Awakin Calls

"Whatever your passion is, dive right into it and give it away; it's just that simple. Whatever you really, really love to do, do that and share it with the world and teach youth how to use it for them to share with the world." 

Chad Harper is founder of Hip Hop Saves Lives, a non-profit  that creates humanitarians out of youth. The organization uses hip hop to affect global change by raising awareness and funds.

Its mission was inspired by the history of hip hop, which began in New York's South Bronx in the early '70s. After years of urban decay and gang wars that culminated in the murder of peacemaker "Black Benjie" Benjamin, a treaty was signed in 1971 between gangs that allowed for peace. Instead of getting together to fight, they would get together to dance. Father of hip hop DJ Kool Herc hosted legendary free outdoor parties, and former gang members became DJs and dancers. A robust culture of DJ’ing, MC’ing, breakdancing, and graffiti followed --arts which are practiced today by Hip Hop Saves Lives.

Growing up, Harper wanted to become a superhero or football star but when those dreams fell through, he attended Morehouse College. There, he was inspired by great black writers and inventors and leaders who helped build this country. It fueled his motivation to succeed and help others, but his true passion was music, so he decided to pursue it as a career and began to write music for the radio.

Then, in 2006, while working at an establishment in New York City, an organization called Charity Water held an event. From them he learned that 5,000 children die every day from a lack of clean water, and for a few thousand dollars water wells could be drilled that would save many lives. Suddenly he realized he could do something to combine his desire to help others with his love of music. He wrote a song for them and donated the profits, and went on to travel and volunteer with the organization. The response was so great that he started making songs for other organizations and causes. Then a teacher friend asked if some students from his hip hop afterschool class could sit in on a recording session. This led to the creation of more programs.

Hip Hop Saves Lives helps kids create hip hop videos that shed light on important issues or allow for creative self-expression. It gives kids the opportunity to be heard and help each other and to sell music videos to raise funds for important issues. Hip Hop Saves Lives has run workshops in New York City schools, at homeless teen shelters, incarcerated youth centers, with teens on probation, and at schools in Haiti. The program has touched lives in India, Liberia, Ghana, Brazil, Palestine, Jamaica, Switzerland, St. Lucia, Bermuda, and Hawaii. Chad was the recipient of the Music for Empowerment award at The Social Innovation and Global Ethics Forum in 2014 and continues to help create global citizens who take action for social change. He encourages others to do the same.

"For youth, just having something that they really love and having a mentor and an older person support that creative art means the world to them. It gives them a lot of self-esteem when they can find and see their abilities through creative art expression. Just having that is ... enough for a lot of youth to maintain and finish school and start a career and always maintain a love for their creative art."

Join us in conversation with this passionate change-maker!

Jerry White is CEO of Global Impact Strategies and Professor of Practice at the University of Virginia. He shares in the 1997 Nobel Prize for Peace awarded to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.  He worked closely with Diana, Princess of Wales, and then King Hussein and Queen Noor of Jordan, to address the humanitarian crisis caused by tens of millions of mines buried in over 80 countries. He is known for leading high-impact campaigns, three of which led to major international treaties: the Landmine Ban Treaty, the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; and the Cluster Munitions Ban Treaty.

A landmine explosion while hiking in the Golan Heights in 1984, as an undergraduate studying abroad in Israel, took away Jerry’s leg. Twenty years old when the accident happened, Jerry spent the following year recuperating in Israel, learning how to walk again with an artificial leg. A fellow survivor who had lost his leg from a minefield explosion reached out to him and said, “The challenge is in your head and your heart, not your leg.” This set him not just on a journey of self-discovery, but on a dedicated path to help people in conflict-laden communities develop resilience.

"It’s a mindset to know that your life does not have to be defined by your worst moment." Jerry said in his keynote speech at the Mendoza Graduate School of Business, University of Notre Dame, Commencement Ceremony in 2010.

Driven by a deep desire to empower survivors and his belief that individuals can rise above trauma, Jerry founded the Landmine Survivors Network (LSN) in 1995 together with Ken Rutherford, a fellow survivor of a landmine accident, as a push for an anti-landmine movement. Understanding that recovery is a long-term process beyond the immediate exigencies of a crisis, LSN offers amputees and victims access to healthcare, rehabilitation support, and vocational training. At the heart of this assistance is a community of peer support, something Jerry experienced personally on his road to recovery. Believing that the antithesis of victimhood is the opportunity to give, and that those scarred by violence are well-placed as agents of change, Jerry sought to create opportunities for survivor-leaders to provide support to others especially through public outreach efforts.

