School for The Great Turning

Salt Lake City, I’m coming your way this weekend!

Friday talk, including stories from my time in Asheville doing hurricane relief work:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/immersive-evening-making-life-from-the-dark-tickets-1033789721887

Saturday Work That Reconnects Workshop:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/depth-workshop-work-that-reconnects-tickets-1033829490837

Thank you Jung Society of Utah for having me 🔮

Making Life From The Dark, with Lydia Violet

What a time to be alive.

Each day we face the news of climate chaos, political warfare, species extinction, and ecological and social suffering, and we are asked to reconcile these collective traumas with all that is breaking in our hearts.

It is natural in our time to experience despair, overwhelm, and grief. To want better for our world and our children.

In such dark times, the world will teach us how to love her, how to make life of her aching body, to collaborate with the great powers that are still alive. And to learn, as Joanna Macy has asked us for five decades, to practice becoming unafraid of our pain for the world, for that pain might itself be integrity trying to come back into living systems. To abandon private salvation and take refuge in the ecosystems of healing still alive in our world.

Beloved 95-year-old elder and teacher Joanna Macy has been offering us profoundly helpful insights on this “Great Turning” toward a life-sustaining society for more than 50 years.

She speaks of “Three Dimensions” of the Great Turning:

🖐🏽 Holding actions that slow down harm and buy time
🌱 New and remembered life-sustaining systems that organize food, water, shelter, and more
🔮 Shifts in consciousness that are necessary to sustain the first two dimensions

How do we ourselves become a part of the Great Turning?

In this free webinar founder of School for the Great Turning and Joanna Macy scholar, will discuss the three dimensions of the Great Turning, how actions in the different dimensions connect and rely on each other, and how we can move past infighting to support all three dimensions, even while advocating for and focusing on our own work.

Saturday : August 24th : 10-11am PDT : recording available

Link in bio

What does it look like to find our formation in the US Election Season? How do we flock in support of life? How do we engage is principled struggle while maintaining care and relationship?
Let us practice, let us pray.

SGT is excited to host Lydia Violet Farshid-Harutoonian tomorrow, August 20th for a session practicing the application of Adrienne Maree Brown ‘s Emergent Strategy for this Election Season. After studying ES for 5 years with amb and the Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, this work landed with Lydia as a core piece of her study and action. Emergent Strategy is an incredible organizing tool and philosophy that’s been gifted to us from an intentional synthesis of praxis from the realms of Octavia Butler, biomimicry, living systems, and embodied moral imagination.

In this current US election season, there are many perspectives on how to campaign and vote in ways that are in solidarity with marginalized communities, in pursuit of collective liberation, aware of the ills of empire while also organizing towards our most desired outcome. Lydia and this group with practice together how we can use the elements of Emergent Strategy to ground our perspectives and actions in these ever-changing socio-political landscapes.

register at https://programs.schoolforthegreatturning.com/sgt-events -speakers

On The Hungry Ghost of Diasporic Descendants -

Those of us who have grown up in a Western globalized capitalist economy, dependent on the success of colonization, can experience a consolidation of culture as it intersects with materialism. Capitalist systems centralize that what we can buy, sell, have, or not have become a defining part of the story of being human. If that goes unchecked, there is an incredibly intense hunger I’m left with.

One of my primary intentions with Tending the Bones is to allow culture to be a big place again. To let the story of what it means to be human be filled with a pantheon of options, of how to live out our intensely magical and mysterious existence on this planet, on how the universe paints herself through us onto the walls of incarnation.

Our next Tending The Bones retreat with is coming up this winter in California. All info in the link in our bio.

