PW1 Healing and Transformation—Marilyn Mandala Schlitz and Cassandra Vieten

Consciousness plays many roles in individual and collective healing. One of the most intriguing, and potentially most relevant, is the role of conscious intention. We will look at intention as it relates to healing ourselves and our relationships, considering the best evidence for various mind/body/spirit healing modalities.

Marilyn Mandala Schlitz, PhD, is Vice President for Research and Education at the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California and Senior Scientist at California Pacific Medical Center. She is co-editor of Consciousness and Healing: Integral Approaches to Mind-Body Medicine and co-author of the upcoming Living Deeply: The Art and Science of Transformation (Noetic Press/New Harbinger, Jan. 2008)

PW2 Entangled Minds—Dean Radin

For millennia, people have reported unusual experiences that have been called “psychic” or “mystical.” Until recently many scientists have assumed that such experiences were illusions or delusions. Dean will show that such proposals fail to account for the actual data, and that when the fabric of reality is considered from a modern physical perspective, these phenomena are not just allowed to occur, but are expected.

Dean Radin, PhD, is IONS Senior Scientist and author of The Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds. He has conducted research on exceptional human capacities at Princeton University, the University of Edinburgh, and SRI International. He has a PhD in psychology and an MS in electrical engineering.

PW3 Transformation as a Vital Aspect of Sustainability: Why and How—Edgar Mitchell

Continuing to see our Earth as a literal and violent battleground for contending world views is a sure course toward the collapse of civilization. The solution must begin with a change of individual thinking on a very large scale. This workshop will open dialogue and discussion of the ramifications, possibilities, responsibilities, and courses of individual action for sustaining our future, for the benefit of ourselves and our progeny. Chief Sequoia has been credited with the saying, “If not us, who? If not now, when?” Can we take up the challenge?

Edgar Mitchell, PhD, is the founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences and a former Apollo astronaut. His many credentials and degrees include four honorary doctorates and a PhD in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT. Dr. Mitchell is a renowned lecturer and author of several books, including Psychic Exploration: A Challenge for Science and The Way of the Explorer.

PW4 Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream Symposium—Lynne Twist

This symposium explores the link between three of humanity's most critical concerns: environmental sustainability, social justice, and spiritual fulfillment. Using video clips from some of the world's most respected thinkers, along with inspiring short films and leading-edge information, the symposium invites participants to gain a new insight into the very nature of our time and the opportunity we have to shape and impact the direction of our world with our everyday choices and actions.

Lynne Twist is a global activist, fundraiser, author, and founder of the Soul of Money Institute. Lynne has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and has trained thousands of fundraisers to be more effective in their work for organizations that serve the best interest of all—eradicating poverty, empowering women, nurturing children and youth, and preserving the natural heritage of our planet.

PW5 Yoga, Sound, and Consciousness—Suzanne Sterling

In this workshop we will learn about the history and science of sound and sound healing, and use the power of sound and conscious movement as a tool to enhance our lives. We will explore ways to combine simple movement and yoga asanas with sound, mantra, pranayama (conscious breath), and guided meditation. We will focus on embodying and activating our deeper awareness, freeing the natural voice, developing awareness of the breath and body, clearing the emotional body, listening to our innate wisdom, allowing our creativity to expand, and tapping into our sacred self and our connection with the Divine.

Suzanne Sterling is an ecstatic vocalist and composer whose devotional music has been called a "groove-loving and seductive journey into Spirit." She brings a special blend of yoga, devotional music, and sacred ceremony to yoga retreats, “emerging culture” conferences, and music festivals worldwide.

PW6 IONS Community Group Coordinators—Gathering in the Wisdom

How great! We get an entire day together to explore how we might ignite personal and social transformation in our communities through our community groups. Join our shared leadership "Open Space" experience, where we bring our best ideas, questions, visions, hopes, and love to the table. In supporting one another in this way, who knows what can happen when we return home? Come join us; admission to this session is free.

The IONS Community Network has been a vital extension of the Institute of Noetic Sciences since its inception. More than 250 community groups are committed to the IONS vision. Shared leadership and community-building through communal inquiry, visioning, and creative action are at the heart of our collective. Together we share years of leadership experience, hosting local and regional gatherings, events, and community projects that support IONS’ evolving mission.

PT1 Infinite Life Workshop—Robert Thurman

We will look at the Buddhist sciences—not only the "inner science" that studies and teaches the paths to enlightenment—but also the physical cosmology, karmic biology, and ethical sociology that make enlightenment sensible. We will practice selected philosophical, psychological, and meditational disciplines together that fit with a definition of Buddhism as "engaged realism," rather than just one more variety of other-worldly religious pursuits. We will alternate between lecture, dialogue, and both guided and silent meditations.

