Process Arts+*referred to by
"Getting a sense of culture"(sm)
...a group orientation and learning process created by Brandon WilliamsCraig that is based in mytho-psychology. AsIn uncovers the intangible and tangible workings of culture—imagination and the concrete realities of daily life creating each other—and sets the stage for understanding and practicing the Process Arts, the field that studies and practices group process design and facilitation.
Association Building Community
Founded in 1999 and incorporated in 2001, ABC operates as a fiscal sponsor for community building initiatives and as an intentional distributed community devoted to developing the Process Arts for social justice and conflict facilitation training.
Toward this end they conduct public and private dialogues, such as the community conversations in 2010 with Huston Smith and Brandon WilliamsCraig, as well as connecting Process Arts professionals with individuals and groups ready to work through conflict toward peace. Peace is impossible without conflict done well. Every minute/dollar donated to ABC deepens and strengthens the sustainable capacity of your community to respond creatively to difficulty and difference.
Please visit their website to learn more...
"Peace is conflict done well."®
Healing Friction is a method of accessing conflict directly through the body (physical/psyche, politic, of knowledge) at work and at play to get at how wanting different things and being different people can work well in service to life and the building of community rather than poorly in service to domination and needless suffering. By this route a group begins to teach itself Associative Inquiry, how ideas and their consequences are related in the making of cultures, in order to see how they are not only separated but are also related through difference, in order to look for ways through turf wars and systems that are designed to make either victims or victors of everyone involved.
After coming to terms with the degree to which culture is now made as an artifact more than ever before, by early practitioners of the Process Arts, the next step is to characterize that making. From the basics of fiction and narrative (conflict drives plot) to the interplay of international diplomacy, or lack thereof, it is Friction that defines a given system. As tired fantasies of simplistic ways to deal with difficulty are fading into history, a new psychological mythology (fiction) of friction is emerging. Healing Friction is the peace-practice of group process design forming from this emergence.
My dissertation for a doctorate in Mythological Studies with an emphasis in Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute was entitled
The Myth of Peace: a culture of peacemaking, the process arts, and the emergence of a global communitarian mythology
The term "Process Arts" refers to the field of all disciplines which study, design, and facilitate group process. I proposed in The Myth of Peace that the process arts have a culture-making component and thereby may make a beneficial collective contribution to "Community," the next planetary mythology built of social justice-based narratives and practices emerging around the world in response to the challenges posed by industrial globalization. This has implications, at least, for education, psychology, management and organizational development, polity and governance, and international peace-making.
This web resource is a repository for information on the project, and you are invited to participate by finding examples of the Myth of Peace as it grows, creating a page on this site for the new information, and linking to it below. Please don't forget to tag it using whatever social bookmarking tool you prefer (Myth of Peace related links) and then Tweet the discovery. Twitter Hash
Please request a Culturesmith account, sign in, and "watch" this page for updates. Also sign up here to participate in the Process Arts discussion list and to stay informed about the growth of this field of study, group practice, and cultural activism. You might also want to hover over the bottom right side of this page and click on "watch" to know about breaking news and new developments.
Guardians of Peace
(GPx)
YOU MATTER.
Celebrate difference. Do no harm. Peace is conflict done well.
Guardians are those who co-create a training cohort continually preparing to receive and work through conflict of any kind as though:
- Peace is usefully redefined as working well by way of conflict, rather than the state of its absence.
- Something essential and perpetual about being human is expressed as differences in all struggles. Though the story of a particular problem may reach a conclusion, Conflict doesn't resolve.
- Experienced conflict facilitation assists the development of differences, the understanding of archetypal themes, while preventing victimization.
- Learning and practicing this Process Arts, Conflict Done Well, is an essential part of any person's lifelong education.
Culturopoiesis is an idea originally proposed in my dissertation. Derived from the literary discussion of mythopoesis, Culturo-poiesis directs attention to the ways in which culture is made through narrative world views, is artifactual, and the lengths to which human beings have gone, and will go further to refine this as an artform of the imagination and the Process Arts (group process design and facilitation).
The image is of Greek extraction and depicts the artificer god Hephaistos.
Being In Movement® mindbody training (Watch Video) is a Process Arts created by Paul Linden, which uses body awareness instruction to help people increase comfort and improve performance in whatever areas of their lives are important to them. BIM uses practical movement experiments to help people learn how to examine the Body as the Self, and it focuses on helping people learn how to create a mindbody state of awareness, power and love as a foundation for effective action. BIM explores the underlying links between structural/functional efficiency, emotional/spiritual growth, and environmental/social justice.