Join us for our upcoming WTR retreat in beautiful Boonville, CA. 🌱⁣
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August 8-11, 2024.⁣
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In this four-day retreat, seasoned facilitator Lydia Violet Harutoonian will lead an in-depth immersion in the “Work that Reconnects” (WTR).⁣
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WTR is Joanna Macy’s experiential group work that has helped thousands find clarity of vision and emotional sanctuary while living through this precious and precarious moment on our planet.⁣
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Come learn and experience tools for transforming our climate grief, anger, paralysis, and fear into compassionate connection with our world and communities, knowing our place in the web of life, and motivation to act on behalf of life on earth.⁣
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Join us at the gorgeous Whispertree Retreat Center for this nourishing and powerful immersion into the Work That Reconnects to gain new tools in navigating the current crisis – on a personal and planetary level.⁣
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More info in bio. 🌱

Join us tomorrow, July 9 at 5 pm PST, for our guest speaker, Amikaeyla Gaston!⁣
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is a POWERHOUSE in our world, and we are excited to hear some of her thoughts on being a healer for our world in these times. ⁣
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This session will include 30 min of an interview of Ami by Lydia, then open up to the group for dialogue and questions.⁣
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Proclaimed as one of the “purest contemporary voices” by National Public Radio (NPR), Amikaeyla is a force for change. A Cultural Arts Ambassador for the State Department, as well as a highly sought-after performer and public speaker, she travels worldwide doing expansive work with political refugees, war survivors, and jeopardized populations “opening paralyzed voices and transforming wounded spirits...” ⁣
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This will be an exceptional session, and we can't wait to see you. More info and tickets in bio.⁣

Hey folks! So we’ve now got 10 Sudanese and one Palestinian woman coming to this training with me in the UK in a week and a half!
I REALLY Want to be able to at least reimburse the funds they have put into our housing, venue rental, and food. All the $$ will go towards that first. Please consider donating towards this and your funds will be so well used !!!

Donate to Help Lydia Work With Sudanese Community This July, organized by Lydia Harutoonian Founded in 2023, Collective Circles was brought to life by 3… Lydia Harutoonian needs your support for Help Lydia Work With Sudanese Community This July

We're already so excited for our WTR 4-day immersion in August. ✨⁣
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This in-depth immersion, led by seasoned facilitator , will help participants find clarity of vision and emotional sanctuary while living through this precious and precarious moment on our planet.⁣
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For the last 5 decades, Joanna's work has offered inspiration and guidance for living courageously in uncertainty. It maps ways into our innate vitality and determination to take part in the self-healing of our world.⁣
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Join us! The retreat will be capped at 40 participants, and we'd love to have you.⁣
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Info + registration in bio.

My Friends! Collective Circles and I seeking support to accept an invitation this July to train psychotherapists from the Sudanese community in the Work That Reconnects, a body of group work I specialize in. Please consider a donation to help make this happen!

"Founded in 2023, Collective Circles was brought to life by 3 women from Sudan and Egypt, seeking to support and heal the Sudanese diaspora following the war and conflicts in Sudan.

We are now working with Sudanese women who have been displaced and affected by the war to support their mental well-being through designing and facilitating trauma healing and empowerment workshops.

We are so excited to bring Lydia Violet Harutoonian to our community in the UK in July to train us in Joanna Macy's "Work That Reconnects," a body of work that the women in our workshops have already fallen in love with, and we desire deeper training in the fundamentals of this work, of which Lydia is a scholar and well-practiced practitioner. We also want to work with Lydia because of her own MENA roots and have already felt a great comradery and resonance with her and the way she holds her work in the world."

Donate to Help Lydia Accept Invitation to Work With Sudanese Community, organized by Lydia Harutoonian Founded in 2023, Collective Circles was brought to life… Lydia Harutoonian needs your support for Help Lydia Accept Invitation to Work With Sudanese Community

Sometimes humanity requires us to presence it where it has been desecrated. ⁣
Be a birthplace for it.⁣
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More resources via the link in our bio.

Join the fabulous for a community sing on June 2!⁣
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Our community sings are a monthly offering of song, togetherness, and sanctuary.⁣
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For many millennia, music - and specifically music made together - has been a crucial way we bolster ourselves in hard times.⁣
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Music can mend our bones and pour in the grace. It can transform our exhaustion and help us feel more held as part of the choir.⁣
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All are welcome - no experience is necessary! ⁣
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Tickets & info in bio. ❤️

In these changing times, what is your compass? 🧭⁣
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Wise words from our founder, Lydia Violet.⁣
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May you find beauty today in all the ways humans are vying for life.⁣
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Norcal Retreat coming this August.

A few days to work with the impact of the times, to fashion ourselves into agents of compassionate power, drinking deeply at the well of Joanna Macy's "Work That Reconnects."

