Category Archives: News

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Progress Report August 2021

August 2021 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Progress Report from the Community Advisory Committee for the Process Work Institute Community  

As published in our August 31 Newsletter.

Progress Report from the Community Advisory Committee

(Rhea Shapiro, Lynn Lobo, Mbali Maseko, Emma Dugan)

for the PWI Community

PWI has begun to actively engage in making changes to promote diversity, equity and inclusion over the last year, however this is the first official report from the Community Advisory Committee, and begins a commitment to regular progress updates.

Dear community,

We recognize that this is a long-term growth process and we are in the beginning stages. We plan to publish monthly updates on progress made at PWI in its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) process to keep the entire community informed.

Please Note: In this report we are using: People of the Global Majority (PGM), an empowering term emphasizing that over 80% of the world’s population are people of color, not white.  POC and BIPOC are US centrist terms not used or related to by most of the world.

Here is a report on PWI actions towards DEI goals over the last year:

1.        In July 2020, PWI initiated a Board strategic working group to focus resources and leadership on anti-racism work, and search for an outside consultant to advise PWI in its DEI process.

2.        In August 2020, PWI and the Board strategic working group established a community based anti-racism Community Advisory Committee (CAC) to advise the PWI Board and to bring external expertise, guidance and accountability to the organization. Members of the committee that represent the Global Majority receive an honorarium to acknowledge their expertise and time contributions.

 

3.        The Community Advisory Committee has reviewed PGM, student, faculty and community feedback from past years and based on that feedback came up with recommendations for the PWI Board to make structural changes to support anti-racism in the Institute.

 

4.        October 2020 In service faculty training: Errol Amerasekera and Dawn Menken: Working with Race at PWI – Learnings, Growth and Systemic Change,

 

5.        In January 2021 leadership began working with outside consultant, Ed Porter (Courage of Care) to create anti-racism structures and strategies within PWI. Some of his suggestions are as follows:

  • a.   He has stressed the importance of staying in relationship and working with our differences.
  • b.   Recognizing that the social issues and culture are in constant change so we need to create structures that can respond to the present needs of our students and faculty.
  • c.    He suggested we discuss cultural appropriation both inside the organization and publicly in the larger community. We organized a PWI faculty roundtable in the school and plan to post responses. We also plan to create a public roundtable in fall 2021.
  • d.   He has emphasized the importance of uplifting the PGM faculty voice. This is a long-term project. PWI has begun to address this need by engaging more PGM faculty both in public courses and in the academic course curriculum.

 

6.        PWI has strengthened its Grievance Procedures to address rank issues and bring up student DEI complaints. In January 2020, we created an Ombuds role (Rhea Shapiro) to investigate and discuss complaints to reach a satisfactory resolution for the student. This process has been used by 2 students since its inception.

 

7.        June 2020, there was Institutional acknowledgment to the PGM community through the PWI newsletter of our grief and regret surrounding past actions and our commitment to changing. 
 See Newsletter June 15, 2020.

 

8.        In Sept 2020, an apology was sent by email to PWI students and faculty. We include a copy of that to share with the whole community:

Update on Racial DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) Work at PWI (Sept 2020)

Hello to everyone reading this update on our racial equity work here at PWI. As Hellene stated in her June update: “As an organization we are committed to earning back trust through actions and outcomes.“ As a predominantly white organization we have begun to actively struggle with our white dominant culture and actions.

The PWI board, faculty and administration are totally committed to the work of creating a school that is anti-racist with an DEI focus. We have had an unconscious white lens and we are waking up around this and we are dedicated to change; to becoming an anti-racist organization where everyone’s reality is truly supported and encouraged.

We cannot go back in time, but we can apologize to the many People of the Global Majority, both faculty and students, who have suffered with the actions and attitudes that come from our white privilege within PWI. Many students and faculty have been speaking out, saying that this has been happening for far too long in our organization. Our white micro and macro aggressions created a culture that has been painful and debilitating. We know that just an apology is not enough.

Realizing this and trying to change this culture, the PWI Board is instituting a systemic DEI Change Process. In July, the board created an Anti-Racism Work Group. Also, we have begun to connect with community members to create a Community Advisory Committee that will give PWI feedback about how we are doing. We are engaging a Strategic Planner to help us create a long-term plan for racial equity. Also, we are initiating conversations within the school with an outside facilitator to address white dominance. We are committed to this change process and making PWI a safer place for People of the Global Majority and all of us connected to the organization.

