Washington National Cathedral

101 — Friday

Feeding Your Demons: Transforming Conflict

Tsultrim Allione

Tibetan Buddhism teaches a powerful method for facing and dissolving fears, illnesses, and emotional stumbling blocks—our “demons.” Come learn this approach, first developed by a twelfth century Tibetan yogini, that can help us meet and release “demons” we battle every day. To transform these difficulties into allies is to practice compassion and love instead of fear and animosity. Co-sponsored by Insight Meditation Community of Washington.

One of the first Western Buddhist teachers, Tsultrim Allione is founder of Tara Mandala Retreat Center and author of Feeding Your Demons: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict.

102 — Friday

“Redvolution”

Sera Beak

Based on a combustible cocktail from Beak’s The Red Book, we’ll explore mixing ancient religious traditions and new spiritual beliefs to create a “redvolutionary” life guided by the sacred feminine. Discover and activate your spiritual superpowers through creative exercises, meditation, ritual, journaling, and dialogue. We’ll learn to trust our unique path and inner authority, and create some delicious, divine mischief that can help heal the world.

Sera Beak is a Harvard-trained scholar of comparative religion and author of The Red Book: A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Divine Spark.

103 — Friday

Dancing with Shakti

Cheryl Catranbone

Align with the divine in this joyful and centering day of Anusara yoga practice. Shakti is the Sanskrit name for the sacred feminine creative power. Invite this divine energy within your heart to flow through and empower your body according to yoga’s universal alignment principles. Our revitalizing morning yoga session will lead to an afternoon of gentle poses, meditation, journaling, breathwork, and Yoga Nidra.

Cheryl Catranbone is a certified Anusara yoga teacher affiliated with the Willow Street Yoga Center and the Yoga Center of Columbia, Maryland.

104 — Friday

Inspiration from the Soul

Beth Nielsen Chapman

Unlock your creative gifts with an inspiring guide who is navigating a spiritual road in the world of popular music. Chapman will share a variety of techniques and approaches for overcoming blocks and fears of failure to allow our creative fire to shine through. She’ll perform songs and illustrate the many ways we can explore this uniquely direct, powerful, and healing form of communication and expression.

Ranging from contemporary Christian to flat-out rock styles, singersongwriter Beth Nielsen Chapman has written hits for Faith Hill, Willie Nelson, and Elton John.

105 — Friday

Writing from a Sacred Space

Marita Golden

Writing can be both a transforming expression of inner divinity and a way to engage ourselves in the wider world. Practice writing exercises in different genres, consider your and others’ writing life histories, try techniques to allay emotional obstacles, and discuss your writing goals. By day’s end you’ll have created a blueprint to continue writing and exploring in projects going forward.

Marita Golden is author of 14 works of fiction and nonfiction, including the award-winning novel AFTER. She is writer-in-residence at the University of the District of Columbia.

106 — Friday

Rediscovering Ancient Paths of the Divine Feminine

Rabbi Jill Hammer and Holly Taya Shere

Do you feel called to embody the divine feminine? In the Hebrew Bible are many paths of women’s sacred service—hidden and revealed. Prophetess, midwife, wise woman, seeker, weaver, and others offer us surprisingly contemporary models. Through text study, ritual, and experiential practice, we’ll clarify our personal journeys and gifts of leadership.

Rabbi Jill Hammer, Ph.D., directs spiritual education at the Academy of Jewish Religion and is author of Sisters at Sinai: New Tales of Biblical Women. Holly Shere serves as spiritual leader of Olney Kehila Jewish Congregation. They co-founded the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute.

107 — Friday

Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves

Stephanie Kaza

To heal our world, we start by remembering the deep experience of interconnection that threads through all life. Drawing on green wisdom from many sources, we will ask—What ails you? What calls you? What is asked of you? Ecopsychology, Buddhist mindfulness, deep ecology all offer pathways to action. Using guided meditations and experiential practices, we will transform energy blocks to release healing energy on behalf of the earth.

