Thursday, March 27th
Welcome to The Chrysalis Project, an immersive workshop designed to ignite personal transformation and foster leadership through dynamic, collaborative artmaking. We’ll dive into wire-sculpting and reflective writing in which we weave our unique stories into a collaborative art piece. This workshop isn’t just about learning a craft, it’s about embracing our roles as leaders and change-makers in our communities. As we twist and shape wire, we’ll also weave connections with other young visionaries, collaboratively crafting art and a collective vision. Come discover how the act of making can shift us from passive onlookers to active creators of our futures. No artistic experience necessary. With Chrysalis creator Carrie Ziegler.
NOTE: This workshop will initiate the art project, which will continue with drop-in sessions on Friday & Saturday for youth to continue working on the collaborative project throughout the conference weekend.
March 27th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Kinzie Room, Brower Center
Panelists
Discover the profound ability of music and movement to inspire resilience, healing, and transformation in this soulful workshop led by Rising Appalachia. Drawing from their acclaimed Folk Choir master class, sisters Leah and Chloe Smith invite you into an immersive exploration of how art and sound can hold space for beauty, hardship and disaster alike. This workshop weaves together community singing, storytelling, and embodied practices to tap into the universal language of music as a means of connection and catharsis. Learn how to use your voice as a tool for personal and collective empowerment, exploring melodies, harmonies, and movement rooted in folk traditions and global rhythms. Together, we will explore how music can be a balm in times of struggle, and a celebration in moments of Joy.
March 27th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Lotus Cafe, Dharma College
Panelists
Come join us in a circle to explore how surviving and thriving in these difficult times requires expanding our ability to pause our busy lives and be present with grief. In naming our losses and mourning together we will get to experience grief’s potential for solace, regeneration and transformation. Through basic breathing practice, intimate sharing, guided group conversation, and a simple ritual with elements from nature, we will touch into the gifts of connection and healing available when we take time to honor our losses and tend to our grief in community. Facilitated by death/grief educators and community gatherers, Anneke Campbell, Asha Kohli and Nisha Arcadia Shah.
We invite you to bring a sacred item to place on our collective altar—a token that holds meaning for you. This altar will hold us as we tend to our grief, weaving our individual stories into a shared tapestry of honoring and healing.
March 27th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Insight Room, Dharma College
Panelists
ReParentive® Therapy, a somatic, experiential, non-hierarchical and non-pathologizing therapeutic modality that has roots in approaches to mental wellbeing that prioritize embodiment, mindfulness, liberation, and social justice, views the body as an ecosystem that reflects what’s happening in the larger society and in which resulting negative patterns can get encoded. ReParentive® concepts and approaches can be valuably applied to systems, leadership styles, activism and personal/spiritual growth, providing tools that permit us to heal at a deep level and shift those deeply encoded cellular and neurological patterns, allowing us to “spiral out” from an authentic, embodied place with radically increased efficacy. Come discover how ReParentive Therapy techniques and perspectives can enhance your life and work. With therapist, teacher and group leader, Pamela Rosin, MFT.
March 27th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm | Lotus Cafe, Dharma College
Panelists
This session invites participants to explore the concept of “Cultural Currency,” a framework for exchanging value that centers creativity, care, and collaboration over monetary returns. Through storytelling, group discussion and reflective prompts participants will identify ways their personal and professional practices can contribute to building a culture of reciprocity and shared humanity. Participants will leave with actionable ideas for fostering transformative relationships and projects that honor cultural and artistic sovereignty. Facilitated by Sol Guy, founder of Quiet.
March 27th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm | Skillful Means Center, Dharma College
Panelists
Since time immemorial, First Peoples have understood the need to center human-nature relationships at the core of their prayers, ceremonies and ways of living. How can we in the modern, industrialized world, so frequently cut off from the natural world, draw from that ancestral wisdom to repair our severed ties to the rest of the web of life? Without recovering that deep understanding that we are not separate from nature but completely embedded in it, our efforts to prevent the unraveling of our ecosystems and global climate will not succeed. Come hear from some inspired visionaries from a wide range of backgrounds as they share their perspectives on how to re-awaken that sacred spark. With: Haley Mellin, renowned artist and conservationist; Willow Defebaugh, co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of Atmos; Pat McCabe, a Diné mother, grandmother, activist, artist, writer, and ceremonial leader. Hosted by the Program Director of Bioneers Learning, patience kamau.
