Thursday, March 28th

Bioneers brings together a very diverse, discerning, engaged and reflective community, and the curated conversations around crucial topics we have been hosting recently (“Conversation Cafes”) have proven highly popular and stimulating. Each session begins with a very brief presentation by one of the conference presenters as a “conversation starter” to frame the topic, followed by structured group discussion. At the end of each session, a “harvester” who has carefully witnessed and “absorbed” what has transpired, offers us a poetic synopsis/recapitulation of the highlights of our time together.

Conflict is the spirit of the relationship asking itself to deepen.”

– Sobonfu and Malidoma Somé

In these polarizing times, how can we invoke the spiritual gifts of conflict as opportunities to deepen learning and connection? What does it take to shift our mindsets, skill-sets, and structures to build generative cultures around conflict? In this session, Shilpa Jain, who has decades of experience supporting people to free themselves from soul-crushing institutions and to live in greater alignment with their hearts, their communities, and with nature, will lead us off by sharing some tools we can use to enhance our inner awareness and interpersonal connections, so we can then engage in conversations about how to harness the energy of conflict, navigate specific types of conflicts, move beyond polarization and from judgment to curiosity and witnessing, all the better to succeed in achieving systemic change. Facilitated by: David Shaw, Santa Cruz Permaculture and UCSC Right Livelihood College. “Harvester:” Jahan Khalighi, spoken word poet, youth educator and community arts organizer.

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Lotus Cafe, Dharma College

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Panelists


David Shaw
Founder
Santa Cruz Permaculture and the UCSC Right Livelihood Center
Jahan Khalighi
Program Manager
Chapter 510

We are constantly inundated by attempts to influence our behavior, and we also often seek to persuade others on social and cultural issues, but how do we differentiate between authentic and manipulative persuasion? When do we give up in our efforts to persuade others? When do we stay engaged in persuasion even when it’s difficult? In this interactive session, facilitated by Joan Blades, entrepreneur, political activist and co-founder of Living Room Conversations, we’ll have a conversation that explores when persuasion is effective and when it isn’t, as well as what we think is worth the effort and why. This conversation is inspired in part by themes found in Anand Giriharadas’s book, The Persuaders.

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Skillful Means Center, Dharma College

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Panelists


Joan Blades
Co-Founder
Living Room Conversations

This intimate room will provide Bioneers attendees with a gently curated healing space for connection, contemplation and experiencing the transformative power of communal grieving. All the sessions held here will be facilitated by death midwives /community gatherers/educators Anneke CampbellBirgitta Kastenbaum and Amber Deylon

The room will be open from 2 to 3 pm, before the day’s two sessions begin at 3pm, for those who want to come and sit quietly and/or write messages for the altar, but the room will be closed once each session begins to assure privacy. The communal altar invites you to honor loved ones by bringing offerings including photos and/or responsibly foraged gifts from nature. 

Cultures worldwide practice rituals deeply intertwined with the natural world to mark transitions and losses of life. Come join us in a circle to explore how resilience and thriving in these difficult times require expanding our ability to be present with grief and getting to know it for its gift potential of regeneration and transformation. Through intimate sharing and group conversation, anchored in breath, embodied practices and offerings to our communal altar, we will connect with the strength and healing available when we honor our grief in community.

March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Insight Room, Dharma College

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Panelists


Amber Deylon
Creator
Grieve and Breathe
Anneke Campbell
Writer and Community Activist
Birgitta Kastenbaum
Co-Founder
Bridging Transitions

This intimate room will provide Bioneers attendees with a gently curated healing space for connection, contemplation and experiencing the transformative power of communal grieving. All the sessions held here will be facilitated by death midwives /community gatherers/educators Anneke CampbellBirgitta Kastenbaum and Amber Deylon

The room will be open from 2 to 3 pm, before the day’s two sessions begin at 3pm, for those who want to come and sit quietly and/or write messages for the altar, but the room will be closed once each session begins to assure privacy. The communal altar invites you to honor loved ones by bringing offerings including photos and/or responsibly foraged gifts from nature. 

Many of us who are laboring to bring about environmental and social change find ourselves frequently confronting obstacles and setbacks, but the tremendous urgency of our struggles does not allow us the space to experience and honor the losses and grief that accompany our care, passion and commitment. Come find solace in community through guided conversation, sharing, breath and embodied practices, as we touch into the love that is the underlying source of grief, renewing our ability to continue our good work in the world. 

