March 17

Technology for Transformation: Kundalini Yoga and Y.O.G.A. for Youth

Keval Kaur Khalsa

The practice of Kundalini Yoga develops awareness, consciousness, and the courage to act from the heart as a“spiritual warrior”.  Kundalini Yoga balances and strengthens all the systems of the body, disciplines the mind, and connects the practitioner with spirit.  A regular practice of Kundalini Yoga & Meditation can move us beyond perceived barriers, experiencing the Oneness that pervades all.  

Y.O.G.A. for Youth is a non-profit organization based in the US, founded in the mid 1990’s by Black yoga master/pioneer Krishna Kaur.  Y.O.G.A. for Youth is dedicated to empowering youth and families in underserved communities  through the principles and practice of yoga.

This workshop will be a combination of experiential work, lecture and discussion. Workshop participants will be lead through a practice of Kundalini Yoga, with time for sharing their experience of the practice. Workshop leader Keval Khalsa, Y.O.G.A. for Youth Regional Director, Teacher Trainer and Board Member,  will share information about the Y.O.G.A. for Youth program and curriculum, and results of two research studies completed to-date.  

ESSENCE Here and Now – Workshop Initiation of “Lakou”

Laura Beaubrun

The Lakou in Haiti reflects a way of life. It’s a way of living and being that unites individuals in community and establishes values and principles. In the “Here and Now”, reminds us what is essential to know our origins and who we are. This song, drum, and dance workshop, “Initiation of Lakou”, teaches this essence. This workshop shares the roots of Haitian culture and spirituality through dance, drum, and song, where attention is directed towards body and mind consciousness. Through a pedagogy adapted to all audiences and at all levels, each class will include a brief presentation on the origins and deeper spiritual meaning of the rhythms. Here are the themes and rhythms that will be shared with the participants: Yanvalou (ceremonial dance of water) Nago ( The warrior and fire dance ) As a complement to body expression, Laura Beaubrun started a new training in art therapy, she will work on other mediations, such as painting or clay, etc. in order to bring a continuation of movement and transformation in individual and collective creation. (If face to face is allowed)

I Yawn Because You Yawn: Intercorporeal Art as Political Witnessing

Qais Assali

Through a collective experience of seeing, listening, writing and drawing, we will create tactile and temporal evidence of senses. We will see, listen, describe and trace deep narratives and archives in order to witness our past as a means to change our futures. Gaining skills to hone in our collective consciousness, the act of individual recognition as presence, being here and now may help us to acknowledge our intercorporeality. ‘I yawn/scream because you yawn/scream’.

Through several acts of recognition of other presences and existence, explaining archives, memories and a-tonal music from a specific year, the year of 1948, we will explore the journey to remember and hold on to those histories. Through a global and social-distanced contagious yawn, how might we project that year from a Palestinian perspective onto the German landscape?

How to use the tool of art as a form of political witnessing in order to develop a practice of intercorporeality and art as global witnessing to empathize with the other within our own global contexts. We will develop a concept of intercorporeality where it is not about one empathizing with the other but learning how our struggle is already about, related to and affecting each other.

* Pre-Workshop: Please prepare yourself to write words and sentences and draw lines and pictures. Pen, colors and sketching paper are necessary. You might use the zoom chat to share your words.

* Post-Workshop: If you are interested in sharing with us and/or with the students of GSW, please take photo(s) or scan and share with Artist Qais Assali at: qais.assali@gmail.com

Re-sounding Global Social Witnessing : The Batesonian Instinct / The Jazz of GSW

Rik Spann

Experienced professional musicians, mainly in improvisational styles like jazz, often tend to develop specific, unique ways in their interactions to find a dynamic balance, a state of consciousness, a ‘groove state’, a ‘jazz bubble’, that might provide an alternative perspective and experience for those who are interested in developing GSW competencies.

This workshop is an invitation to explore this approach, building on generative metaphors, embodied learning, complex responsive processes and insights and approaches that have been co-developed by IFGIC / Kazuma Matoba and the CMM Institute for Personal and Social Evolution. Starting point will be the jazz album Kind of Blue by Miles Davis and connected ideas from Steps to an Ecology of Mind by Gregory Bateson. (The Batesonian Instinct). The facilitator is an organizational scientist, writer, researcher. Also he is a professional improvisational musician, artist, applied musicologist and lecturer at international business schools. He works as a board member of the CMMi, published with Sergej van Middendorp and Barton Buechner on ‘Moral Injury : an encounter between liminal experience and the transformation of meaning’, will be publishing soon (Taos Focus Book Series) on ‘Re-Sounding : Introducing an alternative metaphor for organization change’, is a co-leader and facilitator at Fielding Graduate University (Sta Barbara, Chicago), and worked in several projects with IFGIC, Kazuma.