Awakin Calls

“Scientists … are responsible for their research not only intellectually but also morally….[T]he results of quantum mechanics and relativity theory have opened up two very different paths for physicists to pursue. They may lead us—to put it in extreme terms—to the Buddha or to the Bomb, and it is up to each of us to decide which path to take.” -- Fritjof Capra, from The Turning Point

Fritjof Capra, Ph.D., is an Austrian-born American physicist and systems theorist.  He is author of the 1975 best-seller The Tao of Physics, which explored the parallels between modern physics and Eastern mysticism, and how modern physics was changing our mechanistic worldview to a holistic and ecological worldview. Four decades later, The Tao of Physics is still in print in more than 40 editions worldwide.

Recognizing the significance of this emerging worldview for social as well as scientific systems, Capra regards the paradigm shift in modern physics as a precursor to transformation in our cultural and social paradigms as well.  As he said on “Voices” in London in 1984: “For the modern physicist, the material world is no longer a mechanic system made of separate objects, but rather appears as a complex web of relationships that include the human observer and his or her consciousness. There is no material substance in the subatomic world; it’s a world of dynamic patterns, continually changing into one another.”  Over the past three decades, he has been engaged in a systematic exploration of the social and cultural implications of this transformation.

Inspired at age 18 by the book Physics and Philosophy by Werner Heisenberg, one of the founders of quantum physics, Capra realized early on that quantum physics implied a whole new worldview. After receiving his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Vienna in 1966, Capra spent 20 years conducting research in high energy physics at universities in Europe and the U.S. and  teaching. In 1968, after two years in Paris, Capra came to work at the University of California in Santa Cruz, where he encountered the counter-culture hippie movement and became interested in meditation and Eastern philosophy. Almost immediately, he saw the connection between ancient Eastern philosophy and modern physics.

One late summer afternoon, when Capra sat on a Californian beach watching the waves and feeling his breathing, he suddenly became aware of his entire surroundings, the sand, rocks, water, and air, as being engaged in a gigantic cosmic dance. What he learned in high-energy physics through graphs, diagrams, and mathematical theories suddenly came to life, as he “saw” and “heard” the Dance of Shiva. Being trained in detailed analytical thinking, Capra was so overwhelmed by this transformative experiential insight that he burst into tears.

In 1971, when he worked at the Imperial College in London, Capra made a photomontage of particle tracks in bubble chamber with the Dancing Shiva. When he showed it to an Indian physicist in his office, his Indian colleague, who had distanced himself from his Indian tradition in order to study physics, cried at the sight of this profound unifying image. After publishing three articles addressing the connections between Eastern philosophy and modern physics, Capra began to write his first book The Tao of Physics.

Capra’s later books include: The Turning Point (1982), Uncommon Wisdom (1988), The Web of Life (1996), The Hidden Connections (2002), The Science of Leonardo (2007), and Learning from Leonardo (2013). The movie Mindwalk (1990) is loosely based on his book, The Turning Point. All his books connect conceptual changes in science with broader changes in worldview and values in society. In 1991, Capra co-authored Belonging to the Universe with Brother David (David Steindl-Rast), a highly regarded Benedictine monk, to explore parallels between new paradigm thinking in science and in theology, and how these new paradigms offer remarkably compatible views about the universe.

As a young child, Capra had direct contact with nature and learned to farm. Born in 1939 in Vienna, Capra lived on his grandmother’s farm for 10 years when his whole family took refuge in the countryside after World War II. By necessity, his extended family and war refugees found a way to live on the farm self-sufficiently as a community. They grew vegetables, baked bread, and raised animals. He saw women taking sunflower seeds off the sunflowers to make sunflower oil under the lamp light in the evening. Everything was recycled and reused on the farm.

Those early years planted in Capra the seeds of ecological awareness and sense of community. Today, over 60 years later, he can still draw a detailed map of the farm after it was long gone. Knowing deeply the significance of taking children out to nature or school gardens, in 1995, Capra co-founded the Berkeley-based Center for Ecoliteracy, which is dedicated to advancing ecology and systems thinking in primary and secondary education. He co-authored EcoManagement and Green Politics.

