Leading with

Embodied Integrity in Spiritual Community

Join us for this 4-month experiential program to deepen
somatic resilience, power consciousness, & relational skills
for spiritual or religious leaders, facilitators, healers, and
those holding leadership roles within spiritual communities
of all faith and spiritual lineages and traditions.

This is for you if…

  • You want to develop your skills in navigating the complex dynamics that are present for you in your role as a spiritual leader.

  • You care deeply about showing up in your leadership roles with integrity and authenticity, and minimizing harm.

  • You want to cultivate more joy, pleasure and satisfaction in your life, and more resource to hold your leadership roles with care and integrity.

  • You want to hold your positional power and spiritual authority with awareness and to be in choice about how your power impacts others.

As teachers, pastors, ministers and others in spiritual leadership roles we are uniquely positioned both to offer deep support for our communities to navigate these troubled times, as well as to create harmful impacts when we are unaware of or abuse the power we hold.

In this experiential class series, we will dive deeply into understanding our power, navigating and creating more consensual relationships that respect each others’ sovereignty, increase our skills to show up with more authenticity, transparency, and vulnerability as leaders, and deeply care to ourselves, including our needs and boundaries, so that we can sustain our leadership through these challenging times.

So many of us have been challenged, called out, or given hard feedback from our communities. So many of us have witnessed harm and not spoken up or intervened in ways that have been effective or fostered a more caring culture. This class will create a space where we can discuss these challenges, work through our own shame, fear and anger with our peers, and cultivate new tools and practices to enhance our leadership path. 

Join us in this community of peers to build skills and increase capacity

Through iterative practice, we develop our capacity to deeply care for ourselves and increase our ability to navigate relational challenges and delicate dynamics with more grace, ease, and care.

In this series, we will offer individual/communal and paired somatic practices, supported by contextual frameworks, with opportunity for reflection, noticings, questions, and discussion.

We build capacity both individually and collectively, deepening our resilience, discernment, and the ability to notice subtle nuances and tolerate discomfort that comes with confronting the responsibility of holding power.

This class draws from the lineages of Wheel of Consent, Processwork, Right Use of Power and practices of abolitionism, embodied anti-racism, and transformative justice.

Facilitated by

Helena De Felice

Adam Nicholson

René Rivera

  • Helena De Felice (she/they) is a trainer, facilitator, and coach. She is passionate about developing individual and collective awareness that deepens our capacity to connect, care, and facilitate healing. She is a Certified Facilitator of the Wheel of Consent®. In her practice, she weaves in awareness of power, oppression, and trauma informed by training in Process Work, Deep Democracy, Right Use of Power, and Somatic Abolitionism. Her facilitation is trauma-responsive and non-judgemental, informed by many years in the field of prevention and response to gender-based violence, senior leadership for sexual and reproductive rights, teaching peer counseling, and holding space for births and death as a doula.

  • Adam Nicholson (they/them) is a facilitator, consent educator, and coach based in Tennessee.

    Their 1-1 and group work center around how we can create, negotiate, and maintain heart-centered groups and relationships with clarity and ease.

    Adam’s work brings a focus to the power dynamics and systems that impact conflict and obstacles in our relational spaces and believes that fulfillment, ease, and settledness can only come when we bring awareness and curiosity to them.

    They are influenced by many teachers and thinkers including Paul Muller Ortega and his guidance within the Shaiva-Sakta, contemplative lineage of tantra; Betty Martin’s Wheel of Consent; Resmaa Menakem’s Somatic Abolitionism; and many other teachers who center social justice, integrity, and the importance of our responsibility to ourselves and our communities.

  • René Rivera is a meditation teacher and restorative justice facilitator working and learning in all the spaces in-between race, gender, and other perceived binaries, as a queer Latinx trans man. René teaches heart-centered, trauma-informed meditation, as a core teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center. He offers classes and retreats for many Buddhist centers and groups, with a focus on supporting LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC practitioners. He leads trainings on how to create spaces that are inclusive and accessible to transgender, nonbinary and gender expansive people. René is a facilitator in training for the School of Consent and a restorative justice facilitator, working to heal sexual and gender based violence.

Program Structure

  • 8 live facilitated sessions of 2.5 hours each (total of 20 hours)

    May 8, May 15, Jun 5, Jun 12, Jul 3, Jul 25, Aug 7, Aug 14    
    9-11:30am Pacific Time, 12-2:30pm Eastern Time, 6-8:30pm Central European Time

    Live sessions focus on facilitated individual/communal and paired somatic & contemplative practices, welcoming participant noticings, reflections, questions, and discussion.