WTR Immersion | Whispertree — School For The Great Turning August 8-11 2024 Work that Reconnects4-Day Immersion with Lydia Violet Harutoonian& Leilani Wong Navarexperience Joanna Macy’s pivotal work at Whispertree Retreat CenterBoonville, California In this four-day retreat, seasoned facilitator Lydia Violet Harutoonian, informed by her 15 years of dedica...

Join us for a 4-day immersion into the Work That Reconnects in August!⁣
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August 8-11, 2024.⁣
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We are so excited to be hosting this opportunity to experience the Work That Reconnects in person. ⁣
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Since Joanna Macy began facilitating this kind of multi-day immersion decades ago, thousands have found connection, clarity of vision, emotional sanctuary and rejuvenation together in this way.⁣
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Our August immersion will be held at the extraordinary Whispertree retreat outside Boonville, California. On-site lodging and delicious, seasonal meals are included. ⁣
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Located in the heart of Anderson Valley, Whispertree Retreat offers a beautiful setting for the Work That Reconnects. We'll have access to miles of trails among fir forests and towering old oaks, and expansive, pristine views of the valley.⁣
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Partial scholarships are available. The application is on the retreat info page. ⁣
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Click the link in our bio to learn more! 🌿⁣
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📷 from last year's Singing The Bones retreat.⁣
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Announcing: Registration is now open for a VERY special, 8-week Tending the Bones cohort, a stewarded deep dive into ancestral folk studies and diasporic healing, with and

In this time of disorientation and disenchantment, we turn to the wellspring of ancestral stories, songs, crafts, and culture to nourish our compass towards life and liberation. We are not alone in finding a road forward that feels good and steady, we can lean on each other and the cultural lessons from the past to feed us here. We practice together how to become a reparative cultural force for these times.

With very special guests and , Iranian and Irish stewards of song, story, and homecoming.

Registration only open the next two weeks!
Link in bio.

Announcing! Registration is now open for a VERY special, 8-week Tending the Bones cohort, a stewarded deep dive into ancestral folk studies and diasporic healing. With Leah Song and yours truly.

In this time of disorientation and disenchantment, we turn to the wellspring of ancestral stories, songs, crafts, and culture to nourish our compass towards life and liberation. We are not alone in finding a road forward that feels good and steady, we can lean on each other and the cultural lessons from the past to feed us here. We practice together how to become a reparative cultural force for these times.

With very special guests Mahsa Vahdat and Manchán Magan, Iranian and Irish stewards of song, story, and homecoming.

Registration only open the next two weeks!

School For The Great Turning Jan 10th — Feb 13th Tendingthe Bones Embark on a 6-week journey with Leah Song and Lydia Violet to rediscover and reconnect with your ancestral cultures, mythology, and folk traditions Join the Waitlist Gather at the…Wellsprings of Story and Song!During this experience, Lydia Violet & Leah Song ...

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for

may for once spring clear
without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,

streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.
- Rilke, trans by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows

Purpose Group Course 2024 — School For The Great Turning Featuring teachings from Joanna Macy and adrienne maree brown, a course to clarify and strengthen your own role in the Great Turning toward a life-sustaining society.

Coming up this week!

Cultural integrity is essential for WTR facilitators, yet many of us feel disoriented around how to relate to the cultural influences of our practices and teachings, and even to our own personal cultural heritages. Lydia Violet, seasoned facilitator, 15-year student of Joanna Macy, and co-creator of the Tending the Bones program, is committed to the work of cultural integrity. In this workshop, she will support facilitators of any identities in finding their own way toward right relationship.

https://programs.schoolforthegreatturning.com/facilitator-development-day-cultural-integrity

Songleading for Facilitators : Online this Saturday.

Have you wanted to integrate songleading into your group-work facilitation? Then this one is for you ;)

https://programs.schoolforthegreatturning.com/facilitator-development-day-songleading

We have a BOUNTY of upcoming programs filled with ancestral cultural healing, burnout care, facilitator development, song leading…all medicines for these times that ask for our full-hearted rootedness and learning in supportive cohorts.

All links to info for each program in our bio and schoolforthegreatturning.com 📚🔮

ONLINE:

Jan 10th-Feb 13th: Tending the Bones, 6-wk journey with and to rediscover and reconnect with your ancestral cultures, mythologies, and folk traditions.