Thank-you, the Anti-Racism Work Group, PWI Board (Rhea Shapiro, Elva Redwood, Irina Feygina)

9.        In Spring 2020 PWI created PGM student scholarships of which 2 students have made use. Also funded were PGM Guest Faculty positions for the Masters of Process Work Race and Culture class.

 

10.     We have the intention of significantly increasing People of the Global Majority representation on the PWI Board. In Summer 2021, Diane Wong joined the board and we are in the process of inviting a second member.

Thank you for your interest in the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion process in which PWI is continuing to engage. The Community Advisory Committee is now committed to giving monthly updates on the progress of PWI. Stay tuned.

Respectfully,

The Community Advisory Committee

Rhea Shapiro, Lynn Lobo, Mbali Maseko, Emma Dugan

To reach the Committee please email rhea@processwork.org

800 years young & don’t miss our January Intensive

How did you get so big?

I stood in the rain, awed by an 800 year old being rising up through the mist. The low grrrrr of ocean waves crashing not far away, I sobbed quietly, overwhelmed by joy and awe in the Pacific Northwest coastal forest.

Western science has just recently understood that forests are collaborative diverse communities. The visible part of the forest can look like a competition for light, space and nutrients. But underground, the forest is a network of inter-species connections used for support and nourishment.

What scientists call ‘mother trees’ partner with fungi to pass nutrients, protection from disease, and information exchange that helps the entire forest flourish. This 800 year old giant has lived with generations of indigenous peoples, witnessed the recent arrival of Europeans, felt the steady deforestation of its coastal homeland, all the while nourishing and uplifting the forest community of which it is part.

As we farewell this year and welcome 2021, I am wishing us time to feel our roots and the invisible connections they make. To wonder at the weave of inter-species process that unfolds between and through us.

Could our roots help us transform the intense polarizations of this time?

Could our mother trees hold us through vulnerability, fears and denial and give us the courage to act with “stubborn optimism” for racial justice and a safe climate future?

How have your underground networks nourished you this year?

How have you been a ‘mother tree’ to others in your community?

Join us online this January for our introductory intensive to study the skills for unfolding process. Together we can find our way to a better normal.

Love
Hellene, from all of us here at the Process Work Institute

Click here for our latest newsletter (December 26,  2020)

Hellene Gronda, Executive Director
Ph.D, PW. Dipl, MA, BSc/BA(Hons)
Hellene has a life-long interest in personal and collective change and has been inspired by Processwork for over 30 years. An experienced leader in government and nonprofit settings she values the deep optimism and courageous spirit of Processwork, and its ability to find creative and unexpected solutions to the most difficult, confusing or inexplicable challenges.

Black lives matter

The Process Work Institute stands in community and solidarity against racism and all those who are protesting against police brutality for a fair and just system. Black Lives Matter and we grieve the recent deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery and the countless others who have lost their lives to police violence. This is an unprecedented moment that challenges us all to not be silent and to use our voice, energy, and ideas to work towards change and focus on the impact of racial disparity in our communities.

The Process Work Institute condemns all prejudice, racism and injustice in our society, country, and world. We will continue as an organization to work on improving our own awareness, to examine ourselves, and create dialogue which leads to change and more inclusive community.

Photo by frankie cordoba on Unsplash

If you have the means, please consider donating to support the many incredible organizations led by Black, Brown, Indigenous and People of Color, offering their leadership in the movement for change. Some links below as starting points, with special focus on Portland groups:

Right to Health Founded by Leslie Gregory. Right to Health is a Portland based nonprofit organization working to address inequities using a restorative and health perspective, and leading a campaign for the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health to declare racism a public health crisis. 

Official George Floyd Memorial Fund

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund

Black Lives Matter

Movement for Black Lives

Black United Fund 

Coalition of Communities of Color

MRG Foundation

PAALF (Portland African American Leadership Forum)

Urban League of Portland

COVID-19 Coronavirus – Courage, Solidarity and Awareness – together we get through this

Courage, Solidarity and Awareness – together we get through this

Portland, March 7, 2020

March 19, 2020

Dear PWI community,

Wishing all of us strength, solidarity and compassion in these difficult times.  Some in our community are already deeply impacted, and others are feeling the pressure and anxiety of an uncertain future and threats we can barely comprehend.

