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Ahmed Aawar from Cairo and Max Schupbach discuss the Arab spring

Wed, 09 May 2012 09:29:00 -0500

The Deep Democracy Exchange - a DDI Publishing House

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 10:34:00 -0600

The Deep Democracy Institute has now a publishing arm, the Deep Democracy Exchange. www.deepdemocracyexchange.com Our first two books are Process Work Classics from Arnold Mindell: "The Dreambody" and "River's Way".

Open Forum on Climate Change, Portland, June 2nd

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 13:15:00 -0600

Is facing Climate Change as urgent as some suggest - And what if anything needs to be done about it?

This is the title of an Open Forum in Portland on June 2nd, facilitated by the founders of Worldwork and Processwork, Drs. Amy and Arny Mindell. Together with leading climate scientists they initiated this opportunity for a public dialogue in Portland. They write: The polarization of public discussion about climate change, and society's response to it, are due in part to the lack of communication among dissenting parties. Let's bring together people with divergent views on climate change. We will invite a balanced group of people to this discussion, including some who are enthusiastic about the need to respond to climate change and some who doubt the need for response to climate change, whatever the source of their doubt. Check out the details of the event.

Fact, Feelings, Fire 2012 - Free Turn of the Year Gathering on Dec. 31st 11am - 2pm in San Francisco

Sun, 11 Dec 2011 11:44:00 -0600

A Turn Of The Year Gathering offered by the Deep Democracy Institute

Drs. Ellen and Max Schupbach

Dec. 31st, 2011, San Francisco, CA 11 am – 2 pm
Please join us as we come together as a learning community to celebrate both the coming New Year and the one now passing into the realm of personal history. We will seize the occasion to re-discover the fire within us that lights our passions. We will play and unfold our feelings, dreams, hesitations, and find courage to bring these passions out into the world. Then, we will use Deep Democracy tools to find strategies and action plans to turn them into measurable results for the coming year.
This is a Deep Democracy gathering for Dreamers and Doers, Leaders and Home and Community Makers, Modern Mystics and Holistic Entrepreneurs, Spiritual Mavericks and Conservatives, Scientists and Change Agents. All voices are welcome!
We will present a short introduction into the concepts mentioned above, and then offer an exercise to do in pairs that will lead you through the steps of a process aimed to facilitate your dreaming.
After closure, you are invited to hang out with colleagues, friends, snacks and juices.

Where: Fort Mason, San Francisco  Fort Mason Center, Building C,  San Francisco, CA 94123

Seminar language :

everything

How much:

free

Please register (limited space)

Phone: + 1 (415) 729-5768
Email: sfleaders@deepdemocracyinstitute.org

When:

December 31 2011 11:00 AM
December 31 2011 02:00 PM

Where

Fort Mason, San Francisco
Fort Mason Center
Building C
San Francisco, CA 94123

Think Tank Gothenburg

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 01:31:00 -0500

Bernhard Le Roux (City of Gothenburg), in collaboration with Mistra Urban Futures, has organized a think-tank of conflict resolution facilitators and diversity experts to discuss building sustainable futures for Gothenburg, Sweden’s second largest city, and other cities. Mistra Urban Futures is a Swedish organization that gathers socially relevant knowledge and experience essential to understanding, improving and communicating sustainable urban development processes. It is a center for interaction between research and its practical application, promoting knowledge transfer and cooperation between businesses, interest organizations, and the public. Invited think tank participants are Max and Ellen Schupbach from the Deep Democracy Institute, Josef P. Folger (Temple Univ.); Cathy Wilkinson (Stockholm Resilience Ctr); Judith Saul; The Ctr for Conflict Resolution (Copenhagen); the Swedish Ass’n for Municipalities and Regions; Gothenburg Univ.; and Gothenburg’s City Office. Ellen and Max will present a post think tank workshop