Jan 20th: Songleading for Facilitators- How to integrate community singing into your workshops, classes, and retreats!

Feb 17th: Cultural Integrity for Work That Reconnects Facilitators, with Lydia Violet: A vital study in cultural right relationship in Work That Reconnects Facilitation

IN-PERSON:

Jan 27th: Work That Reconnects Oakland Day-long, Healing Burnout Amidst Planetary Crisis at

Feb 3rd: Work That Reconnects Black Mountain Day-long, Healing Burnout Amidst Planetary Crisis at

You are invited to Tending The Bones w/ Leah Song & Lydia Violet: a communion at the heart of ancestral and cultural healing, cradled in the magic of global folk traditions.

Our modern lives, heavily influenced by fast-paced, capitalist cultures, have led to a profound sense of disconnection from our ancestral roots.

This gap in our cultural fabric can leave us feeling lost and out of place, especially in these challenging times. Where we feel scattered, we crave roots. Where we see suffering, we want to help alleviate it.

Powerful parts of our heritage have been buried - pieces so crucial for our being - wisdom that has shaped human existence for millennia.

Throughout history, we consistently gathered around art and culture-making, capturing life’s most enduring lessons, questions, and prayers. From the songs that marked our births to the rituals that honored life's pivotal moments, every culture weaves a unique thread in this rich tapestry.

Our humanity often came forward through these outlets, and through these studies, we honor both the humanity in ourselves and each other.

Without this connection, there may be an intangible emptiness, a yearning for something profound yet indefinable. Many of us feel a tender longing to connect with meaningful practices, rituals, songs, and traditions, with right relationship being essential to intercultural healing. Rooting in the traditions you have come from empowers that compass, and allows us to come to the table with more offering and integrity.

This course offers a bridge to that lost part, a chance to reclaim parts of ourselves that holds clarity and direction in a world that can feel overwhelming.

In this online live experience, Lydia Violet and Leah Song of the internationally acclaimed folk group Rising Appalachia will guide you through a carefully crafted, 6-week immersive curriculum of cultural self-discovery. You’ll have engaging lectures, group discussions, vocal workshops, storytelling, and Q&A sessions. We invite you to come as you are, either participating live or catching our recordings.

Wednesdays, Jan 10-Feb 13th, 4pm PT/7pm ET

Online w lifetime access to recordings
Link in bio 📚🔮

Dearest Students and Community,

We reach to you in these tender times, knowing that revolution moves at the pace of relationship, and we need each other as much as we can muster. We would like to share some of our thoughts and intentions around the current global moment and the escalating horrors we have watched unfold in the Middle East. Please hold our words with an extension of grace, as we are all trying to figure out how best to grow understanding and capacity around this conflict.

Our intention here at School for The Great Turning is to be a place of learning, healing, and community. A place where it’s okay to come confused, or heartbroken, or full of rage, and even afraid. A place where it is okay to move at the speed of grief and trust, as we also balance that with moving into right action and solidarity. We, ourselves, have been moving at the pace of grief and learning, as we witness the horrors that have escalated in the Middle East over this last month, and it feels important to support the calls for an immediate end to the violence.

From Lydia: “As a person of Iranian descent, I feel it’s very important for me to condemn Hamas, their violent terrorist attacks, and their seizing of hostages. I am in firm support of the humanity and right to safety of the Jewish community.

As an American, I absolutely condemn the overreaching violence that Israel has responded with to this attack, that my taxpayer dollars are going toward, not to mention the ills of oppression the Palestinian people have already been experiencing for decades. This current attack on Gaza is maddening in its scope and cruelty.

I say these words, in critique of these military powers, knowing that my understanding and its nuances is always growing. I feel so much compassion for all of us who are trying to find our voice and ground in response to all that is hurting in our world. May we remember that knowledge is an ecosystem, and we can’t expect any one person to see the full scope or have all the answers. We build the vision together.”