First priority is consensus reality – please follow all guidelines and directions for public health and safety in your local context. Some links and information below.

Courage to all of us as we do our best to access and follow Consensus Reality, Dreamland and Essence level information to guide us through impossible times. Processwork is built for chaos, and our awareness skills have never been more needed.

Over the coming weeks, as we adapt to these scary times and necessary public health measures, PWI faculty will be offering online community opportunities to connect to the dreaming processes and unfold the meaning and resources in these agonizing, terrifying and perhaps transformational experiences.

Arny and Amy’s seminar in late May, and Arny’s supervision June 1st will provide a powerful space for exploration and support. They will be available online  – livestream or video recording, and we are looking forward to connecting together as a community in the virtual world.

On a CR level, as a school, we have received the latest Executive Order from the Oregon Governor, effective March 21. This requires that all in person instruction must cease until April 28.  I have written to our contact regarding guidance for the Spring quarter, but the situation is very uncertain and changing as we all know.

For current students, we will be continuing to work with each cohort and individuals to find the best way forward for everyone.  It is likely that we will be prohibited from in person instruction for the Spring Quarter, and that travel restrictions will be continuing to impact many of us.  PWI is exploring alternatives and will be connecting with individual students as well as each cohort to navigate this together.

Our practitioners have shifted their practices online, and we have cancelled in person meetings at the PWI building, as ordered.  PWI administrative office is working to adapt to the required measures as everywhere.  We put in place enhanced hygiene practices and are now staggering staff schedules and preparing to be able to shelter in place and maintain essential functions.

What a time. Stay strong, stay connected, take care of each other, together we will get through this.

Reach out if you have questions or concerns.

Sending love in these difficult and uncertain times

Hellene

 

Hellene Gronda, Ph.D.
Executive Director, Dean of Academic Programs
Office: 503 223 8188
Pronouns: she/her/hers and they/them/theirs

 

COVID-19 Information Links

 

From Oregon Health: simple steps you can take to protect yourself and your family from COVID-19 as well as influenza and other illnesses

  • Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
  • Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth with unwashed hands.
  • Avoid close contact with sick people or animals.
  • Stay home when you are sick.
  • Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw it away. If you don’t have a tissue, cough into your elbow.
  • Clean and disinfect objects and surfaces that you frequently touch.
  • Avoid non-essential travel to regions listed in CDC travel advisories.

 

Sharing the Handprint: How Processwork Holds Me to My Dream

By Jon Biemer

August 21st, 2019 is a date I will remember.  This is when I received an offer from Rowman & Littlefield to publish From Footprints to Handprints: Creating Sustainability to Heal Our Planet.  How did I focus and stay the course long enough to reach this point of fruition?  I have Processwork to thank for that.

Competing Passions

I felt pulled in two seemingly incompatible directions. 

The idea of getting a PhD with a cross emphasis in sustainability and spirituality intrigued me, even though I had no inclination to use it for consulting or teaching. 

Also, for two decades, I had followed a Native American spiritual path.  I left my full-time job, partly with the intention of deepening my commitment to ceremony and carrying medicine. 

I brought my divergent callings to a Processwork class on altered states.  We would learn about the diversity of dreams within ourselves, and how they insist we pay attention.  The instructor used a basic Processwork technique of amplifying symptoms, in this case my yearnings.  He asked class members to form two groups, each advocating an aspect of my dreaming. 

The PhD group regaled me with congratulations for choosing their path and assured me that I would join a cadre of esteemed colleagues.  I would receive a badge of honor.

The spiritual folk literally pulled me away from the academic crowd.  They reminded me of my desire to help others.  They appealed to a calling higher than the practical plane.  They loved me. 

But I couldn’t stop looking over my shoulder.  I could not ignore the conventional crowd.  The exercise ended in chaos — but I had to treat the PhD seriously. 

My process toward the handprint

During the break I filled a whiteboard with my reservations.  I’m a slow reader.  I don’t enjoy studying, let alone following rules.  Spending four years – if all goes well – away from my environmental activism seems like a selfish distraction.  I’d be spending less time with my wife.  I wouldn’t be helping other people much either.  And the significant cost… I was at an edge, a Processwork term for fearing change.

Two bubbles on that web of thought (some call it a mind map) stood out for me – “contribute something unique,” and “need to be recognized.”  Ah… Those were the reasons the PhD was so compelling.  I realized there may be other paths to meeting those needs. 