As his work grew to encompass other individuals like war veterans whose lives were marred by conflict, LSN was later renamed as Survivor Corps in 2008.  Promoting capabilities and reconciliation over surrender and desolation, survivors are given opportunities to engage other individuals whose lives are affected by violence and conflict. This process takes them into the territory where they move from survivorship to leadership, which also aids their personal recovery as they reclaim their lives with dignity.

Drawing from his personal experience and decades of work with survivors, Jerry shared his philosophies on “survivorship” in his book, I Will Not Be Broken: 5 Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis, published in May 2008. A detailed account of his injury, his recovery and his work on the international campaign to ban landmines, the book (re-issued in paperback as Getting Up When Life Knocks You Down: 5 Steps to Overcoming a Life Crisis) also features a collection of personal stories of fellow survivors in recovery, shining light on human resilience, inspiring others who have or are going through life-changing losses as well. Jerry’s message is clear - “survivorship and resilience can be learned”, and times of crisis offer growth and opportunity; one can learn to move through hardship and adversity with grace, by choosing life fully.

Jerry served three years as U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and during that time, launched the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations created by Secretary Hillary Clinton, where he highlighted the need to break cycles of religion-related conflict and violence through collective action. He also introduced religious literacy training and data-driven analytics to develop impact strategies for conflict mitigation. 

After leaving the State Department in 2015, Jerry founded and serves as the CEO of giStra (Global Impact Strategies) a data-analytics start-up which seeks to help leaders make better data-backed decisions for the pressing issues of this age like conflict and cooperation, energy and environment, health and society. He also co-chairs Global Covenant Partners (GCP), an international commitment to prevent religion-related violence and destruction through broader involvement with civic society leaders. Jerry is also a Professor of Practice at the University of Virginia where he teaches about religion-related conflicts, and the usage of data-driven approaches beyond interfaith dialogues. These involvements build upon one another, and underscore his belief that “radical inclusion” – the participation of civil society in strategic approaches – is highly crucial as we push back and break cycles of violence.

As a social entrepreneur widely recognized for his work on complex issues of peace and justice, Jerry is a Senior Ashoka Fellow who has mentored many young social entrepreneurs globally. He served as Executive Co-Chair of the Abraham Path Initiative with Founder William Ury and worked ten years as a research analyst and Assistant Director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, tracking technologies used to build weapons of mass destruction.

Jerry holds a bachelor's degree in Judaic Studies from Brown University, an MBA from the University of Michigan, and Honorary Degrees from Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Caledonia University Glasgow.  He has engaged in graduate work in theology at Cambridge University.

As the saying goes, “Hurt people hurt people. Healed people heal people.”

Dr. Karen Lischinsky has been at the forefront of efforts to work with the incarcerated in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts through restorative justice practices.  As the decades-long volunteer coordinator of the Restorative Justice Group at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute (MCI) in Norfolk, and more recently as founder of the Transformational Prison Project (TPP), Dr. Lischinsky brings incarcerated persons face-to-face with victims, saying that she “tries to make things not right -- but at least more right.” 

Known as the US’s first “community-based” prison, Massachusetts Correctional Institution (MCI) in Norfolk is one of the few prisons in the United States that allows for a multitude of restorative justice programming for the incarcerated. Under the guidance of Dr. Lischinsky, restorative justice practices at MCI Norfolk were seeded when a small group of men serving life sentences started to explore the concept of restorative justice as a means of easing the tension that was beginning to mount among them in 2010. The “long-termers,” or “lifers,” desired to become better role models and work more closely with younger prisoners who would eventually be getting out. They began reading about international peacemaking tribunals like South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. They began applying the models to their own lives.

Dr. Lischinsky now serves as the volunteer coordinator of this restorative justice initiative which is anchored in a commitment to mend harm, rehabilitate, and rise above trauma. A process with roots in Native American and other indigenous cultures, the power of restorative justice is that it centers on the voices of those who have been harmed due to crime, while supporting those who are willing to face responsibility for the harm they have caused.

As part of this project with MCI Norfolk, Karen and her colleague supported a group of incarcerated persons who wanted to put together a two-day Restorative Justice & Responsibility retreat to guide fellow incarcerated men and women through a process of rehabilitation that restores a sense of community responsibility, and nurtures a space for introspection such that a commitment to change can take place. This gathering, which has been running since 2012, typically brings together over a hundred incarcerated persons, together with various victims, judges, prosecutors, and mediators. Karen plays a role in mediating these dialogues which provide opportunities for rehabilitation for offenders, and healing for all parties harmed by acts of violence – whether or not the victim families present were directly connected to the particular prisoners’ acts of violence. In these circles where honest and vulnerable conversations take place, families of victims – seated together with incarcerated men and women – can find greater healing in an unlikely place. The circles also provide safe spaces for honest dialogue, building understanding and open-heartedness for all individuals who have been involved with violent crimes.

