transform.

Interconnectedness Means Fight

xformedit — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 22:11:14 +0000

Original post written & contributed by B. Loewe

image credit: K. Connors

When I was fifteen years old I was in my ninth year of Catholic school. I had internalized Catholic social teaching based upon “treat others as you would like to be treated” as well as my parents’ lessons that taught me to share with others. However, as we reached the age to begin preparation for college and thus career track, the messages subtly shifted. During that coming of age we also became more aware of the dynamics of the world; of poverty and discrimination. In the modern segregation of the middle class suburb where I was raised, we began to realize that the adults in our lives didn’t necessarily practice our childhood lessons; that the circle of compassion we were taught to extend only extended so far.

newDharma Talk | Bearing Witness to Suffering

xformedit — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 02:37:17 +0000

As a friend of mine likes to say, “You got people, you got problems.” Even if we’re simply facing ourselves, we’ve still got problems. We can’t escape our pain. We can’t hide from it or make it disappear, but we can learn to live with it. We can be in relationship with it. It starts with the simple act of just paying attention.

“Maybe just for a moment we can breathe some life into our relationship with suffering by bearing witness to it, by bearing witness to the supposed oppressor, by bearing witness to the victim, by bearing witness to the “us” that is suffering, by bearing witness to the many people that are held down, that have in their spirits been suppressed and repressed. If we can just bear witness to it…maybe we can bear witness to the truth of that. Not as a way to discard the other truths, but to let it all in.”

Listen to Bearing Witness to Suffering

Download Bearing Witness to Suffering

Welcome | february 2013

xformedit — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 01:58:07 +0000

public domain image: John F Kennedy & Nikita Khrushchev

The other night I watched the 1991 feature JFK about the Kennedy assassination. The film’s implications are frightening. While JFK may seem to have little to do with February, with love, relationships, with Black History Month, my thoughts lie in the relationships built and broken. In how events ripple out in waves. In our need as human beings to be brave enough to develop better relationships with ourselves, with others, especially with those who oppose us and with those we think of as “other.” Reaching beyond those barriers wherever they lie is how change is done.

This month we celebrate Valentine’s Day, Black History Month, and President’s Day along with LGBT History Month, UK, (January 19), Rosa Park’s Birthday (February 4), Alice Walker’s Birthday (February 9), Huey Newton’s Birthday (February 18), WEB Dubois’s Birthday (February 23), Ralph Nader’s Birthday (February 27), and Pedro Zamora’s Birthday (February 29)

Claim Your Space

kmking — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 01:08:50 +0000

The month of January has been an intriguing time here at CXC. We have been diligently preparing for the months ahead. Our NewDharma Community will begin this year’s 27 Days of Change Spring Practice Period on March 5th. We are finalizing all of the necessary information to guide participants toward a higher level of personal transformation. For 27 Days in March, activists, allies and agents of social change will enhance their daily inner practice in the midst of their very hectic lives.

The 6-point, 360-degree personal change program helps to examine one’s relationship to self, community, and the world. During the Practice Period, the Center will also explore a new weekly practice schedule. We want our offerings of fearlessMeditation and fearlessYOGA to be more accessible to the activist community here in the Bay Area. We would like to invite all those who are new to meditation to our Wednesday night sit from 7pm-8pm. Evening meditations will be held on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Morning practice will remain on Wednesdays and Fridays.The Center will be holding a Sunday Program on the first Sunday of every month as well as a Public Talk with angel Kyodo williams. We invite you to join these monthly gatherings of community.

Here at Center for Transformative Change we are looking forward to helping you, our friends, neighbors, and allies, “claim your space.” We want our Practice Hall to become a sacred and valuable asset to the Bay Area community. From workshops to concerts to retreats we want to extend this space to you and those in your circles. As we continue to expand our community and share our space, we will continue to encourage you to join us in practices rooted in transformative change. We are looking forward to seeing you at The Center.

Side & Back Arches

chandra — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 23:50:22 +0000

The next transition postures of the Friendly Warrior Series are Side and Back Arches. These can be practiced as a warm-up or in preparation for additional side-focused postures, such as, Utthita Parsvakonasana, Extended Side Angle Posture or Trikonasana, Triangle Posture.