    Each session will be recorded.

    The live sessions are complemented by weekly content, optional home practices, and participant pods.

  • We will offer somatic & contemplative home practices to engage in between the live sessions (~30 mins per week)

    We will offer theory and concepts to support the live sessions and practice, including frameworks, short texts, and videos (~10mins-1.5 hours per week)

  • Small group connection, practice, and reflection

    May 22, May 29, Jun 19, Jun 26, Jul 10, Jul 17

    9-10 Pacific (or otherwise mutually agreed upon time)

  • In recognition of the ways in which financial systems impact each of us differently, we invite you to choose the level of support you’re willing to give. 

    We offer a suggested structure below. This is based on our needs to receive $6,250 in order to offer this course. 

    In acknowledging and tending the ongoing impacts of colonization, as settlers on these lands, we have space available for less than the lower tier listed. Please email Adam about this.

    • $775USD (individual with investments/able to afford travel/vacations, training paid/reimbursed by employer/institution)

    • $500USD (stable income, access to financial support, organizational support)

    • $350USD (minimum requested payment, precarious personal finances)

    Register here

    A guide for choosing your tier: ask yourself ‘what would be a stretch and not a strain?’. Please be mindful that if you choose a lower end tier when you can truthfully afford a higher price, you are limiting access to those who truly need the gift of financial flexibility. If the base rate is inaccessible for you, or you need a payment plan, or other methods of payment, contact the team.

  • How we ask that you engage with each other:
    1. Confidentiality — outside the practices and the group, share only your own experience and learnings.
    2. All feelings are welcome and do not need to be justified or explained; honor the feelings that arise in others by allowing them to feel without fixing or advising.
    3. Share with intention, using "I" statements. Listen with attention. Bring awareness to power and orient towards care.
    4. Use the names and pronouns people request, and honor the lived experience of those in the group. Bring curiosity and set aside assumptions about people's identities and experiences (e.g. gender, race, sexuality, faith, denomination or lineage, etc.).
    5. Stay within the stated limits of each practice. You can always pause or stop an experiment or practice when needed. You are welcome to change your mind anytime.

    What we invite for your own experience:
    1. Invite beginner’s mind — everything we offer is an experiment and an opportunity to notice yourself; take what works for you and leave the rest.
    2. Participation can look many ways and you choose how you want to participate — actively join an exercise, witness, journal, take a break, and change your mind at any time.
    3. Do not do anything you do not want to do.
    4. Self-care and self-regulation — take care of your needs (for water, rest, movement, etc.)

  • ໑ This program is offered in English. Closed captions are available.
    ໑ All sessions are recorded in speaker view. If you do not wish to be recorded while speaking, and you let us know, we will pause the recording.
    ໑ You may choose to have your camera on or off, and we welcome tending to needs, including needs for movement, stillness, and food.

    While our aspiration is for this to be a safe and accessible enough space for learning for everyone drawn to this work, we acknowledge that despite our best efforts, due to the ways we carry and reflect systemic patterns of oppression, our lived experience, technological and resource limitations, this offering will not meet everyone’s needs.
    We are committed to make accommodations and adaptations where possible to address safety and accessibility. Please email the team to let us know your questions or needs, and we will do their best to accommodate them.

  • As our limited space, we offer this refund policy.  If you are unable to attend, you may choose to have your payment refunded minus an administration fee, according to the following schedule:
    More than 30 days before the event: Full refund, less $30 admin fee
    15-30 days before the event: 50% refund, or, if you can fill your spot with someone else, a full refund
    Less than 15 days before the event: No refunds, or unless you/we can fill your spot with someone else*
    *In cases of illness or family emergency, we will endeavor to refund your full tuition less any unrecoverable costs, or transfer to a future offering.

Q & A

  • This course welcomes all spiritual lineages and religions. The practices and teachings offered are a complement to your personal spiritual practice and will support you in developing your skills and capacities in holding and navigating your position of power within your community.

  • All live sessions will be recorded in speaker view in case you are unable to attend a live session.
    The opportunity to form and tend community and learn with each other is available through attending the live session and connecting with the pods.
    We ask for your commitment to engaging in active participatory learning and fostering community as you discern whether this offering is a fit for you at this time.

  • Yes. We welcome all who are committed to learning how to hold power with more awareness & care and limit the risk of harm. We recognize that we all have the capacity to (and likely have) harmed others.

  • We welcome those who hold spiritual authority as a pastor, minister, teacher, facilitator, guide, mentor, counsellor within a practice, lineage, or denomination.

    We also welcome those who hold a decision making or supervision position within your spiritual community (including governance, management of staff).