Raised in Massachusetts, Dr. Lischinsky is currently an Associate Professor in the Sociology and Criminal Justice Department at Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts. She teaches a variety of courses ranging from the intersectionality of race, class, gender to the Sociology of Sports. She also teaches a class at Norfolk Prison through the Boston University Prison Program and conducts trauma workshops for members in the law enforcement community.

As an educator, she has sought to help students make meaning about the social issues around them, providing perspectives and encouraging discourse on issues like the death penalty, sexual assault, and restorative justice. A believer in experiential learning, Karen has taken learning out of the classroom as part of a criminal justice inquiry class. Started in 2010, together with a colleague, she led a "sleep-out” -- an on-campus overnight learning experience -- to bring attention to the issue of homelessness and to guide reflection on the issues of homelessness and poverty experientially. “I want (the students) to really think,” said Karen of the experience, “We’re going to have conversations throughout the night. What does it feel like to be cold? There are 8,000 homeless people just in Boston. It’s not a class for them.”

Karen’s desire to help others lead dignified, honorable lives also sees her being a part of the Ahimsa Collective – a network of people committed to address violence, heal trauma, and restore justice.

Prior to becoming a sociology professor, Karen was a community organizer lobbying for affordable housing, better working conditions, disability rights movement. She has also served as a union organizer where she worked successfully on organizing hotel and restaurant workers to establish better working conditions in all of Boston's union hotels.  Raised in Massachusetts, Karen received her Ph.D in Sociology from Northeastern University, her Master's degree in Social Work from Boston University, and her Bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Suffolk University.  Karen has also served in the United States Army Reserve.

Join Dr. Lischinsky in conversation as she shares more about her journey!

"Contemplative practices aim not merely to induce altered states but to induce altered traits -- or as Huston Smith so eloquently put it, 'to transform flashes of illumination into abiding light.'" - Roger Walsh

Dr. Roger Walsh is not your everyday MD. A former circus acrobat and high-diving and trampoline champion from Australia, he once plunged more than 100 feet off a bridge, setting what was then the world record for high diving. Today he is a celebrated writer and one of the world's leading researchers of meditation, altered states of consciousness and the field of transpersonal psychology.

After achieving academic and athletic success in Australia, Roger traveled to California where he trained at Stanford and passed licensing exams in medicine, psychology, and psychiatry. He then moved to the University of California at Irvine where he is currently professor of psychiatry, philosophy, anthropology, and religious studies.

It was during his stint at Stanford that he worked with the well-known psychotherapist James Bugenthal -- an experience that radically transformed his world-view from that of a neuroscientist who believed "subjective" modes of inquiry and experience held little value for the field to one who:

"came to realize that we have an enormous array of capacities psychological, spiritual, intuitive capacities that are virtually untapped. [...]There was one blinding moment of insight that changed my life when I realized that there is a profound contemplative core to all the world's great religions - which is vastly different and deeper than the conventional institutions and that this core provides road maps and technologies for the induction of transcendent states of consciousness. Once I saw this, I had a radically new way of viewing contemplation, meditation, yoga, and the great religious traditions which led me to plunge intensively into meditative and other contemplative practices."

Roger began practicing vipassana ("insight") meditation and attending retreats where spending 18 hours a day in silent sitting and walking meditation was the norm. 

Remarkable in his life is the balance he strikes between teaching, writing and experiential investigation. The rigor of Roger's research is matched by the depth of his commitment to spiritual practice. In 1977 he undertook his first three-month retreat at the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts. Since that time he has explored multiple practices including karma and jnana yoga, Buddhist Dzogchen and Zen, Christian contemplation, Sufism, and with his beloved wife, the yoga of relationships. 

Today his work centers on topics such as psychological health and human potential, the practices that foster them, the virtues such as ethics and wisdom they are rooted in, and the attendant implications for our contemporary social issues. His more than 200 publications include books on neuroscience, psychological wellbeing, ecology, spiritual practice, meditation, and shamanism -- books such as Meditation: Classic and Contemporary Perspectives (“Outstanding Academic Book of the Year Award”), Paths Beyond Ego, The World of Shamanism, Essential Spirituality: The Seven Central Practices (with a foreword by The Dalai Lama), Gifts from A Course in Miracles, and The World's Great Wisdom. His research and writings have received over two dozen national and international awards and honors as well as an honorary doctorate, while his teaching has received one national and six university awards. He was named the University of California-Irvine Outstanding Physician and also the University’s Distinguished Writer. Roger and his beloved wife of forty years, the late Frances Vaughan, were frequent collaborators. She was a well-known writer and pioneer of transpersonal psychology.