Rejuvenation of DDI

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 23:57:00 -0500

Our DDI exec team, Ellen, Max and Stanford have been using these last months to dream, re-juvenate and re-vision our work DDI, as we earlier in July announced on our facebook page http://www.facebook.com/DeepDemocracyInstitute. While Ellen and Max worked on their various projects on the Oregon Coast and Stanford up in the harbor of Port Townsend, we also dreamt, emailed and talked and even met a couple of times face-to-face to work on our team process and develop the next steps for our think tank. As our retreat time comes to an end, we would love to share some of the highlights of that journey with you. Well, all three of us agree that we had an amazingly deep and transforming time this year and now these last months, and that we find ourselves at the beginning of a new exciting phase as individuals, as a team and as an organization. 1. We looked for something, and found ourselves First, we were so surprised. We looked for our main areas of difficulties, but instead found first our love for each other. We actually re-discovered the rich diversity of our small team Stanford, Ellen and Max. In the midst of all the work and tasks, we rarely have the time to appreciate each other, the multiple talents that each of us brings, the dedication and devotion that all three of us share, and the fun, adventurous team spirit that has pulled us together. Yes, Now, Wow! We love working together. It’s a majorly fun team! We feel we owe it to the vision that recruited us and forged us. From travelling into the interior of Sierra Leone together, to visiting the heavily guarded government compound of the Palestinian authorities, having meetings with publishers, and working with our IT teams and graphic artists in Europe, India and China, we are having a blast. We felt that our joint vision helped us through all our outer and inner difficulties: The Vision: A DDI ecosystem DDI wants to co-facilitate with other people and groups the emergence of a global Deep Democracy ecosystem whose members hope to co-create/facilitate living together in this diverse village we call Earth. We want to be part of an ecosystem of organizations and individuals that are interested in discovering “The Process” - the often invisible organizing principle that creates and resolves tensions and brings forth innate solutions, bringing everyday reality, dreams and deeper meaning. In this ecosystem we see businesses, including big business, social activists, different religions, different scientific approaches, different cultures and races, each contributing their direction and culture, insights and learning. Ode to Deep Democracy Our key principle of Deep Democracy, that nature makes no mistake and that awareness, meaning “understanding” and “unfolding” is the key to change, has helped us so much in developing our team and in developing the part of DDI that we can influence. We all feel grateful to the founders of Process Work Arny and Amy Mindell, their concepts and our training and coaching with them over the years. It has turned out to be the key develop our team. During these last 5 years, “the process” has made a team out of us. We are all three excited about our paradigm and love working on ourselves, we love the group processes among us, we love using Deep Democracy when conflicting, visioning, developing partnerships, and are thrilled: IT IS WORKING FOR US. It has brought us friendship, more self-knowledge, learning, a special collegial spirit, mutual respect, the openness and ability to enter conflict and resolve it, mutual encouragement, support of our individual visions, and team resilience that we are grateful for and also very proud of. Well, most of the time, unless we are having a bad day or week J. But yes, we have room for united vision and strategy, we appreciate competition among us, we welcome conflict and its resolution, we allow and hate jealousy, and then fail at it all to re-discover ourselves and renew. In short, we are having a really great time together and love who we have become, more often than not! Gratitude To Our Larger Team Second, we realized that we have grown enormously as an organization. Out of our first training program in Palestine have come training programs in Africa, Central Asia, Europe, the USA, and Ukraine and Russia. We consult companies and governments and for example recently have been asked by an African government to train their entire parliament. We look forward to soon publish a newsletter with all that has happened, and more details on what we are cooking on. With this realization comes an immense gratitude for our larger team, which has allowed for all of this to happen. We are overwhelmed by the idealism, heart, personal connection, professional integrity and team spirit of our larger DDI team over all the world. We cannot believe the luck that lead us together, or better the spirit that smiled on us. Thank you DDI spirit, and thank you thank you thank you team for all that you made possible. We feel supported in our basic paradigm: Wrok on yourself, follow sentient experiences and Consensus Reality will fall into place. We feel we have the single best and most amazing team of the planet. We made a list of our members at the end of this note, and look forward to presenting them soon in a new way on our new website. And, we are grateful to our board of directors for their support and to our board of advisors who have helped us and advised us in many ways. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Our Team Essence: Satyagraha Third, when working on our team issue and organizational growth, we were very excited to rediscover our love and conviction, that team and organizational strength is also based on Satyagraha, a Sanskrit term developed by Ghandi meaning “soul force” or “truth force”, meaning for us, the realization that our sentient experiences and our dreams are the most reliable part of us, and that our night dreams and sentient experiences create our most valuable benchmark in terms of where we are going and what we are achieving. We end up teaching what we are, and how we feel about the world, our colleagues and students and process that we are all involved in. The point is not only to teach students to facilitate conflict but to assist their development to become the ground that everyone stands on when conflicting with each other. Yes, we also educate on process work skills, yet, most important, our own personal development is the key to the development of our team and of DDI as a whole. Facilitation skills with individuals and groups are enhanced and set free by what Arnold and Amy Mindell call our “Second Training”, the ability to access holistic viewpoints and approaches which include transpersonal experiences like “the earth’s viewpoint”. The second training can be added to any skill set, business, facilitation, medicine, social work, politics etc. We strife to use it as our guiding principle for DDI, which is a think tank, a training organization and an experimental lab for Deep Democracy Organization Development all in one. In this spirit, we realized that our own personal work is the beginning and the end of everything. If we can develop and recognize the obstacles that we encounter as a challenge to our own personal growth, we are the Deep Democracy Institute; and if we stop, then we are no longer the Deep Democracy Institute, we are a traditional mainstream skill training organization. Inner work and finding one’s dream path, the path of least effort, is our strongest organizational leverage. We think of us as a meditation in action group, who is at home in the world of raw nature, in the offices of international business and governments, in the families that try to get along with each other, in the camps of social activists and among those who have chosen as a religion to guide their path on this planet. Everything that we did with this attitude brought us “success”, meaning a sense of satisfaction and “being on it”, as well as traditional organizational growth. We all three rejuvenated in this insight and celebrated the sheer joy in this. Yes, we are small, and want to stay small, because small is beautiful, yes, we want to encourage us to focus on going deeper and not on going bigger. We loved our discovery, it didn’t have a goodie goodie feel to it, but a rock and roll sense of fun and joy and yes, now, wow. It’s who we are, well, also J Our biggest resource and source of joy: Our Students Out of this process came a renewed appreciation and commitment to our group of students. They are precious to us and we are thrilled to learn with them and from them. Growing as an organization means growing as people, and as learners and teachers. If we grow as students and teachers, the organization grows, independent of the number of students. If the number of students or programs grow, but we don’t grow as people (if that is possible), the organization shrinks. Thank you, dearest students in East Africa, Asia, Europe, Russia, the Ukraine and the United States. You are DDI’s most venerated treasure. We are because you are, and without you there is no us and no DDI. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to learn together and for all the learning you have helped us with, the love and dedication you have shown and also the tolerance and generosity in dealing with the small team efforts of a young and immature training group. The Next Steps Fifth, in this spirit, we are ready for the next exciting steps. Over these next years, we plan several new directions:

