Stop trying to fix the system. Learn to dance with it.
You lead change in organizations, communities, or places that don’t bend to a plan. The Dancing with Systems learning journey helps you see what’s really driving the dynamics of systems you are a part of, and sense, in mind and body, where your effort will matter most. You’ll do it alongside a community of fellow learners, grounded in the work of one of the great systems thinkers of our time.
Dates: January 13 - April 7, 2027
Rhythm: Weekly on Wednesdays, 11am - 12pm US Eastern Time
Format: Live on Zoom with small learning pods
The tools you were trained on weren’t built for this moment.
Most of us learned to break problems into parts, solve the parts, and push harder when things don’t move. But climate, inequality, polarization, and the slow unraveling of the places we love don’t respond to force. They respond to structure, relationship, and timing.
Donella “Dana” Meadows understood this decades ago. “We can’t control systems, but we can dance with them.” Lead author of The Limits to Growth and Thinking in Systems, she also wrote hundreds of essays, columns, and reflections over three decades. That vast archive is the soil this Learning Journey grows from. Every session is grounded in and inspired by her writing.
Over 13 weeks, you’ll meet people carrying Dana’s work forward today, then turn what you hear into something you can feel, practice, and bring into your work and life.
Systems thinking isn’t only something you think. It’s a practice.
Dana knew that real understanding comes from paying attention: to the land, to people, to our own reactions. As such, this isn’t a lecture series. Each week we move between ideas and experience, using embodied practices that help you notice patterns in your own body, settle your nervous system when complexity feels overwhelming, and build the steady, grounded presence that systems work demands.
Learners from our first cohort told us this was what set the journey apart: they didn’t just learn about systems, they began to feel their way through them. You don’t need any movement experience, only a willingness to arrive as a whole person.
Dana’s warnings are now our headlines. Her hope is still available.
More than fifty years after The Limits to Growth, its scenarios are tracking uncomfortably close to reality. The question is no longer whether our systems are under strain. It’s whether we can meet that strain with clarity instead of panic, and with possibility instead of despair. That is the stance this Learning Journey is built to cultivate.
Built for people who carry change
Organizational leaders and consultants leading transformation inside companies, nonprofits, and public agencies
Place-based and community practitioners nurturing vibrant and caring communities
Sustainability, regenerative finance, and policy professionals who need more than tools and frames to create change
Coaches, facilitators, and educators weaving systems thinking into how to guide others
The “systems curious” who yearn for a more holistic way to make sense of the world and want companions in expanding their world views
This probably isn’t for you if…
You want technical modeling, systems mapping, or software training. While this course is not specifically designed around teaching tools or frameworks, we will explore structures that influence system behaviors with an emphasis on seeing and acting wisely in living systems, including the one you live in: your body.
Thirteen weeks from now, you’ll be more equipped to
See the structure under the surface: recognize the feedback loops, delays and mental models behind the problems you keep running into.
Find where effort pays off: use Dana’s insights to better understand where to engage your talents and energy rather than spreading yourself thin.
Lead from your whole self: hold complexity and uncertainty from a grounded, embodied stance, without burning out or shutting down.
Carry her work with you: bring a deeper understanding of Dana’s writing into the choices you make every day.
Shape futures worth living into: move from crisis framing to visions people want to build toward.
Join a living network: leave with fellow learners across sectors and continents who hold a hopeful and transformational orientation.
Choose the tier that fits
Individual: For independent practitioners and lifelong learners
Early Bird: $450 USD (until November 15)
Regular: $540 USD
Organization: For learners whose employer is covering their registration costs
Early Bird: $600 USD (until November 15)
Regular: $720 USD
Supporter: learners who are able to help make seats possible for others
Early Bird: $800 USD (until November 15)
Regular: $960 USD
With questions about fees and/or if these are a barrier to your participation, please reach out to Lina at accounting[at]academyforchange.org. We are happy to work with you to make participation possible!
20% of program revenue helps us keep Dana’s work freely available to the world through the Donella Meadows archives.
Light the spark, then practice. One hour, every Wednesday.
Time commitment: one hour a week live, plus an optional 60 to 90 minutes of study and reflection. Designed for people with full lives.
The Learning Journey moves in a simple rhythm, so insight becomes capacity:
Spark session: a guest who is extending Dana’s work shares what they’re learning in the field, followed by live dialogue (60 minutes total).