March 27th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm | Freight & Salvage
Panelists
An immersive and poetic film centered on iconic shaman Davi Kopenawa and the Yanomami community of Watoriki in the Brazilian rainforest, based on the book co-authored by Davi Kopenawa and anthropologist Bruce Albert, invites us to participate in the sacred ritual of Reahu, and challenges all of us in the industrialized world whose economic structures exploit nature for financial gain to rebel against the damage wrought by predatory extractive industries on the Amazon rainforest. Directed by Eryk Rocha and Gabriela Carneiro da Cunha. (Running time: 110 minutes)
March 27th | 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm | Goldman Theater, Brower Center
A love affair with chocolate has many wonderful benefits: it’s heart healthy, it elevates one’s mood, and some studies even suggest that it can promote capillary growth and increase energy, but most of all it is its rich, intense flavor that keeps us coming back for more. No wonder it has been called the “Food of the Gods.” The cacao tree grows near the Equator and is particularly expressive of its “terroir.” Flavors that range from fudge to floral are expressed depending on which region in Africa, the Caribbean or South America it’s grown. In this interactive experience, we’ll learn a lot about chocolate and get to sample a delicious range of chocolate flavors at a chocolate-tasting hosted by expert chocolate maker Gillian Goddard who has started chocolate micro-enterprises in 12 countries in Africa and the Caribbean.
There is limited space for this event, and pre-registration is required to participate, including a $20 fee. Please add to your conference registration if interested.
March 27th | 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm | Ashby Room, Residence Inn
Panelists
Friday, March 28th
Join Chrysalis creator Carrie Ziegler and fellow Bioneers youth for a session of collaborative wire-sculpture artmaking. This relaxed, hands-on session is a perfect way to unwind, connect with peers, and engage in a creative, collective experience. Dive in at any stage and help bring our community project to completion by the conference’s end. No prior workshop attendance or experience required.
March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Terrace outside Tamalpais Room, Brower Center
Panelists
Come join us in a circle to explore how surviving and thriving in these difficult times requires expanding our ability to pause our busy lives and be present with grief. In naming our losses and mourning together we will get to experience grief’s potential for solace, regeneration and transformation. Through basic breathing practice, intimate sharing, guided group conversation, and a simple ritual with elements from nature, we will touch into the gifts of connection and healing available when we take time to honor our losses and tend to our grief in community. Facilitated by death/grief educators and community gatherers, Anneke Campbell, Asha Kohli and Nisha Arcadia Shah.
We invite you to bring a sacred item to place on our collective altar—a token that holds meaning for you. This altar will hold us as we tend to our grief, weaving our individual stories into a shared tapestry of honoring and healing.
March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Insight Room, Dharma College
Panelists
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.
Growing in Southeast Louisiana near a corridor callously but accurately dubbed Cancer Alley means growing up with the ecological grief and anxiety that accompanies knowing your home and ecosystem are harming you and your community’s health. When your connection to home and family binds you to a place riddled with toxic pollution and politics, what is the antidote? Leave and find a safe community, or stay and take up the work of your ancestors to resist these toxic industries? For those living in and around Cancer Alley, these choices can be a daily battle, but the best elixir for ecological grief is action.
This youth-led community conversation is for anyone living on the frontlines of endemic pollution or climate catastrophe who has wrestled with the choice of staying and fighting or leaving to find a better place to call home—and for anyone who wants to learn from and support them. With: Lael Kylin Judson from Rural Roots Louisiana; and Skye Williams. Facilitated by David Shaw, Santa Cruz Permaculture and UCSC Right Livelihood Center; and Tenika Blue, an advocate for anti-violence initiatives, social justice reform, and community healing. “Harvester:” Jason Bayani, author, theater performer, Artistic Director, Kearny Street Workshop.
March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Ashby Room, Residence Inn
Panelists
In a time when people too often run from grief and struggle in order to seek joy, this session will delve into how coming into a more active, balanced relationship with joy and grief is essential to nurturing our sense of wholeness. Join us for a cross-generational conversation between panelists and among attendees, as we collectively explore how these twin pillars can frame essential practices for not just surviving, but thriving in a time of deep uncertainty. Facilitated by Akaya Windwood, Liz Ogbu, Benja Mertz.
March 28th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Skillful Means Center, Dharma College
Panelists
4:45 pm: Sacred Activism: Reimagining Awakened Action
An Emergent Conversation
Although a great deal of human rights and ecological activism is rooted in secular rationalism and scientific materialism, there are also illustrious lineages of spiritually based social justice champions, including many prominent figures in the Civil Rights and various anti-war movements, and quite a few contemporary eco activists who draw from Indigenous teachings that view the entire web of life as ensouled. In this session, three leaders from very different backgrounds and generations working in very different fields but whose vision is anchored in a deep sense of the sacred will share their perspectives on how to bring one’s full heart and spirit to the quest for healing our relations with ourselves, each other, and the earth. With: Pat McCabe, a Diné mother, grandmother, activist, artist, writer, and ceremonial leader.; Sonali Sangeeta Balajee, Founder of Spiritual Social Medicinal Apothecary (SSoMA) and Our Bodhi Project, lifelong meditator, spiritual practitioner, artist, and activator; Kazu Haga, a trainer and practitioner with over 25 years’ experience in nonviolence and social change work, author of Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm. Hosted by Nina Simons, author, co-founder and Chief Relationship Officer of Bioneers.
