“The times are urgent, let us slow down.”  — Bayo Akomolafe

What are the most effective wellbeing practices and supports for this time of upheaval and uncertainty? Community leaders and activists, especially those of us who have suffered othering and colonization, are reporting greater stress, grief, and mental health challenges. As current systems transform, collapse and shift, there is a great and growing need for radical artists, activators and healers to center collective wellbeing.

Join Ginny McGinn of the Center for Whole Communities Collective and Sonali Sangeeta Balajee, founder of Our Bodhi Project and the Spiritual Social Medicinal Apothecary (SSoMA), in an experiential session in which they will lovingly guide us through mindful and creative practices designed to help us slow down, heal and collectively receive our greatest wisdoms.

This course will run from September 26 - October 17, 2023, with classes taking place on Tuesdays from 2 - 4 pm (PT), with the exception of the first session on September 26, which will be 2 - 5 pm. Classes will be held via Zoom, and recordings of each class will be available for anyone not able to attend.

Ginny McGinn is a mother, artist, writer, meditator and process designer. She has served as Executive Director of Center for Whole Communities since 2010, and previously served as president of Bioneers, a national nonprofit inspiring and realizing a shift to live on Earth in ways that honor the web of life, each other and future generations.

Throughout her career Ginny has been deeply involved in the work of social and organizational change and in building partnerships across lines of race, power and privilege. She has cultivated a profound interest in how change happens, from the level of individual transformation through the level of entire communities. It is this process of deep personal learning, change and accountability that she seeks to practice in her leadership. Ginny consults on equity initiatives and organizational change around the country. She currently serves as Vice Chair on the Bioneers Board of Directors.

Sonali Sangeeta Balajee is a proud mother, artist, organizer, facilitator, mindfulness / yoga instructor, and emerging health practitioner who works at the intersection of belonging, equity, and deep transformative change. She is the founder of Our Bodhi Project, a spiritual and political project that supports healthy movement-building and organizing through deepening our critical analyses, centering the health of all living systems, and enlivening the connection between social and collectively spiritual wellness.

Sonali's life work has focused on bringing forward ideas and strategies that speak to wholeness, specifically calling for leading with multiple truths and perspectives required for collective health. She has spent 13 years in U.S. local government, creating, leading, and managing social justice and racial equity initiatives. Her community organizing background has focused on youth development, environmental justice, racial justice, and HIV / AIDS-related advocacy and service. Her current advocacy focus is on resource mobilization for projects and initiatives that speak to the social and environmental antidotes our world so desperately needs. She has recently founded SSoMA (Spiritual Social Medicinal Apothecary), a space that gathers and protects the medicines of our times, as well as the people and life that tend to such antidotes.