Conversations examined the assumptions shaping our systems, the shared language driving belonging across faith-based organizations, and how inner work supports high performing teams. Sessions also highlighted the contributions of Indigenous mindfulness and contemplative modalities such as breathwork, while examining the logics of oppression and intergenerational trauma that must be addressed for true healing and systemic change.

Across all dialogues, a unifying theme emerged — a call for accountability and a paradigm shift in how we understand and approach systems change. Here are a few of the key insights shared:

• Social issues reflect a deeper spiritual crisis
• Inner work is essential to our capacity for transformation
• Logics of oppression and intergenerational trauma are embedded in our systems and require new paradigms of dismantling and reimagining
• Contemplative practice builds the capacity to question conditioned thinking and learn across differences
• Community offers the belonging and interconnectedness needed for collective navigation
• Spirituality helps us source our values internally rather than in external conditions
• Inner work invites a more relational and compassionate orientation
• Systems of care are vital for sustaining this work

In the weeks ahead, we’ll continue deepening this research and sharing emerging wisdom from the field. We invite you to explore some of the rich resources offered in this newsletter.

What: “Transforming Justice from the Inside Out”

When: November 9 from 10:10 – 11:40 am PT / 1:10 – 2:40 ET

Register: Event Page

Who: Join us in hearing the wisdom and programs of renowned social justice leaders applying contemplative practice for change:

Rhonda Magee, MA, JD, is Professor Emeritus of Law at the University of San Francisco and a nationally recognized thought and practice leader in the emerging fields of contemplative legal education and law practice. She has spent more than 20 years at the intersection of anti-racist education, social justice, and contemplative practice, and has worked to transform the criminal justice system through mindfulness and compassion practices.

Aqeela Sherrills, Founder of the Community-Based Public Safety Collective is a spirit-centered organizer and activist who has worked for three decades to promote community ownership of public safety and to shift the culture from violence, shame, guilt, and fear into one rooted in forgiveness, compassion, reverence, and truth.

Tracy Ferron is Founder and Board President of Life On Art, a California-based nonprofit that brings people together in therapeutic community art-making processes, healing trauma while building hope. Life On Art has innovated groundbreaking art programs at the margins, serving patients and staff in a forensic state psychiatric facility as well as men and women in California state prisons.

Susan Olesek, Founder of the Enneagram Prison Project (EPP), a California Bay Area nonprofit offering self-awareness education and self-regulation training to those incarcerated. EPP is now programming from San Quentin State prison to Australia, the UK, Belgium and beyond, teaching the incarcerated about the prison of our own personality.

Alex Senegal, Ambassador, Enneagram Prison Project, is a father, grandfather, ordained minister, certified drug and alcohol counselor, court liaison, and mental health specialist with a passion for helping people overcome many of the same challenges in life he has endured.

This Collective and the potential of this generative field offers:

• Deep, lived experience in applying consciousness and contemplative practice to social change
• A growing network for peer support, learning, and collective action
• An open-source repository of data and insights for research and field development
• A pathway for conscious philanthropy and aligned grant-making
• A critical mass of practitioners modeling an alternative paradigm for systems transformation
• Diverse examples of more conscious approaches to social change
• Opportunities for collaborative solutions-building grounded in a sacred worldview

To date, we have researched the work of 660 organizations around the globe and invited 350 organizations to join the Collective. We are processing nearly 100 referrals a month. The following data points come from the first sample of 77 organizations to complete their organizational profiles.

In our early-stage outreach, organizations included in the mapping project have largely been located in North America, but we are eager to grow our reach globally.

Within the network, 70% of the organizations are nonprofits. More than half of our participants are smaller organizations with fewer than 10 staff. The largest subset, at 29%, have been in operations for more than 20 years, while 22% have been operating less than five years, representing both sides of the spectrum of deep experience and cutting-edge new endeavors. Our community also represents a wide variety of faiths, using a diverse set of inner work modalities to address a comprehensive mix of social issues.

Faith Identities:

• 25% Spiritual but not religious
• 23% None, secular
• 23% Christian
• 18% Buddhism
• 10% Indigenous Religions / Animism
• 5% Judaism
• 5% Islam
• 4% or less: Bahá’í, Taoism, Confucianism, Sikhism, Hinduism, Shinto

Practices Used:

• 70% Meditation and Mindfulness
• 64% Compassion & Contemplative Social Change Practices
• 62% Reflection & Inquiry
• 45% Contemplative Movement & Somatic Practices
• 44% Yoga & Body-Centered Contemplative Practices
• 36% Nature Based Practices
• 29% Contemplative Practices Based in Cultural Traditions

When asked the reasons organizations engage in Contemplative / Inner Work / Spiritual Practice:

• 81% said: because it is aligned with our values and theory of change
• 55% said: because it helps us build relationships and understand our community better
• 55% said: because it is part of our identity / ancient wisdom traditions
• 45% said: because it supports or sustains impact / makes our programs more effective

This reflects our intention of identifying those organizations that have embraced the inner dimension as core to their approach to social change.

Project Venture is the evidence-based program of the National Indian Youth Leadership Project (NIYLP), a Native-led nonprofit with more than 40 years of experience empowering Indigenous youth. Recognized as the most effective prevention program for Native youth in the government-sponsored National High-Risk Youth Study, Project Venture integrates outdoor adventure, experiential and service learning, cultural teachings, and Indigenous mindfulness practices.

The program is delivered year-round—in schools, after-school settings, on weekends and school breaks, and through more than four decades of summer camp programming.

Guided by the traditional wisdom of elders and supported by current neuroscience on the healing effects of mindfulness and connection to nature, Project Venture continues to foster resilience and leadership among Native youth.

As an evidence-based model, it has been implemented in 27 U.S. states, nine Canadian provinces, Alaska, Hawai‘i, and Jamaica. Project Venture operates from offices in Gallup and Albuquerque, New Mexico, and on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

Participants consistently demonstrate greater competency, connection, character, caring, confidence, and contribution to their community. They also show fewer risky behaviors, including substance use, teen pregnancy, violence, and depression. Project Venture programs in Pikangikum First Nations (Ontario), Canada have even measured decreases in youth crime and increases in positive relationships between youth, the community, and police.

The inner work is key to this impact. “We are already doing the outdoor work, which is the venue for healing that works the best. Now we are adding mindfulness to take it to the next level,” Mac Hall explains. He shares that mindfulness “supports our efforts to repair the historical damage of trauma that has been passed down. We must rebuild, revive traditional practices that served a purpose – that is what mindfulness is doing now… It is all woven in.”

Upcoming Programs

• Indigenous Commons webinar series: Rituals of Renewal, a four part series of Indigenous Economic Futures to ReHome our GrandMothers
• Spring Up and bluelight academy’s programs in Non-Punitive Approaches from Organizing to HR and Nature-Based Ecosystems of Care
• Wolf Willow’s Complexity Code: Influence at the Edge of Chaos
• Solvable & New Works for Our Time: Writers with Ideas that Change How We Work and Live

Musings & Critical Thought

• Cattail Strategy’s article on recovering ancestral ways of being in collective repair, inspired by work with Indigenous Commons: Raising the Dead IV: The Sensory Future
• Sense-making conversations with commonplace and those working to build new ways of living and doing society
• Julian Norris, Raging Against the Dying Light, A Systems View of Human Futures on the regenerative capacity we need to support humanity’s deeper developmental potential
• Claudia Horwitz, I Love You, Keep Going

*The opinions expressed by our members do not necessarily represent the opinion of the Garrison Institute or its Board of Directors.