Email   Print

Educating for change

How schools are offering paths for personal and social growth.

Ode Editors | June/July 2009 issue

Transformational education

The practice of teaching personal transformation while exploring the mind, body and spirit used to be associated with crystal balls and incense. Now it’s a serious field. Think tanks and universities have injected academic rigor into an approach that merges East and West, the cerebral with the corporal. California is a hub of the movement. The Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto uses integrative, whole-person learning to train clinicians, spiritual guides, wellness caregivers and consultants. Nestled in the Sierra Nevada foothills near Sacramento, California, Ananda College offers students a liberal arts education with an emphasis in fields like living wisdom and yoga philosophy. Alternative energy and sustainable living are also part of the curriculum.

Saybrook Graduate School in San Francisco offers master’s and doctoral degrees in humanistic psychology, as well as concentrations in humanistic and transpersonal psychology, consciousness and spirituality and social transformation. The Great School of Natural Science in Stockton, California, instructs students in the natural science and philosophy of an individual life, based on the texts of John Richardson, distilled from Eastern and mystical philosophies. And for those interested in online degrees, the California-accredited Hawthorn University uses online resources and a full-time faculty to train students in holistic nutrition.

Outside of California, Colorado’s Integral Institute is a think tank where teachers cultivate solutions to distinctly 21st-century problems—like global warming and culture wars in political, religious and scientific domains—solutions that hinge on an integrated, post-disciplinary approach. At Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, students are encouraged to explore intellectual enlightenment without the pressure of grades. The school offers graduate-level concentrations in consciousness studies and transformative language arts, as well as undergraduate degrees in sustainable business and interdisciplinary arts. This September, the school will sponsor the Power of Words Conference, where leading thinkers explore how written, spoken and sung words can deepen healing and foster transformation. Organized by the Transformative Language Network, the conference will include Dovie Thomason, an award-winning Native American storyteller, and John Fox, the founder of Poetic Medicine.

In South Florida, the Barbara Brennan School of Healing teaches students the art of hands-on energy healing and personal transformation. Students can earn a Bachelor of Science degree or a diploma in Brennan Healing Science. In Warren, Vermont, the Yestermorrow Design/Build School aims to inspire practicing professionals and students in architecture to transform the world through better, more sustainable building. Classes aim to demystify design and construction so architects and builders can create more cohesive, inspired structures.

More untraditional are the Dance of the Deer Foundation, Star’s Edge International and the Celebrant USA Foundation. Dance of the Deer Foundation is a center for shamanic studies that leads participants on retreats and seminars around the world for lessons in healing prayers of the Huichol Indians. Star’s Edge International, based in Altamonte Springs, Florida, trains students in a self-discovery course dubbed "Avatar," a series of exercises that enable students to align their consciousness with what they want to achieve. Finally, the Celebrant USA Foundation in Montclair, New Jersey, trains students in the art of celebration. Certified "Life-Cycle Celebrants" use ceremony to mark the milestones and transitions in the lives of individuals, families, communities and organizations.

The California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, California, is a university that aims to connect the spiritual and practical dimensions of intellectual life. That means grounding the mind, body and spirit in scholarship, research and knowledge. The Institute trains the largest number of marriage and family therapists in the country and offers doctoral, master’s, and bachelor’s degrees in counseling psychology, transformative education, integral health and more. Regardless of subject matter, the emphasis is on post-disciplinary education: removing traditional academic pursuits from their silos and teaching them in the context of a complex, interconnected world.

Thus at the Institute, in place of the traditional English or history departments, one finds a department of philosophy, cosmology and consciousness and another in writing, consciousness and creative inquiry. "Our education is transformative," says the president of the Institute, Joseph Subbiondo. "It’s about changing yourself and changing the world through post-disciplinary study. We want to educate the whole person, and believe this sort of education is critical in the modern world."

Similarly, The Big Mind Western Zen Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, uses a blend of Zen Buddhist meditation and Western psychotherapy techniques to help students more deeply understand and appreciate their lives, the world and the relationships they pursue. Zen Master Dennis Genpo Merzel Roshi, a New York City native, heads the program and orchestrates one- to two-day workshops as well as weekly sessions known as the Big Mind Big Heart approach to life. The goal is to teach students how to transform their lives and attain inner peace and heightened life wisdom. Big Mind Big Heart can also be used at home by way of DVDs, audio CDs, books and Zen Eye, an online download service that allows students to follow Genpo Roshi’s live lecture sessions on Zen, Big Mind, koans and meditation.

Nestled on 200 acres near the Hudson River in Rhinebeck, New York, the Omega Institute is one of the nation’s premier sources for wellness and personal-growth training. Each year more than 23,000 people venture to Rhinebeck for the institute’s workshops, conferences and retreats. A non-profit organization, Omega aims to inspire people to live healthier, happier, more meaningful lives. Attendees are encouraged to integrate body, mind and spirit, to listen to the needs of each and act in a way that begets wholeness and balance. The institute was founded in the late 1970s and has helped usher the integrative-health movement—and the ideas of personal transformation and individual consciousness—from the fringes to the mainstream. The faculty still includes co-founders Elizabeth Lesser, who wrote The Seeker’s Guide: Making Your Life a Spiritual Adventure, and Stephan Rechtschaffen, author of Timeshifting: Creating More Time to Enjoy Your Life.

<< PREVIOUS   1 2 3 4 NEXT >>
view as a single page

Tools: Discuss | Email | Print | RSS | Weekly Newsletter Save/Share:

Comments (1)

Post a comment