Institutes - SDI Companions

Engage 2022 Institutes & Premium Workshops

Details

Our institutes and premium workshops will be presented on Wednesday, May 11 from 9AM – 5PM MDT (the day prior to the full conference experience.)

Institutes and premium workshops are available to all conference participants at an additional cost. As with the workshops and keynotes, you may select a virtual or in-person experience.

More institutes to be announced soon. Stay tuned!

Institutes & Premium Workshops

Wednesday, May 11, 2022 - (09:00-17:00 MDT)

All times listed are in MDT. To convert to your own timezone, refer to this timezone converter.

Full-Day Enneagram Intensive: The Enneagram Circle & Centering Prayer – Creating and Exploring Contemplative Community - (9:00 AM - 5:00 PM MT)

This is an interspiritual program. Participants from all spiritual traditions and orientations are welcome as are those with all levels of contemplative practice experience. Those attending this premium workshop will ideally have some knowledge of the Enneagram, including a sense of what Enneagram number they lead with.

When we look at the symbol of the Enneagram, we tend to focus on one of the 9 points (usually that of our own Ennea-Type) and the connecting lines between the points. But what happens when we focus on the circle that encompasses it all?

In this full-day premium workshop, international lecturer and contemplative counselor Rev. Nhien Vuong will explore what it means to listen “around the circle” of the Enneagram. We will experience how that listening can support not only our individual but also our collective awakening. We will learn how contemplative community can be fostered in groups using story and through listening for the words we use that unconsciously reveal our particular lens of the Enneagram. And we will intersperse all our learning with contemplative practice by sharing in Centering and Welcoming Prayer together.

The Enneagram offers an amazingly precise roadmap for identifying the often-unconscious filters through which we hear and identify ourselves, one another and Spirit. In this premium workshop, participants will gain a deeper understanding of how to listen with an Enneagram-informed sensitivity within a group context. We will also explore how to incorporate contemplative practice and spiritual companionship into community building.

Rev. Nhien has seeded and sustained Enneagram-literate intentional communities around the globe through her work with Evolving Enneagram. This premium workshop will offer experiential learning designed for spiritual directors and companions, spiritual care providers, facilitators, and leaders of all kinds who seek to support the evolution of consciousness through developing their Enneagram-informed group facilitation skills.

In this session, participants will:

Experience the healing and transformational power of participating in a sacred listening “contemplative Enneagram” circle.
Engage in Welcoming Prayer and Centering Prayer and examine these practices through the lens of the Enneagram.
Learn how knowledge of the 9 Enneagram Types and 3 Instinctual Biases can inform our own contemplative journeys as well as our spiritual companionship of individuals and groups by helping us to identify the stories we tell ourselves.
Practice listening not only to others but to ourselves and cultivate use of our Inner Observer to notice the Enneagram-based filters through which we tend to hear Spirit, ourselves, and others.

Nhien Vuong

Accredited Enneagram Professional and Founder of Evolving Enneagram, Nhien Vuong, J.D., M.Div., (she/her/hers) is a contemplative Enneagram counselor, consultant, and global community builder. Nhien has a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of California Irvine, a Juris Doctor from Stanford Law School, and a Masters of Divinity from Unity Institute & Seminary. She left her San Francisco law career in 2012 to pursue a calling to support our conscious evolution. An ordained Unity minister, Nhien offers a compassionate, interspiritual path of transformation without dogma—an Enneagram-informed path that honors and is rooted in each person’s unique background, personality, and beliefs. As head faculty for Evolving Enneagram, Nhien works with a team of adjunct faculty to support the growth and transformation of individuals, families, and organizations around the world. For the past few years, Nhien has served as a regular presenter at the IEA Global & Regional Conferences (hosted in countries including the U.S., Egypt, Stockholm) and the Enneagram Global Summit hosted online by The Shift Network—an event that reaches 40k+ people in over 110 countries. Committed to the greater good, Nhien offers scholarships for her public programs and volunteers to teach the Enneagram to non-profits, the incarcerated, and 12-step recovery groups.

Writer's Institute: Writing Your Story – Engaging the World

Join us for a day of creative inspiration and practical tips on sharing your story and ideas as a means of engaging more deeply with the world.

The prophets “understood the distinctive power of language, the capacity to speak in ways that evoke newness ‘fresh from the word.’”
Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination

We don’t all have to be prophets, yet writing can still be a powerful way for us to engage with the world, with the change that needs to happen, with the seekers who can move mountains, the marginalized who must be included, and the despairing and grieving who seek hope. Our words can speak to the heart of the sincerest human truths beyond the mass market superficiality and political divisiveness of our times.

“The hope-filled language of prophecy, in cutting through the royal despair and hopelessness, is the language of amazement,” wrote Walter Brueggemann, reminding us that our words can speak truth to power and uplift and energize our communities.

One person’s words can inspire change for many. Writing also holds great potential for ourselves as a spiritual practice.

This institute will explore how you can engage both your inner and outer worlds through writing and how you can develop your writing personally and professionally.

Come and join us for an interactive day of writing with ample time for Q&R and discussion. Writers of all levels and in all forms are invited to join us, from beginners to experienced.

We will explore various approaches to free our natural flow of expression, bypass the inner critic, beat writer’s block, and find our most authentic voices. This is a process oriented workshop — we will not critique what you write and you don’t have to share any of your writing if you choose not to.

We will also explore paths to publishing and invite a few participants to present their book idea for feedback in a brief “elevator pitch.” (We’ll tell you how to do this in the month before the Institute.)

Our presenters have decades of experience not only as authors, but as teachers who guide people in using writing as a contemplative spiritual act.

Whether you journal or write poetry, want to write articles or blog posts, or you have a glimmer of an idea for a book, you will find encouragement and practical tips in this institute. Bring your questions… and a notebook and pen! Come ready to be inspired and leave with a vision for your next steps forward.

In the words of Walter Brueggemann: “What a commission it is to express a future that none think imaginable!”

Tell Us Your Book Idea for Feedback! We will also take some time toward the end of the day to hear book pitches from a selection of participants who have a book manuscript in process or the germ of a book idea. The presenters’ intention is to help you refine and focus your book idea and the way you pitch it to agents or publishers. We’ll hear as many pitches as we can in the allotted time, in a very brief “elevator pitch” format. Guidelines on how to write that pitch and how to volunteer for a book pitch feedback slot are available after registration.

Please note this session will not be recorded and will not be available to view post event.

Tania Casselle

Tania Casselle has been a writer and editor for 25+ years, published in books, magazines, newspapers and online media in the US, Europe and Asia. She is a committee chair for the American Society of Journalists & Authors and a senior teacher and mentorship director for the Sage Institute online Meditation & Mindfulness Leader training program. Her nonfiction, fiction, poetry and radio work have been recognized in numerous awards and anthologies. She holds a Masters in Transpersonal Psychotherapy, follows a contemplative path in the Zen Buddhist and Christian mystic traditions, and is an alumnus of Fr. Richard Rohr’s Living School for Action and Contemplation. As a writing coach and teacher, she works with people individually and in seminars and writing retreats in person and online. She helps writers on every level, teaching not just the craft and business of writing, but also exploring the deeper creative and spiritual impulse, helping writers free their natural writing voices and navigate internal blocks. A Brit from London, Tania lives in New Mexico.

