Community Platform

Unite and empower
the Great Turning!

We are thrilled to invite you to the become a member of our robust, interactive community platform for The Great Turning! A space uniting the hearts and minds of change-makers and visionaries worldwide.

As we face the challenges of the Great Unraveling, it's more important than ever to connect, resource emotionally and spiritually, share our collective wisdom, and work together towards a life-sustaining future. Our platform aims to address this need and empower you to make a difference in the world.

Together, we can move the world from unraveling to restoration and regeneration. By becoming a member of our platform, you can amplify your impact on The Great Turning and broaden your awareness of the powerful network of individuals working on behalf of life.

We’d love you to be a part of this transformative journey and contribute to the growth and success of the community.

What’s
Inside:

Joanna’s Monthly Reflections

Gain insights from Joanna Macy, our cherished elder and activist, in monthly releases from our archives of conversations with Joanna, sharing her thoughts and wisdom from decades of participating in The Great Turning.

Exclusive
live sessions

With beautiful and inspiring activists, artists, and thought-leaders, like brontë velez, John Seed, Leah Song, Rev Vahisha Hasan, Ruth Łchavaya K’isen Miller, and more! These sessions will provide valuable insights, knowledge, and inspiration to our community while fostering a sense of connection and shared purpose. All sessions will be available later as downloadable audio and video files.

Open office
hours

Open office hours with our founder, Lydia Violet Harutoonian, where you can bring projects you are working on, purpose questions, inquiries about Joanna Macy’s “Work That Reconnects,” and anything else on your heart-mind.

WTR COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE

Practice the "Work That Reconnects" (WTR) within our warm and supportive community of practice. Led by a team of experienced facilitators, the WTR framework, was developed by our esteemed teacher Joanna Macy. Through engaging group exercises, deep listening, guided meditations, and experiential activities, you will embark on a journey to rediscover your interconnectedness with all beings and the Earth. And, cultivate a sense of gratitude, compassion, and responsibility towards all life forms.

Empowering workshops

Emotionally empowering workshops that will nourish you with compassion, courage, and joy on the path of healing yourself and the world.

Somatic Resourcing and Support Circle

Explore a range of somatic (body-based) practices designed to cultivate a profound sense of safety, grounding, and empowerment. These include guided meditations, breathing exercises, gentle movement, body awareness explorations, and heartfelt group sharing, you'll tap into the depths of your own bodily sensations, emotions, and inner wisdom. Our circle is led by an incredible group of experienced facilitators, ensuring you receive the guidance and support you need along the way.

Resource
Library

An ever-growing library with powerful resources to help you heal, grow and serve better. It includes our pre-recorded courses like “Cultivating Wisdom” with Joanna Macy and “Emergent Healing” with Lydia Violet and adrienne maree brown. Plus all recorded platform sessions, The Great Turning Summit recordings, and our favorite writings, videos, songs, and meditations.

A community forum

With discussions and 1-on-1 messaging, so you can connect with fellow change-makers, share projects, receive feedback, and create meaningful friendships across the world.

Spotlight Into The Great Turning

Inspiration from life-affirming projects that are happening around the globe right now and opportunities for collaboration.

Music As Medicine Sunday Sings

A joyful and inclusive gathering led by rotating songleaders such as Michaela Harrison, Maggie Wheeler, Melanie DeMore, and Lydia Violet, where you are welcome to come together to sing, learn music, and build a sense of community. These heartwarming and uplifting Sunday Sings celebrate the power of music to heal and foster a spirit of togetherness.

“

This is an exciting moment for Lydia and School for The Great Turning as they bring their important work farther out into our world. In these leaden times Lydia’s artistry, energy, and wisdom ignite love for life in people of all ages and backgrounds. Here participants find honesty and strength, as well as spirited community, for facing our current crises head-on.

As root teacher of that work I rejoice that Lydia is an outstanding and trustworthy facilitator. With her understanding of its theoretical foundations and her skill in guiding practices, the music she interweaves serves to strengthen the Work, while weaving its own magic of joy, praise, and resiliency.

I believe Lydia’s mission will serve to inspire positive change for years to come. Her decade+ of studying and co-leading workshops with me have forged her into an invaluable resource for our society. I love to think of all the lives that will be changed and communities enriched by the programs she will provide.