In 2011 Roger wrote a landmark article in the American Psychological Association’s reputed journal, American Psychologist. The article, Lifestyle and Mental Health, outlines eight major lifestyle factors that are routinely under-appreciated in the field of mental health, despite overwhelming evidence of their psychological (and physical and social) benefits. Building on that article, Roger is currently working on a new PBS documentary called “Eight Ways to Wellbeing,” which offers scientifically-backed tools for leading healthier, more joyful lives -- he calls these tools therapeutic lifestyle changes, or TLCs, and among them are time in nature, spirituality, giving back and relationships.

As a graduate of the San Francisco College of Comedy Roger has tried his hand unsuccessfully (in his view) at stand-up. In considering the breadth and depth of his life work, and his untiring gift for exploration that has enriched so many lives, Roger Walsh seems living proof of his own words:

“Our lives are rich with opportunities and our challenge is to live them to the full. All of us can be the creative artists of our lives.”

Join us in conversation with this extraordinary scholar-practitioner.

 

“I am loved. I am a blessing. I am sacred just the way I am. I have dignity. I have wisdom and gifts for the whole.” The 2016 graduating class at Naropa University echoes Brenda Salgado’s words after she addresses them at their commencement ceremony.

Brenda Salgado is a first-generation Nicaraguan-American who was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has over 17 years of experience in nonprofit management, movement building, women’s health, and environmental and social justice. Her work reflects a strong commitment to reclaiming our stories of wholeness, healing our connection with land and people, building regenerative cultures, and above all, empowering others who seek to walk this path as well.

Brenda knew from a tender age that she wanted to be a healer. Her first foray into the field of traditional medicine started in Mexico where she received teachings from teachers and elders. In her sharing with WisdomWomen, a collective of whom she is a founding member, Brenda recounts how her grandmother came into her dreams when she first started seeking guidance from ancestors as part of the ceremonies she was officiating. An indigenous woman from Nicaragua, Brenda’s grandmother had died when Brenda was a little girl, but that dream connection touched Brenda, setting her onto the path of healing and traditional medicine, after a long line of women healers in her lineage who had heeded similar callings to heal.

Brenda was guided and well-supported on this medicinal path, receiving training from elders in Purepecha traditional healing, Xochimilco traditional healing with roses, and herbal medicine and ceremony from various teachers in the U.S. and in Central America. Her teachers taught her that at the heart of traditional healing and medicine is a recognition of one’s relationship with plants – one that is grounded in humility, respect, and grace. Plants and nature, to Brenda, are regarded as teacher, elder, family and friend.

While Brenda’s draws much of her wisdom from ancient roots, weaving indigenous teachings for our times, the importance of her work in today’s context of upheaval in economic, political and cultural systems, has never been clearer.  Brenda’s work shines light on the immense potential for inner transformation each individual has. It is only in accessing one’s unique gifts and understanding the nature of interconnectedness that individuals can bring their wholeness to the table.

Brenda’s involvement in organizing work includes having served on the board of Movement Strategy Center, which uses vision, embodiment, connection as an approach to driving social change through transformative movements. During this time, she co-authored Out of the Spiritual Closet: Organizers Transforming the Practice of Social Justice. In the past, she has served as the Director of the East Bay Meditation Center where her deep experience and commitment to community healing, social justice, and alliance building has been said by Naropa University President Charles G. Lief to provide a strong scaffold and fertile ground for birthing and sustaining work that will support a society filled with wholeness and beauty. She also serves on the board of on the board of Lion’s Roar Foundation which seeks to communicate Buddhist wisdom and practices. In 2016, Brenda released her first book Real World Mindfulness for Beginners: Navigate Daily Life One Practice at a Time, featuring a wide range of voices from mindfulness thought leaders seeking to help individuals bring a more mindful presence to their personal and work lives while navigating life with greater courage and clarity. It is Brenda’s belief that self-care when taken collectively as a response to the challenges of our times, can be a revolution on its own.

To create transformative social change, Brenda sees the necessity in the emergence of heart-based leadership -- one which is less concerned with authority and hierarchy, and more about responding from a place of love and compassion. It is when one leads from the heart, Brenda says, that we may begin to create new systems that will replace the old. In highlighting the importance of feeding the system we want to live in, Brenda says, "We need to stop asking the systems that are dying for permission to build the world we want. We need to just start building it together”. In 2017, Brenda founded Nepantla Consulting as a space offering restoration and community, for individuals and changemakers driven to build systems and models which are regenerative in nature.