Over the past thirty-five years, Capra has given management seminars to top executives in Europe, North and South America, and Japan. Currently, Capra serves on the faculty of the Amana-Key executive education program in São Paulo, Brazil, and is a fellow at Schumacher College, an international center for ecological studies in the UK. He also serves on the council of the Earth Charter Initiative.

His recent book, The Systems View of Life (2014), which he co-authored with Pier Luigi Luisi, Professor of Biology at the University of Rome, explores the new systemic conception of life at the forefront of science and its application in economics, management, politics, design, medicine, and law. It presents a grand new synthesis of Capra’s work—integrating the biological, cognitive, social, and ecological dimensions of life into one unified vision. Several critics have suggested that The Systems View of Life is destined to become another classic.

Capra is now in transition from active research and writing to teaching and sharing knowledge. He no longer gives workshops or seminars, and has reduced his travels and lectures to concentrate fully on Capra Course, his new online course, based on the textbook The Systems View of Life. During the 12 online lectures, participants from around the world join the discussion on systems thinking with Capra. This course is the realization of a dream that Capra had for many years. It will provide the participants the conceptual tools to understand the nature of our systemic problems and to recognize the systemic solutions that are being developed by individuals and organizations around the world. He hopes that Capra Course will serve as a model for similar multidisciplinary courses at universities, colleges, and other institutions of learning.

The alumni of the Capra Course stay connected online and in person around the world, sharing ideas and collaborating on emergent social projects, such as BARRIO SOLAR, a new organization formed in 2017 through the Capra Course alumni network in response to the devastation in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.

Capra holds deep gratitude for his mother, a poet, who brought literature into his life, and his father, a lawyer by trade and a philosopher at heart, who ushered him to the world of philosophy at an early age.

Mumbai-based 22-year-old Aarti Kuber likes to call herself a Planeteer and believes her life’s mission is to help our planet and its people heal. Having experienced child sexual abuse, she went on to peacefully confront the person who violated her, ten years after the incident took place.

In 2016, Aarti went up to her teacher’s house with her friends and read out a letter she had written to him. Firmly but compassionately, she said to him, “Although your actions have had a very negative impact on my life, I forgave you in that very moment. I hope you’re able to forgive yourself. I’m glad to know that you have taken an oath never to harm anyone again. I’m proud of you, because it takes a lot of courage to own up to your actions and move on from there. I have and will continue to work with survivors of sexual abuse and work towards empowering them till they're as strong as I feel now, standing in front of you. Today, I am letting you go. From my mind, my thoughts”. Her teacher’s wife gave Aarti a hug and assured her that he is a changed man, after which he apologized to her. The psychosomatic back ache Aarti had had for ten years magically disappeared. She became a new person, broke her pattern of abuse, victim identity and self-blame.

It was during college, that she had begun spiraling downwards. She survived several instances of abuse and harassment from people she trusted, as well as strangers, but had not still acknowledged the damage those incidents had done. All the anger, fear and pain that she had unknowingly bottled up inside her began to suddenly surface. She numbed the negative thoughts in her head with alcohol and binge eating. She put on a lot of weight, was out of touch with her inner voice and had isolated herself from her friends and family. This is when she was diagnosed with manic depression.

Her transformation began in her last year of college, when she joined “The Circle”, a support group that was started by her friends, to spread awareness about violence and mental health, gender and sexuality through communication and art. Along with her classmates, she led discussions and facilitated sharing circles, for people to express their thoughts and experiences, just listen or ask questions. The community now continues to grow in Mumbai and Bangalore, holding circles and workshops in homes, schools and colleges in the spirit of gift economy.