Stephanie Kaza is Director of Environmental Studies at University of Vermont where she teaches ecofeminism, religion and ecology, and Buddhist environmental thought. She is a long-time Zen student and has trained with Joanna Macy and Thich Nhat Hanh. Her just released book is Mindfully Green: A Personal and Spiritual Guide to Whole Earth Thinking.

108 — Friday

Art, Being, and Becoming: A Sufi Exploration

Salima Raoui

Embark on this day’s journey of color, Sufi chant, and creativity. Invoking the divine as we paint and collage, we will open to a dynamic inner dialogue, offering prayer and receiving guidance through what our hands create. We will pair the visual art that emerges with writing our reflections to deepen our understanding of the experience.

Salima Raoui is an artist whose Islamic-Sufi path and study of healing practices inform her art and teaching. She lives in New York and her native country of Morocco.

109 — Friday

The Soul Loves the Body

Cynthia Winton-Henry

Mystics know that a body at play, dancing, singing, and opening to the world is how we find holy ground. InterPlay is an invitation both mystical and pragmatic—for restoring the soul, gaining insight, and creating grace-filled communion. With and without partners, we will enter paths of movement, voice, stories, and stillness for celebration, healing, and discernment. The day includes times of quiet and reflection. All abilities welcomed.

Cynthia Winton- Henry co-founded InterPlay. She authored What the Body Wants, and the forthcoming Chasing the Dance of Life.

201 — Saturday Morning

Feeding Your Demons

Tsultrim Allione

Do you struggle with difficult emotions, illness, or turbulent relationships? Come explore the idea that the harder we fight these “demons,” the stronger they become—and that instead the solution is to nurture them. This adaptation of teachings by Tibet’s greatest woman adept, Machig Labdrön, is a five-step method for healing negative emotions and self-defeating patterns. This stand-alone session is also compatible with the Friday Pre-Conference Intensive. Co-sponsored by IMCW.

Tsultrim Allione is the founder of Tara Mandala Buddhist Retreat Center in Colorado, and author of Feeding Your Demons: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict.

202 — Saturday Morning

The Soulwork of Clay

Marjory Zoet Bankson

Clay is the earthy, ancient material of creative expression. Join your power of imagination with your inner mud-loving child in this interactive experience of clay and color, personal sharing, and creativity. Grounded by the earth in our hands, we’ll pinch “beloved bowls” and connect our personal creation story to the larger story of creation.

Marjory Zoet Bankson is an author, artist, and seasoned retreat leader. She leads a yearly work pilgrimage to Guatemala, was the CEO of Faith at Work, and published Faith@Work magazine for 20 years. Her new book is The Soulwork of Clay.

203 — Saturday Morning

A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven

Phyllis Berman

Ritual helps us bear witness to life’s important transitions—joyous or painful, fearful or exciting. Learn the concentrated listening theory and practice of Sh’ma, a key skill that fosters compassion and lowers separation. Enhance your capacity to lead enlivening life-cycle rituals and identify varied opportunities to respond to the emotional and spiritual needs of your family and community. Both traditional and non-traditional life cycle rituals will be discussed.

Rabbi Phyllis Berman is facilitator for the Tent of Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah, an author, and ESOL educator.

204 — Saturday Morning

A Conversation with Joan Brown Campbell, moderated by Sally Craig

Joan Brown Campbell

Joan Brown Campbell’s decades of progressive Christian leadership are a history of compassionate love in daily action. The fruits of her labor are robust—but just how did she do all this and raise a family? Thus we might ask ourselves: What has emanated from what we have given? How can we learn to do all the good things we do with more ease?

The Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell now heads the religion department at the venerable Chautauqua Institution and co-chairs the Global Peace Initiative of Women.

