Communication

I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may never complete this last one, but I give myself to it . –Joanna Macy ​ On July 19, 2025, Joanna Macy died at the age of 96. She was an author, teacher, eco-philosopher, and Buddhist scholar and practitioner. I had the privilege of participating in a workshop with her in January 2000 and have read several of her books. Today, I write to honor her and all that I and so many others around the world learned

Alan Briskin and I are writing a book about “fields:” personal, social, and noetic. I have written several posts about them including one on the personal field. The piece below continues to explore the value and practices for perceiving and influencing the personal field. Thank you for your interest. Given the plethora of distractions and diversions at our beck and call, perhaps it is time for all of us to learn what John O’Donahue calls the “art of inwardness.” By inwardne

As noted in previous posts, Alan Briskin and I think of a “field” as a dynamic, living series of perceptible and imperceptible forces emanating from multiple sources inside and around us that influence how we feel, think, and behave. Field phenomena include everything from how you feel with good friends, to social customs and group norms you might take for granted, as well as conflicts that arise among competing factions. When we think of them in this way, fields are everywhe

—Arnold Mindell , As noted in my previous post , Alan Briskin and I think of a “field” as a dynamic, living series of perceptible forces emanating from multiple sources inside and around us that influence how we feel, think, and behave. Field phenomena include everything from how you feel with good friends, to social customs and group norms you might take for granted, as well as  conflicts that arise among competing factions. When we think of them in this way, fields are ever

When you read the word “field,” what comes to mind? A meadow surrounded by a wooden fence with horses grazing in the distance? of vegetables in tidy rows? Perhaps a baseball, soccer, or football with athletes playing competitive games? Or you might think of a particular area of study like biology or history as a . You could also think about the exciting electromagnetic that precede thunderstorms. Might there be another way to think about a field in a way that allows it to

My husband has a wicked sense of humor. For years, I often misperceived his dry wit as criticism, especially if I had been silently rehashing what seemed a less than sterling something that I did or said in the past with a client. If I didn’t pause to check and notice his expression or ask if he was criticizing me, I was off to the reactive races moving into some form of criticism of him or withdrawing entirely for a period. Even now that I know better and appreciate his humo

You might have heard of the indigenous South African philosophy of , “I am because of who we all are.” Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, in a conversation earlier this year with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, she described the meaning of ubuntu as “a person becomes a human being through other people.” As a clinical psychologist who worked alongside Bishop Desmond Tutu on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, Gobodo-Madikizela witnessed firsthand the invisible threads

“What do you think we should be talking about more?” I heard myself recently say to a friend, “The world is just too much for my soul these days.”  I had just read an announcement from the Wiyot Tribe on whose unceded ancestral lands I live that they had declared a State of Emergency on the Wiyot’s ancestral rivers due to extreme low flows and drought conditions. The Wiyot Tribe are my neighbors. Some of them are friends, colleagues, and former students. This comes on top of

john a. powell , professor of Law, African American and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley, made the astute observation that in times of stress, societies either break apart or build bridges. In addition to the stress from accelerating changes in globalization, technology, environment, and demographics, we now add a global pandemic and an economic free fall. All of this is hard for the human brain to process. Because the brain evolved to keep us safe, it craves certainty and predi

The first time I was listened to, really listened to, was a revelation. It happened in my mid-twenties while talking with Grace, a close colleague and friend. She did something deceptively simple. She restated back to me what she understood me to say. Then she asked a question to increase her understanding of what I was trying to convey.  Hearing my words reflected back to me was revelatory. I felt seen and understood in a way I had never experienced. Her question increased

This post is inspired by ongoing conversations with my colleague Alan Briskin as we consider writing a book about social fields. The intention is to examine what they are and how to create generative ones in the service of positive social change. I intend it to be a follow-on to Alan’s blog post The Power of Fields. As I reflect on conversations with my friend and colleague Alan and his recent blog post, these phrases stand out: human consciousness evolutionary responsibil

“A difficult conversation is anything you find it hard to talk about…difficult conversations are a part of life.” —Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen in “Difficult Conversations” What difficult conversations do you typically avoid? How do you talk yourself out of speaking up? What makes difficult conversations difficult for you? During our annual Cascadia Center for Leadership program, we ask the 28 participants how they respond to these questions. Over the 20 years

Picture about seventy people crowded into a dimly lit room with a creaking, wooden floor of an old building at the edge of San Francisco Bay. It was the home of the Dolphin Club, a legendary swim club founded in 1877, and their board of directors called a meeting to propose a series of upgrades to its aging facilities. I was standing at the back of the room with a swim buddy listening to two directors present the board’s proposals. As one of the directors paused to take a bre

How do you feel in your meetings at work? Happy, sad, glad, mad or scared? What are your thoughts during those meetings? “This is such a waste of my time.” Or, “I am glad to be part of this conversation.” How does your body feel? Tired, engaged, agitated, calm? All three of these—your emotions, thoughts, and body sensations—contribute to a larger social or relational field in which the meeting is happening. The social fields we create influence us, as do the internal states

There’s a lot to be worried about these days. Fires in the Amazon Forest, rising tensions in the Middle East, chaos in the leadership of two of the world’s oldest democracies, frequent mass shootings, rising numbers of hate crimes, lead in the water in Flint and now in Newark… Oh my. I have to stop. With all that is occurring in the world (to which we have access 24/7), it is no wonder there is a dramatic increase in the number of  people who feel anxious . Unfortunately, an

We are receiving more requests to facilitate “difficult conversations” this year than in previous ones. We don’t know the cause. Perhaps it’s the national political climate that has people more on edge. One common denominator in many of these conflicts is people NOT saying what they mean or doing what they said they would do. According to Angeles Arrien , these are two major sources of conflict. In her bestselling book , Arrien writes about conflict and asks, “What parts of m

Recently, I was talking with a small group of women about difficult situations and the impact they have on us. By “difficult” we meant anything that triggers us emotionally and diminishes our ability to handle circumstances effectively and constructively. One aspect that we had in common is that in these situations, we tended to give our power away and lose access to our equanimity and skills. By “power” I mean the ability to stay grounded, think clearly, not be overwhelmed b

This post is more personal than typical posts. I wanted to share some of the reflections on the past couple of weeks.  June 8, 2019  I am in route to Massachusetts to see my older brother Michael who is quite ill and in hospital. There is a strong possibility this trip is not just to show love and support, but also to say goodbye. Michael, who is ten years older than I am, was often hard on me verbally and physically in my early years. I spent a lot of my childhood frightened

When tackling a problem, it’s easier to analyze its pieces and parts and try to solve them one by one than it is to try and understand the whole situation or system. However, this approach rarely works because analyzing the parts does not help us understand how the system in which the problem is embedded works nor how it keeps the problem you want to solve in place. Systems thinking, on the other hand, seeks to understand  why  and  how  the system works the way it does. It

Are you trying to tackle a problem that, despite everyone’s best efforts, does not go away ? Are you trying to optimize your part of an organization without considering the impact on the system as a whole because it seems too complicated or too effortful to do otherwise? Are you afraid your short-term efforts might undermine your intention to solve a problem in the long-term? Are a number of groups working on the same issue at the same time with disparate and competing init