The New School at Commonweal

Join TNS Host Steve Heilig and Anna O’Malley in a conversation exploring the role of physician in society at this planetary moment, community resilience in the face of COVID, and allyship with nature. Anna O'Malley, MD Anna is an integrative family and community medicine physician, founded and directs Natura Institute for Ecology and Medicine in the Commonweal Garden, and cultivates the medicine of connection to self, one another, and the Earth. 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 Steve Heiig with two long-time members of the Commonweal community, Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, and Marion Weber. Rachel is a master story-teller and co-founder of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program. She is the author of Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather's Blessing, both international best-sellers. Marion is a pioneer of the healing arts movement, a long-time sand tray practitioner in the Commonweal Cancer Help Program, the inventor of group sand tray, and a deep seer into the wisdom and mystery traditions. Rachel Naomi Remen: Rachel 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, 

The Learning Community Series at The New School Join TNS Host Michael Lerner in a webinar conversation with Lisa Simms Booth, the executive director at the Smith Center for Healing and the Arts. The Smith Center is a Washington, DC-based health, education, and arts nonprofit that develops and promotes physical, emotional, and mental resources for people affected by cancer. Lisa Simms Booth: In addition to serving as executive director for the Smith Center for Healing and the Arts, Lisa previously served as senior director of patient and public engagement at the Biden Cancer Initiative. Prior to joining the Initiative, she was at FasterCures, a center of the Milken Institute, playing leadership roles in partnership development, external affairs and operations. Lisa’s experience also includes working for political and advocacy organizations including LISTEN, Inc., The Alliance for Justice, Time Dollar Institute, Children’s Defense Fund, Democratic National Committee and the National Rainbow Coalition. 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 webinar conversation with Carl Safina, writer, marine conservationist, PBS host, and MacArthur fellow. Carl Safina’s lyrical non-fiction writing explores how humans are changing the living world, and what the changes mean for non-human beings and for us all. His work fuses scientific understanding, emotional connection, and a moral call to action. His writing has won a MacArthur “genius” prize; Pew, Guggenheim, and National Science Foundation Fellowships; book awards from Lannan, Orion, and the National Academies; and the John Burroughs, James Beard, and George Rabb medals. He grew up raising pigeons, training hawks and owls, and spending as many days and nights in the woods and on the water as he could. Safina is now the first Endowed Professor for Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University and is founding president of the not-for-profit Safina Center. He hosted the PBS series Saving the Ocean, which can be viewed free at PBS.org. His writing appears in The New York Times, TIME, The Guardian, Audubon, Yale e360, and National Geographic, and on the Web at Huffington Post, CNN.com, Medium, and elsewhere. His books include the classic, Song for the Blue Ocean. Carl is author of ten books including Beyond Words; What Animals Think and Feel. His most recent book is Becoming Wild; How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace. He lives on Long Island, New York, with his wife Patricia and their dogs and feathered friends. More at CarlSafina.org and SafinaCenter.org . 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 During this liminal time, where many old borders seem to have vanished, we are all trying to re-imagine how we might serve as hospice workers for the old, and midwives of the new. Join us for this webinar from The Learning Community series at The New School at Commonweal featuring TNS Host Michael Lerner in conversation with journalist, teacher, entrepreneur, civic leader and strategic advisor to philanthropic leaders Katherine Fulton. Katherine Fulton Katherine has been a leading strategic advisor to foundations, high-net-worth donors, and major nonprofits for the past 25 years. She spent a decade building Monitor Institute into one of the nation’s leading social sector consulting firms, and has published and spoken widely on the future of philanthropy, impact investing and social change. Previously she was a journalist, co-founding an award-winning, alternative newspaper company in the American South. Her conviction in the early 1990s that the internet would transform journalism led her to California, where she worked with the world’s leading futurists and scenario planners as a senior leader at Global Business Network. She has served on more than two dozen boards, including Commonweal’s, and is now the co-chair of The Long Now Foundation. She lives in Sonoma, CA, with her wife of 30 years, Katharine Kunst. 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 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.