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Conference Experience

 

The conference will be a full experience for participants. As well as papers, workshops and keynote speakers there will be community forums, a Wise Women’s Council, a practitioner panel, ceremonies, a posters session, beautiful music and a theatrical event – the performance of a play by Stephen Taylor.

 

Theatrical performance

Dr Steve Taylor’s play, Blasphemy and Doubt, will be performed on the Thursday evening. It will be a “staged reading” followed by an open discussion.

Blasphemy and Doubt is the story of Robin’s efforts to fight a seemingly repressive system and to seek justice for the oppressed. It highlights some of the issues involved with leading change in a socially constructed world where meaning and even reality itself can be constantly shifting. Our discussion will centre on what lessons the play holds for us in our own struggles for justice and wisdom.

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Wise Women’s Council

Maria Maguire

Maria Maguire of Unfolding Futures has worked as a consultant and educator in Australia for the last 25 years, with a focus on facilitative leadership development.

Affirming and growing purpose, participation and partnership is essential to all her work and on all levels. She and husband Richard build on the wisdom of many disciplines, approaches and technologies they have learned since university days and ever since. They include science and information systems as well as philosophy and religion, literature and psychology, management and adult education, sustainability and overseas development. Maria and Richard have worked in the business, government and community sectors and are deeply touched by the wisdom and plight of the Indigenous peoples of this land. They have personal and professional experiences on all continents, and in particular in their background countries of USA and Germany.

 

 

Elisie Heiss

 

Elsie Heiss was born into the Wiradjuri Nation and spent most of her early days in Cowra and Griffith in NSW. Married to her much loved Josef for 45years (Joe died in November 2005) and is the mother of five children and seven times a grandmother. However, this picture of a wife, Mum and Grandmother, proud in her identity, is just the front cover of a life story of strong faith, dedication to change, and a woman of action and challenge. In a lifetime of hard work and commitment Elsie has helped bring about justice for her people and recognition, respect and action from the Catholic Church, in regard to acceptance of Indigenous cultures and practices.

 

 

 

 

Maggie Hamilton

Writer and publisher Maggie Hamilton gives regular talks, lectures and workshops; writes for magazines; and is a keen observer of social trends. She is an outspoken critic of the commercialisation of childhood and the sexualisation of our boys and girls, and the pornification of our culture. In her spare time Maggie loves sil ence and to travel off the beaten track. She has a great love of desert scapes. Passionate about life and creativity and beauty, she sees her life mission as finding the extraordinary within the ordinary. Her many books include Coming Home: Rediscovering Our Sacred Selves, Love Your Work, Reclaim Your Life, Magic of the Moment and A Soft Place to Land.

 

 

 

 

 

Alison Yiangou

Alison is participating in the SlaM Conference with partner Peter Yiangou. Alison studied Physics at Bristol, entered the business world practising industrial relations and is currently responsible for HR and financial management in Yiangou Architects, an award winning practice in the UK. Peter and Alison have studied at Beshara School in England since 1972. Its programs are focused on the principles of unity and inter-connectedness, and study of the great wisdom texts such as Rumi and Ibn’Arabi. They are involved in the Self Knowledge Global Responsibility Project, which aims to combine the personal and the global, contemplation and action. For the past 10 years, they have been facilitating courses in the USA, Australia, Indonesia, Greece and Tanzania.

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Practitioners’ Panel

As practitioners bringing spirituality into the world of enterprise, whether it be business, education, public or social sector, we face persistent challenges:

How can we integrate our higher consciousness into our services and bring our wisdom into conscious practice through the course of our work with leaders and managers in organisations?

This is one of the key questions that our panel of leading practitioners will address.

The Panel members will share their unique insights from their evolving journeys as practitioners and describe how they are effectively putting their wisdom to work, which will then lead into an open and engaging question-and-answer session.

 

Susanne Rix has been introducing Spirituality in the workplace since 1982.

Her target audience has been senior management in Government and Corporations – particularly those sceptical to such concepts. This has required walking a tight rope of language. Always chosing phrases and words that take people on a gentle journey of deeper and deeper inner development. Some of the outcomes in organisations have been the creation of meditation rooms – open to all and often including a selection of various spiritual texts. (including one in Parliament House, Canberra)

Susanne is the author of Superworking: How to Achieve Peak Performance without stress, which has been published in several countries. The personal development program on which it is based, is presented around the world. It takes people on an inner journey, opening the door to their spiritual development, barely mentioning the word ‘spiritual’ at all.

