Spiritual Activism

Spiritualizing the political
politicizing the spiritual

About the Workshop

Join us online to explore how building cultures of practice rooted in care and justice can help us navigate the perceived tensions between spirituality and activism, or “inner” and “outer” transformation.

At Courage we focus on building compassion-based, anti-oppressive, healing-centered, transformational and visionary practice communities. Rather than addressing only systems change or personal change alone, we believe that systems of oppression live in our bodies and our cultural practices, and thus we cannot simply legislate—or meditate—our way forward. Justice is a practice. Anti-racism is a practice. Beloved Community is a practice.

What to Expect

Saturday, October 21st
10a-4pm ET
On Zoom

The workshop will contain a combination of guided embodied exercises and informal conversations that build bridges between “inner” meditative/spiritual practice and “outer” social action based on our model, CourageRISE. Read more.

We will pay particular attention to the tensions between “me” and “we”, personal and collective liberation, being and doing, and “center” and “margins”.

Together, we will explore practices that can help us:

- resource and access a greater capacity for care that can help us not only sustain in the work, but extend more grace and deep seeing to others;
- recognize features our embodied conditioning or shaping, and learn how to develop intra- and inter-personal practices to access more freedom;
- explore practices for rest and recognize how resistances to rest or “being” are often shaped by oppressive social structures—like capitalism—themselves;
- strengthen our complexity capacity and ability to embrace a both/and mindset rather than an either/or mindset;
- transform our awareness from being solely rooted in ‘what is important to me’ to having a felt sense of interconnectedness and the common good.

The workshop will include guided contemplative and somatic practice, reflection and small group discussion. Participants will gain access to resources on our Mighty Networks community platform.

Meet Our Team

Maha El-Sheikh (she/her) is core faculty at Courage of Care, and a member of the International Solidarity Movement, where she partners with relational facilitators and leaders in the economic, racial and climate justice movements. With 20 years working in the international humanitarian sector, Maha’s work currently focuses on the social injustices underlying our global crises. As a facilitator, she is inspired by 15 years living and working in Palestine and Lebanon, learning how connection to heart, beloved community, mutual aid, joy, and compassion can serve as antidotes to oppression, colonization, injustice and violence.

Brooke Lavelle, Ph.D. (she/her) is the co-founder of Courage of Care. She holds a Ph.D. in Tibetan Buddhism and Embodied Cognition, and is committed to ways in which individuals and communities develop cultures of practice that support love, health and liberation. Brooke has consulted to various human rights, education and spiritual organizations, and has experience leading national and international political, educational and climate justice projects. Through her work at Courage and in her neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY, Brooke understands the challenges of trying to build alternatives to the status quo, and remains steadfastly convinced that another way is possible.

Katrine Bregengaard’s (she/her)work as a facilitator combines her background as a critical human rights educator, organizer and researcher with her work as a contemplative and somatic practitioner. She’s passionate about building meditative and compassion-based approaches that can strengthen our personal and collective capacity to address the complexities of eco-, gender-, class- and racial-justice. She facilitates radical mindfulness groups in Copenhagen and works with Courage of Care Coalition to build bridges between individual and collective healing and systemic transformation.

WE'RE IN IT TOGETHER

SUPPORTER

$200.00

We offer a sliding scale for all of our workshops in service of economic justice. We ask those with access to financial resources and/or access to organizational professional development funds to please consider paying this rate. This practice of solidarity giving enables us to cover costs and to provide financial support to others with less financial resources, thereby building and strengthening our community.

BASE TICKET

$150.00

This rate covers basic costs of producing this event. We invite those with less class privilege or with limited financial resources or recent financial hardships to consider paying our base fee. This enables us to cover basic costs and to provide ongoing community support.

REDUCED SOLIDARITY RATE

$100.00

We invite folks with less class privilege, financial hardship and/or those representing historically marginalized identities for whom the cost to attend is not possible, to register at our subsidized rate.

“I really felt like many parts in my life came together, that often feel like they’re at war with each other—particularly the academic, the activist and the contemplative parts—and thus I feel like a more whole person.”