After college, Aarti set off on an exploratory adventure around South India for over a year, to discover her passion, engage in volunteer service, and heal herself. She was introduced to holistic well-being, veganism and began changing her lifestyle – learning Yoga, Reiki, Neuro-Linguistic Programming and Tarot Card reading as tools for self-care. Aarti is currently training to be an Art-Based Therapy Practitioner. She is in the process of starting an initiative called Chandrakala (“moonbeam” in Sanskrit), through which she plans to host healing and art circles every new moon and full moon to help people flow with nature’s rhythm, connect with their inner selves and make peace with the demons that live inside all of us. 

“So much of our current high school system values achievement over exploration and competition over cooperation. So it is little wonder that many students leave high school and continue to drive toward external achievement without a true sense of self or deeper level of motivation."

Patrick Cook-Deegan is an educator, speaker, and wilderness guide focused on helping young people live more meaningful lives. A former lecturer at Stanford's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, Patrick writes and speaks about boldly re-designing the American high school for the 21st century, drawing on neuroscience, purpose learning and human-centered design.  His articles have been featured in national publications including the Stanford Social Innovation Review, where his article was one of the 10 most popular articles in 2016. Patrick writes and speaks nationally on the importance of purpose learning for adolescents, re-defining high school, and re-defining masculinity.

At Stanford’s Design School, Patrick launched and now independently directs Project Wayfinder, which seeks to inspire our next generation to become intentional meaning-makers empowered to contribute to the world around them.  Project Wayfinder works with schools, offering kits and educator workshops to help equip students with the skills, knowledge and confidence to become purposeful navigators of their lives and the world. It also offers summer institutes at leading universities for high school educators, to equip them to lead students on the Wayfinder Journey and reflect on their own paths as wayfinders.

The term “wayfinding” comes from an ancient system of navigation used by Polynesians to voyage thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean. In order to determine directions at various times of day and year, these wayfinders learned to recognize important signs and patterns in the natural world, such as the position of specific stars, weather and climate, wildlife species, the nature of ocean currents, colors of the sea and sky, and cloud formation relative to land mass.  Wayfinders share a common value system: respect for the earth, an understanding of the interconnectedness of nature and people, a sense of wonder and a spirit of exploration.

Patrick came upon the concept during his own extensive travels in the Far East.  As he writes in a chapter of the anthology book, Purpose Rising: A Global Movement of Transformation and Meaning (2017): “The approach taken by these traditional navigators resonated deeply with me. I admired the navigators’ skills greatly: their connection with the land and sea, their heightened ability to read the natural world, and their pure stamina (wayfinders only take catnaps on weeklong voyages).  These navigators cultivated many skills that I valued—attunement to nature, creative problem-solving, self-awareness, empathetic connection, and risk-taking. My industrialized education taught me these skills were useless, obsolete, and ancillary. In truth, they turn out to be as important as ever, especially in the quest for a purposeful life.”

Having grown up in Annapolis, Maryland where he was an All-American lacrosse player and captain of a state championship lacrosse team, Patrick went on a journey to find himself after his sophomore year at Brown University, and then again on a longer travel journey after graduating college. For five years, he traveled alone to countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, North Korea and Rwanda — including a 2,800 mile solo bike ride through Southeast Asia. His interest in international adventure and global justice inspired his work with human rights activists in Myanmar, his founding of a program for low-income U.S. students to volunteer overseas, and the launch of the Social Innovation Initiative at his now-alma mater, Brown University.

Patrick was deeply affected by the injustices of the world he witnessed during his travels, and while in Cambodia, a friend suggested that he do a 10-day meditation sit that radically changed his life. With a new sense of purpose, Patrick returned to the social sector energized to help other young people have their own transformative experiences.

In 2007, he began speaking with high school students about the importance of global citizenship, leadership and self-awareness. He has since taught semester-long mindfulness programming in public and private schools, and has led mindfulness and backcountry trips with Back to Earth and UCLA-Mindful Awareness Research Center. Patrick was the West Coast Director of Inward Bound Mindfulness Education, where he helped launch its first wilderness-based retreats. During his Stanford Design School fellowship, Patrick worked with the Palo Alto Unified School District to develop a purpose-learning curriculum for high school students, which resulted in his incubating Project Wayfinder.