From Leilani: “I am a mother. A mother in a line of Jewish mothers going back hundreds of generations, and a daughter of Chinese families tracing back as far. I also recognize my identity as an American. I identify, too, as a human being, in relationship with individuals from dozens of countries, many with experiences of atrocious violence. I identify also with the lineage of the web of life on our living Earth. Living inside all of this, it feels important for me to know that I can say “no” to killing each other. “No” to killing anyone’s children, and we are all someone’s children. I can say “yes” to the difficult, complex, dangerous, beautiful, sometimes impossible-seeming work of making peace – even when there’s much about it that I don’t understand yet. I can say “yes” to the work of learning how.”

We feel that we are witnessing rampant dehumanization. We see this taking place both in Gaza and Israel, as well as outside of these places, as communities attempt to dialogue, process, and organize. One of the best responses we can figure to offer this moment is to center our and each other’s humanity. This means that in our groups and sessions at School for the Great Turning, we do our very best to center a compassionate learning space. We bring in experienced guests we can learn from about organizing and community healing, and integrate intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and somatic resourcing.

We are committed to continuing to offer these things. We, alongside you, were made for these times. Gaia has given shape to each and every one of us. As Reverend Osagyefo Sekou said in our Community Platform session yesterday, “We are all we’ve got.”

In love and growing together,
Lydia and Leilani

New Course Announcement!!

:::The Essential Joanna Macy:::

Facilitated by Lydia Violet Harutoonian.
Crafted by Joanna Macy and Lydia Violet

September 19th - November 7th : Tuesdays

Have you been hearing the name “Joanna Macy” over the years, as you’ve explored sustainability, activism, climate grief, engaged Buddhism, or systems thinking? Looking for resources to help you sustain yourself through the promise and peril of these times?

We got you!

Studying Joanna’s work - and putting it into practice - has been pivotal for thousands of people for over 40 years. In today’s moment of intersecting, accelerating planetary challenges, Joanna’s teachings continue to be a profound resource, for orienting ourselves to what’s going on, and finding our ways to stay present and contribute to this world we love.

https://programs.schoolforthegreatturning.com/the-essential-joanna-macy-course?mc_cid=f4f216c137&mc_eid=2e4ea6b9af

love you 🔮♥️🌏

On the SGT Community Platform, we curate a holistic combination of monthly offerings for education, healing, and connection, including:

BODY- Somatic Resourcing and Support Circle where you learn a range of somatic (body-based) practices designed to cultivate a profound sense of grounding and empowerment. These include guided meditations, breathing exercises, gentle movement, body awareness explorations, and group sharing. You'll be offered the opportunity to tune into the wisdom and healing compass of your own bodily sensations and emotions. Our circle is led by an incredible group of experienced facilitators, ensuring you receive the guidance and support you need along the way.

Link in bio, Enrollment window closes Monday!

If you are reading this, you’re likely someone who values alignment between your personal growth/inner healing AND your passion for making the world a better place.

You may crave a deeper resonance between your spiritual life and what you do with your hands for the community. You value the art of shaping a moral compass, learning from others, building relationships within the movement, and contributing to your community.

We at SGT believe it’s important to connect, listen, study, play, ideate, put-into-practice, and report back. It is critical to listen at the intersections of ecology and human societies, as we locate who we are inside of these intersections. How we reconcile our personal lives with collective realities offers us the invaluable gift of orientation in disorienting times. When our consciousness feels more oriented, we tend to have more capacity in our work and relationships.

We cannot, and are not meant to, explore all this alone. As a 15-year student of these questions, our founder is convinced that no one is meant to try to think and feel through these

answers alone in our rooms. No one is meant to reconcile this current planetary moment in isolation. The response to community crises has always been in and from the community, diverse in its skillsets, dependent on relationships between communities — systemic in nature… and this time is no different.
On the SGT Community Platform, we curate a holistic combination of monthly offerings for education, healing, and connection. One of the recurring nodes on this platform nourishes our minds through exclusive live, interactive sessions with educators, activists, and artists working in the realms of spiritual ecology, environmental and social justice, community organizing, indigenous ecological and social knowledge, artistry for social change, and more.

Our next three months of educators include Black-feminist-environmental-steward brontë velez , social-justice-wellness advocate Reverend Vahisha Hasan , and Alaskan-indigenous-climate-organizer Ruth Łchavaya K’isen Miller !

Enrollment window is open for one more week 🔗 bio 🔮📚🤘🏽