Susanne spends her time between Australia and Nepal. In Nepal, she works with Sacred Journeys Nepal to take group of people on guided creative and spiritual journeys into the Himalayas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sarah Cornally is founder and managing director of Cornally Enterprises, a consultancy that specialises in improving the performance culture of organisations. With more than 20 years as a leadership and management consultant, Sarah is a leading expert in organisational dynamics, working regularly with culture and strategy at the senior executives levels.

 

 

 

 

Peter Yiangou studied architecture at Natal University in South Africa and the Architectural Association in London. He and Alison established Yiangou Architects, an award winning practice in the UK. Alison studied Physics at Bristol, entered the business world practising Industrial Relations and is currently responsible for HR and financial management in the architectural practice.
Peter and Alison have studied at Beshara School, whose programs are focused on the principles of unity and inter-connecedness, and study of the great wisdom texts such as Rumi and Ibn’Arabi. The Self Knowledge Global Responsibility Project began in 2009. It aims to combine the personal and the global, contemplation and action.

 

 

Allan Rudner
BSc, MA Cultural Psychology

With over 20 years of international business experience and an equal number of years working with males of all ages, Allan has designed, developed and delivered experiential personal leadership and rites-of-passage programs in the wilderness particularly for teenage males, men, and men over 50 years.

Allan works nationally and internationally includes one-on-on coaching and counselling, facilitating retreats, short courses, and presentations to communities and corporate clients.

In recent years Allan work with men in the second half of life has increased. Successes include my Retreat “Using Our Wisdom” and the new corporate 2-day program “How to find meaning in the second half of life”.

Notable recent coverage includes interviews in CAPA Quarterly, an Australian National Counselling publication in 2010, and the men’s health section of the Australian Financial Review in 2010.
www.LifeCrafting.org www.panicattackshelpcenter.com

 

 

Kate Walker, is the founder and owner of human, a creative agency which works with brands and businesses to uncover and bring to life their higher purpose.

During an advertising career spanning more than 20 years, Kate has worked for many of the world’s largest agencies and brands, including Unilever, Mars, Microsoft, IBM, Samsung, and Vodafone. Often leading large multi-disciplined integrated teams, across multiple markets, Kate has developed a strong understanding of how to build powerful, collaborative team cultures. Establishing human was the culmination of that experience – an agency based on conscious business principles working with business who are looking to evolve the way they connect with the world around them.

Kate is the one of the founding members of the US-based Conscious Capitalism Alliance and has attended their 2009 and 2010 C3 CEO Summits. Inspired by the work of CCA, Kate has co-founded Conscious Capitalism Australia, a ‘profit for purpose’ organisation created to help accelerate the Conscious Capitalism movement in Australia.

Peter Wallman is a Sydney based speaker, coach, consultant, workshop leader and facilitator. His work involves using a broad range of techniques to discover, ignite and direct passion for individuals, groups and organisations. Peter is the co-author of “The Wisdom of Passion” perhaps the first book to truly enunciate the nature and power of passion. From extensive research, he has come to the position that passion is the unique expression of spirit as embodied energy; the deep inner drive to reach for what we love.

As inventor the unique processes of Passion Mapping™ and Passion Cafes, he works with organizations and individuals to show up in the world with a deep sense of creativity, authenticity and purpose, and to use the power of shared passion to create harmonious collective action.

Peter has trained and accredited practitioners, and led organisational programs in Australasia, North America and Europe.

 

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Ceremonies

One of the features of the SLAM conference is the ceremonies which take place throughout the conference. Ceremonies have many purposes – just think of the pre-game chant of the Springbok rugby team! This year there will be four ceremonies, each marking the transition of the four phases that the conference passes through in the program design.

The opening ceremony will focus on welcoming all participants, each with their own wisdom from their own experience, their own traditions and their own communities. The opening ceremony will be accompanied by the inspiring music of Heather and Kym Cunio.

For the closing ceremony the focus will be on gratitude and grounding, anchoring the collective wisdom of the community at the conference and what each participant will take away. Once again this year the gongs of Myste will help to create a transformational atmosphere for the departure.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Myste is a partnership between Paula Novotna (left) and Is Guillemin (right). They design sacred sound and storytelling workshops for private groups and organisations. They create rituals, rites of passage, sound meditations (with singing bowls, planetary gongs, percussions, flutes, and voice), and group musical improvisations. Is also offers individual Sound Sessions and Feng Shui consultations with Sound.

