ROBERT BRINGHURST

Robert Bringhurst is a lifelong student of Native American languages and literatures. His major work in this field is a three-volume study of Haida oral literature: two volumes of translation of the works of the Haida mythtellers Ghandl and Skaay, and an introductory volume entitled A Story as Sharp as a Knife. 

“Bringhurst’s Achievement,” wrote Margaret Atwood in the London Times, “is gigantic as well as heroic.” Two popular collections of his lectures and essays – The Tree of Meaning and Everywhere Being Is Dancing – are published in the USA by Counterpoint.

 His most recent book of poems is The Ridge (Harbour, 2023).

Francis Weller

Francis Weller, MFT, is a psychotherapist, writer and soul activist. He is a master of synthesizing diverse streams of thought from psychology, anthropology, mythology, alchemy, indigenous cultures and poetic traditions. Author of the bestselling, The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief; The Threshold Between Loss and Revelation, (with Rashani Réa) and In the Absence of the Ordinary: Soul Work for Times of Uncertainty, he has introduced the healing work of ritual to thousands of people. He founded and directs WisdomBridge, an organization that offers educational programs that seek to integrate the wisdom from indigenous cultures with the insights and knowledge gathered from western poetic, psychological, and spiritual traditions. 

For over forty years Francis has worked as a psychotherapist and developed a style he calls soul-centered psychotherapy. As a gifted therapist and teacher, he has been described as a jazz artist, improvising and moving fluidly in and out of deep emotional territories with groups and individuals, bringing imagination and attention to places often held with judgment and shame. His offerings include a 10-session audio series on "Living a Soulful Life and Why It Matters." a 5-session series on "The Alchemy of Initiation: Soul Work and the Art of Ripening," and a 4-session series on "An Apprenticeship with Sorrow: Community, Ritual, and the Sacred Work of Grief." 

Francis received a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin Green Bay and two Master’s Degrees from John F. Kennedy University in Clinical Psychology and Transpersonal Psychology. His writings have appeared in anthologies and journals exploring the confluence between psyche, nature and culture. His work was featured in The Sun magazine, the Utne Reader, and the Kosmos Journal. He was recently a guest on Season Two and Three of "All There Is" with Anderson Cooper. Francis is currently on staff at Commonweal Cancer Help Program, co-leading their week-long retreats with Michael Lerner. He is currently completing his fourth book, Facing the World with Soul and Why It Matters. 

Miguel Rivera

A musician, mentor, translator, and teacher, Miguel has published four bilingual anthologies of the Maya K’iche’ poet Humberto Ak’abal: Poems I Brought Down from the Mountain U.S. 2001, Tejiendo las huellas, Uruguay 2006, El animalero. Guatemala 2008, In the Courtyard of the Moon, Tia Chucha Press, U.S. 2021

Miguel has been a board member of Shade Tree a mentoring group in Los Angeles since its

inception in 1996, introducing at risk youth to traditional Native American ceremonies and ways of knowledge. Miguel is also a Director/Co-founder of Western Gate Roots and Wings Foundation an organization dedicated to bringing back youth rites of passage

Miguel is a Co-producer and Sound Designer for the School of Lived Experience podcast.

Joel Glanzberg

Playing and working in the farms and forests of Southeastern Pennsylvania and the houses his father built, Joel was steeped early on in natural systems and people working and living in them. The rigors of a self-directed education at St. John’s College honed his thinking and communication skills as well as the ability to work with groups of people. He has been a builder, farmer, teacher, writer, storyteller, naturalist, and permaculturalist for over 30 years.

His early work establishing the site and research behind Flowering Tree Permaculture  www.floweringtreepermaculture.org is featured in both Gaia’s Garden and Our Home  “Our Home Book”. as well as Brad Lancaster’s Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond Vol. 1, and A People’s Ecology, Greg Cajete ed..

Joel is a founding partner of Regenesis Collaborative, www.regenesisgroup.com which came together as an integration between permaculture and Living Systems Thinking technologies. Its founding was a response to the realization that so many of the blocks to implementing Living Systems Design work were not physical, but in people’s understanding and thinking.

Joel’s work with the Tracking Project www.thetrackingproject.org provides another approach to understanding and working with patterns and the natural world, as well as techniques for accessing the minds required. Integrating these three ways of looking, thinking, and working has been the focus of Joel’s work over the last 10 years. The result is the unique approach he calls Pattern Mind.

 The importance of bridging disciplines and ways of thinking has led to working with the integration of natural systems and the arts. This has included collaborations with ecological artists Helen and Newton Harrison  www.theharrisonstudio.net,  Little Globe  www.littleglobe.org , and the UMN Land Arts program landarts.unm.edu.

Joel has found that Pattern Based Design requires us to shift our minds to a pattern way of thinking and seeing. Tracking and Living Systems Thinking provide the “mind” needed to see, think, and work in patterns. The triangulation provided by these three perspectives has become his passion. His deep experience in these three realms has fed the development of ways of working with these understandings with diverse groups of people. Joel has come to believe that each of these approaches is powerful in itself. However, the holistic experience of understanding natural patterns viscerally as well as intellectually and intuitively helps to integrate them into our lives and work in an even more powerful and effective way.

Ben Dennis

Ben is a mythologist and writer with a love of story, myth, psychology, psychodrama, and storytelling. His mythic interests include Greek mythology, Native American story, European fairy tale, and Hindu epic literature. Ben holds his PhD in Mythological Studies with an Emphasis in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute.

Ben retired from the Seattle Fire Department after 28 years as a fire fighter and training coordinator for the Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) and Peer Support Team.

He leads retreats for Veterans and First Responders, and has been adjunct faculty at Antioch University Seattle.

Ben has worked in diverse fields such as oil exploration, commercial fishing, construction, investment banking, teaching, and is a veteran of the U. S. Air Force.