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1. Stand with your feet hip distance apart. To figure out hip-distance, locate the bony protrusions at the front of your hips. Imagine a line dropping straight down from the protrusions and landing in between the big toe and the next toe. Root the feet down towards the earth.

2. On your next inbreath, swing both arms out towards your sides and then up with your fingertips up towards the sky. On an outbreath, draw the shoulders down away from the ears as you extend up through the fingertips.

3. Next inbreath, extend up and then over towards your right side. Lengthen through the crown and the fingertips, focus on lengthening the spine rather than bending over as much as you can.

4. Allow your hips to be neutral rather than cocking to the side. Find stability by rooting down through the outer edge of the left foot.

5. Maintain the posture for 3-5 breaths, using the inbreath to lengthen and the outbreath to deepen.

6. On an inbreath, return to neutral. Repeat on left side.

7. After you practice both right and left sides, practice arching towards the back. Pay attention to rooting the balls of the feet and drawing the navel towards the spine to engage the core. As you lengthen through the crown of the head, keep the back of the neck long rather than cocking the head back. Repeat steps 5 and 6.

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Benefits

- stimulates intestinal movement
- opens sides of body
- opens + lengthens spine
- strengthens shoulders
- opens belly
- improves digestion
- opens shoulders and armpits
- relieves mild anxiety

Contraindications

- high blood pressure
- neck or shoulder injuries

Jessica Jackley | Poverty, Money — and Love

kmking — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 03:07:15 +0000

During the month of February we all have a tendency to gravitate toward love. For some that means flowers, chocolates, and spending time with loved ones, for others, love has a much broader scope. Co-founder of Kiva.org Jessica Jackley, shares this love story in the form of a TED Talk. This beautiful story, about the power of micro-loans, is sure to broaden your definition of acting out of love.

Watch Poverty, Money–and Love

Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr.’s Forward Motion for a World That Works for All

xformedit — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 02:58:50 +0000

image credit: Duane J.

In what is being billed as “the largest climate rally in history,” thousands of people are expected to gather on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, Feb. 17 to call for a definitive shift in the nation’s energy policy. The “Forward on Climate Rally“ will urge President Obama to once and for all reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and take steps to reduce carbon pollution. The historic gathering will call on the president to translate the strong comments he made about tackling the climate crisis in his recent inaugural address — “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that failure to do so would betray our children and future generations” — into a far-ranging set of policies and executive orders for global sustainability in his second term.

The demonstration’s three major sponsors — 350.org, the Sierra Club and Hip Hop Caucus — are betting that integrating grassroots momentum, historic longevity and a commitment to move beyond traditional, predominantly white environmentalism is key to making the breakthrough that will be crucial to dealing full-on with this accelerating crisis.

Original article written by Ken Butigan for Waging Nonviolence and posted February 7, 2013.

Alice Walker | Beauty in Truth

xformedit — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 02:35:11 +0000

Writer and activist Alice Walker will be featured in a documentary, Beauty in Truth directed by British filmmaker and activist Prathiba Parmar. The film opens in London next month and soon after will be coming to the States. It ”offers audiences a penetrating look at the life and art of an artist, a self-confessed renegade and human rights activist.”

Beauty in Truth Trailer

Beauty in Truth Web site

Buy tickets

adrienne maree brown | coevolution through friendship

xformedit — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 02:10:45 +0000

coevolution is “the change of a biological object triggered by the change of a related object.”

a couple of years ago i hosted a community of practice. one of the outcomes of our year of building relationship and sharing of ourselves was an idea articulated toward the end by gibran rivera: coevolution through friendship. meaning we evolve in relationships of mutual transformation.

since the community’s formal time ended, i have watched and felt this relational coevolution continue in a variety of ways, including close daily personal contact, occasional opportunities for mutual support, noticing and supporting each other’s work and growth from afar, and being more intentional about bringing this practice into the way we hold all of our relationships.

