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Live Community Session: The Discipline of SpaciousnessLive Community Session:
July 30 @ 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm
The Well-Being for All Webinar Series
A Shared Inquiry into Well-Being in Systems and Ourselves
Co-hosted by the Academy for Systems Change and CoCreative
Live Community Session:
The Discipline of Spaciousness
Featured Guest: Norma Wong, Zen Master & Abbot of Anko-in
July 30, 2024
10:00 – 11:30 am Pacific US
1:00 – 2:30 pm Eastern US
How might we differentiate between unconscious habits and intentional practices that could sustain our well-being for the long haul? Join us for an inspiring session in our Well-Being for All series, titled “The Discipline of Spaciousness,” featuring the esteemed Norma Wong.
Norma will guide us in reconnecting with our bodies, particularly through the power of conscious breathing. By becoming aware of our breath, we can better manage stress and anxiety, and enhance our leadership presence. In conversation with Norma, we will explore how we cultivate the self-discipline required to maintain spaciousness, fostering resilience and creativity in the face of global challenges. Norma will share insights on aligning internal work with external change, support us to reflect on self-sabotaging habits, and how to cultivate practices that would honor our needs and support effective systemic change leadership.
**There is no fee to participate in this special event. We invite you to make a donation to benefit the work of Hui O Waa Kaulua. Hui O Waa Kaulua is a replica traditional Native Hawaiian voyaging canoe, used for teaching children and young adults, that was destroyed in the Lahaina wildfires (August 2023). Funds are being raised to rebuild the canoe, along with the hale (house or shelter) that was the canoe’s home and place of learning.
Welcoming Guest and Co-Host, Norma Wong
Norma Wong (Norma Ryuko Kawelokū Wong Roshi) is a Native Hawaiian and Hakka life-long resident of Hawai’i. She is the abbot of Anko-in, an independent branch temple of Daihonzan Chozen-ji and serves practice communities in Hawai‘i, across the continental U.S., and in Toronto, Canada. She is an 86th generation Zen Master, having trained at Chozen-ji for over 40 years. When No Thing Works – a Zen and Indigenous Perspective on Resilience, Shared Purpose, and Leadership in the Timeplace of Collapse, her book on the necessity and ways to leap beyond this fraught societal moment, will be published in the fall of 2024 by North Atlantic Books/Penguin Random House.
In earlier years, Norma served as a Hawai‘i state legislator, on the policy and strategy team for Governor John Waihee with federal and Native Hawaiian portfolios. She led teams to negotiate agreements on the munitions cleanup of Kaho`olawe Island, ceded land revenue for Native Hawaiians, and the return of lands and settlement of land issues for Hawaiian Home Lands. She was active in electoral politics for over thirty years.
In recent years, Norma has been called back into service to facilitate breaking the impasse and transforming policy and governance on issues of seeming contradiction. In the conflict between native culture/science and western discovery science posing as a dispute over the construction of a telescope on Mauna Kea, Norma was a team member narrating and facilitating a path forward through mutual stewardship. She is currently an advisor to Speaker of the Hawai‘i House of Representatives Scott Saiki, serving in policy development and facilitation roles on issues such as the protection of the aquifer from fuel contamination at Red Hill, and the long-term response to the Lahaina wildfires.
Norma is part of the Collective Acceleration community of practice.