205 — Saturday Morning

Yoga Nidra Meditation: The Power of Rest and Receptivity

Robin Carnes

Much of our life energy is spent striving—at great cost to our physical and spiritual selves. Yoga Nidra is an ancient Tantric meditation practice that cultivates the divine feminine qualities of receptivity and loving acceptance. Discover this practical, simple way to rest the nervous system and restore a sense of connection to self and others.

Robin Deen Carnes is a certified yoga and iRest® Yoga Nidra instructor who offers workshops nationally and internationally and at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center to military service members with PTSD.

206 — Saturday Morning

Lighting the Fire of Climate Action

Kari Fulton

Majora Carter is unable to be with us as expected at Sacred Circles. We are excited to feature two dynamic young women leaders in her stead. Majora’s Saturday morning workshop will be led instead by award-winning activist Kari Fulton, a national campus organizer for youth of color on environmental justice and climate change. We invite you to join Kari to get a powerful grassroots perspective from the heart of this powerful movement of compassion in action. Direct from Majora’s own green jobs team based in the South Bronx, Tanya Fields will deliver the keynote talk Saturday afternoon. Here is Kari’s workshop description and a little bit about her:

Come hear how you can be part of a dynamic solution to climate change: empowering young women for climate justice. Pioneer organizer Kari Fulton’s success mobilizing youth of color has already won her such prestigious awards as Earth Island Institute’s Brower Youth Award 2008 and editorial acclaim by Elle magazine. Kari will give us an up to the minute status report on the national environmental justice movement, how young women of color working to secure their environmental human rights need our help, and the ways green business offers economic hope and opportunity to people across our society. Kari takes a holistic spiritual and practical approach in her climate organizing. Come get energized and connected across lines of color and generations to activate your love for the earth and the whole human family.

Kari Fulton is the national campus campaign coordinator for the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative. She is a spokesperson for the Energy Action Coalition and a senior fellow with Young People for the American Way, and in her spare time blogs on Youngblackandgreen.blogspot.com.

207 — Saturday Morning

Leela—Divine Play

Cheryl Catranbone

Do children’s playful spirits show us a sacred truth? Called Leela in Hindu philosophy, the energy of divine play is thought to be the essence of our existence. In this session of Anusara yoga, we will tap into the playful dimension of ourselves so often put aside for other “more important tasks.” Here you are invited to share your laughter and your beauty with each other and connect freely to an innate joyfulness within.

Cheryl is a certified Anusara yoga teacher and teachertrainer based in Maryland.

208 — Saturday Morning

Creativity’s Healing Power

Beth Nielsen Chapman

Connection and compassion can be experienced most profoundly when we open to the creative impulse during times of loss and grief. This natural healing capacity is available to us all at any level of adversity. Come sing and talk with Beth Nielsen Chapman as she shares her experience of this realm, and celebrate together the sacred gift of creativity.

Beth Nielsen Chapman is a songwriter and performer who has written hits for Faith Hill, Willie Nelson, Elton John, and many others.

209 — Saturday Morning

Seeking Holy Wisdom through Poetry

Esther de Waal

It is said that poets are the prophets of our time. Explore how the language of poetry can open up our experience of God and draw us more profoundly into prayer. Experience allowing poetry, and the poet inside each of us, to encourage the prophetic voice to enter our tasks and missions, and nurture our hearts and spirits.

Esther de Waal is an Anglican scholar of the Cistercian, Benedictine, and Celtic traditions of Christian spirituality. Her most recent book is Lost in Wonder: The Spiritual Art of Attentiveness.

210 — Saturday Morning

Personal Solitude as a Call to Wholeness

Florence Falk

What if being alone is our challenge? Partnered or single, each life stage brings a form of aloneness, with its doubts, hesitations, and fears. Yet an inner freedom is possible when we befriend aloneness. Through guided meditation, reflection, and movement, we discover “creative solitude”—a state brimming with the potential for personal freedom and resources for renewed life.

Florence Falk, Ph.D., M.S.W., is a writer, teacher, and psychotherapist in private practice for many years. She is the author of On My Own: The Art of Being a Woman Alone.

