details and facilitator bios below.)
Reflective circles schedule 2023:
First Monday of the month: 6 Feb, 6 March, 3 April, 1 May, 5 June, 3 July, 4 Sep, 2 Oct, 6 Nov, 4 Dec 15:30-17:00 UK time
Registration + fees: £250 (low income), £350 (moderate) £450 (high) per year (partially subsidised)
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Tier 2: Session details & Facilitator bios:
13 February, 17:00-19:00 GMT
David Nicol: Subtle Activism: Creating the Energetic Foundations of the Emerging Era
At a time of such extreme polarization and bewildering change, how can we participate in the healing of our world without feeding the cycle of reactivity? Subtle activism explores the creative application of spiritual practices like meditation, prayer, and ritual for social and planetary transformation. It invites us to imagine new forms of spiritual expression that straddle the private and public spheres as a way to offer a more profound holding for the complex wounds that are rising to the surface as we transition to a new era. In particular, it seeks to nurture the rising potential of our collective spiritual intelligence to meet the challenges of our times with wisdom and courage.
David T. Nicol, PhD, is the co-founder (with his wife Kate Naga) of EarthRising (http://earthrising.one), an emerging global community dedicated to seeding the new Earth through harnessing the power of coherent group consciousness for personal and planetary healing. He is the author of Subtle Activism: The Inner Dimension of Social and Planetary Transformation (SUNY Press), the first comprehensive study of the idea that focused collective meditation can contribute powerfully and measurably to social change. He is the director and co-founder of the Gaiafield Project, and co-founder of BeThePeace and WiseUSA, initiatives that have united tens of thousands of people worldwide for large-scale meditations dedicated to social change. David has taught on Subtle Activism at the California Institute of Integral Studies and The Shift Network. He is also a professional astrologer (https://www.earthrising.one/) and writes a regular column on Substack called Geistic Musing. David, an Australian by birth, now lives in North California with his wife Kate and dog Peaches.
8 March, 16:00-18:00 GMT
Patricia A. Wilson and Paméla Overeynder
Engaging Community: Stories and Practices for Awareness-Based Change
Patricia shares practitioner stories, especially from the Global South, illustrating the inner and outer practice of awareness-based whole-systems change. Paméla interweaves experiential practices to attune to that pulsing systemic wholeness. They conclude with key patterns of generative practice and offer a personal credo for the participatory change agent.
Patricia A. Wilson, professor emerita from the University of Texas in Community and Regional Planning, holds a BA from Stanford and a Ph.D. from Cornell. Her interests evolved over four decades from economic development and inequality to community engagement and the phenomenology of practice. Her action research in community-based change processes has included Latin America, South Africa, India, and Hispanic neighborhoods in the U.S. Her latest book, The Art of Community Engagement: Practitioner Stories from Across the Globe (Routledge), won the 2020 Hamilton Book Award for best textbook. Dr. Wilson currently serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Awareness-Based Systems Change.
Paméla Overeynder is a biodynamic craniosacral therapist with 30 years in the healing field facilitating human transformation. She received lay ordination in the Order of Interbeing in 1996 from Zen Buddhist Master Thich Nhat Hanh and co-founded Plum Blossom Sangha, a mindfulness community in Austin, Texas. Paméla is currently an ordained minister in the Inayatiyya Sufi Order International and the center leader of the Inayatiyya Sufi community in Austin. For many years she has taught meditation classes, led chanting circles, and guided meditations. She offers core teachings in the esoteric school, serves as a guide and spiritual mentor, and facilitates individual and group spiritual retreats.
14 April, 16:00-18:00 BST
Daniel Schimmelpfennig: Creative Chaos Lab
A Creative Chaos Lab is where “choice” is left to chance. “Chance” is not the absence of selection but rather the intrusion of a different order of selection. Meanwhile, “chaos” is not the absence of order but rather highly complex information. We are thus seriously gaming with an epistemological therapy to think in possibilities and potentialities. In other words, we explore what anticipation for futures and anticipation for emergence imply and how we can approximate what synthesis and paradox could mean. We investigate strange synchronicities together and ask ourselves what contains secret truths that are downright dangerous for the mind, so we can no longer remain in prior fiction.
