The Newfield Ignite Podcast

What is ontological learning? Why is it so important in today's world?

In this very personal conversation with Veronica, she not only shares the answers to these questions but also reveals how she became the CEO of Newfield Network, her stories of a unique childhood immersed in the world of personal transformation, and how using the ontological approach itself to run Newfield as a business gave her an invaluable skill set she could not have gained at business school… one that has made the company thrive.

Veronica gives us a taste of all the realms ontological learning can reveal:

• The idea of 'other' and observing how our definition is not as air-tight as we think.
• How it is possible to coordinate a future together even when we have very different perspectives.
• How to fully experience this wild crazy ride called life that we are on.

Brendan Kelly, acupuncturist, Chinese medicine practitioner, book author, and tai chi teacher.

What if climate change — what is happening at the global level — is a reflection of our own internal and cultural imbalances?

In this provocative conversation, Brendan uses the concept of Yin and Yang as a lens through which to see our current crisis. We live in a time of imbalance. Our over-emphasis on stimulation, newness, and constant growth is an excess of Yang. What we need is Yin: to slow down, to have less, and to value the old.

Brendan invites us to see how our culture has devalued balance, and that only by regaining balance can we hope to heal psychological and ecological health.

He asks if we can move from a doom-and-gloom view to seeing our times as a transition, as an opportunity to regain balance on all levels.

Bio:

Brendan Kelly has been actively involved with local, regional, and national environmental issues for 25 years. The co-founder and co-owner of Jade Mountain Wellness, where he currently practices acupuncture and herbalism, he also teaches at Johnson State College and the Academy for Five Element Acupuncture. Kelly lectures nationally on a wide variety of topics, including Chinese medicine, Western herbal medicine, personal health, climate change, and other environmental issues.

Laura Bond, Director of the Arts and Ideas program at the University of North Carolina in Asheville and master trainer in the Alba Method (a somatic approach to inducing, expressing, and modulating emotions).

Do you often feel driven by our emotions? What if there was a method to put you in the driver's seat?

In this conversation, Laura Bond talks about how each of our emotions is very specifically embodied: anger, for example, has its own muscle patterns in the face and body which are quite different from that of joy.

When people learn how to do these patterns, they become able to physically shift their emotional state, they begin to feel different. "Suddenly you have more power, more control," says Laura.

Laura has found that the Alba Method, originally used to train actors, is actually universal, something that anyone can use, including coaches and practitioners. Being able to sense the physical expression of your emotional state, and then embody a different one is far from imitating life; it is understanding life.

Bio:

Laura Bond is a Full Professor at UNC-Asheville, and the Director of the Arts and Ideas Program. Laura is a master teacher in the Alba Method of physical emotion regulation. She has developed new methods to teach the Alba Method to the general public and helps performers, business professionals, therapists, and life coaches recognize how the method can be used in their practices. She is the author of TEAM for Actors: A Holistic Approach to Embodied Acting.

John Kesler, proponent of individual and collective flourishing, Founder of the Integral Polarity Practice Institute, Founder of the nonprofit Salt Lake Global Civil Network, and "recovering" attorney.

In a time of deeply divided politics, how can we find a way to include and transcend two opposite poles, two contending points of view?

In this conversation, John Kesler presents his Integral Polarity Practice (IPP) as a practice that calls us to transcend the ego, access our compassion, and reach a higher self. IPP allows us to access a place where we see that opposite poles are actually different qualities of the same thing. When we become aware of polarities, both individually and collectively, and work with them, we can begin to see the relevance of each pole, see the dynamics between the poles, and learn to hold both poles simultaneously. This, in turn, enables us to stretch beyond our current patterns that no longer serve us.

This powerful practice is relevant for our own self-development, for relationships, in organizations, in coaching, and in leadership. And, Kesler invites us to consider how it is also crucial in politics. Democracy is in danger when those in power are not aware of how to expand their perspective to include both poles. To be more collaborative and generous, to get things done, we need to access a level of maturity that can move beyond polarities.

