Day one at Shambhala

Wicked fun day here today at the Shambhala Institute for Authentic Leadership in Halifax. I’m here as faculty teaching a module on the Art of Hosting with Toke Moeller and Monica Nissen. Highlights of the day included being asked to create a slam poem harvest from a World Cafe with all of the participants today, running the first day of our module and then singing tonight on stage with Judy Brown, Tim Merry, Mark Durkee, Shauntay Grant and Mary Jane Lamond (whose music I have loved for 15 years) and others. We were up on stage tonight in a mixed spoken word and song cafe performance, the highlights of which were Basia Solarz’s version of “over the Rainbow” and Shauntay’s incredible spoken word reminiscences about her childhood. We finished the night with a sweet jam on Tim and Mark’s “Switch it On.”

I’m loving how much actual art is in my life these days, especially as it relates to hosting work. One participant shared with me that she felt my impromptu poem harvest was as vivid as a graphic facilitation, which is high praise indeed, but also points to the power of words to evoke a shared meaning, if they are put into a poem. I continue to play intensively with this form of harvest.
Our module is based on the journey of the practitioner from individual to systemic work, and it looks at things that are constant at every scale. Today we started with the journey of the practitioner, opening with a check in circle, going to the chaordic path teaching and then finishing with some aikido to capture the learning of what it’s like to move with ground and centre. There were rocks balancing in the centre of our circle, an activity which is a very fast teacher about artistic hosting practice. One of our module participants, Jean-Sebastien Bouchard came alive with this practice, and he’s been balancing rocks all over the campus.

So a great week so far, following on a really interesting faculty retreat and some time with friends down at Tim’s place in Carleton. It’s a long stretch to be on the road but I’m in heaven here, learning tons, making lots of friends and playing at the edges of my life, art and work.