Deep dreaming resources for times like this (August 2020 newsletter)
Read our August Newsletter here
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Category Archives: News
Black lives matter
The Process Work Institute stands in community and solidarity against racism and all those who are protesting against police brutality for a fair and just system. Black Lives Matter and we grieve the recent deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery and the countless others who have lost their lives to police violence. This is an unprecedented moment that challenges us all to not be silent and to use our voice, energy, and ideas to work towards change and focus on the impact of racial disparity in our communities.
The Process Work Institute condemns all prejudice, racism and injustice in our society, country, and world. We will continue as an organization to work on improving our own awareness, to examine ourselves, and create dialogue which leads to change and more inclusive community.
Photo by frankie cordoba on Unsplash
If you have the means, please consider donating to support the many incredible organizations led by Black, Brown, Indigenous and People of Color, offering their leadership in the movement for change. Some links below as starting points, with special focus on Portland groups:
Right to Health Founded by Leslie Gregory. Right to Health is a Portland based nonprofit organization working to address inequities using a restorative and health perspective, and leading a campaign for the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health to declare racism a public health crisis.
Official George Floyd Memorial Fund
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
Coalition of Communities of Color
COVID-19 Coronavirus – Courage, Solidarity and Awareness – together we get through this
Courage, Solidarity and Awareness – together we get through this
Portland, March 7, 2020
March 19, 2020
Dear PWI community,
Wishing all of us strength, solidarity and compassion in these difficult times. Some in our community are already deeply impacted, and others are feeling the pressure and anxiety of an uncertain future and threats we can barely comprehend.
First priority is consensus reality – please follow all guidelines and directions for public health and safety in your local context. Some links and information below.
Courage to all of us as we do our best to access and follow Consensus Reality, Dreamland and Essence level information to guide us through impossible times. Processwork is built for chaos, and our awareness skills have never been more needed.
Over the coming weeks, as we adapt to these scary times and necessary public health measures, PWI faculty will be offering online community opportunities to connect to the dreaming processes and unfold the meaning and resources in these agonizing, terrifying and perhaps transformational experiences.
Arny and Amy’s seminar in late May, and Arny’s supervision June 1st will provide a powerful space for exploration and support. They will be available online – livestream or video recording, and we are looking forward to connecting together as a community in the virtual world.
On a CR level, as a school, we have received the latest Executive Order from the Oregon Governor, effective March 21. This requires that all in person instruction must cease until April 28. I have written to our contact regarding guidance for the Spring quarter, but the situation is very uncertain and changing as we all know.
For current students, we will be continuing to work with each cohort and individuals to find the best way forward for everyone. It is likely that we will be prohibited from in person instruction for the Spring Quarter, and that travel restrictions will be continuing to impact many of us. PWI is exploring alternatives and will be connecting with individual students as well as each cohort to navigate this together.
Our practitioners have shifted their practices online, and we have cancelled in person meetings at the PWI building, as ordered. PWI administrative office is working to adapt to the required measures as everywhere. We put in place enhanced hygiene practices and are now staggering staff schedules and preparing to be able to shelter in place and maintain essential functions.
What a time. Stay strong, stay connected, take care of each other, together we will get through this.
Reach out if you have questions or concerns.
Sending love in these difficult and uncertain times
Hellene
Hellene Gronda, Ph.D.
Executive Director, Dean of Academic Programs
Office: 503 223 8188
Cell: 503 317 4441
Pronouns: she/her/hers and they/them/theirs
COVID-19 Information Links
- Access up to date information about coronavirus in Oregon here.
- US Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organization
From Oregon Health: simple steps you can take to protect yourself and your family from COVID-19 as well as influenza and other illnesses
- Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
- Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth with unwashed hands.
- Avoid close contact with sick people or animals.
- Stay home when you are sick.
- Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw it away. If you don’t have a tissue, cough into your elbow.
- Clean and disinfect objects and surfaces that you frequently touch.
- Avoid non-essential travel to regions listed in CDC travel advisories.
Sharing the Handprint: How Processwork Holds Me to My Dream
By Jon Biemer
August 21st, 2019 is a date I will remember. This is when I received an offer from Rowman & Littlefield to publish From Footprints to Handprints: Creating Sustainability to Heal Our Planet. How did I focus and stay the course long enough to reach this point of fruition? I have Processwork to thank for that.
Competing Passions
I felt pulled in two seemingly incompatible directions.
The idea of getting a PhD with a cross emphasis in sustainability and spirituality intrigued me, even though I had no inclination to use it for consulting or teaching.
Also, for two decades, I had followed a Native American spiritual path. I left my full-time job, partly with the intention of deepening my commitment to ceremony and carrying medicine.