Join us in conversation with this inspiring and purpose-driven youth leader!

Mary Rothschild was making bread with a group of preschool aged children at Ariadne's Thread, the children's center she founded and directed, when "she realized there had been a period of total silence as the children paid attention to kneading their piece of dough into an animal shape. She looked around, feeling fulfilled. She had started the center to provide an environment for just this kind of attention. Then Stacy (not her real name, of course), who had just turned three, looked up and said, 'The Lion King video is too loud.' There was no TV in the children's center. Perhaps it was coming from a car in the street outside? Mary listened and finally said: 'I don't hear it, Stacy.' Stacy's large, dark eyes turned up to meet Mary's as she said: ' It's in my head. It's in my head.'"

The startling implications of Stacy's experience weren't lost on Mary. Much of her life has been dedicated to helping parents and teachers of young children devise intentional plans for media use that take into account the invisible realities of the modern world. In 1995 Mary founded "Ariadne's Thread," to provide hands-on learning and free play in response to the influence of media in the lives of her own two children. She later co-founded and now directs Healthy Media Choices, a non-profit that conducts workshops for parents and teachers of children ages birth through 6 years. For five years, Mary hosted a weekly radio program, "The Healthy Media Choices Hour " on Brattleboro Community Radio in Vermont, and she has taught courses in Children and Media at Adelphi and Fordham Universities.

In a TEDx talk delivered in 2017 she explored The Myth of the Digital Gene -- and the media-centered story about what children need to prepare for their futures.Throughout those various learning experiences and working with individual families, Mary has deepened an understanding of a non-judgmental middle way in the often dichotomous discussion about what young children need, especially in relation to media use. As she puts it, "It's really about attention and about relationship. But we go in through media because that's where we are. The questions I want people to ask are: 'Where am I spending my attention? Do I have to?'"

Join us in conversation with this thought-provoking changemaker on a subject of relevance in today's world. 

Eoin "Owen" Ó Súilleabháin is a singer, composer and storyteller with a deep-rooted belief in the creative power of art. Music, one might say, runs in his blood. Owen's mother Noírín Ni Riain is a leading sacred singer and theologian, and his father Mícheál is a pioneering national composer and founder of the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance. Along with his brother Mícheál ‘Moley’, Owen writes songs that aspire to "lift and apprentice the human heart to generosity and gratitude", and has released five albums of both ancient and contemporary music, the latest released by Sounds True, called Fields Of Grace - Celtic Meditation Music from the Heart of Ireland. 

The star-studden list of Owen's many collaborators over the years includes the monks of the Glenstal Abbey, Riverdance composer Bill Whelan, singer Sinéad O'Connor, poet John O'Donohue, actor Russell Crowe, director Steven Spielberg, and Irish traditional music legends The Chieftains. While he has performed around the world, Owen now lives in the United States, and is bringing his gifts to bear on industries that range from education and healthcare to the corporate world.

His projects are anything but typical. For instance, he has worked on the role of listening in healing and transformation at a California public hospital affected by gang violence, and composed songs for The Teaching Channel and the Storytelling Project at Stanford University. As author and theologian Barbara Brown Taylor put it, "Owen Ó Súilleabháin is more than stellar musician; he is a soulful physician of the human heart, whose voice goes straight to what is most in need of healing. He has put me back together again more than once, and I cannot thank him enough."  

In 2018, Owen co-founded The Studio, a business that inspires leadership, innovation and culture-change through the experience and the inspiration of artistry. Through this work he engages with leaders to unlock the sensibilities of listening to enable more powerful communication and enliven transformation. 

In the summer of each year Owen curates and leads journeys of art and spirit in Ireland to share his family's artistic gifts and the profound wisdom and rich history that the Golden Vale region has to offer. Owen's academic background includes the study of philosophy, Greek and Roman civilizations, and peace studies. He credits his unique approach to a close working relationship with the poet David Whyte, and to the long friendship his family shared with the late Celtic poet and philosopher John O'Donohue.