BIM focuses on helping people overcome the body's distress response. When people feel threatened or challenged in any way, they typically contract their breathing, posture, movement, and attention. This can take a number of forms. It may take the form of hardening and bracing as a preparation for strength and effort. It may take the form of stiffening and constricting in shock. It may take the form of collapse and numbness. Or elements of these can combine. This body contraction can be seen in situations ranging from sports to job interviews to abuse and so on.
Contracting the body reduces ease and effectiveness. Acting in a state of contraction is like driving with the parking brakes on. People cannot function effectively, and this ineffectiveness reinforces their feelings that the challenges or threats they are facing are indeed difficult or overwhelming.
Beyond just physically interfering with performance, contraction leads to alienation and separation from oneself, one's body, the environment, and other people. This separation not only reduces the capacity for effective action, but it is also a deep spiritual wound.
Contrary to our normal distress response, action is much more efficient and effective when the mind/body is free and expansive.
BIM approaches the body as both an objective process governed by rules of physics and biology and a subjective process of lived consciousness governed by rules of awareness, emotion, and energy flow. By examining how breathing, posture, and movement simultaneously shape and are shaped by thoughts, feelings, and intentions, BIM teaches people to develop an integrated mindbody state of awareness, calmness, power, love and freedom and use that state as a foundation for effective action.
BIM teaches people to develop an integrated mindbody state. Speaking structurally, this state is one in which the musculoskeletal system is balanced and free of strain. Speaking functionally, this state allows stable, mobile, graceful and easy movement. Speaking in terms of intention/energy, this state involves staying anchored in one's core while reaching out into the world with a symmetrical, radiant, expansive awareness and will. Speaking in psychological/spiritual terms, this state is an integration of power and love (Watch Video) and freedom.
BIM is an educational rather than a medical or psychotherapy approach. It does not diagnose or cure. Rather, it teaches people new resources for effective action. BIM is often helpful as an adjunct to appropriate treatment, but BIM is not a replacement for appropriate treatment when that is required.
Where?
Aikido of Berkeley 1352 S 49th St. Richmond, CA
When?
Feb 18, 19, and 20, 2011
What?
When we speak of the future of Aikido, we mean not only the ever-expanding practice of the art by over one million students and teachers in dojos around the world, but also the extension of aiki principles into the Process Arts (group process design and facilitation), which is to say at least into politics, facilitation, somatics, activism, social justice, law enforcement, psychotherapy, and education at all levels, so that peace-building responses to literal, systemic, and even potential violence may be ever-ready.
Themes
- Why aikido works and doesn't work (anatomically speaking) on the mat
- How aiki works and doesn't work (metaphorically speaking) in the dojo, community, and beyond
- Compassion and awareness as a power source
- Investigating the underlying logic (body and mind) from which aikido technique springs into the world in Process Arts.
Who?
Robert Frager Ph.D. is renowned for his pioneering work in the field of transpersonal psychology and for his role in establishing the country's first educational institution dedicated to this emerging field of research and practice. He also teaches courses in Spiritual Psychology and The Wisdom of Islam at the online University of Philosophical Research in Los Angeles. He is also a Sufi teacher, or sheikh, in the Halveti-Jerrahi Order, in which he was initiated by Muzaffer Ozak. He currently leads a dergah in Redwood City, California as Sheikh Ragip al-Jerrahi. Dr. Frager has been practicing the martial arts for over 50 years. He has been practicing Aikido since 1964 and currently holds the rank of 7th dan. He personally trained with the founder of Aikido, Morihei Ueshiba, while living in Tokyo, Japan in the mid sixties. (from Wikipedia)
Paul Linden Ph.D., 6th dan, is Dojo Cho of Aikido of Columbus and an alum both of UC Berkeley and the Aikido Club begun there in the late 1960's by Senseis Robert Frager and Stan Pranin. Linden Sensei created and teaches a somatic process called "Being in Movement®" mindbody education, which fundamentally is drawn from Aikido. He will take us through many of the exercises he has developed to teach people to approach conflict from an inner state of calm alertness and compassionate power. He is a Board Member of Aiki Extensions, the international organization dedicated to encouraging aiki principles, building bridges of peaceful practice across divisions of martial affiliation, nationality, race, class, and gender, by valuing all forms of difference. More on Paul Sensei's contribution to the seminar may be found here
BODY AWARENESS TRAINING AS A FOUNDATION FOR AIKIDO PRACTICE
An Aikido Workshop with
PAUL LINDEN, 6th Dan
Columbus, Ohio USA
This Aikido workshop will focus on how to use body awareness methods (drawn from Being In Movement® mindbody education) to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of Aikido defense techniques and deepen Aikido practice as a meditative process. You will work with breath, posture, and intention to develop Aikido technique which is open, balanced, powerful, loving, and effective. These body awareness methods are equally useful outside of Aikido in helping people in such areas as stress management, conflict resolution, and improvement of daily movement tasks.
