Exploring Nature, Culture and Inner Life

The Learning Community at The New School Join us for a webinar conversation with TNS Host Michael Lerner and hospice and palliative care physician and educator BJ Miller about grief, public versus personal health, managing social distance while keeping the felt world alive, self-deliverance, and what to look for on the other side of the pandemic. Dr. BJ Miller has been on faculty at his alma mater, UCSF, since 2007 where he’s worked in all settings of care: hospital, clinic, residential facility, and home. His career has been dedicated to moving healthcare towards a human-centered approach, on a policy as well as a personal level. Led by his own experiences as a patient, BJ advocates for the roles of our senses, community and presence in designing a better ending. His interests are in working across disciplines to affect broad-based culture change, cultivating a civic model for aging and dying and furthering the message that suffering and dying are fundamental and intrinsic aspects of life. BJ’s latest project, Mettle Health, aims to provide personalized, holistic, online consultations for any patient, caregiver or clinician who needs help navigating healthcare system and the practical, emotional and existential issues that come with serious illness and disability. Mettle Health is the sister organization of the Center for Dying & Living, that someday will be a huge open-source, cross-disciplinary library of scholarship and anecdote. Find out more about The New School at Commonweal on our website: tns.commonweal.org. And like/follow our Soundcloud channel for more great podcasts.

The Learning Community Series at The New School What have we learned? How do we bring deep healing work online? For 35 years, the Commonweal Cancer Help Program has offered week-long retreats for people with cancer. For the past five years, Healing Circles has developed circles for a wide range of people and problems. With COVID-19, we have brought much of our Healing Circles work online. Our friends at other centers who do deep healing work have done the same. TNS Host Michael Lerner, co-founder of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program, Healing Circles, The New School, and Beyond Conventional Cancer Therapies, will explore the challenges and promise of bringing deep healing work online with leading friends and colleagues in healing circle work. Please join us with your thoughts and questions. Find out more about The New School at Commonweal on our website: tns.commonweal.org. And like/follow our Soundcloud channel for more great podcasts. Find out more about The New School at Commonweal on our website: tns.commonweal.org. And like/follow our Soundcloud channel for more great podcasts.

Part of The Learning Community Series at The New School Join TNS Host Michael Lerner in a two-part spiritual biography series with Sandra Maitri — artist, author, enneagram teacher, and long time teacher of the Diamond Approach to Inner Realization. The conversations follow her remarkable journey in spiritual work and provide insight into her work with both Claudio Naranjo and Hameed Ali, the founder of the Diamond Approach to Inner Realization. Sandra Maitri was among the first group of students to whom the Chilean psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo presented the enneagram system in the United States in the early 1970s. Her books include The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram: Nine Faces of the Soul (2000) and The Enneagram of Passions and Virtues: Finding the Way Home (2005). She has been teaching the enneagram as part of the larger work of spiritual transformation for more than four decades. Find out more about The New School at Commonweal on our website: tns.commonweal.org. And like/follow our Soundcloud channel for more great podcasts.

Part of The Learning Community Series at The New School Join TNS Host Michael Lerner in a two-part spiritual biography series with Sandra Maitri — artist, author, enneagram teacher, and long time teacher of the Diamond Approach to Inner Realization. The conversations follow her remarkable journey in spiritual work and provide insight into her work with both Claudio Naranjo and Hameed Ali, the founder of the Diamond Approach to Inner Realization. Sandra Maitri was among the first group of students to whom the Chilean psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo presented the enneagram system in the United States in the early 1970s. Her books include The Spiritual Dimension of the Enneagram: Nine Faces of the Soul (2000) and The Enneagram of Passions and Virtues: Finding the Way Home (2005). She has been teaching the enneagram as part of the larger work of spiritual transformation for more than four decades.

Part of The Learning Community Series at The New School “There are some experiences,” Brother David Steindl-Rast once said, “where only poems can carry the freight.” The myths of original peoples were often chanted and held in memorized poems. The great religious and spiritual texts are often poems. Join Rachel Naomi Remen and New School Host Michael Lerner in the next conversation in The Learning Community series as they share some of the poems (and sayings) that they live by. Share the poems and sayings that inspire you. Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., is a Professor of Family Medicine at Wright State Boonshoft School of Medicine and the Founder and Founding Director of the Remen Institute for the Study of Health and Illness (RISHI), which was at Commonweal for decades and is currently at Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine. She is one of the best known of the early pioneers of wholistic and integrative medicine. As a medical educator, therapist, and teacher, she has enabled many thousands of physicians to find individual meaning and purpose in the practice of medicine and thousands of patients to remember their power to heal. More than 30,000 medical students have completed The Healer’s Art, her groundbreaking curriculum for medical students taught at the majority of medical schools in America. A master storyteller and observer of life, her bestselling books, Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather’s Blessings have sold more than 2 million copies and have been translated into 21 languages. Dr. Remen has had Crohn’s disease for more than 65 years and her work is a unique blend of the wisdom, strength, and viewpoints of both doctor and patient. Find out more about The New School at Commonweal on our website: tns.commonweal.org. And like/follow our Soundcloud channel for more great podcasts.