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm | Insight Room, Dharma College

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Panelists


Amber Deylon
Creator
Grieve and Breathe
Birgitta Kastenbaum
Co-Founder
Bridging Transitions
Anneke Campbell
Writer and Community Activist

Bioneers brings together a very diverse, discerning, engaged and reflective community, and the curated conversations around crucial topics we have been hosting recently (“Conversation Cafes”) have proven highly popular and stimulating. Each session begins with a very brief presentation by one of the conference presenters as a “conversation starter” to frame the topic, followed by structured group discussion. At the end of each session, a “harvester” who has carefully witnessed and “absorbed” what has transpired, offers us a poetic synopsis/recapitulation of the highlights of our time together.

Our conversation starter, Zuleikha, a renowned dance performer and movement awareness teacher, will discuss the practice of “Body Listening,” a technique that permits us to access our inner wisdom through a subtle attunement to what our body is communicating to us. She will share methods we can use to reclaim our embodied wholeness and revivify and heal our body/mind/spirit. The conversations will be facilitated by: David Shaw, Santa Cruz Permaculture and UCSC Right Livelihood College. “Harvester:” Jahan Khalighi, spoken word poet, youth educator and community arts organizer.

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm | Lotus Cafe, Dharma College

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Panelists


Zuleikha
Executive Director and CEO
The Storydancer Project
David Shaw
Founder
Santa Cruz Permaculture and the UCSC Right Livelihood Center
Jahan Khalighi
Program Manager
Chapter 510

The emerging field of Climate Psychology provides an ecological understanding of our psyche and effective tools for leveraging the full range of our human capacities toward resolving the deep challenges of our times. Trauma-informed practices and perspectives offer ways to metabolize and channel our emotions, so that we can become engaged stewards of the planet. In this context, visceral feelings related to the crises facing us are understood as a healthy response to the troubled state of the world.

This experiential workshop will provide a brief overview of evolutionary psychology, cognitive biases and trauma-informed perspectives as they relate to the climate crisis, and will guide us into our innate belonging to the Earth with a range of psychospiritual practices. The exploration of our inner landscapes will include some approaches drawn from Joanna Macy’s “Work That Reconnects.” Reconnecting within ourselves, with each other, and with the larger non-human world, cultivates an inner resilience that can awaken us to the healing recognition of our belonging in the family of all beings and permit us to participate effectively in systemic, collective transformation. Facilitated by Leslie Davenport and Adrián Villasenor-Galarza.

March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm | Skillful Means Center, Dharma College

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Panelists


Leslie Davenport
Author, Professor, Climate Psychology Consultant
Adrián Villaseñor
Core Faculty, East West Psychology Department
California Institute of Integral Studies

Come unwind from the day at Bioneers Afterglow! Join us for light refreshments, casual activities and a relaxed environment to meet up with old friends and make new ones. All conference attendees are welcome! 

March 28th | 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm | The Marsh Berkeley Theater Cabaret

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Friday, March 29th

Bioneers brings together a very diverse, discerning, engaged and reflective community, and the curated conversations around crucial topics we have been hosting recently (“Conversation Cafes”) have proven highly popular and stimulating. Each session begins with a very brief presentation by one of the conference presenters as a “conversation starter” to frame the topic, followed by structured group discussion. At the end of each session, a “harvester” who has carefully witnessed and “absorbed” what has transpired, offers us a poetic synopsis/recapitulation of the highlights of our time together.

Our conversation starter Aya de Leon, longtime activist, novelist and Berkeley’s current Poet Laureate, will frame our topic: How can the climate and environmental movements mobilize to maintain the democracy that allows us to keep fighting for a livable planet? As the climate crisis escalates and the window for action to save our species narrows, it can seem critical to stay focused exclusively on climate, but what about threats of authoritarianism? We count on a functional yet flawed and limited form of democracy to do our organizing. In 2024, when that foundation is threatened, can we pivot our energies toward maintaining a democratic context in which we can keep working for people and planet? How do we move to a greater vision of liberation? Are there progressive folks on the ground we can support in building climate-friendly power beyond November of this year? The conversations will be facilitated by: David Shaw, Santa Cruz Permaculture and UCSC Right Livelihood College. “Harvester:” Jason Bayani, author, theater performer, Artistic Director, Kearny Street Workshop.