1) Training and Programs: We want to adapt and develop our training programs, so they serve better the needs of our students. We want to create better teaching and deeper learning opportunities and give priority to assist and develop our programs, including our new Process Work Diploma, according to the needs of our students.

2) Professional Network: We want to continue to expand our professional network so that our graduates can be connected to groups and organizations that are in need of their services.

3) Consulting: Think tank development - we want to publicize and support, and expand our especially interesting new consulting contracts and networks.

4) Deep Democracy in the Public Space: We have a series of Open Forums planned with a special track for community facilitators. An important milestone is the event with the City of Gothenburg this fall, the second largest city of Sweden, where we have a think tank day with the city government and several conflict resolution experts from the USA and Europe on how to develop new diversity policies for our urban future. We also look forward to more open forums in connection with our Portland activities, our home town

5) Publishing: We are in the middle of creating a publishing adventure including a journal. We feel we can communicate with more people who are interested in using Deep Democracy but will not join trainings.

6) Training Development worldwide: We want to continue to develop the training programs especially 2012 Central Asia, Turkey and Eastern Europe, Somalia; and expansion in Norther Kenya and Sout Sudan, Ecuador and Brazil. 2013 Siberia, China, Korea, India and South East Asia. 2014 Jordan, Egypt, Emirates and Syria. We want to put more focus on open forums and new trainings that come with them.

7) Organizational Changes: We would like to create a firmer infrastructure, so we can concentrate more on the development of DDI as a creative force. For this we need bigger and better budgets, an administration staff that can help, and a developed and stable budget for each reason. We are excited about this development.

Thank You !

Thank you regional directors Dr. Ruth Weyerman Europe, Prof. Dr. Rola Jadallah in Palestine, Maryanne Wachira in Nairobi, Yuliya Filippovska, Anton Ermolenko and Masha in Kyiv, Ukraine, Dr. Xenia Kuleshova in Moscow, and Elena Kornoukov of DDI Ural, Elvira Tanzarella in Kazakhstan and wider Central Asia; and our larger circle of team members, Florence Champin in East Africa, Ahmad Adabi in Jenin, Niels and Daphne in Amsterdam, Bill Say in San Francisco, Ainura in Almaty and Oleg in Kyiv. We also want to thank Arnold and Amy Mindell for their support of DDI, members of the process work faculties, IAPOP, and those of you who have helped DDI with financial donations over these years. We can’t express our gratitude enough.

4 Stepping Stones: An International Seminar Series in San Francisco, Nairobi, Amsterdam and Moscow

Sun, 21 Aug 2011 16:12:00 -0500

We are proud to introduce our new four module, year-long seminar series: Four Stepping Stones, beginning Fall 2011 - Fall 2012, and delivered in many locations on the planet. The seminars are designed to present the full gamut of the basics of process work, cutting edge developments, and personal development tools, customized to fit with your inner and outer experiences. This composition is based on the understanding that all of us can find the beginner, the advanced learner, and the master within ourselves. In case you are interested in participating in the Four Stepping Stones, which we will first offer in San Francisco, Nairobi, Moscow, Amsterdam and Kyiv (Kiev), please click on this link, and also check out our schedule for dates and locations. "Learning dreams" show a lot of diversity. Some of you are interested in learning about Process Work and its individual relationship and group facilitation applications in order to expand the tool box that you have acquired, used, and mastered over the years. Some of you want to learn a particular skill set, and complete it with a certificate or a certificate of excellence. Some of you have discovered in Process Work a path that fits your values, hopes and dreams about facilitation and eldership, and have adopted it as a lifestyle in which personal development, professional development, and supporting the development of organizations, communities and the whole, are one. In this case, you might be interested in a Deep Democracy Diploma. The Deep Democracy training development team strives to create opportunities and structures in which each person can follow their own unique path, and use it to choose from a variety of learning offers, mixing and matching among our various locations, and learning opportunities within the many groups of the international WW and PW communities (www.iapop.org)

Wishing you fun adventures and encounters with your deepest self, The DDI Team

Ruth and Josef in Jenin (arabic translation)

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 14:38:00 -0500

الدكتورة روث ويرمن والدكتور جوزيف هلبلينغ تيسير تدريب في فلسطين

معهد الديمقراطية العميقة في فلسطين

مذكرة من زملائنا الدكاترة. روث ويرمن و جوزيف هلبلينغ، الذي نشر في نشرة لمعهد بحوث بروسس وورك ،سويسرا

تأسس معهد الديمقراطية العميقة في عام 2006 من قبل الدكاترة. ماكس وإلين شوباخ ، جنبا إلى جنب مع الدكتور ستانفورد سيفر بوصفها كمؤسسة بحثية تعليمية و معهد بحوث لتدريس الديمقراطية العميقة في جميع أنحاء العالم. تركيزه خاص على القيادة والتغيير التنظيمي والتطوير المهني وعلاقتها بنمو الفرد والشخصية.

في هذه المقالة ، نحن الدكتورة. روث ويرمن و الدكتور جوزيف هلبلينغ ، نشارككم وصفا موجزا لندوة نحن يسسرناها مارس 2011 في جنين ، كجزء من معهد الديمقراطية العميقة برنامج التدريب عملية توجيه القيادة والتيسير في فلسطين.