”

Joanna Macy

A sneak peek of Upcoming Events:

Zoom in to checkout the events.

This community is for the ones who:

  • Want to learn from brilliant heart-minds dedicated to the most pressing topics of our time (activism, spiritual ecology, collective liberation and more)

  • Want to be an active and nourished part of The Great Turning - the collective movement towards a life-sustaining future.

  • Wish to find solace and understanding in a community that values empathy, kindness, and holistic well-being during these challenging times.

  • Value the deconstruction of all supremacies that continue to cause division and oppression in our world, and the fostering of equitable and regenerative societies that prioritize the well-being of all.

  • Want to carry on Joanna Macy's legacy by learning directly from her and applying her teachings to foster The Great Turning in your own communities.

  • Seek to cultivate inner peace, resilience and strength to navigate the complex challenges of our time.

  • Believe in the power of collaboration and shared learning to create a ripple effect of positive change.

  • Desire to be part of a global network of change-makers working towards a more just, life-sustaining, and thriving future for all.

…just one node in the web of amazing organizations who are empowering and furthering work in service of a livable future for all beings.

We are in community with many people who have dedicated their lives to the “Work that Reconnects,” deep ecology, adrienne maree brown’s “Emergent Strategy,” collective liberation, community healing through the arts, and Joanna Macy’s work. We hope to contribute to all these legacies continued ripples outward and to carry our own torch with wild love and studied excellence.

It is our intention for this platform to be…

Meet Our Teachers

  • Lydia Violet Harutoonian, M.A., is a visionary, group-work facilitator, community organizer, and musician who has studied dedicatedly with deep ecology elder and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy for the past 14 years, learning how we can metabolize climate despair, eco-anxiety, and community traumas into energy for resilience, action, and community healing.

    She founded the School for The Great Turning, in dedication to the work of Joanna Macy, and to create access to an education that supports the societal shift from an Industrial Growth Society to a Life-Sustaining Society.

  • adrienne maree brown grows healing ideas in public. Through her writing, which includes short- and long-form fiction, nonfiction, spells, tarot decks and poetry; her music, which includes songwriting, singing and an upcoming immersive musical ritual; and her podcasts, including How to Survive the End of the World, Octavia’s Parables and The Emergent Strategy Podcast, adrienne has nurtured Emergent Strategy, Pleasure Activism, Radical Imagination and Transformative Justice as ideas, frameworks, networks and practices for transformation. Her work is informed by 25 years of social and environmental justice facilitation primarily supporting Black liberation, her path of teaching somatics, her love of Octavia E Butler and visionary fiction, and her work as a doula. She is the author/editor of several published texts including Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (2017), Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (2019),  Grievers (2021) and Maroons (2023) the first two novellas of her speculative fiction trilogy. After a multinational childhood, adrienne lived in New York, Oakland and Detroit before landing in her current home of Durham, NC.

    Books & Projects

    adrienne is the author of *Fables and Spells: Collected and New Short Fiction and Poetry, The Journal of Radical Permission with Sonya Renee Taylor*, (Berrett Koehler, 2022), *Grievers* (the first novella in her fiction trilogy for the Black Dawn imprint at AK Press), *Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation, We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice*, the NY Times Bestseller *Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good*, the radical self/planet help book *Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds* published by AK Press in 2017. She is also the co-editor of the anthology *Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements* with Walidah Imarisha, published by AK Press in 2015.

  • Vahisha Hasan is a faith-rooted organizer moving at the intersections of faith, social justice and mental health. She is the Executive Director of Movement in Faith, a project of Transform Network. She is a powerful public speaker, transformative facilitator, social justice trainer, minister, and writer with a deeply prophetic voice and imagination for how faith communities can be an active part of healing and collective liberation.

    She is the Director of the SEAL Initiatives at American Baptist College in Nashville TN (Social Justice, Equity, Advocacy, and Leadership). Vahisha is also a core team member of TRACC4Movements (Trauma Response and Crisis Care), providing supportive tools for wellness for those who labor in freedom and liberation. She also serves as an associate minister at Christ Missionary Baptist Church, under Rev. Dr. Gina Stewart, Senior Pastor, where she was licensed and ordained June 23, 2019.