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Lotus Cafe, Dharma College

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Panelists


Aya de Leon
Author and Activist
David Shaw
Founder
Santa Cruz Permaculture and the UCSC Right Livelihood Center
Jason Bayani
Artistic Director
Kearny Street Workshop

In this inspiring writing workshop, award-winning author, veteran college professor, and arts activist Jennifer Browdy, Ph.D., will lead participants in the practice of “purposeful memoir,” in which we set our individual life story against the larger backdrop of our time and place in order to understand the present moment more fully and to begin to intentionally co-create the future we desire—for ourselves, our society and our planet.

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Skillful Means Center, Dharma College

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Panelists


Jennifer Browdy
Professor of Writing and Media Arts
Bard College/Simon’s Rock

This intimate room will provide Bioneers attendees with a gently curated healing space for connection, contemplation and experiencing the transformative power of communal grieving. All the sessions held here will be facilitated by death midwives /community gatherers/educators Anneke CampbellBirgitta Kastenbaum and Amber Deylon

The room will be open from 2 to 3 pm, before the day’s two sessions begin at 3pm, for those who want to come and sit quietly and/or write messages for the altar, but the room will be closed once each session begins to assure privacy. The communal altar invites you to honor loved ones by bringing offerings including photos and/or responsibly foraged gifts from nature. 

Cultures worldwide practice rituals deeply intertwined with the natural world to mark transitions and losses of life. Come join us in a circle to explore how resilience and thriving in these difficult times require expanding our ability to be present with grief and getting to know it for its gift potential of regeneration and transformation. Through intimate sharing and group conversation, anchored in breath, embodied practices and offerings to our communal altar, we will connect with the strength and healing available when we honor our grief in community.

March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Insight Room, Dharma College

GET DIRECTIONS

VIEW EVENT PAGE

Panelists


Anneke Campbell
Writer and Community Activist
Birgitta Kastenbaum
Co-Founder
Bridging Transitions
Amber Deylon
Creator
Grieve and Breathe

This intimate room will provide Bioneers attendees with a gently curated healing space for connection, contemplation and experiencing the transformative power of communal grieving. All the sessions held here will be facilitated by death midwives /community gatherers/educators Anneke CampbellBirgitta Kastenbaum and Amber Deylon

The room will be open from 2 to 3 pm, before the day’s two sessions begin at 3pm, for those who want to come and sit quietly and/or write messages for the altar, but the room will be closed once each session begins to assure privacy. The communal altar invites you to honor loved ones by bringing offerings including photos and/or responsibly foraged gifts from nature. 

Many of us who are laboring to bring about environmental and social change find ourselves frequently confronting obstacles and setbacks, but the tremendous urgency of our struggles does not allow us the space to experience and honor the losses and grief that accompany our care, passion and commitment. Come find solace in community through guided conversation, sharing, breath and embodied practices, as we touch into the love that is the underlying source of grief, renewing our ability to continue our good work in the world. 

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm | Insight Room, Dharma College

GET DIRECTIONS

VIEW EVENT PAGE

Panelists


Amber Deylon
Creator
Grieve and Breathe
Anneke Campbell
Writer and Community Activist
Birgitta Kastenbaum
Co-Founder
Bridging Transitions

Bioneers brings together a very diverse, discerning, engaged and reflective community, and the curated conversations around crucial topics we have been hosting recently (“Conversation Cafes”) have proven highly popular and stimulating. Each session begins with a very brief presentation by one of the conference presenters as a “conversation starter” to frame the topic, followed by structured group discussion. At the end of each session, a “harvester” who has carefully witnessed and “absorbed” what has transpired, offers us a poetic synopsis/recapitulation of the highlights of our time together.