211 — Saturday Morning

Transforming Conflict

Michelle LeBaron

When we consciously engage the light and dark aspects of self and community, we may find flashes of peace. Choosing natural objects to help us reflect on an inner conflict, we will identify an aspect of our most benevolent selves and one of pain or shadow and then engage them in written dialogue. When ready, we will braid them together through movement. We will then repeat the process to resolve a conflict we have in the world. Embodying this potent practice will give us tools we can use in a variety of situations.

Michelle LeBaron is professor of law and director of the Program on Dispute Resolution at the University of British Columbia. Conflict transformation, spirituality, and the arts have been central to her work for 25 years.

212 — Saturday Morning

What Does Love Look Like in Your Life?

Kiamsha Leeke

Every woman deserves to know what love looks like in her life so she can see where it is flourishing and where greater cultivation is needed. Using contemplative practices, collage, and journaling, we’ll develop a clear picture of the love we have and what we can do to bring love into every action of our daily lives.

Kiamsha Ananda Leeke is an artist, author, creativity coach, yoga teacher, Reiki Master, and radio host. Her books include Love’s Troubadours: Karma Book One and That Which Awakens Me.

213 — Saturday Morning

Taking up the Green Practice Path

Stephanie Kaza

In today’s global marketplace, consumer choices are endless. How are we to find our way among the many options before us? The green practice path offers practical approaches to unlearning the habits of desire and consumerism. Through guided exercises based in Buddhist principles we will identify action steps to manifest our love for the earth.

Stephanie Kaza is Director of Environmental Studies at University of Vermont where she teaches ecofeminism, religion and ecology, and Buddhist environmental thought. She is a long-time Zen student and has trained with Joanna Macy and Thich Nhat Hanh. Her just released book is Mindfully Green: A Personal and Spiritual Guide to Whole Earth Thinking.

214 — Saturday Morning

Listening with the Heart

Kathy Nelson

Listening is an art of concentration and openness. Listening with the heart goes beyond words to the heartbeat of love. Using the prayer form lectio divina, we will gaze at photographs and use texts to draw us closer to the divine. This allows us not only to hear words, but open to color and light, pain and joy, vastness and intimacy.

Dr. Kathy Nelson, a Presbyterian pastor, is president of F.I.S.H. Foundation, Inc. She has been a lecturer at Princeton Theological Seminary and is an author and photographer.

215 — Saturday Morning

Spiritual Art Journaling

Salima Raoui

Can working with image and color expand your meditation and prayer life? Try painting a journal page while in a heart-centered dialogue with the divine. You will be guided by an international artist who draws deeply from Sufi spiritual practice and healing wisdom. Raoui uses Rumi’s words to describe her—and our—focus: “in your Light I learn how to love.”

Salima Raoui is an artist and fiber designer who leads transformative programs for adults and children in the U.S. and her native Morocco.

216 — Saturday Morning

Returning to Our Mother’s House: Taking Back Our Feminine Wisdom

Gail Straub

Do you wonder if your inner life is being sacrificed for outer accomplishment? Find clues in Straub’s story to the five most common ways women lose their inner female wisdom and learn the seven practices for taking it back. Our time is intended to empower your deepest essence. Lecture, guided meditation, and dyads will help us reclaim the natural freedom of our true selves.

Co-founder of the Empowerment Institute, Gail Straub’s new memoir is Returning to My Mother’s House: Taking Back the Wisdom of the Feminine.

217 — Saturday Morning

“You Do Not Have to Be Good”

Devon Ward-Thommes

Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” poem inspires all ages. Yet for women in our 20s and 30s, an inner sense of home is crucial amid the vast and hurried world. Engage the flow of creativity and joy through yoga, poetry, and artistic wordplay. We’ll investigate our relationships with our bodies—so often governed by conditional, critical love—and discover how specific physical practices can open places of lovingkindness and compassion within.