I brought my divergent callings to a Processwork class on altered states. We would learn about the diversity of dreams within ourselves, and how they insist we pay attention. The instructor used a basic Processwork technique of amplifying symptoms, in this case my yearnings. He asked class members to form two groups, each advocating an aspect of my dreaming.
The PhD group regaled me with congratulations for choosing their path and assured me that I would join a cadre of esteemed colleagues. I would receive a badge of honor.
The spiritual folk literally pulled me away from the academic crowd. They reminded me of my desire to help others. They appealed to a calling higher than the practical plane. They loved me.
But I couldn’t stop looking over my shoulder. I could not ignore the conventional crowd. The exercise ended in chaos — but I had to treat the PhD seriously.
My process toward the handprint
During the break I filled a whiteboard with my reservations. I’m a slow reader. I don’t enjoy studying, let alone following rules. Spending four years – if all goes well – away from my environmental activism seems like a selfish distraction. I’d be spending less time with my wife. I wouldn’t be helping other people much either. And the significant cost… I was at an edge, a Processwork term for fearing change.
Two bubbles on that web of thought (some call it a mind map) stood out for me – “contribute something unique,” and “need to be recognized.” Ah… Those were the reasons the PhD was so compelling. I realized there may be other paths to meeting those needs.
Unfolding My Path
Upon hearing my story from the altered-states class, my wife Willow said, “You could get a PhD from the universe… rather than a university.”
That resonated with me.
I could intentionally treat my adventures in sustainability as coursework. I had already managed energy conservation programs professionally. I had supported ballot measures to curtail nuclear power. We were in the middle of an eco-remodel of our new house, creating a “food forest” in place of a lawn, and partnering with the Johnson Creek Watershed Council to remove invasive English Ivy.
For my unique contribution, I was already nursing the idea of the Environmental Handprint, the good we do, the ways we can change the system. Encouraged by my altered-states experience, I submitted and presented a professional paper about the Handprint, and… One morning the vision for a book crystalized.
I loved writing, but it had always been a lower priority than getting things done. But now a book would serve the role of my dissertation. Besides, I might receive some recognition.
The Gift of a Headache
Four years into my book project, work proceeded slowly. Some of my data was going out of date.
And another problem claimed my attention. Headaches. A fiercely intense pain over my right eye would claim my entire attention for about twenty minutes. They came mostly during sweat lodge ceremonies. The doctor had a nine-syllable name for these headaches and some medicine – which worked. But, after ordering precautionary imaging, he offered no physiological reason why I was getting them.
I brought that reality to another Processwork class. In this instance, I walked with the seemingly incompatible energies of my ordinary plodding self and the pounding energy of my headache. I moved first with one energy, then the other. Gradually, they fused into a lively dance. Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” came into my mind.
I moved with the music, feeling its punctuated downbeats. I admitted to myself that the heat of a sweat lodge was part of the headache problem. Yes, but that thought didn’t feel helpful. Processwork reminds us that physical symptoms can reveal wisdom that we are not already aware of, perhaps something needed for a breakthrough. I kept dancing.
Eventually, these words came to me, “The dance is my spiritual practice.” And then, “The dance, slowed down, is my walk.”
Suddenly I understood that my book – a walk of sorts – is a spiritual calling.
My headache told me that life was out of balance. It is okay to back off the sweat lodges. I’m not abandoning my spiritual path. I’m deepening it – as I hoped to do back when I took that altered-states class.
The labor and discernment I pour into my book is my commitment to serve. Making money is not my goal. However, it is important to find a mainstream publisher and partners willing to share this earth-healing message widely.
Therefore, engaging a book coach became yet another course in my advanced study.
Takeaway
From Footprints to Handprints required six years of writing and rewriting. It represents the practicality, creativity and persistence of millions of people who are contributing to a better future. It offers nearly two hundred Handprint Opportunities. And it reflects the power of Processwork to help inner needs make a difference in the outer world.
The image with this article, a green handprint superimposed on the 1972 NASA photograph of the Earth, is a symbol for sustainability, much as three arrows in a triangle symbolize recycling.
By Jon Biemer
Jon Biemer earned a Certificate in Process-oriented Psychology in 2014. He also is a registered Professional Engineer. He provides Organizational Development consulting to businesses and non-profits. Check out his website at www.JonBiemer.com. Contact him at jonbiemer@gmail.com, especially if you’d like to receive publication announcements about From Handprints to Footprints: Creating Sustainability to Heal Our Planet.
Image credits: Jon Biemer
Featured Student: Marissa, 2nd year MAPOF
Marissa is a second year student in our Master of Arts in Process-Oriented Facilitation and Conflict Studies program. We are thrilled to have been given permission to share some of her poetry which sheds light on a part of her experience growing up as a mixed-race person in the U.S. In addition to writing poetry, Marissa can also be found performing with her band at local spots around Portland. Thank you for sharing with us Marissa!
swimming lessons
it’s strange to learn a language secondhand
a language that lives in me
lives in my childhood
lives in my blood
yet shame so often holds it hostage to the tip of my tongue
it could “never be good enough”
a language that lives in the steam of dumpling baskets
the clanging of dim sum carts
and my mother’s beckoning hands
and too–
her scolding
passed down from mother to mother
“mei mei, don’t go to bed with your hair wet or you’ll wake up with a headache”
the language that lives in the food i’ve craved
as a 6 year old to 26 year old
but could never
and still cant ever
muster up the courage to order from a waiter
and claim the language as my own
my shame is my mother’s shame
and my clumsy american tongue could never be my mother’s native one
light and agile
carved around tones and ancestry
my ears can’t hear her accent
to me
her voice is just her own
to me
it has always been her own
but to her
her english was only ever
“never good enough.”
to others
her accent was a hassle
a dismissal
another reason to close an office door
to lay her off
to turn their head
to shut their eyes like blinds
she asked me at age 4 how to pronounce “zoo”
she still asks me sometimes, “shzoo”
i hear the hint of home in her accent
the hint of home
when spoken here
outcasts her
the hint of home
causing people to try to
translate her
TO TALK TO YOU LIKE THEY ARE ARE SHOUTING AT YOU FROM ANOTHER CONTINENT ACROSS THE OCEAN
but you swam here at 26
and you continue to swim
even though no one ever taught you how
at age 7
you reminded me everyday before YMCA swimming lessons
how lucky i was to learn to swim
because you were never so lucky
we would go to the pool
and you would stand at the shallow end
waving at me
standing alone
smiling
in your single
black
swimsuit
in the dressing room
i watched you gaze at your reflection in the mirror
turned sideways
head cocked
your hands cupping your belly
this swimsuit you bought specifically
to stand
not swim in
you float at the shallow end
avoiding the water so your hair doesn’t get wet
Interested in additional information about the Master of Arts in Process-Oriented Facilitation and Conflict Studies (MAPOF)? Click here to be taken to the MAPOF page or contact our Outreach and Admissions Coordinator to schedule an information session!
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Featured Student: Vanessa, 2nd Year MAPOF
Vanessa says one of the things making her excited these days is applying her Processwork learning in the diverse projects she is involved in. Recently Vanessa has been working in various places that are in transition. This includes in Greece, where systems are collapsing or dying, as well as working in Canada helping to facilitate an ongoing truth and reconciliation process with indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. She shared a recent story of working with a young woman indigenous leader who is building new partnerships between youth and mainstream institutions and government. One of the big tensions is around different concepts of “time” and the different cultures around time: how to honor both the “funding deadlines” as well as the deeper historical arcs of time, and to bring into these partnerships that things need to take their own time. Vanessa worked with her on “in-sourced” power and “outsourced” power to remind her that she has more power in any situation than she thinks she does, especially when she goes into these meetings.Vanessa shared another recent experience working in a facilitator role with a group of women religious leaders who are part of a massive transition in how institutional religious life is lived. Vanessa was able to introduce the idea of role theory, and that people are people, but they are also occupying roles that are assigned by any given field or context. This concept was so helpful to them as they were struggling particularly with the role of the “bully”. It’s a role that is alive in their leadership and congregation, and also is a systemic issue in the Church also around abuse of power. Vanessa was able to explain different types of power such as positional power, personal power, and social power, which helped them realize that at any given moment they can have a different relationship to power and be in a different role. Once they understood this idea, they were very creative about how to begin using these ideas, even to address bigger changes in the organizational hierarchy to which they belong.
Vanessa feels she is in a major change period of life. Part of engaging in the MA in Process-oriented facilitation allows her to see her world work as connected to a larger community of practice. Vanessa also writes poetry. She recently wrote a poem called “Into the Deep, A Worldwork Fairy Tale” after her 5-day live-in residency with her cohort. Some lines from the poem include:
We welcome the new Loves
unravel the old shames
reveal the burdens of
my pain,
your loser
our privilege, race and rank
We risk dissolving something known
to see the deeper, stranger truth
of our own experience
Thank you Vanessa for being our featured student and for sharing a bit of your experience with us!
Interested in additional information about the Master of Arts in Process-Oriented Facilitation and Conflict Studies (MAPOF)? Click here to be taken to the MAPOF page or contact our Outreach and Admissions Coordinator to schedule an information session!
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Check out the new Faculty VLog: What’s the Process?
Introducing a new feature to the Process Work Institute website: What’s the Process? The Process Work Institute Faculty Vlog. This vlog will feature videos by faculty at the PWI addressing questions relevant to all aspects of Process Work including body symptoms, organizational work, counseling and more. Have a look and don’t forget to bookmark!