March 28th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm | Magnes Museum
Panelists
Saturday, March 29th
Join Chrysalis creator Carrie Ziegler and fellow Bioneers youth for a session of collaborative wire-sculpture artmaking. This relaxed, hands-on session is a perfect way to unwind, connect with peers, and engage in a creative, collective experience. Dive in at any stage and help bring our community project to completion by the conference’s end. No prior workshop attendance or experience required.
March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Terrace outside Tamalpais Room, Brower Center
Panelists
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 fervor of our ecological and social movements, while well-intentioned, can often shut people down, sometimes even turning them into opponents, but to achieve genuine transformation, we will need just about everyone. In this session, we will explore how to tap into our compassion, flexibility, curiosity, listening, engagement, and service to widen the possibilities for wellness for all sentient beings. The central question we will contemplate will be: How can we show up in ways that welcome everyone into change? Participants should be prepared to listen and interact in mindful, respectful conversations with open minds and hearts.
The conversation starter for this session will be Jeanine M. Canty, author and professor of Transformative Studies at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Facilitated by David Shaw, Santa Cruz Permaculture and UCSC Right Livelihood Center. “Harvester:” Jason Bayani, author, theater performer, Artistic Director, Kearny Street Workshop.
March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Ashby Room, Residence Inn
Panelists
Come join us in a circle to explore how surviving and thriving in these difficult times requires expanding our ability to pause our busy lives and be present with grief. In naming our losses and mourning together we will get to experience grief’s potential for solace, regeneration and transformation. Through basic breathing practice, intimate sharing, guided group conversation, and a simple ritual with elements from nature, we will touch into the gifts of connection and healing available when we take time to honor our losses and tend to our grief in community. Facilitated by death/grief educators and community gatherers, Anneke Campbell, Asha Kohli and Nisha Arcadia Shah.
We invite you to bring a sacred item to place on our collective altar—a token that holds meaning for you. This altar will hold us as we tend to our grief, weaving our individual stories into a shared tapestry of honoring and healing.
March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Insight Room, Dharma College
Panelists
Modernity has stripped many of us of our ancestral lifeways. In this interactive session with Maija West and Hilary Giovale, we will explore the reclamation of matriarchal principles, practices, and ways of knowing. Calling on our supportive ancestors, we will create small circles within our larger circle, to sense this reclamation in our bodies, imagine it in our hearts, and begin speaking it into being. How can people of all genders come together and respectfully embody the ancestral teachings that connect us to land, water, and each other?
March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Lotus Cafe, Dharma College
Panelists
3:00 pm: The Vegetal Mind: From Plant Neurobiology to Panpsychism?
Co-sponsored by Thinking with Plants and Fungi Initiative, Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School
Cutting edge research is radically expanding our understanding of plants’ and fungi’s capacities to perceive their environments and make complex decisions in response. The groundbreaking cross-disciplinary Thinking with Plants and Fungi Initiative at Harvard was recently founded to draw from biology, ecology and the humanities to explore how inquiry into plant and fungal life could illuminate the nature of mind and matter and humans’ relationships to the more-than-human world. This session will delve into some of the most recent scientific findings on plant cognition and their implications for our own species as well as venture into more philosophical terrain, exploring such topics as the nature of intelligence and traditions that speculate about whether consciousness in some latent form might permeate the universe (i.e., “Panpsychism”). Hosted by Rachael Petersen, program lead for the Thinking with Plants and Fungi Initiative, Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School. With Luke Roelofs, Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, working on the ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology of consciousness; and Kristi Onzik, anthropologist of science, currently researching the field of PNCB (Plant Neurobiology, Cognition, and Behavior).
March 29th | 3:00 pm to 4:15 pm | Goldman Theater, Brower Center
Panelists
These times call on all of us to become more resilient as individuals and communities. In this engaging, highly interactive “playshop,” we will explore a dozen or so simple practices to help us calm our nervous systems, energize our bodies, and open to new possibilities. The practices span breath, movement, expression, connection and self-discovery. We’ll leave with a toolkit to create our own personalized resiliency routines, as well as practices we can share with our families, friends and communities. With: transformational coach, advisor, and eco-artist, Laura Loescher.
March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm | Lotus Cafe, Dharma College
Panelists
4:45 pm: Interactive Session – Moving Towards Belonging: A Dance/Theater Experience
Co-Sponsored with The Belonging Resident Company
Come explore the radical idea of “belonging without othering,” as espoused by the Othering and Belonging Institute’s Director, john a. powell, through simple movement and theater techniques, and guided conversation. This workshop offers participants a chance to explore personal and collective experiences of belonging, and to dream a world in which everyone belongs in the circle of human concern. Instructors: Sarah Crowell and Sangita Kumar, Co-Directors of The Belonging Resident Company, an ensemble of artists and facilitators dedicated to making the revolution of belonging irresistible.
March 29th | 4:45 pm to 6:00 pm | Skillful Means Center, Dharma College