Devon Ward-Thommes, M.F.A, R.Y.T., is a poet, essayist, and yoga teacher who practices Vajrayana Buddhism.

218 — Saturday Morning

A Conversation with Sakena Yacoobi, moderated by Sheherazade Jafari

Sakena Yacoobi

Sakena Yacoobi embodies love-based peacemaking in international development. If you hunger for a path of direct service in conflict zones, come prepare yourself with stories from a singularly courageous and deeply faithful front-line Muslim warrior of healing. Whether you come to this desire early or late in life, yours can be a life of service in the most intense places. Hear how this service can be a compelling form of love in action.

Sakena Yacoobi heads the Afghan Institute of Learning, based in Kabul, Afghanistan.

301 — Saturday Afternoon

Kirtan: A Calling of the Heart

Vidarbha Agarwal

There is an intense river of surrender and prayer known as Bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion or personal relationship with the divine. We can engage this through the practice of Kirtan. Chanting the ecstatic call-and-response songs of ancient India, we will enter a space of prayer and heartfelt expression that rejuvenates and refreshes the soul.

Vidarbha Agarwal teaches yoga, meditation, and the philosophy of the ancient Gita. She heads a Bhakti yoga club at George Washington University and has trained in devotional music since childhood.

302 — Saturday Afternoon

A Conversation with Karen Armstrong, moderated by Hallie Lovett

Karen Armstrong

This present-day veteran of high-stakes interfaith dialogue teaches us the courage of vulnerability. Karen Armstrong has grappled profoundly with her own faith tradition and emerged with a liberated spirit that clearly has God’s hand in it. Discover how you can nurture compassionate behavior and repair your misunderstandings and interpretations of your own faith. Learn more about the new Global Charter of Compassion and how you can help.

Karen Armstrong is author of more than 20 books and winner of numerous prizes promoting global religious understanding.

303 — Saturday Afternoon

“Redvolution” Mini-Workshop

Sera Beak

Ignite your divine spark—your true self, your red heart, your inner chili pepper—through fiery meditation, intuitive journaling, free movement, and inspiring inner dialogue. This gathering reintroduces spirituality in a style and lingo that fits our modern and often complicated lives. Emphasis will be placed on trusting your unique path and becoming your own spiritual authority.

Sera Beak is a Harvard-trained scholar of comparative religion and author of The Red Book: A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Divine Spark.

304 — Saturday Afternoon

Finding Your Voice

Cecilia Esquivel and Diana Sáez

Whether you sing onstage or in the shower, come discover the beautiful sounds and harmonies of your voice—and our collective voices—as we sing together. We’ll meditate on music, tell our stories of music, and improvise songs from our lives and work. Laughter is part of the empowerment, and the singing will nurture your soul and sense of community.

A native of Argentina, Cecilia Esquivel (not shown) mixes expertise in social work and music to teach and perform in the groups Cantaré and Coral Cantigas. Originally from Puerto Rico, Diana Sáez (shown) is founder and artistic director of Coral Cantigas and directs other choral groups in the D.C. area.

305 — Saturday Afternoon

The Talking Circle: Rebuilding Community

Carol Gallagher

The talking circle is a practice of reconciliation through storytelling used by Native peoples for millennia. After creating a shared altar, we will use this practice to explore its value in healing families and communities after breakdown. Learn how joy and conflict can coexist when opposing people are in sacred communion with one another.

The Rt. Rev. Dr. Carol Joy Gallagher is an Episcopal bishop of Cherokee origin and the first indigenous woman bishop in the worldwide Anglican Communion. She practices a ministry of reconciliation in the Episcopal Church.

306 — Saturday Afternoon

I Want to Write, But…!

Marita Golden

Our imagination is a portal into worlds that enlarge and sometimes save us. Release the writer in you so the words in your head and heart reach the page. We’ll use a variety of techniques to help you write through anxiety, fear, and selfcensorship, and experiment with methods that enable you to write from a sacred place of power and authenticity.