Daniel Schimmelpfennig has a background in Psychiatry, has studied International Business & Management in Amsterdam and Moscow, Futures Studies in Finland, and Space Studies at the International Space University in Strasbourg, France. His work is situated in the multitemporal context of urgency, necessity, and emergency.
20 June, 15:00-17:00 BST
Dave Pendle: Imagination, Spirituality and Social Change
Holistic facilitation emphasizes the integration and importance of the first person perspective, as central to the transformation process in all its dimensions. This necessitates a keen sense of the multi-perspectival aspects of the Self and the heart with its twin impulses towards Being and Becoming. Critical to the future facilitation of Social Change is an undimmed sense of possibility and potential, a deep trust in the life process, combined with a keen attunement to the emerging future, plus a nascent sense of unprecedented and unimaginable possibility. Aspiring practitioners thus develop the capacities and become open to cultivate, the conditions whereby the full health, vitality and thrivability of the systems where they are situated becomes more likely.
Dave Pendle spent 30 years in the UK non-profit sector enabling socially excluded young adults and youths make strides on their journey towards independence. In parallel, for eighteen of those years, he undertook an immense amount of spiritual exploration, including more than 10,000 hours of mindfulness, spiritual enquiry and meditation practice. Currently resident in the Netherlands, he has now founded a business Generative You designing offerings in order to Upgrade the Nature of Leadership. He is currently running an innovative collective enquiry series titled Phenomenal Conversations and a series of Generative Leadership Masterclasses.
5 July, 15:00-17:00 BST
Karen Liebenguth & Alister Scott: Ethical Facilitation & Leadership
How do we know that we lead and facilitate ethically? We believe that ethics are a practice. It’s about knowing our deepest values that guide our actions of thinking, communicating and behaving. In this session we’ll explore what ethical leadership means, how we can practice it, model it and bring it into our work with groups.
Karen Liebenguth is a leadership coach and mindfulness trainer. She works with clients in natural settings creating time and space to reflect on their purpose and values, their inner life (feelings, fixed beliefs, biases, impulses), actions, mind-set and attitude towards themselves and others. In 2020 she co-founded Parcival – an ethical leadership programme.
Alister Scott is a leadership advisor and systemic coach. He is the co-Founder of the Compassion Practices Collective and a co-Director of the Global Rewilding Alliance. He is also the co-author of the acclaimed Little Book of Making Big Change Happen. Alister has supported the leadership of nearly 20 founders and their successors in extraordinary organisations.
19 September, 14:00-16:00 BST
Eva Pomeroy: Social Fields: Exploring the Quality of Our Collective Being
We can think of the social field as the space between us. The quality of that space has a tremendous impact on our lived experience and we also possess significant agency to shape it. In this session, we engage in contemplative exercises and dialogue to connect with our knowing of the social field.
Eva Pomeroy is Research Lead at the Presencing Institute and Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Applied Human Sciences, Concordia University, Canada. Eva is Co-Founder and Managing Editor of the Journal of Awareness-Based Systems Change. Her work focuses on the social field as a key leverage point for transformative change.
19 October, 15:00-17:00 GMT (tbc)
Anton Baaré: Human Insecurities & Conflict Resolution
15 November, 16:00-18:00 GMT
Cassandra Vieten: Gamechangers for Changemakers
As a changemaker you might be engaging in strategies that are counterproductive to what you are trying to achieve. Learn what social, cognitive and neuroscience tells us about what does and doesn’t work to win hearts and minds.
13 December, 16:00-18:00 GMT
Cassandra Vieten: What Kind of Changemaker Are You?
We each have our strengths and challenges when it comes to our work as changemakers. Explore what your innate strengths are, how to emphasize them, and how to develop presence, purpose and power in your communications and actions.
Cassandra Vieten is Director of the Center for Mindfulness, and Director of Research at the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, both at the University of California, San Diego. She is also a Senior Advisor at the John W. Brick Foundation, Director of Research and and a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, where she served as President from 2013-2019. Her research has focused on spirituality and health, transformative experiences and practices, the development of mindfulness-based interventions for emotional well-being, development of media technologies to inspire awe, and social, cognitive and neuroscience of effective changemaking. She received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and completed her research training in behavioral genetics at UC San Francisco. She has authored three books, published numerous articles in scientific journals, and is an internationally recognized keynote speaker and workshop leader.