Join us in conversation with this multi-dimensional musician who has captivated thousands with his songs and the spirit behind them.

 

Clare Dubois is the founder of TreeSisters.org, a quickly-growing women’s crowd-funding and consciousness-shift campaign to inspire and direct the brilliance, creativity and generosity of women towards the reforestation of the tropics and shared leadership around ecological restoration. TreeSisters reflects Clare’s exploration of the links between feminine consciousness and Nature’s intelligence. She and her team experiment overtly to discover how to call forth the unique capacities and creativity of women on behalf of the trees. They are currently funding over 1.7 million trees across Kenya, Madagascar, India, Brazil, Cameroon and Nepal.  Clare founded TreeSisters after a car crash that delivered a life changing message – it was revealed to her that the tropics needed to be reforested within 10 years – that women were the missing piece in the climate change crisis – and that feminine consciousness needed to be reinstated, or – "it’s over".

Clare is an Earth-loving social entrepreneur and inspirational speaker who worked internationally for 18 years facilitating groups, coaching business leaders and creating behavior change processes within the personal growth sector.

 

As a Be The Change Symposium facilitator and freelance writer, she worked for three years as the UK coordinator for a massive agro-forestry initiative in southern India called Project GreenHands (PGH) before initiating TreeSisters. Through her work with PGH she has distilled the social mobilization strategy deployed with great success in India, and now turns it towards the mobilization of women within TreeSisters.

 

Clare’s passion has always included exploring how patterns of consciousness manifest as behaviors.  Her primary work is in the creation of processes, tools, courses, and messaging that can access the nature-connected essence of woman and activate new forms of leadership. Though Clare founded and is leading the campaign, TreeSisters at all levels is jointly held and developed within the circle of core team members.  Clare works on network development, ethos and principles, organizational culture and strategy as they relate to the Map of 5 Choices and behavior change materials.  She offers a free mini-course on “Rewilding your Feminine Nature.”

 

She is committed to the creation of an evolving system that learns as it goes and continually models itself upon the flows and forms of living systems. In her own life, her aim is to reclaim balance, to revel in freedom and health and to be 'walking permission' for those who are fed up of being held back, and just want to have a go.

Sarah Peyton is a certified trainer of the Center for Nonviolent Communication who has a passion for weaving together neuroscience knowledge and experiences of healing that unify people with their brains and bodies. She aims to integrate teachings from brain science and the use of resonant language to help heal trauma. Based on her belief that language is the starting point for the movement towards self-warmth, Sarah offers healing experiences using the precision and resonant language that have come alive to her through her long-term study of nonviolent communication, together with 3D body-centered explorations of families over generations (through family constellation work).

"Once we start learning about neuroscience," Sarah says, "we  find out how emotional trauma creates self-blame and isolation, and gets in the way of gentleness with the self. We humans are uniquely vulnerable to emotional harm, but we are also uniquely available to hold each other and ourselves with warmth and resonance in ways that re-establish real relationship and engage our brains' capacity for healing."

Sarah teaches and lectures internationally, and is the author of the book Your Resonant Self: Guided Meditations and Exercises to Engage Your Brain’s Capacity for Healing, published by Norton Publishing in September of 2017. Sarah "hopes ... we can use warm language to support and accompany ourselves and that our brain can grow and heal at any age, increasing our resilience and enjoyment of life."

In her work, Sarah draws from her own personal experiences:  "I used to struggle with brutal depression… deadening, heavy sadness that made it hard to muster the energy to take a shower or even brush my teeth. Back then, I was in constant battle with a savagely self-critical inner voice that told me I was worthless, stupid, and unlovable. I didn’t realize that my depression made SO much sense given my childhood experiences of family that didn’t provide warm, nourishing relationships. I’m here today to share what I’ve learned since then about how to heal past pains and move into a joyful relationship with ourselves. Regardless of your age, genetic predisposition or adverse childhood experiences, your brain is capable of building new neural fibers to help self-regulate your emotions and awaken your body as a place of safety and security."