Marita Golden has distinguished herself as a novelist, essayist, teacher of writing, and literary institution builder.

307 — Saturday Afternoon

Freeing Love’s Energy

Robbins Hopkins

Robbins Hopkins Profound love is the energetic foundation of being. Yet its flow is often physically blocked. With the support of group prayer, chant, silence, and meditation, we each will identify an internal place where love is blocked and diagnose the anger, fear, or other cause. Using a repeatable, guided practice of focused healing, we will release this struggle and reopen love’s flow.

Robbins S. Hopkins, Ed.D., facilitates healing, spiritual learning, and meditation groups through her interfaith practice and as a member of a global Benedictine community.

308 — Saturday Afternoon

Leadership Wisdom from the Inside Out

Susan Collin Marks

Get in touch with your deepest leadership wisdom and the values that inform it. Then explore how to harness it for the life that is unfolding before you. Using storytelling, meditation, coaching, and reflective journaling, we will reflect on our leadership purpose and chart a path towards its expression in the realms of self, community, and the planet. We will come to see clearly how our inner world affects our experience of the outer world. Above all, this workshop will encourage wise and compassionate leadership of the self.

Susan Collin Marks is an internationally renowned peacemaker and Esalen workshop leader who seeks to balance the spiritual and the political in her work with political and civil society leaders worldwide—and in her life. She is senior vice president of Search for Common Ground, a nonprofit organization with offices on four continents that works to transform the way the world deals with conflict. She is the founder of Search’s Leadership Wisdom Initiative.

309 — Saturday Afternoon

Restore the Sacred Feminine Within

Neva Ingalls

Does your soul direct your life? Journey to the heart of this inner sanctuary through visualization. We’ll identify the concerns and dreams found there and then embody them through a restorative flow yoga practice culminating in an impassioned dance that frees us to act with courage and vitality. A brief closing practice of Yoga Nidra helps us integrate the experience.

Neva Ingalls is a certified yoga therapist, ERYT500 with Yoga Alliance, and director of Inner Domain Yoga teacher training program.

310 — Saturday Afternoon

Romantic Love as a Spiritual Path

Nancy Kadian

Many of us hold “being in love” as the ideal partnered relationship, yet find this unrealistic or hard to maintain. In the Sufi tradition, our relationship with God as “Lover and Beloved” informs all intimate relationships. Using breath, sound, imagery, movement, and meditation, we’ll delve into the holy state of being in love and touch courage and joy that can permeate our lives

A psychotherapist who integrates spirituality and psychology, Nancy Zarifah Kadian, L.C.S.W., has been a student and teacher in the Sufi Order International for more than 30 years.

311 — Saturday Afternoon

Activating the Heart that Yearns for Justice

Julie Kiser, Marianne Loewe, and Catharine Quinn

Do you want your social justice activism to be a clear expression of spiritual principles? Learn from this trio of international development practitioners whose work is recognized for its authenticity in honoring, empowering, and healing the war wounds of the rural villagers they serve. Through discussion and reflection, we will weave together our own lives and purpose, using the threads of indigenous wisdom, the life and work of Jane Addams, and the living systems theory of ecology.

Guatemala-based Julie Kiser, M.D.(not shown), community nurse Catharine Quinn, and Executive Director Marianne Loewe work for the refugee aid organization Concern America.

312 — Saturday Afternoon

Heart and Soul: Developing Your Emotional and Spiritual Intelligence

Elizabeth Lesser

Brain and social scientists identify up to 10 kinds of intelligence, yet only one—logical-mathematical— is measured on an IQ test. Come validate your multi-intelligences, especially the emotional and the spiritual. Through discussion, exercises, meditation, writing, and guided imagery, we will learn to access, trust, and actualize interpersonal skills of compassion and communication, and intrapersonal skills of introspection and faith.

Elizabeth Lesser is the co-founder and senior adviser of Omega Institute. She is the author of Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow