The Spiral Journey Team

Spiral Journey is co-facilitated by Molly Young Brown M. A., M. Div, Mutima Imani M.A. and Constance Washburn M.A. all Facilitator Members of the Work That Reconnects Network. 

Molly Young Brown

Molly Young Brown (she/her), M.A., M.Div. lives in Mount Shasta, CA with her husband Jim.  In her work as a writer, workshop facilitator, and life coach, she draws on the Work That Reconnects, ecopsychology, psychosynthesis, and systems thinking, and specializes in working with activists. She co-authored with Joanna Macy both editions of Coming Back to Life (1998, 2014) and edits the online journal, Deep Times: A  Journal of the Work That Reconnects.  Her other publications include: Growing Whole: Self-realization for the Great Turning; Held in Love: Life Stories To Inspire Us Through Times of Change (co-editor Carolyn Treadway); and Lighting A Candle: Collected Reflections on a Spiritual Life. mollyyoungbrown.com

Mutima Imani

Mutima

Mutima Imani (she/her), M.A. introduces twenty first century tools for personal/professional development and transformation. She is a global diversity specialist inspiring people to heal locally for global impact. Her leadership includes being on the team at several WTR retreats with Joanna Macy.  Mutima has an MA in Public Administration with an emphasis in phenomenology. Additionally, she is a Religious Science Minister. mutimaimani.com

Constance Washburn

Constance Washburn (she/her), M.A. is an activist, educator, director and facilitator, has been a student of the Work That Reconnects since 1994. She attended many intensives with Joanna Macy. Molly, Mutima and Constance have been co – leading WTR retreats and workshops since 2013. She is a founding Weaver of the Work That Reconnects Network helping to support the international community of facilitators. She is also a founding member of the Elders Action Network and leads an Empowered Elder Webinar using the Work That Reconnects for elders around the world.  She has a MA in Education and Theater, loves ceremony and ritual and has certificates in the Ecology of Leadership, Permaculture Design and Transforming Business, Society, and Self from U.Lab MITx. She is a mindfulness/ meditation instructor in the Vajrayana Tradition and a long time yoga practitioner and have completed 3 yoga teacher trainings. constancewashburn.com

Support Staff

Yulia Smagorinsky (they/them), M.S., Spiral Journey Administrator. Yulia is a farmer, weaver of social change and healing, permaculture designer and a graduate of the Spiral Journey Facilitator Development Program and registered facilitator of the Work That Reconnects Network.

Yulia works as a horticultural educator in the Healing Garden – a project of Down North Foundation – at the Philadelphia Juvenile Justice Service Center.

Yulia is the founder of the Emergent Abundance Farming Collective, sharing food, knowledge, skills, information, access to land and sources of healing with the local community. They are actively creating platforms and pathways to hold space for others to heal, to listen deeply and transform. wideningcircle.com

Yulia

Root Teacher

Joanna Macy Ph.D. (she/her) has given her blessings to the Spiral Journey Facilitator Development Program.   She is a scholar of Buddhism, systems thinking and deep ecology, and a respected voice in movements for peace, justice, and ecology, interweaving her scholarship with learnings from six decades of activism. 

Her wide-ranging work addresses psychological and spiritual issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of ecological awareness, and the fruitful resonance between Buddhist thought and postmodern science. The many dimensions of this work are explored in her fourteen books, which include Coming Back to Life as well as three volumes of poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke with translation and commentary.

Joanna has encouraged our emphasis on decolonizing, saying, “It is a good and necessary thing to take steps now to “decolonize” the Work That Reconnects.  Midwifed by a white woman, it inevitably carries the limitations and distortions of white blindness.”
joannamacy.net