    Vahisha holds a dual Master’s of Divinity and Master’s of Mental Health Counseling with an Education Specialist Certification from Gardner-Webb University and a bachelor’s degree in Communications with a concentration in Interpersonal Organization from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

    In addition to penning book reviews, journal articles, online publications, and writing a bachelor’s curriculum in Applied Psychology, she has curated and co-edited three editions of *Resipiscence: A Lenten Devotional for Dismantling White Supremacy*, 2018-2020.

  • Leah Song is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumental musician, storyteller, poet, and activist known for her role as front woman in Rising Appalachia, with her sister Chloe Smith, incorporating sultry vocals, rhythm, banjo, guitar, ballads, dance, spoken-word and storytelling into her work. Her music is based in the traditions of Southern soul and international roots music. Song engages in social activism and is involved with the environment, food justice, human rights and prisons.

    She has studied and worked alongside some of the greatest teachers of our time...including Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Martin Shaw, Joanna Macy, Winona LaDuke, Sobunfu Some, and Rosemary Gladstar, gathering tools and teachings of resilience, mythology, grief work, creative ritual, and rewilding.

  • Joanna Macy,  Ph.D, author & teacher, is a scholar of Buddhism, systems thinking , and deep ecology.

    A respected voice in movements for peace, justice, and ecology, she interweaves her scholarship with learnings from six decades of activism.

    Her wide-ranging work addresses psychological and spiritual issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of ecological awareness, and the fruitful resonance between Buddhist thought and  postmodern science. The many dimensions of this work are explored in her thirteen books, which include three volumes of  poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke with translation and commentary.

    As the root teacher of **The Work That Reconnects**, Joanna has created a ground-breaking framework for personal and social change, as well as a powerful workshop methodology for its application.

    Based in Berkeley, California, close to her children and grandchildren, Joanna has spent many years in other lands and cultures, viewing movements for social change and exploring their roots in religious thought and practice.

    Since the early 1980’s her travel was governed by invitations to teach the group work that she and a growing number of colleagues were developing. Many thousands of people around the world have participated in Joanna’s workshops and trainings. These methods, incorporated in the Work That Reconnects, have been adopted and adapted yet more widely in classrooms, community centers, and grassroots organizing.

    In the face of overwhelming social and ecological crises, this work helps people transform despair and apathy into constructive, collaborative action. It brings a new way of seeing the world as our larger living body. This perspective frees us from the assumptions and attitudes that now threaten the continuity of life on Earth.

  • (she) is a nonviolent action trainer and interspiritual theologian. She is a PhD student in Syracuse, New York (Haudenosaunee Confederacy traditional land) she focuses on ecological regeneration, community cultivation, and spiritual activism. Previously, Sarah was a 2019 Rotary Peace Fellow, and has worked at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

    She is the former Executive Director of Community Peacemaker Teams, an organization that sends small groups of unarmed civilian accompaniers to advocate for change alongside oppressed communities facing lethal conflict.

    She attended Spelman College, and has an MDiv from Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary in her hometown of Elkhart, Indiana. She has been facilitating the WTR since 2014.

  • Wholeheartedly fed by the folk and gospel traditions, MaMuse (Sarah Nutting and Karisha Longaker) create uplifting music to inspire the world into thriving. Interweaving brilliant and haunting harmony with lyrics born of honed emotional intelligence, MaMuse invokes a musical presence that inspires the opening of the heart. Playing a family of varied acoustic instruments including upright bass, guitar, mandolins, ukulele, and flutes, while backed by guitar virtuoso Walter Strauss and inspired drummer (Mike Wofchuck), these two powerful women embody a love for all life. The synergy that is created through this musical connection is palpable and truly moving to witness.

    With nine delicious years of co-creation and five full length albums under their belts, MaMuse keep their hearts tuned to the creation of music for the health of all beings.

  • John Seed is the founder and director of the [Rainforest Information Centre] in Australia, which has engaged in the protection of rainforests worldwide. Since 1979, he has been involved in direct actions, which have resulted in the protection of the Australian rainforests. He has since created numerous projects protecting rainforests throughout South America, Asia, and the Pacific.

    In addition, he is an accomplished songwriter, filmmaker, and author, writing and lecturing extensively on deep ecology and conducting re-Earthing workshops for the past 25 years. John co-authored “Thinking Like a Mountain – Towards a Council of All Beings” with Joanna Macy, Pat Fleming, and Arne Naess. His most recent project with the Rainforest Information Centre focuses on the protection of Ecuador’s rainforests in the Los Cedros Biological Reserve.

  • brontë’s work and rest is guided by the call that “black wellness is the antithesis to state violence” (Mark Anthony Johnson). as a black-latinx transdisciplinary artist, curator, trickster, educator, jibarx and wakeworker, their eco-social art praxis lives at the intersections of black feminist placemaking, abolitionist theologies, environmental regeneration, death doulaship and the wisdom of comedy.

    *they embody this commitment of attending to black health/imagination, commemorative justice (Free Egunfemi) and hospicing the shit that hurts black folks and the land through serving as creative director for Lead to Life design collective ([leadtolife.org](http://leadtolife.org/)) and ecological educator for ancestral arts skills and nature-connection school Weaving Earth ([weavingearth.org](http://weavingearth.org/)). they are currently co-conjuring a mockumentary with esperanza spalding in collaboration with the San Francisco Symphony and practicing pastoral care as a co-steward of a land refuge in Kashia Pomo territory in northern California.

    mostly, brontë is up to the sweet tender rhythm of quotidian black queer-lifemaking, ever-committed to humor & liberation, ever-marked by grief at the distance made between us and all of life

  • Skye grew up on a farm in South Africa and spent her early years immersed in wildlife conservation and rehabilitation before going on to work as a wilderness guide. She then spent 5 years living in the Peruvian Amazon jungle where she was immersed in the study of traditional plant medicine of the indigenous Shipibo people, and co-facilitated healing retreats with her partner Miraz.

    She moved to Melbourne 5 years ago where she first encountered Deep Ecology through the workshops of John Seed and has been a passionate student and co-facilitator of this work ever since.

  • Maggie Wheeler is best known for her work as an actress, most notably as the character of Janice on NBC’s hit series Friends. In addition to her acting and voiceover work, she is a singer, songwriter, choir director, and workshop facilitator.

    She has been teaching her vocal workshop Singing in the Stream for more than 30 years at retreat centers, universities, communities, and schools to provide the experience of creating interpersonal and internal harmony through the powerful act of singing together. Maggie directs the Golden Bridge Community Choir in Hollywood, a non-auditioned, intergenerational choir which supports local and global communities through fundraising concerts, now in its 17th year.

    Maggie studied  with Ysaye Barnwell of Sweet Honey in the Rock, Joseph Shabalala of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and the late Marion Williams. She formed her own a capella group, based in New York City, called Sons & Daughters, mentored by Barnwell. She is the host of a weekly online community gathering called Together In Song, bringing together more than 4,000 people from around the world to join in the healing power of singing.

  • Ruth (Łchavaya K’isen) is a Dena'ina Athabaskan and Ashkenazi Russian Jewish woman, raised in Dgheyay Kaq (Anchorage), Alaska. She is a member of the Curyung Tribe from the Lake Clark region, and also has roots in Bristol Bay. She is a recent graduate from Brown University, built on occupied Wampanoag and Narragansett lands, and received a BA in Critical Development Studies with a focus on Indigenous resistance and liberation. Ruth is the former Climate Justice Director for Native Movement, a matriarchal grassroots Indigenous organization that fights for the rights of Indigenous peoples, our lands and waters, and justice for our ancestors and descendants. She has worked many years towards climate justice and a regenerative economy for all on her lands and beyond, her work also includes international advocacy, including attending the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, the UN Youth Climate Summit, COP25 in Madrid, Spain, and the Continental Gathering of Indigenous Women of the Americas (ECMIA). She is a daughter, a granddaughter, and aunty, a language learner, a traditional beadworker, and a subsistence fisherwomxn.