Unfolding My Path

Upon hearing my story from the altered-states class, my wife Willow said, “You could get a PhD from the universe… rather than a university.” 

That resonated with me. 

I could intentionally treat my adventures in sustainability as coursework.  I had already managed energy conservation programs professionally.  I had supported ballot measures to curtail nuclear power.  We were in the middle of an eco-remodel of our new house, creating a “food forest” in place of a lawn, and partnering with the Johnson Creek Watershed Council to remove invasive English Ivy.

For my unique contribution, I was already nursing the idea of the Environmental Handprint, the good we do, the ways we can change the system.  Encouraged by my altered-states experience, I submitted and presented a professional paper about the Handprint, and… One morning the vision for a book crystalized. 

I loved writing, but it had always been a lower priority than getting things done.  But now a book would serve the role of my dissertation.  Besides, I might receive some recognition.

The Gift of a Headache

Four years into my book project, work proceeded slowly.  Some of my data was going out of date.

And another problem claimed my attention.  Headaches.  A fiercely intense pain over my right eye would claim my entire attention for about twenty minutes.  They came mostly during sweat lodge ceremonies.  The doctor had a nine-syllable name for these headaches and some medicine – which worked.  But, after ordering precautionary imaging, he offered no physiological reason why I was getting them. 

I brought that reality to another Processwork class.  In this instance, I walked with the seemingly incompatible energies of my ordinary plodding self and the pounding energy of my headache.  I moved first with one energy, then the other. Gradually, they fused into a lively dance. Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” came into my mind. 

I moved with the music, feeling its punctuated downbeats.  I admitted to myself that the heat of a sweat lodge was part of the headache problem.  Yes, but that thought didn’t feel helpful.  Processwork reminds us that physical symptoms can reveal wisdom that we are not already aware of, perhaps something needed for a breakthrough.  I kept dancing.

Eventually, these words came to me, “The dance is my spiritual practice.” And then, “The dance, slowed down, is my walk.” 

Suddenly I understood that my book – a walk of sorts – is a spiritual calling. 

My headache told me that life was out of balance.  It is okay to back off the sweat lodges.  I’m not abandoning my spiritual path.  I’m deepening it – as I hoped to do back when I took that altered-states class.

The labor and discernment I pour into my book is my commitment to serve.  Making money is not my goal.  However, it is important to find a mainstream publisher and partners willing to share this earth-healing message widely. 

Therefore, engaging a book coach became yet another course in my advanced study.

Takeaway

From Footprints to Handprints required six years of writing and rewriting. It represents the practicality, creativity and persistence of millions of people who are contributing to a better future.  It offers nearly two hundred Handprint Opportunities.  And it reflects the power of Processwork to help inner needs make a difference in the outer world.

The image with this article, a green handprint superimposed on the 1972 NASA photograph of the Earth, is a symbol for sustainability, much as three arrows in a triangle symbolize recycling.  

By Jon Biemer

Jon Biemer earned a Certificate in Process-oriented Psychology in 2014. He also is a registered Professional Engineer. He provides Organizational Development consulting to businesses and non-profits. Check out his website at www.JonBiemer.com. Contact him at jonbiemer@gmail.com, especially if you’d like to receive publication announcements about From Handprints to Footprints: Creating Sustainability to Heal Our Planet

Image credits: Jon Biemer

Featured Student: Marissa, 2nd year MAPOF

bbf9224b-b669-4e47-b629-9796eaeaa416Marissa is a second year student in our Master of Arts in Process-Oriented Facilitation and Conflict Studies program. We are thrilled to have been given permission to share some of her poetry which sheds light on a part of her experience growing up as a mixed-race person in the U.S. 
 
In addition to writing poetry, Marissa can also be found performing with her band at local spots around Portland. Thank you for sharing with us Marissa!
 