 

It seems almost natural to respond to themes of suffering and turmoil with despair and helplessness. However Brenda remains hopeful, believing that this time of transition offers great opportunity. Brenda talks about darkness as a gift. “Dark places are the places of reverence and rebirth. A seed cannot grow without the darkness of the soil. The rest. The pause. Connect with the rich and dark soil so that we can grow”.

 

Join us in conversation with this remarkable, heart-driven leader!

“In 1987, while teaching a class at MIT [the Massachusetts Institute of Technology] on nonviolence, philosophy lecturer Lee Perlman had a novel idea: Why not take the students to a prison, to talk with men who had committed extreme forms of violence?  Needless to say,” an MIT publication reported, “the experience was an eye-opener for students — a powerful way to help them understand, at a visceral level, the nature of violence. And it also sparked Perlman’s lifelong professional and personal interest in the prison system.”

Now, 30 years later, through the MIT Prison Initiative that he founded, Perlman teaches classes to a mixed cohort of both MIT students and prisoners at two medium- to maximum-security Massachusetts Correctional Institutions in Norfolk and Framingham.  Teaching philosophy courses at the prisons – including “Self and Soul,” “The Philosophy of Love” and “Nonviolence as a Way of Life” – Perlman and many MIT students travel each week by van to Norfolk or Framingham to engage in discussion and study with imprisoned fellow students, many of whom are incarcerated for life.

For the MIT students, Perlman’s courses help them to see the similarities between the two cohorts – prisoners and MIT students – separated in part by an “accident of birth.”  According to one MIT senior, “The reality that I’ve come to believe is that these guys really are the same as me. …You realize that the things you do are not necessarily indicative of your moral character as much as you’d like to believe, but of the situation and what you’ve been taught.”  The experience has also offered the MIT students rich perspectives beyond the university tower:  according to one student of the nonviolence course, “To hear an MIT student’s perspective is interesting, but to hear a gang leader’s opinion on nonviolence is something else. … [Notwithstanding the many hours required for travel and processing in the prison, this has] been profound and educational in more ways than simply discussing the readings of Gandhi on campus.”

The prisoners, in turn, appreciate the opportunity to interact with MIT students. As one of them noted, working with his MIT classmates motivates him to bring his “’A game’ to class.”  The incarcerated students also view the classes as a window on the “outside.” One commented, “The outside students tend to bring an entirely different perspective to discussion than we would normally receive, because we are essentially from very different worlds.” Another noted that the combined class simply enhanced his learning by “making me feel a sense of normalcy.”

For Dr. Perlman, expanding his teaching into the prison system was deeply personal. “Teaching philosophy is what I have to offer to the world, and offering it in prison was offering it to people who don’t get this opportunity,” he says. “I find it a really remarkable experience to see people grow intellectually, people who never thought about their lives this way at all, who never thought about thinking as an activity that you do for its own sake in your life.”

The intersection of philosophy with politics and policy has been a mainstay of Perlman’s career. After studying philosophy as an undergraduate at St. John’s College (Annapolis), the famed “great books” school, he pursued graduate work in philosophy at the Catholic University of America. He completed an M.A. in political philosophy at Georgetown University.  Before earning his Ph.D. in political philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Perlman spent eight years working in the political arena as a public interest lobbyist and political organizer, including serving as the executive director of Common Cause in Maryland.  In 1978 Baltimore Magazine named him ‘the most feared lobbyist in Maryland’.

In 1984 Perlman joined the teaching staff of the Experimental Study Group, MIT’s first freshman learning community, where he has taught for most of the last 33 years. Founded in 1969, ESG offers a tight-knit intellectual community that fosters innovation and creativity in the educational process. Courses in philosophy and other humanities subjects strengthen this sense of community by encouraging conversation and personal sharing in class. “ESG is a wonderful place to teach philosophy,” Perlman says, “because the program attracts intellectually curious students who enjoy learning for learning’s sake.”

Dr. Perlman has taught at Harvard University, Brown University, Swarthmore College, Phillips Academy (Andover), and, for the past 20 years, at MIT.  He considers himself to be primarily an educator, and prides himself on designing and teaching a number of courses at MIT which offer students an integrated view of the humanities and sciences in the western tradition.  He has twice been awarded the Irwin Sizer Award for Most Significant Improvement to MIT Education (1997, 2015). Lee is also a composer and musician, and the Music Director of the Deborah Abel Dance Company, which has toured in the US and India.

