The Art of Facilitation

This work is deeply personal, and it invites you to do your own transformative work, because who you are is more important than what you teach.

Mind-body experiences are the vehicle for delivering the workshop content. The best ones follow a three-step process—safety, experience, and integration. We refer to this as the transformational learning cycle, which is a facilitated process of self-discovery.

In a transformational workshop, the participants come to perceive themselves, each other, and their world differently. The goal of coming together is to create the conditions for these perceptions to shift through insight and empathy, both in the individual and in the group.

The experience may be slightly different from practice to practice (and lesson to lesson), but the essence revolves around discovering (or rediscovering) the wisdom of the self.

The chapters of this book follow the stages of spiritual work as I see and have experienced them. This is, fundamentally, the journey from the outermost layers of our consciousness, through the obstructions, into our innermost core. Chapter 1 encourages us to accept our flawed human nature and to honor our spiritual longing. Chapter 2 reinforces ou

The key to transformation is self-awareness. A transformational leader helps participants bring attention to hidden assumptions, which are often part of our default stories or identities, such as the lost child or hard-hearted person. We do this through the safe witnessing of habitual thinking and judgments.

Learning is enriched and deepened when experiences are personally relevant, emotionally stimulating, new and different, reinforced through repetition, and engaged through multiple modalities.16 Mind-body experiences are the vehicle for exponential learning in a transformational workshop. They connect people to themselves, others, and the natural wo