Join the imaginal core: Develop your capacity for holistic change facilitation through personal integrative practice and in-depth accompaniment in a 4-module holistic change facilitation course
Our Integrative Practice quest is the first module of the training course. The cultivation of inner skills and capacities is inextricably related to how we can be of service in the world and model and embody the very change we want to see around us. Moreover, an integrative perspective helps us honour all dimensions of our being and our work – the inner and outer, the individual and the collective. Therefore, we place integrative practice at the heart of the holistic change facilitation quest. This module features guidance on integrative planning and practice through readings and audio-visual resources, several webinars (recorded) that will explore the principles of integrative practice, a year-long facilitated integrative practice circle, a written forum, and 5 one-to-one coaching sessions – as detailed above.
Dreaming while awake, this module explores imaginal and embodied practices for envisioning and enacting change. Our practices will be rooted in principles emerging from quantum physics, social field theory, transpersonal theory, and quantum social science, inviting us to explore concepts of self and self-agency. We will sense into the daily narratives that inform our actions and ways of being, and what archetypal stories are calling for our fuller attention and enactment. This module includes reading resources, guided activities, a facilitated forum and several sessions blending theory and praxis, exploring the value of imaginal play in holistic change facilitation.
This module will consider essential attitudes and capacities that enable holistic change facilitation in any given context. We will explore systems sensing and conscious stake-holder engagement alongside practice ethics. The module includes reading resources, guided activities, a facilitated forum and several webinars. This module also includes case clinics. Case clinics are held to address work and practice related issues experienced by the members of the programme. You will be invited to register your interest in bringing a case at various times of the programme.
The summer module explores how we share our work with the wider world, finding common ground through shared values and igniting new visions for holistic praxis. Together, we will apply the art of visionary storytelling that can help inspire new ways of being and doing. We will also consider how holistic change can be evaluated, drawing on transpersonal and participatory approaches to research. We will explore how to navigate narratives of commissioners and funding bodies that are overly identified with reductive measurement and quantification. Lastly, we will calibrate our intentions and start to prepare the soil for the next cycle of our work. The module includes reading resources, guided activities, a facilitated forum and several webinars. This module also includes further case clinics. Case clinics are held to address work and practice related issues experienced by the members of the programme. You will be invited to register your interest in bringing a case at various times of the programme.
All webinar and case clinic dates to be announced.
Celebratory gathering of the programme community: December 2023.
All live taught webinars & practice sessions featured on the 4-module course will be recorded and the recordings will be made available to registered participants.
Reflective circles:
First Monday of the month: 6 Feb, 6 March, 3 April, 1 May, 5 June, 3 July, 4 Sep, 2 Oct, 6 Nov, 15:30-17:00 UK time
Monthly Integrative Practice circle meeting:
Last Monday of the month: 27 Feb, 27 March, 24 April, 29 May, 26 June, 24 July, 25 Sept, 30 Oct, 27 Nov, 17:00-18:30 UK time
Seasons of Holistic Change: A 4-module experiential course. Webinars:
Module 1: Wednesdays, 8 Feb, 22 Feb, 15 March, 17:00-18:30 UK time
Module 2: Wednesdays, 29 March, 12 April, 26 April, 10 May, 24 May, 17:00-18:30 UK time
Module 3: Wednesdays, 14 & 28 June, 12 & 26 July, 13 & (27 Sept), 17:00-18:30 UK time
Module 4: Wednesdays, (27 Sept), 11 Oct, 25 Oct, 8 Nov, 22 Nov, 6 Dec, 17:00-18:30 UK time
Registration fee: £2,000 (low income); £2500 (medium income); £3,000 (high income). (All fee levels are partially subsidised.) Partial scholarships are available for those experiencing financial hardship.
Certification: Participants who fulfil the participation requirements will receive a Certificate of Participation in Holistic Change Facilitation from Alef Trust.
If you are interested in joining Nurturing the Fields of Change you’ll find registration and further information here. Places are limited, so do send your application as soon as possible!
We will be happy to respond to any further questions through our general enquiry form.
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