In addition to founding the MIT Prison Initiative, Dr. Perlman has helped organized powerful debates between the Norfolk Correctional debate team and the MIT debate team on topics such as pharmaceutical company liability for the opioid crisis, as well as face-to-face extracurricular conversations between inmates and MIT students.  Some of his MIT students have been moved to engage in public policy advocacy for correctional inmates in the face of regulatory changes.

Join us in conversation with this visionary educator!

Myron Eshowsky embodies many roles -- among them, that of mediator, shamanic healer and co-director of the Social Health Care Program for Syrian Refugees based in Jordan, which provides direct services and training in trauma treatment for Syrian families displaced by the conflicts. Between 1987-1994 he worked as a shamanic healer in a community mental health center, and was the first shamanic healer to be covered by a U.S. health insurance plan specifically for spiritual healing.

Widely published in professional journals, he is the author of Peace with Cancer: Shamanism as a Spiritual Approach to Healing. Watching his own father struggle with and ultimately succumb to cancer deepened his commitment to explore the spiritual, physical and environmental terrains of illness. His book draws upon that journey as well as with his work with individuals diagnosed with cancer, including survivors of Chernobyl, Vietnam Vets, people with AIDS, leukemia and many other cancers and acute conditions.

Eshowsky has consulted throughout the U.S. and globally working with the trauma healing needs of communities ravaged by violence including gangs, at-risk youth, child soldiers in Africa, and more. For the last 30 years, he has studied extensively how indigenous cultures address the healing of trauma and conflict.

In many ways the preparation for this life path began at his birth. Eshowsky was born with congenital severe hearing loss, a condition affecting not only the range of sounds he hears, but also what words he can discriminate. In essence the sound ranges he hears most clearly are the vowel sounds. Through years of developing and recognizing skills for being in the hearing world, it became clear to him how much the skill of listening is core to the process of peacemaking and healing. He listens with his heart and something he calls intuition. In the indigenous healing practice he conducts, he listens to what is going on in this world and also to the other world, the spirit realm that requires a type of going in and connecting where he hears everything perfectly.

As a young child, his great aunt, a self-described "dreaming woman" taught him her spiritual practices of dreaming to the spirits and how she did healing work. He would come to understand those methodologies as “shamanism.” His success in employing shamanic counseling approaches in addressing psychological, emotional, and spiritual problem led the drug/alcohol unit of his agency to refer clients with a history of severe addiction and significant mental health issues to him. He subsequently worked with at-risk youth and gangs and provided programs for mental health centers, community-based anti-violence groups, hospitals, health maintenance organizations, public schools, and prisons.

His activism began as a child. As the only Jewish family in a very poor, white neighborhood during the 1950's, he was frequently the target of violence and hate crimes. Many of the people were from the Southern U.S. who had moved north for industrial jobs. It was a time when Christianity was practiced in the local public schools. There was a brief time when he was not on the hate list and was invited to play baseball and participate in all the games. A young soldier had moved into the neighborhood with his Japanese wife and their bi-racial children. These children became the new target. One day the lead bully mobilized an attack. Everyone was grabbing stones and Eshowsky was pulled into the group energy. Quickly, he saw the terror in the young children and dropped the stones. He walked away, never to play in the neighborhood again. Young as he was, it hit him that none of them were separate and he could not do to another what was done to him. This and other childhood experiences, taught him that wounding cuts deep into the souls of all things. It is not easily or quickly healed, and it leaves scars.

Today Eshowsky heals those wounds through deep listening. Deep listening is not just with our ears, but with all of our being. Eshowsky learned how to talk by putting his hands on his throat and the throat of his teacher and try to meet the vibrations of his therapist. When he met her vibration in himself, there was the feeling of harmony with another human being. He says that deep listening requires getting to that place where your vibration and the other’s vibration are in harmony. When people are in a really strong emotional connection and hearing each other, their heart beats meet. When we listen in such a way that we are connecting with the actual sense of being alive, of being connected to all life, and at a much slower way of being -- deep connections are forged. That’s the lesson that carried Eshowsky through the storms -- listening with the body, with our feelings as another talks, with the heart and with something larger. He teaches that in that deep listening, we connect, we move beyond ourselves, we understand.

He has taken this insight into his work with hurting and wounded children. He shamanic drumming programs with adolescents that include a mix of activities -- storytelling, journeying, healing work, dancing, spiritual divination, and group ceremonies. He not only engages them in drumming, but also teaches them to journey on their own. He says that this provides healing and a sense of belonging that helps clients understand who they are. He loves being able to drum with them, to dance, to share music, to experience their creativity whether poetry, storytelling, dance, music, theater, and the times when the “lightbulb” goes off and new understandings and ideas emerge.