 

swimming lessons

 

it’s strange to learn a language secondhand

a language that lives in me

lives in my childhood

lives in my blood

yet shame so often holds it hostage to the tip of my tongue

it could “never be good enough”

a language that lives in the steam of dumpling baskets

the clanging of dim sum carts

and my mother’s beckoning hands

and too–

her scolding

passed down from mother to mother

“mei mei, don’t go to bed with your hair wet or you’ll wake up with a headache”

the language that lives in the food i’ve craved

as a 6 year old to 26 year old

but could never

and still cant ever

muster up the courage to order from a waiter

and claim the language as my own

my shame is my mother’s shame

and my clumsy american tongue could never be my mother’s native one

light and agile

carved around tones and ancestry

my ears can’t hear her accent

to me

her voice is just her own

to me

it has always been her own

but to her

her english was only ever

“never good enough.”

to others

her accent was a hassle

a dismissal

another reason to close an office door

to lay her off

to turn their head

to shut their eyes like blinds

she asked me at age 4 how to pronounce “zoo”

she still asks me sometimes, “shzoo”

i hear the hint of home in her accent

the hint of home

when spoken here

outcasts her

the hint of home

causing people to try to

translate her

TO TALK TO YOU LIKE THEY ARE ARE SHOUTING AT YOU FROM ANOTHER CONTINENT ACROSS THE OCEAN

but you swam here at 26

and you continue to swim

even though no one ever taught you how

at age 7

you reminded me everyday before YMCA swimming lessons

how lucky i was to learn to swim

because you were never so lucky

we would go to the pool

and you would stand at the shallow end

waving at me

standing alone

smiling

in your single

black

swimsuit

in the dressing room

i watched you gaze at your reflection in the mirror

turned sideways

head cocked

your hands cupping your belly

this swimsuit you bought specifically

to stand

not swim in

 

you float at the shallow end

avoiding the water so your hair doesn’t get wet

 
 
 
Interested in additional information about the Master of Arts in Process-Oriented Facilitation and Conflict Studies (MAPOF)? Click here to be taken to the MAPOF page or contact our Outreach and Admissions Coordinator to schedule an information session! 

No results.

Featured Student: Vanessa, 2nd Year MAPOF

unnamed (1)Vanessa says one of the things making her excited these days is applying her Processwork learning in the diverse projects she is involved in. Recently Vanessa has been working in various places that are in transition. This includes in Greece, where systems are collapsing or dying, as well as working in Canada helping to facilitate an ongoing truth and reconciliation process with indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. She shared a recent story of working with a young woman indigenous leader who is building new partnerships between youth and mainstream institutions and government. One of the big tensions is around different concepts of “time” and the different cultures around time: how to honor both the “funding deadlines” as well as the deeper historical arcs of time, and to bring into these partnerships that things need to take their own time. Vanessa worked with her on “in-sourced” power and “outsourced” power to remind her that she has more power in any situation than she thinks she does, especially when she goes into these meetings.
 
Vanessa shared another recent experience working in a facilitator role with a group of women religious leaders who are part of a massive transition in how institutional religious life is lived. Vanessa was able to introduce the idea of role theory, and that people are people, but they are also occupying roles that are assigned by any given field or context. This concept was so helpful to them as they were struggling particularly with the role of the “bully”. It’s a role that is alive in their leadership and congregation, and also is a systemic issue in the Church also around abuse of power. Vanessa was able to explain different types of power such as positional power, personal power, and social power, which helped them realize that at any given moment they can have a different relationship to power and be in a different role. Once they understood this idea, they were very creative about how to begin using these ideas, even to address bigger changes in the organizational hierarchy to which they belong.
 
Vanessa feels she is in a major change period of life. Part of engaging in the MA in Process-oriented facilitation allows her to see her world work as connected to a larger community of practice. Vanessa also writes poetry. She recently wrote a poem called “Into the Deep, A Worldwork Fairy Tale” after her 5-day live-in residency with her cohort. Some lines from the poem include:
 
We welcome the new Loves
unravel the old shames
reveal the burdens of
my pain,
your loser
our privilege, race and rank
 
We risk dissolving something known
to see the deeper, stranger truth
of our own experience
 
Thank you Vanessa for being our featured student and for sharing a bit of your experience with us!
 
 
Interested in additional information about the Master of Arts in Process-Oriented Facilitation and Conflict Studies (MAPOF)? Click here to be taken to the MAPOF page or contact our Outreach and Admissions Coordinator to schedule an information session! 

No results.

Check out the new Faculty VLog: What’s the Process?

Introducing a new feature to the Process Work Institute website: What’s the Process? The Process Work Institute Faculty Vlog. This vlog will feature videos by faculty at the PWI addressing questions relevant to all aspects of Process Work including body symptoms, organizational work, counseling and more. Have a look and don’t forget to bookmark!

What’s the Process? The Process Work Institute Faculty Vlog

Recent Entries »