Whether you are integrating mindfulness into core program delivery, weaving spiritual wisdom into justice work, or grounding social action in contemplation, you are part of a growing movement—and we invite you to gather with us.
The Conscious Change Forum will be a unique opportunity to meet fellow practitioners from around the world who share your values and who are working in innovative ways across a range of social issues and modalities. We will practice together, share approaches, deepen our collective insight, and help illuminate the field where consciousness guides social transformation. Over three days of dialogue, storytelling, experiential engagement, spiritual practice, and community learning, we will explore what connects our work. We will surface the wisdom emerging from our unifying field and imagine what becomes possible when we act together.
If you’ve been seeking a community that understands how inner work drives social change, this gathering and this broader movement is for you. Join the Garrison Institute’s Spirituality & Social Change Program and Conscious Change Collective —and help shape the future of conscious social change.
EARLY BIRD PRICING
The registration costs reflected below, represent our early-bird pricing. Prices will increase soon. Don’t miss your opportunity to join this meaningful gathering.
SCHOLARSHIPS
There are a limited number of partial scholarships available for this retreat. Please visit us here for more information, and click here to apply . Please do not sign up for the retreat if you have submitted an application, wait to hear from us. For questions, please contact us at: scholarships@garrisoninstitute.org.
SPEAKERS
***This will be a gathering led by and for our larger community. Though we may be hosting a few special speakers, most of our programming will be interactive engagements, practice, and dialogue led by our community members****
Michelle Alexander is a highly acclaimed civil rights lawyer, advocate, legal scholar and author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness — the bestselling book that helped to transform the national debate on racial and criminal justice in the United States. Since The New Jim Crow was first published in 2010, it has spent nearly 250 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and has been cited in judicial decisions and adopted in campus-wide and community-wide reads, and has inspired a generation of racial justice activists. In 2005, Alexander won a Soros Justice Fellowship that supported the writing of The New Jim Crow and accepted a joint appointment at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University. Currently she is a visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York City and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. Prior to joining academia, Alexander engaged in civil rights litigation in both the private and nonprofit sector, ultimately serving as the director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU of Northern California, where she coordinated the Project’s media advocacy, grassroots organizing, and coalition building and launched a major campaign against racial profiling by law enforcement known as the “DWB Campaign” or “Driving While Black or Brown Campaign.” Alexander is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Vanderbilt University. She has clerked for Justice Harry A. Blackmun on the U.S. Supreme Court and for Chief Judge Abner Mikva on the D.C. Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals.
Rhonda V. Magee, M.A., Sociology; J.D., is a Professor of Law at the University of San Francisco and an internationally recognized leader in integrating mindfulness into education, law, and social change. Born in North Carolina in 1967 and shaped by a childhood of trauma and challenge, she discovered early that healing, service, and contemplative practice could provide a way forward. For more than two decades, she has pioneered courses on civil law, race and inequality, and mindfulness and lawyering, while training extensively in Buddhist traditions, mindfulness-based interventions, and interpersonal dialogue. A former president of the board of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society and a Fellow of the Mind and Life Institute, Rhonda has served on its steering council and sits on the boards of the UMass Center for Mindfulness and the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute. She has also taught in leading mindfulness teacher training programs and led retreats at Spirit Rock, the Garrison Institute, Omega, Esalen, and other centers nationwide. Her teaching and writing focus on compassionate conflict engagement, presence-based leadership, and embodied mindfulness as keys to personal and collective transformation. She is the author of The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities Through Mindfulness (2019).
Gretchen Ki Steidle is the Founder and President of Circles for Conscious Change, a transformative education firm working with social entrepreneurs, nonprofits, and corporations on the use of mindfulness as a design tool for social innovation. Gretchen is also the founder and President of Global Grassroots, an international organization that operated a social venture incubator and mindful-leadership program for women and girls in East Africa. She has an MBA from the Tuck School at Dartmouth and a BA in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia.
Gretchen is author of Leading from Within: Conscious Social Change and Mindfulness for Social Innovation (MIT Press, 2017) and lectures and teaches on mindfulness and social change worldwide. A certified Integrative Breathworker, Gretchen has been delivering breath-based therapeutic practices, resilience training, and trauma healing since 2002 to a range of individuals globally, including survivors of and first responders to war and mass disaster. Her workshops have been offered at institutions including the Skoll World Forum, Omega Institute, Kripalu Institute, Wellbeing Project, AshokaU Exchange, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and University of Virginia, among others. In 2007, Gretchen was honored by World Business Magazine and Shell as one of the top International 35 Women Under 35. She was recognized in 2010 as a CNN Hero volunteering in Haiti after the earthquake. She was chosen in 2011 as one of seven Remarkable Women of the World by New Hampshire Magazine. In 2018, Gretchen was named one of Inc.’s Top 100 Leadership Speakers. Gretchen currently serves as the Director of the Garrison Institute’s Spirituality & Social Change Program.
ACCOMMODATIONS
There are Single, Double and Dorm rooms available. Please note, there is no available guest elevator and all rooms are accessible by stairs—except for those reserved for the mobility-impaired on the first floor. There are two communal bathrooms on each residential floor as well as a comfortable lounge with sofas and easy chairs, where tea and instant coffee are available. The lounges also are equipped with wireless, high-speed internet connection. There are several local hotels within driving distance from the Institute, for those who wish to stay off-site, as commuters. Onsite meals are included with commuter registrations.