Join TNS Host Steve Heilig in this webinar conversation with Marvin Mutch, Ladybird Morgan, and Sandra Fish—co-founders of the Humane Prison Hospice Project, a new program at Commonweal. They will share inspirational, some might say revolutionary, firsthand accounts of prisoners finding great light and healing in the most unlikely of places. Marvin Mutch Marvin is spokesperson, liaison with prison officials, and advocate. Marvin’s bio is an extraordinary one. He was released from prison February 17, 2016, after serving 41 years on a wrongful conviction suffered in 1975. In 2008, Marvin was injured and sent to California Medical Facility for treatment, while there he became a fervent supporter of California’s only full-service prison hospice program. Marvin saw the program shepherd no less than ten of his dying brothers while there. The number of programs and advocacy work Marvin created while incarcerated are too numerous to mention here. You can find out much more KQED documentary, The Trials of Marvin Mutch. Marvin was released through the combined efforts of USC’s Post Conviction Justice Project and The Golden Gate University Innocence Project. Ladybird Morgan Ladybird Morgan, RN, MSW, executive director and co-founder of the Humane Prison Hospice Project, has been working in end-of-life care and on the frontlines of sexual violence as a registered nurse, clinical social worker, and educator for 20+ years. She has worked with many organizations including The Zen Hospice Project, Hospice By The Bay, Marin General Hospital and Doctors Without Borders (MSF). At Commonweal, Ladybird supports the work of various projects including the Cancer Help Program and Healing Circles. Sandra Fish Also a co-founder of the Humane Prison Hospice Project, Sandra is an actor, writer, and caregiver, with decades of passion for prison reform and end of life support. She taught in Riker’s Island Prison, worked as an employment specialist for newly released prisoners in Manhattan, attended ex-prisoner support groups, sat in on parole hearings, and visited SingSing to observe classrooms there. Sandra volunteers inside San Quentin assisting with the Brothers Keepers and Compassionate End of Life Training. Find out more about The New School at Commonweal on our website: tns.commonweal.org. And like/follow our Soundcloud channel for more great podcasts.

The Learning Community Series at The New School Join TNS Host Michael Lerner in our next Friday morning webinar conversation, this time with Diana Lindsay, co-founder of Commonweal's Healing Circles Langley and Healing Circles Global. Diana Lindsay is co-founder of Lindsay Communications, WOW!Stories, Healing Circles Langley, and Healing Circles Global. She is the author of Something More Than Hope: Surviving Despite the Odds, Thriving Because of Them, the story of her recovery and discovery from stage 4 lung cancer. Find out more about The New School at Commonweal on our website: tns.commonweal.org. And like/follow our Soundcloud channel for more great podcasts.

Join TNS Host Michael Lerner in a webinar conversation with Irwin Keller, jewish spiritual leader, musician, and faculty member of Commonweal’s Taproot Gathering. Irwin Keller Irwin is the spiritual leader of Congregation Ner Shalom in Sonoma County, California, since 2008. His past work included LGBT advocacy, HIV legal services, and 21 years as a singing drag queen with The Kinsey Sicks, America’s Favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet. Irwin’s sermons and essays on Torah, mysticism, God, politics, disillusionment and hope can be found on his blog, Itzik’s Well, found at irwinkeller.com. Irwin is a steward and faculty member of Commonweal’s Taproot Gathering. Find out more about The New School at Commonweal on our website: tns.commonweal.org. And like/follow our Soundcloud channel for more great podcasts.

Join us for this rare “two host” conversation between TNS hosts Michael Lerner and Steve Heilig. Michael will talk with Steve about his work as a public health specialist and expert in epidemiology and medical ethics, specifically with regard to COVID-19. Steve Heilig Trained at five University of California campuses in public health, epidemiology, medical ethics, addiction, economics, environmental sciences, and other disciplines, Steve Heilig’s work includes positions at the San Francisco Marin Medical Society, California Pacific Medical Center, UCSF, and as co-editor of the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics. He has served on many organizational boards and appointed commissions, and is a trained hospice worker. He is a music festival emcee, and widely published essayist and book and music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post, and many other publications. His undergraduate honors thesis was about the ever-growing threat of pandemics, and thus in these times his interests have come “full circle.” Find out more about The New School at Commonweal on our website: tns.commonweal.org. And like/follow our Soundcloud channel for more great podcasts.

Join us for the next webinar from The Learning Community series at The New School at Commonweal, this time with Host Michael Lerner and Cynthia Li, MD. Cynthia's experiences as both doctor and patient through an internal “dark night of the soul” and a medical condition affecting her immune system point to tools for building personal immunity and resilience in the face of crises like the current pandemic. She has been deeply involved with Commonweal’s work in environmental health, Healing Circles, and Rachel Remen’s Healer’s Art program at UCSF School of Medicine, which began at Commonweal. Listen to Michael's recent conversation with Cynthia ( https://soundcloud.com/tnscommonweal/20200404-cynthia-li-md-brave-new-medicine-building-personal-resilience-and-immunity ) recorded as part of the Awakin Calls series from Service Space. ( https://www.awakin.org )