Eshowsky believes that the undercurrent of fear in our society today is related to the massive numbers of people being displaced, a number only set to increase with climate change. Whether conscious of it or not, he believes we all sense the implications and, tempting as it might be to disconnect at this time and give in to the illusion of personal security, it is even more important that we engage in deep listening, and collectively move beyond what we think we know because that is the only way we will get to a place of peace.

Eshowsky’s deepest belief is that most people want to live in a kind and gentle world. They want to be loving, but they don’t believe it is possible. Eshowsky suggests that if we listen deeply, listen to something bigger, we can get a better sense of what might be going on and what we might be able to do, for example, to be kind. For Eshowsky, deep listening is healing, spiritual activism, and peacemaking.

Join us on in conversation with this unique change-maker!

 

Anne Veh and Rajesh Krishnan are filmmakers and co-producers of Teach Me to Be WILD, a documentary film that explores the work of a wildlife sanctuary in Northern California where a team of injured, non-releasable wild animals become wild teachers helping to heal generations of hurt children (at-risk teens, justice-involved youth, foster kids and others). The traumatic histories of the creatures, who range from an Andean condor to a two-toed sloth, often parallel those of the at-risk children who visit. Unexpected and empathic connections are forged that ripple into stories of transformation.

The sanctuary that is the subject of the film, Wildlife Associates, aims to recall us to our true place in Nature’s web. The sanctuary was founded by Steve Karlin, a former park ranger and television personality whose greatest mentors were a 330-pound American black bear and a pair of robins.

Teach Me to Be WILD was filmed over a period of three years with intimate access to the animals, their caregivers, remarkable workshop facilitators and their spirited students.  The film captures the magic that transpires where wounded children and their wild teachers meet.  The film has been screened at numerous school and community settings.  Its thematic content and pace inspire reflections, allowing the film to serve as an anchor for community screenings followed by a circle of sharing, discussion and journaling.

Rajesh is a technology entrepreneur in the San Francisco Bay Area who was led to filmmaking by his passion to preserve Sanatana Dharma's (Hinduism's) core philosophy of Vedanta and Vedic traditions. He has completed film, photography and multi-media projects to preserve the teachings of India's renowned philosopher-saint, Sri Adi Shankaracharya (Sringeri lineage). He has volunteered his time for film and photography projects for the United Nations Foundation for Women and other non-profit organizations.

Anne is an independent art curator and a first-time filmmaker. She has anchored her life around service, kindness circles, and teaching meditation and yoga. For the last decade, she has been passionately working with artists and creators who are making a positive impact on our world. She is an active member of ServiceSpace and conducts kindness circles in Bay Area schools. She is also a contributing editor for Conversations.org.  She lives with her husband and two children in Mill Valley, California.

Join us in conversation with these remarkable and compassionate filmmakers!

Rick Brooks is a dedicated community builder who has initiated numerous community-based projects and experiments, including co-founding the Little Free Library project, a movement that has spawned 60,000 registered Little Free Libraries in all U.S. states and over 80 countries around the world over the last six years or so.  Little Free Library is a nonprofit organization that inspires a love of reading, builds community, and sparks creativity by fostering neighborhood gift-based book exchanges around the world.  Millions of books are exchanged each year, profoundly increasing access to books for readers of all ages and backgrounds, and fostering a spirit of gift.

According to Rick, “The Little Free Library movement developed after I saw a box of free books in the form of a one-room schoolhouse [in Wisconsin] …. It was my conviction that such a small object could carry a good deal of social freight, so to speak. … By focusing on generosity, sharing, mutual support and grassroots efforts, we could facilitate connections among neighbors and demographic groups that seemed to live near each other without really knowing how they could nourish a sense of community.” 

“Little boxes of our favorite books seem to be able to make a difference,” Rick says.  “They offer us an excuse to get to know each other by sharing what we love. … Obviously, this is all about something more than just books.  … These so called ‘boxes of books’ have stimulated all kinds of practical attempts to nurture each other:  Little Free Pantries. Neighborhood Gift and Blessing Boxes, Little Free Art Galleries. Rest stops for daily strolls and bike rides.  Seed exchanges.  Memorials. Places to remember and honor people we love.”

