Embodied Leadership Circle:

A Training and Cooperative Inquiry

September 13 – December 6, 2014

with Sabine Amend, PhD candidate & Tiffany von Emmel, PhD

Sponsored by St. Mary’s College, Leadership Center

Five onsite days: St. Mary’s campus or Impact Hub Oakland, CA

9am-4pm: 9/13, 9/14, 10/6, 11/1, 12/6

Click here to register

The challenge to change

Three myths that keep managers, coaches, and consultants struggling to facilitate change:
Myth 1: Change is rational.
Myth 2: Behavioral change is individual in nature.
Myth 3: Leadership is a person at the top.

It is no secret anymore that myths such as these, driven by mechanistic models of “change management” in organizations fail or are limited in working with the complexities of human social systems. Are you drawn to resourcing yourself more fully as an agent of change?

Why embodied leadership?

Embodied Leadership Circle is a four month training and cooperative inquiry, inviting you to become articulate and powerful in applying your own embodied wisdom about facilitating change. Breathing, sensing, heart beating, presence, reach, posture. Movement is fundamental to living. Through movement, we experience relationship with ourselves, each other, and the world: Movement is a relational form of knowing. Neuroscience research points out how movement deeply influences human cognitive processes. The ways we move influence our confidence, self-awareness, mental models, capacity for holding complexity, managing emotions, regulating stress, optimizing performance, communication, and more. Movement is the language of being a human system. And, yet, it is often ignored in organizational theory and practice. In fact, we often find ourselves with a curious absence of language about embodiment and movement, let alone tools to facilitate change.

What will we do?

We will become a learning community through Cooperative Inquiry, a participatory person-centered learning method, in which participants’ interests guide the learning through action-reflection cycles. Once a month, we will gather in person. In these live sessions, participants will learn somatic and movement-based approaches to change, drawing particularly on Laban movement analysis and physical theater improvisation. Throughout the month, each of us will carry out applications of movement language to influence our own work relationships and organizational issues. Online, we will reflect on these actions, with mutual feedback and support. The cooperative inquiry will be guided by two facilitators with extensive experience in movement, performance, group dynamics, leadership development, executive coaching, and transformative learning.

Benefits include

  • Expand your observation skills, language frameworks and methodology choices
  • Develop a resilient positive relationship with yourself, others, your organization and environment
  • Stretch your Use of Self as an agile embodied change agent
  • Support your growth as a leader and change agent by accessing a collaborative learning community of professionals
  • Gain experience in applying movement language in your work to further your unique learning goals and organizational issues

Optional further benefits:
You are also invited to return to St. Mary’s in February 2015 for a one-day free workshop. This workshop is a space to reflect and deepen your insights by contextualizing your experiences more fully within theoretically grounded models and perspectives. The February gathering will include interviews to capture your insights from the learning experience. The material gathered during this session is to become data to inform a PhD dissertation on movement and change agentry. Participation is optional.

Tiffany von Emmel, PhD is a scholar-practitioner, executive coach and consultant. For over twenty years, she has facilitated participatory embodiment trainings, in the U.S., East Africa, and Europe, on the Use of Self, emotional resilience, and diversity. Tiffany’s approach to transformative learning stems from her research and practice in physical theater improvisation, mindfulness, Tamalpa Life/Art process, sensorimotor psychotherapy, and animal-assisted interventions. Also a Facilitator for groups of MBA and PhD students at Stanford University, Graduate School of Business, Tiffany earned her PhD from Fielding Graduate University in 2005. Tiffany was the Founder & CEO of Dreamfish, a collaborative of independents and entrepreneurs in 26 countries.

Sabine Amend, PhD (candidate)is a doctoral student in the Taos Institute/Tilburg University social sciences program. She combines 15 years’ experience in intercultural management, executive coaching, and change facilitation worldwide with her journeys as a certified Gyrotonic® andGyrokinesis® instructor, (humble) learner of improvisational theater and movement forms, and her training in Laban Movement Analysis from the Laban/Bartenieff Institute for Movement Studies, NY. She resides in the Denver Metro area, Colorado. *Rudolf von Laban is a 20th century movement pioneer whose work in movement observation, movement notation, choreography, industry and the performing arts has subsequently informed a broad range of applications of his work in fields as diverse as modern dance, cultural anthropology, factory ergonomics, executive coaching, and computer animation.

Learn more

Join a free teleclass call, “What, How and Why Embodied Leadership?”:

Jul 29, 7pm PST or Aug 20, 7pm PST

Dial: 1-857-232-0300 / Code: 6229172

Please email RSVP to Tiffany von Emmel:

Schedule a free 1-on-1 Discovery Session:

Identify how movement language can address your needs.Contact to schedule:

Tiffany von Emmel or Sabine Amend (720) 494-1595

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