 In this world, it’s a blessing to find a place where you feel you’re in your “element” and an even rarer blessing to feel in your element at your workplace. Many of us look to institutional and business strategies for guidance yet continue struggling. Based on practices passed down for generations, Kevin John Fong has brought his Five Elements approach to thousands of people and hundreds of organizations to achieve workplace health, professional growth, and personal well-being. Combining traditional East Asian philosophies with organizational design and models provided by nature, this framework provides a means for us to identify the underlying patterns that weave us together so that we can help ourselves and others. Kevin will start off this Community Conversation by explaining how we can apply the Five Elements in our lives. Facilitated by: David Shaw, Santa Cruz Permaculture and UCSC Right Livelihood College. “Harvester:” Jason Bayani, author, theater performer, Artistic Director, Kearny Street Workshop.

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm | Lotus Cafe, Dharma College

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Panelists


Kevin Kahakula’akea John Fong
Founder
Kahakulei Institute
David Shaw
Founder
Santa Cruz Permaculture and the UCSC Right Livelihood Center
Jason Bayani
Artistic Director
Kearny Street Workshop

International performer/wellness pioneer Zuleikha will guide us through free movement and pauses within a weaving of world music, all designed to stabilize our body’s dynamic ecosystem, bring us to a state of deep embodied awareness, and build up our reserves for rejuvenation. Zuleikha will also be sharing easy-to-learn but powerful practices that help us melt knots of physical and psychic tension, allowing our bodies to restore their natural balance and become energetically revitalized. You will leave this session equipped with a simple, enjoyable toolkit you can access anytime, anywhere to cultivate sustainable balance and inner resilience.

March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm | Skillful Means Center, Dharma College

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Panelists


Zuleikha
Executive Director and CEO
The Storydancer Project

Come unwind from the day at Bioneers Afterglow! Join us for light refreshments, casual activities and a relaxed environment to meet up with old friends and make new ones. All conference attendees are welcome! 

Bioneers Learning students are especially encouraged to come find each other at this Friday mixer! If you’ve participated in a Bioneers Learning course, come on out to meet up in person, and if you haven’t taken part yet, program staff will be around to chat and answer any questions you might have. 

March 29th | 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm | The Marsh Berkeley Theater Cabaret

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Saturday, March 30th

Bioneers brings together a very diverse, discerning, engaged and reflective community, and the curated conversations around crucial topics we have been hosting recently (“Conversation Cafes”) have proven highly popular and stimulating. Each session begins with a very brief presentation by one of the conference presenters as a “conversation starter” to frame the topic, followed by structured group discussion. At the end of each session, a “harvester” who has carefully witnessed and “absorbed” what has transpired, offers us a poetic synopsis/recapitulation of the highlights of our time together.

The learning and networking we engage with at Bioneers often leave us afire with ideas and energies for bringing ecological and social change to our local and global communities. Unfortunately, our passions are not always mirrored by our personal, professional, and home communities, but the scale of the change needed for mass healing will require practically everyone. Transformative learning theory teaches us that in order to change interlocutors’ outdated paradigms, it is essential to work just beyond their comfort zone – too much discomfort will shut someone down, and too little will not create sufficient disruption. In this session, we will explore our edges of efficacy in fostering change with unlikely partners. The central question we will contemplate is: “What are our leverage points to foster effective paradigm changes within our communities? “ Come prepared to listen and interact in mindful, respectful conversations with open minds and hearts. Conversation starter: Jeanine Canty, Professor of Transformative Studies at CIIS. Facilitated by: David Shaw, Santa Cruz Permaculture and UCSC Right Livelihood College. “Harvester:” Jahan Khalighi, spoken word poet, youth educator and community arts organizer.

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Lotus Cafe, Dharma College

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Panelists


Jeanine Canty
Professor of Transformative Studies
California Institute of Integral Studies
David Shaw
Founder
Santa Cruz Permaculture and the UCSC Right Livelihood Center
Jahan Khalighi
Program Manager
Chapter 510

Addressing the immense ecological crisis facing us requires that we learn to think, speak, and take action in ways that reflect how natural systems actually work. Come discover the Warm Data Lab, a practice developed by Nora Bateson that seeks to nudge us away from sterile, habitual patterns of thinking and speaking into far more genuinely “ecological” modes of perception, cognition and communication. The Warm Data approach asserts that we need a new language that’s alive, responsive, in-play with living processes, one that permits us to perceive that we are embedded in “nests of relationships,” constantly co-learning and co-evolving with all beings. With: Nora Bateson, founder, The International Bateson Institute and Warm Data Labs, Fellow, Lindisfarne Foundation, author, film-maker, and lecturer; Rex Weyler: co-founder, Greenpeace International, founder, Hollyhock Educational Institute, ecologist, author, and journalist.

