Spiral Journey International Programs
Join an international cohort of people dedicated to the Great Turning towards a just and thriving future for all beings. Participate in our 8-month online learning community to develop facilitation skills in the Work That Reconnects. Offered annually from September through April.
In-session: September 2026- April 2027
Embracing Elderhood on Behalf of All Life
Facilitated by Constance Washburn and Mary Oak
Join us in supporting one another in stepping into the role of Elder as sage, peacemaker, and activist. This interactive course builds community and nurtures conscious awareness in service to transforming our humanity, our Earth, and our future.
A Seven-Session Journey of Exploration and Connection
Constance Washburn and Mary Oak will offer a 7-webinar series following the Spiral of the Work That Reconnects to explore what it means to be an Elder in these challenging times. Provides 16 hours of WTR practice and experiences.
This workshop is designed to meet the 12-hour full spiral WTR training prerequisites for the International Facilitator Development Program.
September 9th-October 21st.
Peacemaking and the Work That Reconnects
An In-Person, Residential Retreat
Facilitated by Rukmini Iyer and Constance Washburn
Over three and a half days, we will move together through the Spiral of the Work That Reconnects, grounding in gratitude, honouring our pain for the world, seeing with new and ancient eyes, and exploring what is calling us to do as we go forth into today’s world . Alongside this Spiral journey, we will weave in peacemaking practices drawn from mediation, dialogue, conflict transformation, and trauma-aware facilitation.
The retreat invites participants to explore peace as a relational and systemic practice:
peace within the self, peace in relationship, peace across difference, and peace with the living Earth. Rather than offering techniques alone, the emphasis is on cultivating the inner capacities – presence, discernment, compassion, courage, and responsibility – that allow peacemaking to emerge with integrity in complex situations.
This retreat is designed to meet the 12-hour full spiral WTR training prerequisites for the International Facilitator Development Program.
November 5-8, 2026
San Damiano Retreat Center, Danville, California, USA
Facing Fragility – Toward Building a Culture of Coliberation
An advanced anti-racism workshop for white-bodied folx
Facilitated by Leah Pearson and Yulia Smagorinsky, with guest facilitator Queen Rev. Mutima Imani
We invite you to work with us toward building a sane, loving, compassionate and brave anti-racist culture.
This course builds emotional, somatic, cognitive and social capacity to confront white supremacy and systems of oppression while developing the tools to stay engaged without overwhelm. Through guided learning, somatic practices, and self-regulation techniques, participants will explore the difference between safety, challenge, and overwhelm, as well as activation versus trigger responses.
This workshop is designed to meet both training prerequisites for the International Facilitator Development Program: 12-hour full spiral WTR as well as Anti-Oppression training.
New cohort starting in January 2027
Free self-paced mini spiral
Join us for a self-paced mini spiral. The Spiral Journey Facilitation Team: Sara El-Sayeh, Ian Goh, Molly Brown, Rukmini Iyer, Constance Washburn and Yulia Smagorinsky are guiding you through meditative, somatic and journaling practices along the expanded decolonized spiral of the Work That Reconnects.
The following programs will be offered again in the future,
new dates to be announced:
Inner and Outer Landscapes of Oppression – An Asian Lens for Anti-Oppression Work
Facilitated by Rukmini Iyer
This six-part series invites participants to journey into the interconnections between inner and outer systems of oppression, drawing on the philosophy and practices of the Work That Reconnects. While much anti-oppression discourse has emerged from the U.S. context of race, this offering brings an Asian-centred and global perspective, weaving in reflections on caste, class, religion, labour, gender, colonialism, and ecological harm.
This anti-oppression workshop qualifies as a pre-requisite for those applying to the Spiral Journey Facilitator Development Program this year.
The Thawing – Taking Capitalism Through the Spiral
Facilitated by Sara El-Sayeh
Capitalism and post-capitalism or post-growth will be our thematic focus for our time together.
This workshop is designed to meet the 12-hour full spiral WTR training prerequisites for the International Facilitator Development Program.
Inside Out – Reclaiming Heart and Spirit Through the Challenges of our Times
Facilitated by Molly Brown and Mark Skelding
Join us on a six-month journey to uncover and release the potential and will for transformation deep within ourselves, our communities, and the more-than-human world.
Drawing on Psychosynthesis and the Work That Reconnects, we will explore practices of self-awareness, belonging, will, and ecological identity.
New dates TBD
Imagination for Liberation is a 6-week course for self proclaimed (closeted) dreamers who are ready to claim their role in changing the(ir) world through the power of imagination.
Facilitated by Sara El-Sayeh
New dates TBD
We are living through what Joanna Macy has called the Great Unravelling: a time of ecological breakdown, social fragmentation, deepening inequality, political instability, and widespread uncertainty about the future. Yet Macy also reminds us that alongside these crises, another story is unfolding: the possibility of the Great Turning, the transition from an industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilisation.
This highly participatory six-week course brings together two powerful streams of thought and practice: Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of Swaraj and Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects (WTR).
Throughout the course, we will place Gandhi and Macy in conversation. We will explore how swaraj and the Great Turning illuminate one another, how both challenge the dominant assumptions of industrial modernity, and how both point toward forms of transformation that are simultaneously personal, cultural, political, and ecological.
Facets of Being—Global Disparities in Power and Privilege is an invitation to explore identities and social location in local and global contexts. In this six-week course, we will dance around the expanded spiral of the Work That Reconnects while turning our gaze towards our own pockets of power and privilege or lack thereof—shifting our perspectives— and weaving diverse narratives into a fabric that can hold all of humanity.
Facets of Being—Global Disparities in Power and Privilege is designed to meet both training prerequisites for the International Facilitator Development Program: 12-hour full spiral WTR as well as Anti-Oppression training.
Online in 6 sessions. Dates TBD
Facilitated by Sara El-Sayeh and Yulia Smagorinsky
Mindful Earth Liberation
An Online Workshop in 5 sessions for WTR facilitators
Facilitated by Dr. Angela Miller-Porter and Queen Rev. Mutima Imani
Registration closed. New dates to be announced.