Bio:

John has developed and shares widely an integrally informed awareness and life practice called Integral Polarity Practice (IPP). He was a founding teacher of the Integral Spiritual Center.

Mr. Kesler founded and is president of the global Salt Lake Civil Network, a nonprofit which is dedicated to integrally informed approaches to local/global, and personal/collective transformation. He was a founding member of the Integral Institute and has had extensive experience in the in the areas of community flourishing and other areas of social and political activism and reform.

John graduated from Columbia University Law School. He has practiced law for over 40 years in America, Europe and Asia.

Alexander Love is an Acupuncturist, Coach, Speaker, & Curriculum Developer of Newfield Network's, "Heart, Soul & Praxis of Business Development Program."

What if running a business is an opportunity to show up passionately ...with love, care, and enthusiasm? In this conversation, Alexander shares the path that led him to redefine fundamental assumptions about what "business" "marketing" and "money" are or can be.

Alexander invites us to consider business as the expression of our deepest heart desire, as the catalyst that will bring our voice out into the world.

When a business owner acts from this place, he or she realizes that sales can be about clarity, about serving, about creating a new future and about helping others. Alexander ends with a simple exercise—for newbie and seasoned business owners alike—on how to find this place.

BIO

Alexander Love, M.Ac., Dipl. OM, NTS, is a coach, acupuncturist, and cultural luminary. He is the director, designer, and primary facilitator for the Newfield Network's business development program for coaches, "The Heart, Soul, & Praxis of Business Development." Alexander is an inspirational leader who invites us to allow our pains and challenges to become a catalyst for creating a bright future.

In this conversation, Bernard Lietaer reveals how our relationship with money has become unconscious. We have forgotten that we designed and created the idea of money. It seems money is managing us rather than us using it to serve our needs. "Money is an agreement," says Bernard. "What is interesting about this definition is that one can change it once it stops working for us."

Bernard reviews alternatives to the current system that we seem tied to, one he calls "patriarchal" because it is a single currency system, created top-down, that promotes short-term rather than long-term thinking. He also discusses places he has seen both acceptance and resistance to these alternative systems.

Bernard ends the conversation by speculating on what it will take for a money revolution. What will it take to raise global consciousness around the nature of money, our behavior patterns around it, and the existence of other possibilities?

BIO

Bernard Lietaer, author of The Future of Money, is an international expert in the design and implementation of currency systems. He has studied and worked in the field of money for more than 30 years in an unusually broad range of capacities including as a Central Banker, a fund manager, a university professor, and a consultant to governments in numerous countries, multinational corporations, and community organizations. He co-designed and implemented the convergence mechanism to the single European currency system (the Euro) and served as president of the Electronic Payment System at the National Bank of Belgium (the Belgian Central Bank). He co-founded and managed GaiaCorp, a top performing currency fund whose profits funded investments in environmental projects. A former professor of International Finance at the University of Louvain, he has also taught at Sonoma State University and Naropa University.

He is currently a Research Fellow at the Center for Sustainable Resources of the University of California at Berkeley. He is also a member of the Club of Rome, a Fellow of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, the World Business Academy, and the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. Bernard Lietaer has written numerous books and articles about money systems, including Of Human Wealth (2011), Monnaies Régionales (2008), and The Mystery of Money (2000).

In this interview, Lonny Jarrett integrates the wisdom of Chinese Medicine, Jungian analysis, and integral theory to explore human spiritual development and the ways in which we can access the deeper answers we seek.

Lonny discusses why models of spiritual development are important: They help to identify where a client, patient, or coachee may get stuck, where they tend to regress in times of stress, and where the gaps are between their values and actions.

Closing this gap is crucial for our continued evolution. "Evolution means entering the unknown," says Lonny. It comes when we question our fundamental beliefs, appreciate feeling disoriented, and have confidence in the process.

When we are able to experience a "crack" in our limited worldview, we can see through to something bigger than ourselves. At first, we may see this bigger thing as "it" or "other," but we soon come to understand that it is part of us, an aspect of our self that was previously hidden.

