Wellbeing for All
We are incredibly grateful to our colleagues at CoCreative for co-hosting the Wellbeing for All conversation series where we delved into practices that support us in cultivating the conditions for wellbeing in our personal lives, communities, and organizations.
What is wellbeing and how do we support everyone to achieve it?
Across this online conversation series, we have invited friends and partners to share their stories, insights, and learning about the nature of well-being, what conditions support it, and how we shift systems and ourselves so that everyone can benefit from it. Instead of focusing solely on systemic problems that need to be fixed, we worked from a place of abundance, generously sharing our wisdom, practices, and values that can sustain wellbeing over time. Explore this inquiry!
Wellbeing for All Conversations
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In this interactive session, we explored how the stories we have about the world shape how we see and respond to challenges and how understanding this can help us shift our quality of life for the better. We worked together to understand how the nervous system is wired for safety and threat, and how we can work with it to develop the capacity to manage stress, deal with tough situations, and come back to a state of balance and possibility. In this session we examined wellbeing frameworks, assessed our own wellbeing, and looked at ways we can enhance our wellbeing, together.
Speakers: Luzette Jaimes and Adam Molyneux-Berry
Co-Hosts: Marta Ceroni, Melissa Darnell
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Efforts towards creating just, multi-racial, multi-cultural communities or organizations often focus on increasing the number of previously under-represented people, increasing awareness of racial bias and repressive histories, or educating people around systemic oppression and social supremacies. But it’s not at all clear that those approaches have moved the needle fast or sustainably enough in terms of actual lived experience in schools and organizations, or in daily life. Arguably, some well-intended approaches to systems change have resulted in unintended consequences – leaving systems more vulnerable to inequity. What if we reframe our approaches? What if there are no safe spaces? What if we consider mistakes, ignorance, bias, and even harm as expectable human traits? What if we leverage personal practice instead of changing beliefs to drive systemic change?
Those questions drive the work of the Institute for Liberatory Innovation to reframe equity in terms of liberatory change, which shows when more people thrive, and behave in ways that make it possible for others to thrive. It’s measurable change, without an end.
During this engaging session we reconsidered approaches to systems change and equity, questioned the notion that changing beliefs is the most effective path to changing experiences of inequity and injustice, and familiarized ourselves with five personal practices that drive liberatory systems change.
Speaker: Lucinda J Garthwaite
Co-Hosts: Marta Ceroni, Russ Gaskin, Melissa Darnell
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How might we differentiate between unconscious habits and intentional practices that could sustain our well-being for the long haul? In this thoughtful and inspiring session with the esteemed Zen Master, Norma Wong, we reconnected with our bodies, particularly through the power of conscious breathing. By becoming aware of our breath, we can better manage stress and anxiety, and enhance our leadership presence. In conversation with Norma, we explored how we cultivate the self-discipline required to maintain spaciousness, fostering resilience and creativity in the face of global challenges. Norma shared insights on aligning internal work with external change, supporting us in reflecting on self-sabotaging habits and cultivating practices that honor our needs and support effective systemic change leadership. Norma also shared guided breath work, stories, and wisdom offering deeper insight and relation to the importance of spaciousness in support of connection to self and collaboration for collective well-being.
Speaker: Norma Wong
Co-Hosts: Marta Ceroni, Heather Equinox, Maricela Wexler Aceves
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Aunque podríamos desear estar bien todo el tiempo, hay momentos cuando la desesperación, el desgaste o la desesperanza surgen y nos abruman. En estos momentos, cómo nos envolvemos con otres, nos cuidamos y abrazamos el aprendizaje y las percepciones que estos momentos “en baja” nos ofrecen pueden ser determinantes poderosos del bienestar. En esta sesión, Ana Lucía Castaño Galvis (ARARE) y Paz Bascuñán (Ancla Latam), nos van a guiar a través de una reflexión sobre cómo no estar bien puede ser una fuente poderosa de aprendizaje sobre lo que realmente necesitamos para estar realmente bien, individual y colectivamente.
Although we may wish to feel good all the time, there are moments when despair, exhaustion, or hopelessness arise and overwhelm us. In these moments, how we connect with others, care for ourselves, and embrace the learning and insights that these “down” moments offer us can be powerful determinants of well-being. In this session, Ana Lucía Castaño Galvis (ARARE) and Paz Bascuñán (Ancla Latam) will guide us through a reflection on how not feeling well can be a powerful source of learning about what we really need to feel truly well, individually and collectively.
Oradores – Speakers: Paz Bascuñán, Ana Lucia Castaño Galvis
Copresentadores – Co-Hosts: Luzette Jaimes, Maricela Aceves Wexler
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What does the future of our collective well-being look like, and in what ways is it already here? Too often in our work as changemakers, we focus on fixing our current reality to the neglect of seeing where the world we want is already present. How might we pause and open to the deeply resonant, generative wave of light and connection that is already present alongside the collective despair in our world? Anchored in current research and practice, this community session explores the Four Realms of Well-being developed by Deb Halliday, Principal of Halliday and Associates.
Deb invites us to elevate the beloved world we are co-creating, and foster one another’s path of well-being in our personal, relational, organizational, and community lives. We are grateful to Deb for leading this engaging and reflective conversation, full of juicy reflection prompts and opportunities to lift the examples of light and collective thriving that exist now in our lives' personal, relational, organizational, and community realms.
Speaker: Deb Halliday
Co-Hosts: Marta Ceroni, Russ Gaskin, Maricela Wexler
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How we show up in a collective – with the attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors we bring – has real impacts on that collective and collaboration within it. Our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors reflect how we understand and operate in the world, whether we are conscious of it or not. Without a solid understanding of how we operate in the world, how that manifests in different situations and why, we can inadvertently limit or even harm the collectives we join. Alternatively, when we show up thoughtfully, intentionally, and self-aware, we can help foster positive, healthy dynamics. In this webinar, Kerstin Tebbe, Founder of Collective Mind and webinar series co-hosts Marta Ceroni (Academy for Systems Change) and Russ Gaskin (CoCreative) invite us to build our introspection muscles and increase self-awareness and interact more effectively in collectives.
We are grateful to Kerstin for leading this engaging and reflective conversation, for sharing her own experience and challenges related to this inquiry, and to Collective Mind for contributing to collective wellbeing through the many ways they work to improve the practice and impact of networks.
Speaker: Kerstin Tebbe
Co-Hosts: Marta Ceroni, Russ Gaskin, Maricela Wexler
Explore key insights from the conversation series
Our last session distilled insights from across the series as we reflected on the journey and ways to continue to nurture wellbeing in our lives and for all.