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Skillful Means Center, Dharma College

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Panelists


Nora Bateson
President
International Bateson Institute
Rex Weyler
Co-Founder
Greenpeace International and Hollyhock Educational Institute

This intimate room will provide Bioneers attendees with a gently curated healing space for connection, contemplation and experiencing the transformative power of communal grieving. All the sessions held here will be facilitated by death midwives /community gatherers/educators Anneke CampbellBirgitta Kastenbaum and Amber Deylon

The room will be open from 2 to 3 pm, before the day’s two sessions begin at 3pm, for those who want to come and sit quietly and/or write messages for the altar, but the room will be closed once each session begins to assure privacy. The communal altar invites you to honor loved ones by bringing offerings including photos and/or responsibly foraged gifts from nature. 

Cultures worldwide practice rituals deeply intertwined with the natural world to mark transitions and losses of life. Come join us in a circle to explore how resilience and thriving in these difficult times require expanding our ability to be present with grief and getting to know it for its gift potential of regeneration and transformation. Through intimate sharing and group conversation, anchored in breath, embodied practices and offerings to our communal altar, we will connect with the strength and healing available when we honor our grief in community.

March 30th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Insight Room, Dharma College

GET DIRECTIONS

VIEW EVENT PAGE

Panelists


Birgitta Kastenbaum
Co-Founder
Bridging Transitions
Amber Deylon
Creator
Grieve and Breathe
Anneke Campbell
Writer and Community Activist

Bioneers brings together a very diverse, discerning, engaged and reflective community, and the curated conversations around crucial topics we have been hosting recently (“Conversation Cafes”) have proven highly popular and stimulating. Each session begins with a very brief presentation by one of the conference presenters as a “conversation starter” to frame the topic, followed by structured group discussion. At the end of each session, a “harvester” who has carefully witnessed and “absorbed” what has transpired, offers us a poetic synopsis/recapitulation of the highlights of our time together.

This session will lead off with conversation starter Joan Blades, entrepreneur, renowned activist, author and co-founder of LivingRoomConversations.org (an open-source effort to build respectful connections across ideological, cultural and party lines) discussing the “Building Trust in Elections” project, a critical call to action for 2024. Trustworthy elections are something an overwhelming number of Americans desire. How can we make it a transformational effort to restore confidence in elections? The conversations will be facilitated by: David Shaw, Santa Cruz Permaculture and UCSC Right Livelihood College. “Harvester:” Jason Bayani, author, theater performer, Artistic Director, Kearny Street Workshop.

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm | Lotus Cafe, Dharma College

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Panelists


Joan Blades
Co-Founder
Living Room Conversations
David Shaw
Founder
Santa Cruz Permaculture and the UCSC Right Livelihood Center
Jason Bayani
Artistic Director
Kearny Street Workshop

In this interactive workshop for environmental educators and community and faith-based leaders working with youth at the intersection of social justice, environmental degradation and advocacy, several leading educators and facilitators in “the Work That Reconnects” (WTR) will share strategies to help youth, emerging adults and others move from despair and grief around environmental breakdown, climate change and social injustice to community connection, engaged action and “Active Hope.” Participants will gain experience with and resources for integrating the Work That Reconnects into their own work. With: Constance Washburn, Co-Director of the Spiral Journey Work That Reconnects Facilitator Development Program; Mutima Imani, Co- Director of Spiral Journey, Coach and Healer at the Urban Healing Temple, and Heidi Honegger Rogers, Associate Professor, University of New Mexico.

March 30th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm | Skillful Means Center, Dharma College

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Panelists


Mutima Imani
Facilitator
Spiral Journey International Facilitation Development Program
Heidi Honegger Rogers
Associate Professor
University of New Mexico College of Nursing
Constance Washburn
Co-Director
Spiral Journey Work That Reconnects Facilitator Development Program

Come unwind from the day at Bioneers Afterglow! Join us for light refreshments, casual activities and a relaxed environment to meet up with old friends and make new ones. All conference attendees are welcome! 

March 30th | 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm | The Marsh Berkeley Theater Cabaret

GET DIRECTIONS

VIEW EVENT PAGE