Lonny ends the conversation by talking about the key to getting people to come together: Deep listening. A practitioner who is able to access this transcendental aspect of self, and listen to it, has the power to activate a new dimension of being in their client, patient or coachee. It enables the client to move from listening to their thoughts and feelings to listening to their soul and intuition.

BIO

Lonny S. Jarrett, M. Ac., author of Nourishing Destiny, The Inner Tradition of Chinese Medicine, has been a student of Chinese medicine since 1980. He holds a master's degree in neurobiology and a fourth-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. Lonny maintains his clinical practice in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

What is a human being? What does it mean to integrate the desire to live a meaningful life with the pragmatics of action? In this interview, Bob Dunham reveals a cultural challenge: the flood of "how to" and "5 secrets to success" content that promises to change our lives but does not, and cannot, produce the big shifts we seek.

Bob says that breakthrough can only come when we shift the context. To do this, we must ask questions that go beyond the "how." By asking the "what" questions, we reveal blind spots and see we have the "incredible power to design a life."

In this conversation, Bob speaks about his research on the fundamental skills of leadership, leadership as an art, and how leadership and learning are embodied. He ends by speaking about our ability to engage, moment by moment, with the fundamental question: What do I want to contribute to the world?

BIO

Bob Dunham is the founder of the Institute for Generative Leadership (IGL) and has trained hundreds of graduates in the three-year Coaching Excellence in Organizations (CEO) program. IGL partners with Newfield Network - the leading school of ontological coaching - and also offers the discipline of Generative Leadership and management in the Generative Leadership Program™ (GLP). Bob's experience as a corporate executive and COO of startups informs over thirty years of coaching, consulting, and results-based practices for effective leadership and coaching in organizations. Bob works to establish leadership, management, and coaching in organizations as mature professions.

In this interview, Terri O'Fallon, researcher, teacher and coach, reveals some of the universal human developmental patterns she has discovered. She has been a teacher for 53 years and has, therefore, witnessed first-hand the progression of human unfolding.

In this conversation, Terri speaks to how human awareness and consciousness unfolds over time and how having an understanding of this developmental map enables us to cultivate more compassion for our fellow humans. Terri's model is intricately linked to the work of contemporary philosopher Ken Wilber and also Dr. Susanne Cook Grueter's work on human development.

Lastly, Terri speaks to the importance of establishing a strong foundation of human development in our early years so as to have healthy later stages of development as well as the why healing our early childhood wounds enables us to be much more resilient and healthy adults.

Join us for an exciting journey!

BIO

Terri O'Fallon is a researcher, teacher, coach, spiritual director and designer of transformative containers. She recently completed research on the Integral Stages developmental model, identifying three later adult developmental levels and a series of patterns that repeat throughout the human life-scape. She and Kim Barta co-teach practical approaches for the application of this model for coaches, psychotherapists, parents, and other mentoring positions.

Terri is a founding partner of Pacific Integral, which creates a variety of programs including "Generating Transformative Change". Terri holds Masters degrees in Special Education, and in Spiritual direction and an Integral PhD in Transformative Learning and Change.

What would happen if we allowed ourselves to shift from a constant state of striving and achieving, and instead entered into a place of deep satisfaction?

In this interview, Alexander Love invites us into an intimate space of inquiry and invites us to experience the deep satisfaction that exists when we drop into a great field of love.

From this direct experience of the ocean of love, we explore what new possibilities can arise in our coaching practice, our lives, and the world at large.

What happens when our own agony and humanity's agony is met with profound love and compassion? What becomes possible when we widen our hearts to embrace paradox? Join us in a deeply enriching, experiential journey that takes us beyond our day-to-day assumptions about transformation, change, and being human.

BIO

Alexander Love, M.Ac., Dipl. OM, is a coach, acupuncturist, and cultural luminary. He is the director, designer, and primary facilitator for the Newfield Network's business development program for coaches, "The Heart, Soul, & Praxis of Business Development." Alexander is an inspirational leader who invites us to allow our pains and challenges to become a catalyst for creating a bright future.

For more on Alexander Love.