“I am astounded at Paul’s ability to read the significance of the smallest body response. When I received mind/body work from him, he guided my attention in a way that resulted in deep insight and healing for me. I would like to strongly recommend Paul's workshop on Aikido and body work to all Aikidoists. I believe that Being In Movement training is insightful, profound, and deeply healing.” Mary Heiny Sensei, 6th Dan Aikido
Peace is a martial art of nonviolence. If you'd like to be good at it, you must train regularly, using both your body (action) and words (communication) together to work through the actual bullying and passive aggression of every day life. When someone chooses not to consider your needs before acting, it is common to not know what to say or do next. Martial Nonviolence provides and practices options which increase safety while opening the door to getting everyone what they need.
I hope that my family, friends, and colleagues will help me learn to be peaceful by being both martial
- address conflict directly by practicing techniques that work
and nonviolent
- practiced opting-out of individual and group domination, especially including retribution, in order to work toward helping everyone get what they believe they need.
It is essential to begin stating explicitly and regularly, at the earliest possible moment, that doing conflict well is an essential skill, to be practiced often, and that keeping one's center balanced and moving in the presence of "attacks" is the core physical and emotional discipline in times of stress. The next essential piece always involves speaking the truth, at least to oneself, for now, if the truth would unhelpfully escalate tensions.
Some developmentally appropriate steps and words which create good conflict habits, which I have been refining through practice for several years now, go something like this: "I feel hurt by what you were saying/doing. When that happens I have a hard time knowing what to do. Would you like to take turns listening to each other now or should we be apart and try again later?" Next steps might include: "Should we ask for help? What do you need? Let's go together. Tell me more."
All the while, the attention is on "how shall we do this together?" rather than "how can I make you stop/leave me alone/grow up," etc. because that simply invites the next attack. Whenever "they" come after you, they should know that they will be received in a way that makes further attack irrelevant and other options more attractive. Practice is required to deploy the art of changing the rules to co-create a world that works well for everyone involved in a way that remains ever open to hearing from others what that might be.
We hope to create new and better conflict habits which are more likely to get you more of whatever you need.
To get started, I'll begin a conflict and you act out a common reaction.
The path to new habits can be a bit complex, since there is a lot going on in the body when you have been doing something the same way for a long time. Often one begins with the usual, and then changes to one part of the new habit at a time, perhaps following this pattern:
- Notice a Need Out There (isms)
- Notice a Need In Here (somatic)
- Believe, Choose, Decide (by acting)
- Do the Usual (study your habit)
- Change the Other (attempt to externalise)
- Become Different Through Repeated Steps (settle in to purpose)
What we've done is take a largely unconscious process and brought it into the light by doing it on purpose. We move conflict from something to be handled automatically/reactively (avoided, resented, exploited) to something it makes sense to get good at. For us, peace is a martial art, something you learn to do through repetition, in private and with friends committed to practice, and then take into the world as part of your skill set.
In the words of the founder of aikido:
"Aiki is not a technique to fight with or defeat an enemy. It is the way to reconcile the world and make human beings one family. The secret of aikido is not how you move your feet, it is how you move your mind. I’m not teaching you martial techniques. I’m teaching you non-violence. - Moriehei Ueshiba
Martial Nonviolence® (MNv) refers to a unique somatic conflict facilitation method created by Brandon WilliamsCraig which combines practices and concepts from the martial (aikido), theatrical (improv), and Process Arts (group facilitation) to prepare practitioners to provide co-creative leadership in conflict situations and for systemic revision. Capable of engaging circumstances involving obviously physical conflict and more subtle and systemic violence, the practitioner is a guardian and artist with group inquiry and long-term analysis skills, striving for the redefinition of peace itself as "conflict done well".®
When MNv is deployed as a training curiculum for a particular group, it is referred to as Peace Practices.
