Beyond Diversity 101: Whole System Transformation - Training 1

When you mean to radically change the system, including YOU!

(BD101 WST – TO APPLY: Complete this form

Form link: https://forms.gle/puBJz6Vs7rwMUXt39)

The BD101 WST Series invites those who hold a deep commitment to liberation, wholeness, and the well-being of all. It is a response to a world crying out to remember. Some are called to sit on councils helping community to run smoothly, others bring artistic expression, some are led to teach while others master plant medicines and other forms of healing. Regardless of the particular role or the medicine that you bring, making the jump from dominator culture to realizing interconnection and shared responsibility – whole system transformation – requires re-engaging the imagination,  skillful practices and courageous movement.

While we are in absolute crisis as a society, there are also beautiful expressions of human interconnection, resistance, imagination, and nurturance.  While many hold on to the illusion of power based in separation and domination, some of us are called to not only reject and de-structure those systems but to boldly create and sustain life-affirming communities organized around radical truth and love.

BD101 – WST is a learning laboratory with a focus on organizational systems.  We learn and practice to increase our ability to consciously interrupt patterns of oppression that keep us stuck, read energetic shifts, and ride natural progressions.    We cultivate understanding, strengthen skills, and practice through application and feedback.

Cohort members work and play together inviting and developing conscious ‘creator-ship’ (to know self as creator within communities of co-creators).

The BD101 WST Series Structure: Niyonu D. Spann, Lead Teacher

Part 1 – March 19 – 23, 2025
[Guest Teacher – Zhenevere Sophia Dao]
@ Kirkridge Retreat Center

• Where I/we come from, What I/we yearn for in our life/our communities/our world

• Support grounded in seeing, reflecting, vulnerability, and holding

• Ways of sensing, ways of knowing, ways of making meaning, ways of expression

• Why MIND is essential

• Our blueprint ~ What we’ve signed on for

• Introduce Primary Frameworks through which we access whole-system remembrance/ whole-system transformation

Part 2 – June 26 – 30, 2025
[Guest Teacher – Dr. Darya Funches]
@ Kirkridge Retreat Center

• Understand the differences between incremental change processes, which are generally approached in a linear, rational fashion, and whole system transformation, which calls on imagination, creativity, and the capacity to release (and ride!) generative energy waves: to manifest on many levels at once

• What are you talking about, really? – Inclusion/Equity/Diversity/Belonging/Liberation

• The necessary elements of liberation/of liberatory ways of educating, counseling, creating, leading, worshiping, organizing?

• Why SPIRIT is essential

• Planning toward a practicum

Part 3 – September 26 – 28, 2025
On Zoom 

• Workin’ At the Roots ~ Foundational Change

• Working within the field of knowingness

• Why BODY is essential

• Applying The Flower, Three Circles & Eliminating Patterns of Oppression

• Polarity Thinking/”AND” Thinking

Part 4 & Closing – November 19 – 23, 2025 –
[Guest Teachers – Lisa Graustein & Daniel Hunter]
@ Kirkridge Retreat Center

• Liberatory Design & Facilitation – workshop design/meeting design/community actions

• Movement Building

• Community Care

• Creativity & tapping the mystical

  • Somatic

  • Discernment – Practicing, Supporting

  • Vision Energy

  • Exciting the system

• This is HEARTWORK that we are doing

  • Open-Hearted AND Disallowing Harm

  • Learning in mixed groups AND Learning in Affinity Spaces

  • What we are offering our home communities

• Closing Ritual

DATES & COST
March 19 – 23, 2025 Kirkridge Retreat Center
June 26 – 30, 2025 Kirkridge Retreat Center
September 26 – 28, 2025 On Zoom
November 19 – 23, 2025 @Kirkridge

The RATE for the complete series (includes program fees and room and board for three in-person 5-Day Intensives and one virtual 3-Day workshop):
Standard Rate is $4800.  Sponsoring Rate is $6000.  Low-Income Rate is $1500.

TO APPLY: Complete this form and we will be in touch to set up a short conversation. Form link: https://forms.gle/puBJz6Vs7rwMUXt39