Join us in conversation with Sarah Peyton to learn more!

Ann Medlock is a writer and social activist who founded the Giraffe Heroes Project, a nonprofit organization that's given countless people around the globe the stories and inspiring examples of real heroes—people sticking their necks out for the common good—for more than three decades.  In 1983, concerned that too few people were actively participating in their own democracy, she launched the organization as a call for a spotlight on and inspiration for more brave, active, citizens:  Ann sought to get the stories of such people told on radio and television in order to inspire others into active participation in public life.

The organization has since honored well over 1,300 "Giraffes," and has told their stories in every medium that becomes available.  Ann later realized that she was inspired to launch this project in order to honor “The Holy Fool” – an archetype described by Joseph Campbell as the most dangerous person on earth and the most threatening to all hierarchical institutions, because the fool ignores institutional power and has no concern for naysayers. 

Giraffe Heroes teaching materials are available for kids in kindergarten-through-high-school classes in all 50 states and in American schools abroad. The Project has partnered with Teachers Without Borders to distribute civic engagement materials to teachers in 117 nations.  Ann won the Caring Institute's Caring Award and was named an education innovator by the National Education Association.

Medlock blogs on the Project’s website, on her own site and on Huffington Post. Her personal writing includes Arias, Riffs & Whispers, a book of poems, and Outing the Mermaid, A Novel of Love, Fear and Misogyny, published by Blooming Twig in 2017.

In her eight decades of life, Ann has been a freelance writer, an award-winning public radio commentator, an editor at Macmillan, and speechwriter to US political figures and to the Aga Khan.  She has spoken, written and/or taught in Kobe, Kinshasha, Saigon, Beijing and Moscow as well as in Chicago, Washington DC and New York City.

As she writes on her personal website, “My real work began when I was more than half-way through what's turning out to be a long life. Now, actuarially, time is getting short. So I'm gathering up as many bread crumbs as I can find of that late-begun work and leaving them here, in the vast forest that is the internet, in hopes they may be of value on your path to a long and creative life. There's a lot here. Do wander. Welcome to it all.”

Medlock lives with her spouse, John Graham, on an island in the Pacific Northwest, where she's spending her days writing a memoir, Building With Christopher Alexander, about building her Pacific Northwest home with the master-builder who is one her great influencers, and leading the Giraffe Heroes Project.  She’s a board member of the Hedgebrook Writers’ Retreat for women.

"He thinks like a biologist, writes like a poet, and gives the natural world the kind of open-minded attention one expects from a Zen monk rather than a hypothesis-driven scientist." --A profile of David Haskell by James Gorman in The New York Times 

David Haskell’s work integrates scientific, literary, and contemplative studies of the natural world.

His latest book, The Songs of Trees: Stories from Nature’s Great Connectors (Viking, 2017), examines the many ways that trees and humans are connected. Haskell spent two years visiting 12 sites around the world to reveal the surprising—and surprisingly fascinating—arboreal secrets hidden in the canopies of ordinary trees. Deborah Blum, Pulitzer winner and director of the Knight Science Journalism program at MIT says of The Songs of Trees, “David George Haskell may be the finest literary nature writer working today. The Songs of Trees – compelling, lyrical, wise – is a case in point.”

In the words of a recent profile, “Haskell believes that we live in a world of countless untold stories hiding in plain sight. In [his first book, The Forest Unseen: A Year’s Watch in Nature (Viking, 2012)], he selected a square meter of forest floor and visited that spot almost daily for a year. That’s the entire book, all 288 pages of it, him staring at the ground. But Haskell leveraged three remarkable strengths—vast scientific knowledge, prodigious literary gifts, and a deeply meditative approach to fieldwork—to extract from that patch of dirt characters, relationships, drama, and universal themes.”

