IfGIC Webinars 2017

In 2017 we would like to invite you to join our monthly free Webinar Series, providing valuable educational information on timely, interdisciplinary topics around the Cosmopolitan Communication. A key feature of our webinars is to give, receive and discuss information and combine visions of transcultural justice, peace and conviviality with an ethical commitment to difference and alterity.
Our Institute is changing and evolving to include more ideas, concepts & visions. You are very welcome to be a part of it!

Time:

Join us on the second Monday of every month from 20:30 to 22:00 (CET) and meet the group of scholars who initiated the Institute of Global Integral Competence, as well as the associated local and international friends joining IfGIC. Our webinars will be provided for you to learn more about the fields of our expertise and open a discussion about the direction of human development and our part there to get the more complete picture of human experience.

Format:

Our webinar courses consist of monthly learning sequences. Each learning sequence is composed of input from our areas of expertise interspersed or follow with interactive discussion and some learning exercises, where we can immediately practice together the concepts from the input.

Registration:

We will be using Zoom, which allows us to share audio, documents and applications with webinar attendees. The registration and participation is free for all participants. The possibility to present own topic is open for members only. If you would like to become a member please click here.

You can join us from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android. If you are new to Zoom please follow the instructions in our post: How to join a Zoom meeting?

Meeting ID: 381 538 131

Webinar:
Webinar will take place monthly, on the second Monday from 20:30 to 22:00 CET.

Program and presenters:

DONE! On 13 February Dr. Kazuma Matoba presented: “Person-Energy-in-conversation: Speech act theory, Social constructionism and Physic.”  We know that our communication has ‘energy’. We say “He speaks very energetic!” or “Your words has so much energy!”. Somehow information could be conveyed by ‘energy’ in our communication. But scientists don´t know well what this energy really is. Just few scientists like Denis Gabor tried to explain this energy in physic, but nobody could measure this subtle energy. In this webinar I want to show my experiences and one hypotheses, and discuss about this issue with you.

 DONE! On 13 March, Dr. Anna Storck presented: “Integral Education. Train the Trainer.” Anna is passionate about education, both learning and teaching and personally agrees with Aaron Sorokin and his statement that education is everything and that we don’t need little changes, we need gigantic revolutionary changes… That is her position, but she just haven’t figured out how to do it yet. So she decided to start with applying Integral Theory to Education. In this webinar Anna introduced her Integral Train the Trainer Program, which is about finding our own passion and mission as an educator, in order to create a unique personal learning style and about how to manage ourselves and our resources in the most optimal way, in order to make meaningful contact with the group and build the most favourable conditions for accelerated learning. We were talking about the best components of both conventional and alternative approaches to education which allow us to go into a fuller, wider, deeper, more transformative educational space, honouring each and yet transcending the limits of both. More information about the Integral Education and Train the Integral Trainer Program you will find in our blogs as well.

  DONE! On 10 April, Marion Weber presented: “Shadow Work”.  Shadows are unconscious parts within our personality. They play out and interact in most of our conversations and interactions. The more we become conscious about them and the more we release the hidden energy the more we communicate from a free place in us. In this webinar is given an explanation of shadows and how shadow work can be done to regain more energy and live more freely. More information about shadow work you can find in Marion’s post where she described what shadow work is all about. Enjoy!

 8 Mai, Mari Sawada: “Love your yoni.” Yoni is the word in Sanskrit that describes the holy womb space including the vagina. Why this word? Because there doesn‘t seem to exist a worthy term to express the power, sacredness and wonderfulness of this space. And this, although every human being come through it on earth. You make love with it, you came into being in it. Quite many women feel not really connected with their yoni, and it is said that maybe 10% of adults really lead a fulfilled sexual life, men and women. Sexuality can be a source of power and joy, but many of us struggle to find a way to live it in alignment with our own being, physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. In my webinar I‘d like to illuminate this phenomenon in regard to our relationship to the yoni, whether you own one or not. Please read my blog about yoni in advance, if you like.