Practice session: the following week we return to the guest’s material together and bring it into your own context through embodied practice, reflection, and conversation (60 minutes).
Learning pods: you’ll be matched in a small self-organizing pod of three learners to deepen the work between sessions.
Study and reflection: curated readings drawn from Dana’s archive alongside each guest’s work, with guided reflections. Session recordings are available to all learners.
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Build a stance that can hold intensity and still find joy.
Orientation: Arrive in body and place, set shared practices, meet your fellow learners and pods - January 13
Spark: What The Limits to Growth tells us about the present we’re living with Gaya Herrington - January 20
Practice: Embodied practice with the guest’s materials - January 27
Spark: The foundational principles of systems, and how they help us dance with them - February 3
Practice: Embodied practice with the guest’s materials - February 10
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Recognize and create conditions for relationship and self-organization.
Spark: Bioregioning: thinking and acting at the scale of place with Isabel Carlisle - February 17
Practice: Embodied practice with the guest’s materials - February 24
Spark: Landscape restoration at scale - March 3
Practice: Embodied practice with the guest’s materials - March 10
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Practice a hopeful, abundant relationship with what comes next.
Spark: Crisis as renewal with Eruera Tarena - March 17
Practice: Embodied practice with the guest’s materials - March 24
Spark: Visioning the futures we want to live into - March 31
Reflections: Closing session: what shifted in you, and in your system - April 7
Guest Speakers
Learn from people carrying Dana’s work forward. Each Spark Session features a thinker or practitioner whose work has been shaped by Dana’s legacy. Speakers for 2027 include:
We’ll introduce additional guests as they confirm.
Previous guests include: Kate Raworth (Doughnut Economics), Hunter Lovins, Katy Shields, Isabel Carlisle, Bill Baue, Rob Ricigliano, Hamutal Blanc, and Yoav Egozi.
Two Guides | an ecologist who dances and a systems entrepreneur
Marta Ceroni is the co-director of the Academy for Systems Change. A systems thinker and nature’s economist, she is passionate about revealing the profound connections between human wellbeing and Earth’s living systems. Marta holds a doctorate in forest ecology from the University of Parma, Italy and is an affiliate of the Gund Institute for Environment at the University of Vermont, where she taught and did research for over 10 years. In her work she weaves together a systems orientation, embodied approaches, and an experience as an educator, group facilitator, researcher, author, and dancer. Marta is a facilitator of Telling My Story, a Dance for Parkinson’s instructor, and Argentine Tango community teacher.
Carrie Norton is a regenerative leadership coach and systems consultant with Upstream Studio, and a lifelong champion of women’s leadership. An early executive in the modern solar industry and an Academy for Systems Change Fellow, she is also a bioregional practitioner and works in regenerative finance. Through the System of Systems Thinkers (SoST), she collaborates with her partners to lift up women leading in the field of systems thinking, and her podcast ReDesign explores how we might transform our systems toward a regenerative economy. Inspired by the powerful leadership Donella Meadows demonstrated in both her writing and her practice, Carrie co-created the Dancing with Systems learning journey with Marta Ceroni to carry Donella’s legacy forward as a living practice.
Questions answered
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No. We start with the foundations, and experienced practitioners find new depth in Dana’s work and in one another.
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None at all. Every practice is gentle, optional, and adaptable to your body. You can take part fully from a chair.
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Every session is recorded. To make the most of the experience, try to prioritize attending weekly live sessions.
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The course runs for 13 weeks with a one-hour live session per week, plus an optional 60 to 90 minutes of material engagement and reflection.
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Live sessions take place on Wednesdays 11am - 12pm Eastern Standard Time. This timing is intended to make call times reasonable across the Americas, Europe, and Africa.
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We announce guests as they confirm. Every guest is a practitioner whose work carries Dana’s legacy forward.
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The spirit is the same; the journey is new. Cohort 2 moves in three movements over 13 weeks, with a fresh lineup of guests and a deeper embodied practice.
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Yes. Please email Lina at: accounting[at]academyforchange.org to make arrangements for us to invoice your employer.
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Participation fees are non-refundable except in the case of extenuating circumstances. Such requests will be considered on a case by case basis.
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Further questions? Please reach out to dancewsystems[at]academyforchange.org