Robert Thurman is a professor in the Religion Department of Columbia University. He holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from Harvard and has studied in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in India and the United States. He is an author of many books, including The Tibetan Book of the Dead and, most recently, Infinite Life: Seven Virtues for Living Well.

PT2 The Intention Experiment: Powering Up—Lynne McTaggart

Lynne McTaggart has created a practical, scientifically informed program to get in touch with your own thoughts, increase the activity and strength of your intentions, and effect real change in your life. She has discovered a number of conditions—the right times, the best places, the best mental states, the most likely targets—when intention works best. With the aid of a team of highly experienced consciousness researchers, she’ll show you how to conduct your own personal experiments, and how to take part in the world’s largest intention experiment.

Lynne McTaggart is the award-winning author of five books, including the newly published The Intention Experiment and the bestselling The Field. She is co-executive director of Conatus, which publishes some of the world’s most respected health and spiritual newsletters and online information

PT3 Experiential Introduction to Nine Gates Mystery School—Gay Luce and Deborah Jones

Expand your spiritual antenna! Work with subtle energies, become more sensitive, and invisibly transform external situations while enlarging your own arena of sensitivity and influence through new levels of awareness. This workshop offers fundamentals of The Nine Gates Mystery School, which is built around our human energy centers the way a musical instrument is built around notes and harmonics. Most of us are like a grand piano on which we play only three or four notes. Through participation in revealing energy games, you will tap into your immense power and capacities to heal.

Gay Luce, PhD, is the founder of Nine Gates Mystery School, a transpersonal psychologist, author of five books translated into seven languages, and three-time recipient of the American Psychological Association Award for Journalism. Gay is a visionary who started the SAGE program for the elderly.

Deborah Jones, MA, is executive director of Nine Gates Programs, Inc. and a teacher at the Nine Gates Mystery School. Deborah's spiritual journey began in the heart of corporate America, where she worked for 24 years as an organizational development consultant and advisor to senior management teams. Deborah is a certified hypnotherapist and carries the healing lineage of her Kahuna.

PT4 Spiritual Mentoring: Spiritual Direction in an Interspiritual Age—Janet F. Quinn

 Some of us long for safe harbor to explore the deepest questions of our lives—questions about God, Spirit, Ultimate Reality, meaning, purpose, and calling. It is not therapy we’re after but something with a larger context. Ultimately, spiritual mentoring means holding the space for another to come into deeper relationship with their divine origins and to manifest that deepening in their lives. This highly experiential workshop will explore the gentle art of spiritual mentoring within an interspiritual framework, including its roots in the tradition of the ancient practice of spiritual direction.

Janet F. Quinn, PhD, is an associate professor (adjunct) at the University of Colorado School of Nursing. She is Spiritual Director-in-Residence on the faculty at the Claritas Institute for Interspiritual Inquiry, and also has a private practice as a spiritual director.

PT5 Mindfulness 101: What They Should Have Taught Us Long Ago—Charles Tart

 We are by nature clear, perceptive, compassionate, and effective beings—but these qualities are usually lost in the deluded busyness of "normal" life. This workshop will give us tastes—both experiential and intellectual—of basic “Controlled Attention Practices” that focus, stabilize, and clear our minds, leading to insights that work in everyday life. Ordinary education assumes we already have these skills, but they still need opening and cultivation. In more traditional terms, we will be introduced to concentrative and insight (Vipassana) meditation practices and Gurdjieffian self-remembering as methods to become clearer, calmer, more perceptive, and practically compassionate.

Charles Tart, PhD, is internationally known for research on transpersonal psychology and parapsychology. His 13 books include two classics, Altered States of Consciousness and Transpersonal Psychologies. A professor at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, he works to bridge science and spirituality.

PT6 The Seven Laws of Sacred Activism—Andrew Harvey

It has become increasingly clear that only Sacred Activism—the fusion of the deepest mystical knowledge, peace, strength, and stamina with calm, focused, and radical action in every arena of society, culture, economics, and politics—can be of help in our growing world crisis. Neither a purely “spiritual” nor simply “activist” approach can solve our enormous problems. The core teachings of all the major mystical paths make it clear that there is within human beings an enormous unused reservoir of pure divine power, the pure power of sacred wisdom consciousness, passion, and compassion—the power of what Jesus called the kingdom of heaven, and of what in Hinduism is known as bliss-consciousness. These core teachings also reveal that if we can learn how to use this power—or rather how to let it use us as its luminous instruments—we will harness the “energies of love” and discover for ourselves how a clear, focused, purified, divine passion devoted to transformative action on all levels can birth a new world.

Andrew Harvey was the youngest person ever awarded a fellowship to All Soul’s College at Oxford University. He is the author of The Direct Path, Son of Man, The Return of the Mother, and Sun at Midnight. He was the subject of the 1993 BBC film documentary The Making of a Modern Mystic and is Professor of Sacred Activism at Wisdom University.