Sean Murphy

Sean W. Murphy is a 2018 National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, an authorized Zen teacher (Sensei) in the American White Plum Lineage, and a member of the Spiritual Directors International Coordinating Council. His One Bird, One Stone: 108 Contemporary Zen Stories (Hampton Roads 2013), won the 2014 International Book Award in the Eastern Religions category. He is the award-winning author of three novels with Bantam Dell Books, receiving the Hemingway Award for a First Novel for The Hope Valley Hubcap King, the 2009 National Press Women’s Communication Award for The Time of New Weather, and the William Faulkner Wisdom Award for a novel-in-progress for his current project, Wilson’s Way. He is the founder of the nonprofit Sage Institute for Creativity & Consciousness, which hosts an innovative meditation leaders training program. He teaches writing and meditation at UNM-Taos.

Leadership Institute - Free to all conference attendees

“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” -Lilla Watson

All those who gather for this full-day session will be invited to join the conversation as we explore issues around inclusion and diversity – starting with ourselves and then considering our formation programs. Relying on our collective wisdom, we will share tools and processes, experiences and aspirations, truth and love as we support each other so we can respond to the needs in our communities.

Join us in this contemplative workshop to explore how spiritual direction formation programs tend to the needs of the moment and our movement.

The institute is free to all conference attendees (a nominal charge for lunch is the only price of admission).

Facilitators

Christine Luna Munger, PhD serves as the director of the Episcopal House of Prayer. She previously served as Coordinator of the Spiritual Direction Certificate and Professor of Theology at St. Catherine University, where she was also the director of Encuentro, a high school youth in theology initiative. She has taught at University of St. Thomas and College of St. Benedict/St. John’s University. Christine has published articles, videos, and other spiritual direction resources for Spiritual Directors International (SDI), and she regularly writes, teaches, and leads group prayer sits at EHoP. Christine is a mother of two young children. She is bilingual (English & Spanish) and enjoys all forms of dance and being outdoors.

Cynthia Bailey Manns, DMin is an experienced spiritual director and supervisor with a background in social work, human development, spirituality, and spiritual development. She is a passionate workshop and retreat leader and has served as adjunct faculty and coordinator of spiritual formation at Drew Theological School, adjunct faculty at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, as well as a campus minister and spiritual director at Seton Hall University. Currently she is the director of adult learning at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota and faculty and coordinator of the spiritual direction certificate program in the Theology department at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is currently chair of the SDI Coordinating Council.

Preeta Banerjee, PhD is Tufts University’s first-ever Hindu advisor within the university chaplaincy. She is a spiritual companion who draws on a broad and deep range of experience, having spent over 20 years in academia, coaching and consulting as an advocate, educator, researcher and author. She is a strong voice for combining spirituality, creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship and social change. Her passion lies in creating brave spaces at the intersection of contemplation, activism and healing and deepening in spiritually fluid ways, from a lens rooted in bhakti, gyan, karma, and raj yog, including her work as a founding board member of the North American Hindu Chaplains Association; Vice Chair of the Mystic Soul Project; and Advisory Board Member of the Spiritual Directors of Color Network. She has a Ph.D. in Strategic Management from the Wharton School and B.S. in Computational Biology and Business from Carnegie Mellon.

Bernadette Miles, PhD is co-director of Kardia Formation P/L, where she offers companionship of empowerment for women and men through spiritual direction, Spiritual Exercises, supervision, and various programs for personal and leadership development. Before establishing Kardia, Bernadette worked with the Australian Jesuits where she held various roles including Director of Campion Centre of Ignatian Spirituality and Coursework Coordinator for Sentir Graduate College of Spiritual Formation, (University of Divinity). Her work included the development and delivery of the Master of Arts in Spiritual Direction and graduate studies in leadership and organizational development. She is currently a member of the Coordinating Council for Spiritual Directors International.

Ravi Verma is a spiritual director and has worked professionally with churches and lay leaders for over 25 years. Ravi’s passion is to work with individuals and groups to build bridges between parts of ourselves, with others and the cosmos based on our connection to the Divine. Ravi, born in India, now teaches at Stillpoint, and works with corporations, retreat centers, and non-profits on issues of spiritual development. Ravi is a former member of the coordinating Council of Spiritual Directors International, the first global learning network of spiritual directors in history.