كانت حلقتنا الدراسية ، وبعد سلسلة من أكثر من 20 حلقة الدراسية لمعهد الديمقراطية العميقة في فلسطين على مدى 5 سنوات الماضية كجزء من دورة معهد الديمقراطية العميقة السنة 3 شهادة القيادة بالتعاون مع الجامعة العربية الأمريكية في جنين ، أكثر من 60 الحضور ، رجالا ونساء بأعداد متساوية تقريبا. وجاء المشاركون ليس فقط من مدينة جنين نفسها ، ولكن من المناطق المحيطة بها من نابلس ورام الله وقرى مختلفة في الضفة الغربية.

موضوع الندوة ، التمكين الداخلي لا سيما وهي تتسم بالقرب من قلوبنا ونحن على حد سواء نتشارك اهتماما عميقا في العمل على الواجهة بين العمل الداخلي والورلد وورك . وفقا للموضوع افتتحنا هذه الحلقة الدراسية من خلال العمل مع المشاركين على مواردهم الداخلية للتكيف مع الحياة اليومية والبحث وتسهيل تلك الحياة الفريدة اليومية في الضفة الغربية.

في اليومين اللاحقة استكشفنا التفاعل بين التجارب الذاتية للحياة الداخلية والاجتماعية والحياة السياسية للمجموعة ، والحياة المجتمعية. اكتشفنا هذه المعلومات وجعلناها ملموسة من خلال القيل والقال في الجماعة "إعادة التدوير" وفوجئ العديد من المشاركين في إلأمكانية الغنية من التصريحات التي لا معنى لها على ما يبدو التي نقولها جميعا هنا وهناك في الخفاء ، ولكن لن نفكر في أخراجها للمجموعة ألكبيرة. بالنسبة لنا ، بالطبع ، كزائرين غرباء ومدرسين، كان مثيرا للاهتمام للغاية وفرصة نادرة وامتياز لدينا لتبادل مثل هكذ أسرار محلية حميمة!

كما في معظم الندوات التي تركز على وورلدوورك ، كان عنصرا هاما آخر عملية المجموعة, فريق التدريب والمجتمع دولي المتخصص ، الذي يختار المواضيع والتوترات والاستقطابات لتركيز المجموعة عليها وتكريس الوقت والاهتمام. جلبت مجموعتنا تتصل بموضوعات مثل الثورة الفيسبوكية في مصر فضلا عن كيفية الحفاظ على موقف إيجابي تجاه الحياة ، و الغطرسة ضد الثقة بالنفس. كان الموضوع الحارق الذي اجتذب معظم الاهتمام ونحن بالتالي اكملنا معه معالجته مع التفاعل الكثيف بين ألأدوار المستقطبة والعاطفة القوية كان فرص العمل المتساوية للرجال والنساء ،

كانت الأرض المباركة جميلة لافته للنظر وقاحلة عادة في الاسابيع التي سبقت زيارتنا مع هطول امطار غزيرة على نحو غير عادي ، وكانت مغطاة باللون الأخضر الساطع ، وتوفر بالمقابل صورة بصرية جريئة إلى السماء الصلبة الزرقاء والخشاخش الحمراء في كل مكان. تلك الصور من الأسر التي مررنا عليها عند عودتنا كل يوم من الندوة لمكان سكننا، تتنزه في الحقول ويجلسون على بطانية تحت اشجار الزيتون القديمة ، وهو انطباع دائم : التوضيح لأهمية الأسرة و الاتصال العميق بالأرض الذي كان كثيرا ما يذكر في الندوة.

نحن ممتنون لإتاحة الفرصة لتبادل الانطباعات هنا لفترة وجيزة من عملنا في هذه المنطقة الرائعة ، ولفت الانتباه الى ما نعتبره العمل الهام لمعهد الديمقراطية العميقة في مختلف النقاط الساخنة في العالم.