Is and Paula are, respectively, musician and actor of two playback theatre troupes and have dual professional experience in the healing arts and in the corporate world. Is, after a decade working in human resources, has been working for the past 13 years as a therapist blending Gong Work, Body Work, Holistic Counselling and Sound Journeys. She also makes various instruments including bamboo flutes. Paula is a part-time Solicitor at LegalAid NSW, a Gong Player and a Storyteller.

Their mission: to anchor, promote and increase the Creative Energy that nourishes, inspires and assists healing and growth at an individual and collective level. See their website: www.myste.com.au

Myste will lead the closing ceremony of the next SLaM conference with Paul Eperjesi (Yeshi).

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Beautiful music

 

 

Dr Kym Cunio and Heather Cunio.

Kym has studied with a number of Australia’s finest musicians including Australian composer Nigel Butterly, conductor and producer Eric Clapham, and Jazz guitar legend Ike Isaacs. His work with the ABC has seen him compose and produce music projects for CD, radio and television over the last decade. He is one of Australia’s most accomplished researching composers and was awarded an ABC Golden Manuscript Award in 2004, in recognition of his work with traditional and Islamic music.

He is one of Australia’s most accomplished researching composers and was awarded an ABC Golden Manuscript Award in 2004, in recognition of his work with traditional and Islamic music. Kim is a lecturer at the QLD Conservatorium in Music and a member of the Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre. http://www.kimcunio.com/#!

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Community Forums

The conference seeks to balance information input, experiential and reflective activities and dialogic inquiry. Each conference participant will be a member of one of the several community forums. These are guided by practitioners and convene several times during the conference. These will:

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Posters session

Saturday early evening will be a unique event in this year’s program. The poster session will be like a medieval market place for sharing matters of intellectual significance along with performance, lyric and rhetoric. This year we are offering posters as an alternative format for you to share your ideas. A dedicated poster room will have the posters on display throughout the conference. Saturday early evening will bring all conference delegates to this space to peruse and dialogue with poster presenters.

The session will include drinks and snacks, a short monologue by Abha Banerjee and a table set up for mask-making. The latter is in preparation for the evening: a Fools masquerade. The Poster Session will be a highlight of the conference and we expect a lively interchange of ideas in a convivial atmosphere.

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Monologue – Abha M. Banerjee

A 45-minute CONVERSATION with Self, with confusions and doubts …leading into a space of transcendence called ORGANIC UNITY! The conversation flows through the same cycle of potential, action, results and belief. However, the second half embraces this cycle consciously by OWNING new mental thoughts.

Will these thoughts lead to personal mastery? A leader must equip his/her people with this power to transcend into personal leadership. A TRANSFORMATORY LEADER’s capacity to carry the people from the middle ground to this uplifted ground – from a place of inner subjective confusion to a state of personal clarity – defines success as a leader!

Download Monologue – Abha M. Banerjee


Early Morning Wellbeing Activities

Dream Group with Dr Susan Benson

Thomas Berry writes, ” The dream drives the action. In the larger cultural context the dream becomes the myth that both guides and drives the action.” Gloria Steinem reminds us that dreaming, after all, is a form of planning, and that without leaps of imagination and dreaming we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreams extend beyond the personal to include relationships, social context and spiritual awareness.

Join the morning dream group to experience working with the subtle realms of imagination, and to engage in an organic process of discovery and creation that encourages “deep listening” and opens and extends meaning and understanding. Numbers are limited to 15 participants, so we encourage you to sign up early at the conference registration.

Facilitator: Dr Susan Benson is a transpersonal counsellor, dream group facilitator and educator. Dr.Benson has been leading dream groups for over 10 years; she is president of DreamNetworkAustralia, and Board member and the Australian regional representative for the International Association for the Study of Dreams. Website: www.dreamnetworkaustralia.com.au

Yoga with Veronica Joseph

Veronica Joseph is a yoga teacher from Cherrybrook. She completed her training in India, the home of yoga. She teaches the hatha style of yoga. Veronica is also a writer for WellBeing, Australia’s leading natural health and living magazine.

Join Veronica on Saturday and Sunday for a session that will foster your flexibility, strength, calmness and awareness. Bring a yoga mat if you can. Some mats will be available at the session. Namaste.

On Friday morning, Cheyne Morris will be conducting a morning yoga session.

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Bookshop

Phoenix Rising Bookshop will have a stall at the conference, with books by speakers and other books relevant to the theme of the conference.