these past few weeks i have been really aware of the power of coevolution through friendship as i have been in what feels like a growth spurt. babies do this, suddenly overnight become taller, fuller, using new words, more confident in their bodies and complex in their communications. it’s pretty incredible to watch – and to feel that the growth doesn’t end even if it changes form. in this period i have been supported, inspired, encouraged and witnessed by a marvelous circle full of people in their own growth.

image credit: leovdworp

the very nature of this is iterative, so i am not writing any definitive guidelines up for y’all. but it is so delicious and impactful that i wanted to share some of what i am noticing, some elements of coevolution through friendship.

self-transformation. both/all people in the relationship are committed to their own self-transformation, aligning with the words of grace lee boggs that ‘we must transform ourselves to transform the world.’ we see ourselves as microcosms of the world, and work to shift oppressive patterns in our bodies, hearts, minds, speech, interactions, liberating ourselves into purpose, liberating our communities into new practices.

curiosity. we have curiosity about our own lives as learning labs for our values and figuring out what it means to be human at this moment in time. and we have curiosity about each other’s lives, about why we do what we do, about the roots of our behaviors. we want to know if there are lessons and changes available in the reflection and action cycle of life. this curiosity ranges from philosophical to academic, historical, nosy, somatic. our lives are our life’s work. what matters is that we are authentic with the questions, we believe the answers are important and we listen to each other accordingly.

vulnerable reflection. we reach out to each other and say things like ‘something incredible is happening’, ‘i don’t know’, ‘i fucked up’, ‘i think i hurt someone’, ‘i’m overwhelmed’, ‘i’m terrified’, ‘i think i’m hurting’, ‘i’m lost’, ‘am i falling in/out of love?’, ‘_____ happened, what should i do?’, ‘i want to do something new/different/marvelous/dangerous/that feels essential to my soul – help!’ and so on. we ask others to be mirrors for us at our most vulnerable places, so we can see what we are learning, see new possibilities in our lives.

pattern disrupting. i know i am always whole theoretically, but i don’t always feel that way, i feel half sometimes, i feel fragmented sometimes, messy. being whole includes owning all of that as me. when i am feeling fragmented or limited, seeing any of my friends in their wholeness reminds me of my own capacity. and as i stand in my wholeness, which includes being more honest with myself and others about what i want and who i am in the world, it exerts a pressure on others, both to receive me and to become more whole in themselves. this disrupts those familiar diminishing patterns in my friends and in myself, the internalization of a world that has rejected every aspect of my identity at some point. counter rejection. still i rise. and new patterns become possible, more interconnected and interdependent patterns which rely on being open.

present and intentional. this is perhaps the biggest place to practice. life is not happening to us. we are learning to be in the actual current moment, to recognize where we have choice…in a terrifying twist it turns out we always have it*. so the great question is how to be intentional, in the present moment, to take responsibility for your state of being, and for your life? another participant-teacher in the community of practice asked us to consider, ‘what if i am responsible for everything?’ it’s not a singular task, to be responsible for what happens in this world – we do not exist or transform in isolation. we are in this universe. we are actively reflecting on how to be in our lives, to best embody our greatness and to yield a more liberated future for ourselves and thus, in the fractal sense, for all of existence.

there is a lot to be careful of. we are not yet masterful, even though there are moments of collective genius. sometimes we misread each other, push each other too hard, get defensive or give unsolicited coevolution pressure.

sometimes what is happening in the world is so terrifying and urgent that we forget our complexity, or wonder why take time on ourselves or our friendships when there is so much work to do. what i am noticing is that it is not a privilege to practice coevolution through friendship – it is the deepest work.

i believe it is how communities have survived.
i believe it is harriet tubman going back to free others, because it wasn’t enough to free only herself.
i believe it is ubuntu active in my life.
i believe it is the freedom that we are longing for, which will never be given to us, which we have to create, the pulsing life force of the collective body we are birthing, the rhythm of a shared heart.