الدكاترة. روث ويرمن وجوزيف هلبلينغ

Dr. Ruth Weyermann and Dr. Josef Helbling facilitate training in Palestine

Sun, 22 May 2011 17:20:00 -0500

Deep Democracy Institute in Palestine
A note from our colleagues Drs. Ruth Weyermann and Josef Helbling, published in a newsletter of the Research Institute for Process Work, Switzerland

The Deep Democracy Institute (DDI) was founded in 2006 by Process Workers Drs. Max and Ellen Schupbach, together with Dr. Stanford Siver, as a think tank and educational institute to research and teach Deep Democracy worldwide. Its special focus is on leadership, organizational change, and professional development, and their relationship to individual and personal growth.

In this article, we (Drs. Ruth Weyermann and Josef Helbling), share a brief description of the seminar we facilitated in March 2011 in Jenin, as part of the DDI “Process-Oriented Leadership, Facilitation and Coaching Program, Palestine”.

Our seminar, following a sequence of over 20 DDI seminars in Palestine over the last 5 years (as part of the DDI 3 Year Leadership Certification Course) in collaboration with the Arab American University-Jenin, had over 60 attendees, men and women in about equal numbers. Participants came not only from the town of Jenin itself, but from the surrounding areas of Nablus, Ramallah and various villages in the West Bank.

The seminar theme, “Inner Empowerment”, is particularly close to our hearts, as we both share a deep interest in working on the interface between inner work and worldwork. In accordance with the topic, we opened the seminar by working with participants on their inner resources for coping with everyday life, researching and facilitating those unique for everyday life in the West Bank.

In the subsequent two days we also explored the interaction between subjective experiences of inner life, social and political group life, and community life. We discovered this information and made it tangible by "recycling" group gossip! Many participants were surprised at the rich potential of seemingly meaningless remarks that we all make here and there in private, but would never think to bring out in a larger group. For us, of course, as visiting outsiders and teachers, it was a very interesting and rare privilege to have the opportunity to share such intimate local confidences!

As in most seminars focusing on Worldwork, another important element was group process. The training group, as an ad-hoc community, chooses which themes, tensions and polarizations to focus on and dedicate group time and attention to. Our group brought up such themes as “The Facebook Revolution in Egypt”, as well as “How to Keep a Positive Attitude Towards Life”, and “Self-confidence vs Arrogance”. The burning theme that attracted most attention, and that we therefore processed with intense interaction between polarized roles and powerful emotion, was “Equal Employment Opportunities for Men and Women”.

The strikingly beautiful and typically barren land had been blessed in the weeks before our visit with unusually heavy rains, and was covered in bright green, providing a bold visual contrast to the steel blue sky and ubiquitous red poppies. The image of families that we passed on our return each day from the seminar to our accommodation, picnicking in fields, sitting on blankets under gnarled old olive trees, left a lasting impression: a palpable illustration of the importance of family and a deep connection to the land, which was often mentioned in the seminar.

We are grateful for the opportunity to share briefly here impressions of our work in this fascinating region and to bring attention to what we consider the important work of the Deep Democracy Institute in various hotspots of the world.

Drs. Ruth Weyermann and Josef Helbling

DDI Facebook Community beyond 4000

Fri, 20 May 2011 12:37:00 -0500

We were thrilled the other morning, when we realized that our DDI Facebook community has now over 4000 members. Is it a sign that the time for Deep Democracy has come? Deep Democracy, Arnold Mindell's concept that psychology, spirituality and politics are inseparable, expressing themselves with different voices, and all have to be part of an inclusive leadership approach, which starts by making room for one's own inner diversity. Who are the people who "like" us on Facebook, as a Russian friend asked us? Hard to tell, but here are the top 20 cities from last week, where people who interacted with us on Facebook, became friends, or made comments.      297    Kyiv
      266    Nairobi
      139    Warsaw
      107    Moscow
      103    Tbilisi
      75    Baku
      63    Bishkek
      62    Amsterdam
      57    Yerevan
      43    Seattle
      38    Almaty
      38    Istanbul
      38    Vilnius
      36    Sydney
      33    Portland
      33    Tokyo
      32    Cape Town
      31    Amersfoort
      31    Chisinau