Aikido is often practiced and can be effective as a method of individual self-defense. The physicality of aikido is its beginning, but its founder, Morihei Ueshiba explicitly insisted it be an "art of peace" because it may also be deeply understood energetically, metaphorically, and practiced at the level of ideas and daily communication. Ueshiba is quoted as having said "we do not train to become powerful or to throw down some opponent. Rather we train in hopes of being of some use, however small our role may be, in the task of bringing peace to mankind around the world.”
MNv begins by practicing Aikido 2.0, which moves from silent movement repatterning into embeding language in every technique, so that one need not choose between physical self-protection and co-creative re-direction. Martial artists move smoothly in whatever way and direction seems best.
Physically sophisticated aikido practitioners often find themselves challenged when the need arises to respond to relational and systemic conflict. Academics and social activists, on the other hand, while focused on systemic injustice often find themselves lacking tools to deal with the energetic and bio-physical realities of conflict. This can lead to a retreat into theoretical abstraction when direct action is required to work for change. This is why, for instance, practitioners of meditation, passive non-violence, and the Process Arts frequently seek out aikido instruction to keep their bodies centered and conscious while responding to hostility.
Martial Nonviolence combines the body wisdom and moving meditation within aikido with group process facilitation and professional improvisational skills in order to bridge the hidden and public lives of social change agents, activists and allies to support a more effective, more sustainable social justice practice which makes possible movements toward a more just world.
Please Make Contact, celebrate, struggle, and learn with us!
Brandon WilliamsCraig, Ph.D. is the founder of Culturesmith partnerships, consulting, and services. Working across domains by blending many areas of expertise, his professional work in the last decade alone has included:
- Becoming a member of the Customer Success team at Learning Pool, one of the most humane and successful international eLearning companies with over 1500 customers worldwide, 5.1M active learners, and a 98% recommendation rate.*
- Creating the Martial Nonviolence method, building the Peace Practices curriculum and project with international funding, and developing the work as a whole into the Conflict Done Well system
- Engaging in public service with the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Census by contributing to the administration and field operations of the 2020 Enumeration
- Serving for its entire history as co-founder, Executive Director, and then CEO of the Bay Area nonprofit Association Building Community, or ABC (ABCglobal.net)
- Returning to teach graduate students of every level at his alma mater, Pacifica Graduate Institute, in the Depth Psychology Somatics Department
- Serving as Communications Director for Ragged Wing Ensemble and The Flight Deck, a theater company and community arts facility in downtown Oakland, California.
Born and raised in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas, Texas, his first career was in the professional regional and touring theater, as well as in choral music and as a liturgical soloist. His Ph.D. in mythological studies and depth psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute combines psychology, literature, and religious studies to demonstrate the indispensable interoperability of the humanities with social science, organizational development, and public policy. His teaching and research focuses on the history and literature of psychology, the psychology of genre, the embodied (somatic) psychology of belief, the narrative construction of culture and the threat of disinformation to The Myth of Peace, and the development of the Process Arts.
Brandon has extensive experience contributing to the leadership of and teamwork within private and public institutions, accepts executive positions corp-to-corp and as a contractor or employee, offers leadership and facilitation training, and has worked in the study of peace and conflict since 1998, as well as providing curriculum development, conflict education, and community mediation services.
Brandon Sensei is a 5th degree blackbelt in aikido. He is founder and Chief Instructor of Aikido Oak Cliff, and was founder/Chief Instructor of Free Aiki Dojo and served as Chief Instructor of Golden Bears Aikido at UC Berkeley. He is also an un-ranked (not yet licensed to teach) member of the Takamura ha Shindo Yoshin Kai, a classical budo school (koryu) directed by Kaicho Toby Threadgill. This style of jujutsu influences his aikido and all of his martial and somatic learning.
Brandon's body-based facilitation method, called Martial Nonviolence (MNv), pairs traditional aikido, professional theater techniques, and real-time facilitation, and is the heart of the work presented and developed at Culturesmith.com. His somatics students learn to Embody Nonviolence through somatic conflict resolution. His clients focused on leadership, management, and administration practice Conflict Done Well. MNv also powers an internationally funded Peace Practices curriculum being offered by ABC and practiced by students from 4 to 84 years of age in Montessori, public, and private schools. Brandon resides in North Texas with his wife and two children, and consults nationally and internationally.
To request a seminar, please visit https://goo.gl/forms/1zXJiCOaJ63BgJrz2
* (numbers from Summer 2022 - now expanded)