 19 Juni, Agata Nienajadło: “Culture as a construct. Shaping of cultural Self. We all are cultural beings and culture has huge impact on our personality, the way we think, behave, live etc. The American anthropologist Edward T. Hall wrote in his book “The silent language”: Culture hides more than it reveals and strangely enough what it hides, it hides most effectively from its own participants. Years of study have convinced me that the real job is not to understand foreign culture but to understand our own. (E.T. Hall 1959). Because culture “works” often intuitive and subconscious, we need to dig deep, to be able to better understand how culture is shaping who we are. On the other side, it is equally important to know the “forces” behind cultural shaping of Self. In the webinar, I would like to give you some insights into the topic of culture from two different perspectives: how culture is shaping individuals and how culture is being constructed?

 10 July, David Aliyah: “Affecting patterns  through Representational Relating.” How can we bypass personal biases to create systemic change? One approach is to agree to become impersonal “representatives” of particular aspects of a problem- and then focus on the relationships between the representatives rather than their viewpoints. For example, if we are discussing “the best form of government,” we might have one person represent democracy, another autocracy, another socialism, and another “the government of the future.” Rather than participants debating ideas about these forms (we’ve had plenty of that!), they are asked to attend to sensations in their body and their feelings towards other representatives- working out complex issues “relationally” and within the safety of a role distinguished from their person. Constellation Work has been using this method successfully for years to heal ancestral wounding. Let’s try it to explore our group purpose, or whatever issue seems to be the hot button of the day when we meet in July.

 14 August 2017,  Stephen Holmes: “Rhythm and Intercultural Communication”  Based on my article which will be published soon.  It will focus on a part of Edward Hall’s works which have been ignored by the intercultural training and teaching community.  Rhythm will be treated as a bridge to the aesthetic experience, which has also been ignored, and the aesthetic experience will be treated as a bridge to the construction of embodied value, including moral value.  Milton Bennett has come closest to this understanding as he included embodiment as an important aspect of intercultural communication theory. Here is Stephen’s article as homework for his webinar.  You might be interested in George Simon’s review which is attached here. Enjoy!

  11 September, Charles Savage:  “Rethinking AI: Artificial Ignorance!” “Ignorant of their ignorance, yet wiseIn their own esteem, these deluded menProud of their vain learning go round and roundLike the blind led by the blind.” Katha Upanishad. Does our “SMARTNESS” blind us to our needed “WISDOM?”What is the thinking behind this? We have so focused on “things out there,” using science to study and measure, that we’ve overlooked the dimensions of life that go beyond just the “Objective.” As you know, we “swim” in a sea of words and concepts and often the turbulence confuses us and we loose our way! Our inner smarts GPS might tell us where we are, but not what is happening around us or what it really means. This is where and why we wisdom. Let’s talk about!

 16 October, Martin Bruders, “Global Social Witnessing”  How does our communication change the silence and the silence our communication? Some empirical insights and considerations. You can find an introduction video about this webinar in here

 13 November, Dr. Sergej van Middendorp: „The model, named MMIIRR“
The MMIIRR provides a mirror to systems designers who have to design systems that are capable to deal with complexity and emergence. Systems designers can use MMIIRR for reflexive reflections in-interaction with meta-metaphors. After the webinar, participants will have some practical tools to help them increase their awareness for metaphors AS metaphors in their conversations. This, in turn will help to more consciously generate the desired system and more consciously mitigate the negative effects of existing systems they are trying to change.

  11 December, Denis Knubel  “Teal Politics” How is the Polis organized on a “Teal level”? What forms could “integral Politics” take? Laloux provided us with beautiful insights into the principles and practices of Teal organizations, which involve people voluntarily working together at specific goals. However, the functioning of the public sphere(s) of life, from local neighbourhoods to the global political systems, raises a number of specific questions. Politics has to organize or provide a framework for the life of the whole community, regardless of the degree of agreement or disagreement of its members. It has to deal with issues of power, authority, normativity, legality, and the resolution of conflicts. Even if there has been a long way since Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651), the modern State and the modern State system remain the main referents in this discussion, despite issues of globalization on one end and neomedievalism or fragmentation of the State construct on the other. What forms can Politics take in the future, from decision-making processes to the role of the legal system? From the locus of sovereignty in a digital world to that of the use of force?