Highlights from this session:

• The value of unseen, mothering, and embodiment principles within Climate Activism
• What the failures and successes of the Extinction Rebellion Movement taught its founders about creating coherent collectives
• Destabilizing dominator activism in the movement towards co-liberation

Dr. Gail Bradbrook has been researching, planning and training for mass civil disobedience since 2010 and is a co-founder of the social movement Extinction Rebellion (XR.) She has trained in molecular biophysics, and her talk on the science of the ecological crisis, the psychology of active participation, and the need for civil disobedience has gone viral and inspired many to join XR. She was named by GQ as one of the top 50 influencers in the UK, and honored in a Women’s Hour Power list for her part in instigating a rebellion against the British Government.

Skeena Rathor is of Sufi Kashmiri lineage. At 15 she found racial and social justice work and at 17 she stood for her first election for political office. She holds 18 qualifications in psycho-sensory and neuro-developmental healing and trauma integration. She sits as Global Chair of Activism for The Restorative Practices Alliance. She is the Co-Founder of the Vision and Guardianship of Extinction Rebellion and the Co-Finder of Co Liberation – becoming free together and Being The Change.

Highlights from this session:

• How new models in neuroscience are improving the field of trauma healing
• Practical skills for practicing more secure attachment, responsiveness, flexibility, and regulation
• Understanding disorganized attachment in children and how school can be a safe haven.

Diane Poole Heller, PhD is an internationally recognized speaker, author, and expert in the field of attachment theory and trauma resolution. She developed a signature series on adult attachment called DARe (Dynamic Attachment Re-patterning experience) that provides therapists and individuals with the skills and tools they need to facilitate healing from trauma and create more fulfilling adult relationships. 

Highlights from this session:

• How the Yoruba approach to healing decenters the subject of trauma in order to lean into community
• Using the idea of the slave ship to explore the wounds of modern society
• When practices and concepts around trauma reinforce the very structures that created the wounds

Bayo Akomolafe (PhD) rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life partner to Ije, son, and brother. A widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, public intellectual, essayist, and author of two books, These Wilds Beyond our Fences: Letters to My Daughter on Humanity’s Search for Home (North Atlantic Books,) and We Will Tell our Own Story: The Lions of Africa Speak. Bayo is the visionary founder of The Emergence Network and host of the online post-activist course, ‘We Will dance with Mountains.”

Highlights from this session:

• Learning to surf and surrender to the rhythms of fear, challenge, and change
• The role of an artist and storm chaser to tell the story of a place and a moment
• Countering a culture of distraction and hyper-activation with the Indigenous practices of listening, observing, and stillness

Camille Seaman makes photographs with a concentration on the fragile and fleeting Polar regions. Born to a Native American father and African American mother, Camille’s sense of connection with landscape stems from growing up not far from the Shinnecock Indian Nation. Her grandfather taught her how the Shinnecock saw the natural world, a knowledge and reverence vital to her international practice.

Highlights from this session:

• Music as a healing process and medium that allows us to move beyond suffering and into compassion
• How Cambodian Living Arts brought music back to Cambodia after many musicians and artists were killed
• Exploring how music can awaken the knowing that we are essentially good

Born into a family of arts, Arn grew up in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime. Sent to a child labor camp and forced to play propaganda music during that period, he was later adopted by Reverend Peter Pond and moved to Vermont, USA. In the 1990s, he returned to Cambodia to be a part of the movement of rebuilding the country. One of the projects he started was to support master artists who had survived the Khmer Rouge regime to start teaching music in their communities. This small project has grown to become Cambodian Living Arts, which more than 20 years later is one of the leading arts organizations in Cambodia.

Highlights from this session:

• The personal and cultural work of “coming out of the closet” with our inner truths and spirituality
• The need for transcendent spirituality to meet imminent spirituality that is embodied in daily living
• The development of Sounds True as a community and business focused on process over scale

Tami Simon founded Sounds True, a multi-media publishing company dedicated to disseminating spiritual wisdom. Tami hosts a popular weekly podcast called “Insights at the Edge,” where she has interviewed many of today’s leading spiritual teachers, delving deeply into their discoveries and personal experiences on their own journeys. With Sounds True, she has released the audio program Being True: What Matters Most in Work, Life, and Love.