Rick has dedicated his life to community building.  Until the age of 12, he lived in Wichita, Kansas.  His experiential education began thereafter when his family moved to Kodaikanal, South India.  It continued in Peru, Mexico, Tunisia, Jamaica and Sri Lanka as well as the United States. Vocationally, he started as a teacher of English in Peru, then worked as a park ranger while a Beloit College student of anthropology. From 1969, his “career path” saw him as a child care worker, hospital housekeeper, hospital administrator, newspaper reporter, editor and publisher, youth services director, then marketer and outreach program manager in Continuing Studies for the University of Wisconsin-Madison for 26 years.    

As a teacher, he has served in K-12 schools, after-school programs, 2-and 4-year colleges, graduate and continuing studies programs.

Rick co-founded two youth communication centers, a network of youth newspapers, a center for social marketing, a community food and gardening network, a local independent business alliance, time bank, and eventually, the Little Free Library movement. He has also been active in the U.S. and abroad with the Sarvodaya Shramadana movement of Sri Lanka and Nepal, and served as a board member for more than 30 non-profit organizations ranging from a statewide food program (SHARE WI) and positive youth development initiative to literacy, microfinance, sustainability and human service groups.   

He and his wife Sarah now live in rural Princeton, Illinois, where he helped start a regional Small Business Development Center and You Are Here, which facilitates community-based arts and civic engagement projects.

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Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu is a Stanford University-based psychologist and scholar who combines disciplines of Western science with Eastern healing modalities.  With a doctorate from Harvard University, Stephen has trained in clinical and community psychology, yoga, meditation, and Chinese medicine.  

Dr. Murphy-Shigematsu is an author in both English and Japanese who writes about multicultural perspectives on mindfulness, identity, and citizenship. His stories of healing and human development have been hailed as “beautifully written," "deeply moving," "groundbreaking,” and "revolutionary." Bridging literary and social science genres, his writing is both scholarly and accessible to a wide audience.

Stephen’s latest book is From Mindfulness to Heartfulness: Transforming Self and Society with Compassion (February 2018).  Drawing on the Japanese character for the term, he says:  “Heartfulness begins with mindfulness and extends into other ways of being, embracing vulnerability, humility, acceptance, and authenticity. Realizing our connectedness with others leads to empathy, deep listening, and respect. We become compassionate persons and responsible citizens acting to eliminate suffering in self and others and in the world. Heartfulness is compassionate mindfulness in which the awareness of being connected to the self, perhaps a Higher Self and with everything and everyone makes us hate injustice and moves us to do things for others because their welfare is our concern.”

One mindfulness leader describes the book as taking us “beyond mindfulness as it is often currently taught—as an instrument for cognitive changes like focus, attention, or stress relief—to the truths of the gentle, appreciative, nurturing heart. He shows us through stories and practices how to expand our contemplative lives from being self-focused to being inclusive, connected, compassionate, and responsible. Immense heartfulness shines through every story he tells, drawing on experiences from teaching children and college students to being with his dying grandmother to his own biracial childhood. Each story is a jewel, opening the heart. He connects heartfulness to social justice, leadership, and education and offers simple, direct instructions for seven heartful practices.”

Dr. Murphy-Shigematsu is also the author of When Half Is Whole: Multiethnic Asian American Identities and Multicultural Encounters: Case Narratives from a Counseling Practice; and coauthor of Synergy, Healing, and Empowerment: Insights from Cultural Diversity. His books in Japanese include Amerasian Children; and the Stanford University Mindfulness Classroom.

Currently at Stanford University where he is Faculty in Leadership and Wellness in the Program of Health and Human Performance, School of Medicine, Stephen cofounded the LifeWorks program in contemplative and integrative education. The LifeWorks program fosters the growth of “whole students” among undergraduates, cultivating their ability to live boldly, reflectively, and responsibly; its courses and workshops integrate scholarship, creative expression and embodied practices such as mindfulness and self-reflection to help students connect their academic work with their core values and goals. 

Dr. Murphy-Shigematsu also lectures in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford.  He previously was a tenured professor of education and at the University of Tokyo and director of the international counseling center.  He has been a teacher and counselor for children and adults in schools and universities in Japan and the United States, from day care to medical school. His work balances traditional wisdom and modern science in designing mindful, gentle, and compassionate educational practices and spaces. He uses storytelling, both written and oral, to enhance whole-person learning and mindful citizenship.

Dr. Murphy-Shigematsu’s research career includes fieldwork in Okinawa and other parts of Japan in healing and human development as a Fulbright scholar. His work has contributed to understanding in areas of narrative psychology, mixed-race identity, multicultural counseling, and diversity in Japan as well as the United States.

He has created trainings for the U.S. Marines and Navy on cultural diversity and leadership.  His current research is in the assessment of mindfulness in promoting personal well-being, leadership, and social transformation. 

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