The Forest Unseen was finalist for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction, winner of the National Academies’ Best Book Award for 2013, winner of the 2013 Reed Environmental Writing Award, winner of the 2012 National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature, runner-up for the 2013 PEN E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, and winner, in its Chinese translation, of the 2016 Shenzheng Dapeng Nature Writing Award.  E. O. Wilson wrote that The Forest Unseen was “a new genre of nature writing, located between science and poetry.”

Haskell has also written about the biology of climate change and same-sex marriage for The New York Times, and blogs about his rambles into nature.

Haskell holds degrees from the University of Oxford (BA) and from Cornell University (PhD). He is Professor of Biology and Environmental Studies at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, where he served as Chair of Biology. He is a 2014-2015 Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, a Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies, and an Elective Member of the American Ornithologists’ Union. His scientific research on animal ecology, evolution, and conservation has been sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the World Wildlife Fund, among others. He serves on the boards and advisory committees of local and national land conservation groups.

Haskell’s classes have received national attention for the innovative ways they combine action in the community with contemplative practice. In 2009, the Carnegie and CASE Foundations named him Professor of the Year for Tennessee, an award given to college professors who have achieved national distinction and whose work shows “extraordinary dedication to undergraduate teaching.” The Oxford American featured him in 2011 as one of the southern U.S.’s most creative teachers. His teaching has been profiled in USA Today, The Tennesseean, and other newspapers.

Join us in this new year kick-off conversation with a stunningly beautiful and lyrical writer!

Manulani Aluli Meyer (Manu) is the fifth daughter of Emma Aluli and Harry Meyer. Her family hails from Mokapu, Kailua, Kamamalu, Wailuku, Hilo and Kohala on the islands of Oahu, Maui and Moku o Keawe.

The Aluli ohana (family) is a large and diverse group of scholar-activists who have spent their lives in Hawaiian education, justice, land reclamation, law, health, cultural revitalization, arts education, prison reform, transformational economics, food sovereignty, Hawaiian philosophy and most of all, music.

Dr. Aluli Meyer works in the field of indigenous epistemology (philosophy of knowledge) and its role in world-wide awakening. She obtained her doctorate from Harvard (Ed.D. 1998) by studying Hawaiian epistemology via language, history, and the clear insights of beloved Hawaiian mentors. She is an international keynote speaker who has published on the topic of native intelligence and its synergistic linkages to post-quantum sciences, simultaneity, spirituality, whole thinking, and to liberating evaluation and reflective pedagogy.

Her book: Ho'oulu: Our Time of Becoming Hawaiian Epistemology and Early Writings, is in its third printing. Manu's background is in wilderness education and experiential learning within cultural settings. She has been an Instructor for Outward Bound and Hawaii Bound schools, along with coaching at high school and national levels in volleyball, track/field, and Special Olympics.

Dr. Aluli Meyer championed the Hawaiian Charter School movement, worked within the prisons, and developed Hoea Ea and Kaiao Garden for the Hawaii Island Food Sovereignty movement.

Manulani has been an Associate Professor of Education at the University of Hawaii in Hilo and host to many creative community transformational education projects within/outside UH Hilo for 25+ years. She is an evaluator of international Indigenous PhD's and finds much connection with the healing insights of other indigenous scholar-practitioners. She lived five years in New Zealand working at Te Wnanga o Aotearoa as lead developer/teacher for an innovative Masters of Applied Indigenous Knowledge, He Waka Hiringa.

Manulani will be featured in the film Ho Mai Ka Pono scheduled to be released in 2018.

She is currently the Konohiki (facilitator) of Kulana o Kapolei, a Hawaiian Place of Learning, at UH West Oahu supported by the Hawaii Papa O Ke Ao initiative. Kulana o Kapolei is developed to "invite willingness" and thus to inspire ike kupuna (know one's ancestors) initiatives that deepen ike aina (knowing the land), mo'olelo (history/legend), auamo kuleana (responsibility), and aina aloha (love of land) practices already underway in and throughout West Oahu, Ka Pae Aina o Hawaii, and Moana-nui-akea. Manu has been a practitioner of ho'oponopono (Hawaiian healing practice to deal with disruption in relationships) for that past 30 years.