“coevolution through friendship is a path to liberation.” – gibran rivera

Read more from adrienne maree on the Luscious Satyagraha.

february 2013

xformedit — Sun, 10 Feb 2013 00:47:10 +0000

WEST COAST

fearlessMeditation I | Practice of the Body

CXC | Center for Transformative Change | Berkeley, CA

Friday | March 1, 2013 | 7:00-9:30pm

2-Day Kingian Nonviolence Workshop

The Metta Center | Sonoma State University | Sonoma, CA

Saturday-Sunday | February 23-24, 2013 | 10:00am-6:00pm

More Info

Be Here Wow! Meditation & Yoga for Fun & Enlightenment | Katchie Ananda & Wesley Nisker

Esalen Institute | Big Sur, CA

Friday-Sunday | March 29-31, 2013

EAST COAST

March to End Violence Against Women

Brooklyn Bridge | 12 Fulton Street | New York, NY

Thursday | February 14, 2013 | 4:00pm-5:00pm

More Info

Pioneering Black Women Activists

The Brecht Forum | 451 West Street | New York, NY

Thursday | February 14, 2013 | 7:30pm

More Info

#ForwardOnClimate Rally

National Mall | Washington, D.C.

Sunday | February 17, 2013 | 12:00-4:00pm

RSVP & More Info

Centered Life, Mindful Life | David Frenette

Garrison Institute | Garrison, NY

Friday-Thursday | March 15-21, 2013 | 3:00pm-3:00pm

Fundamentals of Facilitation for Racial Justice Work | IISC

La Quinta Inn & Suites | Springfield, MA

Thursday-Friday | March 21-22, 2013 | 8:30am-5:00pm

SOUTHEAST

Community Care/Self-Care | Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Claudia Horwitz & angel Kyodo williams

stone circles | The Stone House | Mebane, NC

Tuesday | February 26, 2013 | 6:00-8:30pm

More Info

The Revolutionary Power of the Ordinary | 5-Day Retreat | angel Kyodo williams

stone circles | The Stone House | Mebane, NC

Wednesday-Sunday | February 27-March 3, 2013 | 5:00pm-1:00pm

SOUTHWEST

Images of Black Men in the Mainstream Media | Dr. Natalie Byfield

St. James’ Episcopal Church | 1941 Webberville Rd | Austin, TX

Thursday | February 28, 2013 | 7:00pm-9:00pm

More Info

Santa Fe Experience Retreat | Katchie Ananda

Spandarama | Santa Fe, NM

Sunday-Saturday | May 5-11, 2013 | 6:00pm-12:00pm

ONLINE WEBINAR

Listening to Our Eyes | Seeing as Meditation | Bradford C. Grant

Center for Contemplative Mind in Society

Tuesday | February 19, 2013 | 3:00-4:00pm EST

INTERNATIONAL

Premiere | Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth | Prathiba Parmar

Southbank Centre | Queen Elizabeth Hall | London, UK

Sunday | March 10, 2013 | 6:30pm

Buy Tickets

How Nonprofits Make Data Fun & Informative

xformedit — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 20:17:02 +0000

image credit: Laura Leavell

Nonprofits have long relied on stories to help stir emotion.

However, as the nonprofit world has evolved, so, too, has the need to communicate more than just emotion. Foundations and corporate supporters increasingly want to see numbers that show that nonprofits are delivering results. Donors want to see metrics to help them understand why they should contribute to one cause over another. Unfortunately, statistics about an organization’s work aren’t as emotionally engaging as…

Original article written by Matthew Scharpnick and posted in the Chronicle of Philanthropy January 6, 2012.

Why Health Officials Want You to Eat More Potassium

xformedit — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 19:51:49 +0000

High blood pressure is one health risk that is notorious within the black community. Diet and exercise and managing stress are the three things that come to mind when it comes to dealing with it. A recent study says that potassium (found in beans, baked potatoes, dark leafy greens, etc.) can be key in lowering high blood pressure.

It’s a real bummer to be told to eat less of something. Especially when it’s salt, the ubiquitous ingredient that seems to make everything taste a little better.

So I won’t waste too much of your time telling you that — once again — health authorities are urging us to cut back on sodium. The World Health Organization’s latest guidance recommends no more than 2,000 milligrams per day, which is a lot less than the 3,300 milligrams the typical American consumes. (Not to mention children in the U.S.)

Read Pass the Potassium Rich Produce

Symptoms of High Blood Pressure

Potassium Rich Foods

Original article on NPR’s blog written by Allison Aubrey and posted February 5, 2013.