  • Michaela began singing in the Baptist church at age five. Her musical style incorporates her gospel roots as well as a diverse range of genres including jazz, blues, R & B, soul, samba, MPB and African traditional music. As a protégé of Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of Sweet Honey In The Rock, Michaela is well-versed in spirituals, work songs, and African American protest music from the Civil Rights era. Holding a Bachelor's Degree in Foreign Service and a Master's in Africana Studies, Michaela has also studied and lived in East Africa and Brazil. Fluent in French and Portuguese, and familiar with Spanish and Swahili, Michaela has an expanded repertoire of world music and renders songs in their original languages. She infuses her performances with insightful commentary based on her multi-cultural perspective, simultaneously uplifting and educating audiences.

And more to come…

“

I first learned of School for the Great Turning through the Singing the Bones course with Lydia and Leah Song. I took that course three times…This course was an exploration into my roots and lineage and ancestry through song. It was beautiful and profound and healing on many levels.

Through this new community platform that Lydia had launched- there are many opportunities to continue to gather at the well. I particularly look forward to the Music as Medicine community sing on Sundays, the opportunity to listen to Joanna Macy’s reflections and wisdom, the Work that Reconnects community practice. The wonderful guest speakers like John Seed and Skye and learning about deep ecology. The opportunity to be exposed to many different people and sources of wisdom. The opportunity to grow and evolve in community. I really appreciate that these gatherings are recorded and available to watch again as well, so I can go back to them. I’m very grateful and excited for this new platform.

”

— Jen S

Plant medicine facilitator, yoga teacher, body/ energy worker

Cusco, Peru

Join The Waitlist

“

We are all the protagonists of what might be called the great turning, the change, the new economy, the new world.

And I think it is healing behavior, to look at something so broken and see the possibility and wholeness in it. That’s how I work as a healer: when a body is between my hands, I let wholeness pour through. We are all healers too—we are creating possibilities, because we are seeing a future full of wholeness.”

“We are still mostly misdirected, turned away from the wisdom that is our inheritance.

Joanna Macy speaks of the “great turning,” a collective awakening and shifting direction, away from the wanton destruction of this planet and each other, away from those practices of separation and competition listed above, towards life and abundance.

I like this visual of turning and evolving, as opposed to destroying the systems in place now.

”

adrienne maree brown

Will you join us?

We'd be thrilled to have you with us as in our journey on behalf of life.

As a member of the School for the Great Turning Community Platform, you’ll have a unique opportunity to shape the future of our community, both supporting and being supported by this group of amazing people.

Together, we can accelerate the momentum of the Great Turning. Like every individual in a thriving ecosystem, you play a unique role, and your participation is invaluable.

We hope you’ll come to bring your presence and your voice, connect with passionate change-makers, learn from thought-leaders, and contribute to building a just, life-sustaining, and flourishing future for all.

Why we have an enrollment window:

We are thrilled to welcome new members during our 2-week enrollment window. After enrollment closes, we will host a welcome and orientation call, and then focus completely on facilitating the best experiences we can, caring for our community and continuing our relationships with our extraordinary guest teachers.

We find that it works best to bring a group of new members in all at one time, and then turn our attention toward getting to know one another and growing together, as we engage in the ongoing work and play of embodying the Great Turning.

“

This community contributes greatly to my own growing awareness that as the world shifts and changes, as climate change is increasingly impacting and interrupting lives, that we (I) need to be in this particular community to foster hope and collective action. I love this container that has capacity for those who have been immersed in Joanna's work to freely share, converse and facilitate and at the same time, creating space for co-learning by including the voices and inquiries of those of us newer to the Work That Reconnects. I done several courses with Lydia and her co-teachers, and I trust the process of the Work that Reconnects, and Lydia is completely transparent and open and is a great balance of confidence and humbleness. Thank you for this invitation and the wholehearted communication of all the teachers!

”

— Rachel A.

Healing Arts Practitioner/Trauma Informed Wellness Services

SW Pa (unceded land of Monongahela, Lenape, Shawnee)

FAQs

  • To become a member, simply click the "Join Now" button on our landing page, or right here and complete the registration process. Founding members will enjoy exclusive benefits, including discounts and the opportunity to shape the future of our community.

  • For information on pricing and membership options, please click here

  • Your pace is perfect and there is no "behind” here. This is not a course you have to work through from beginning to end. We have curated different kinds of offerings for you to choose to engage in the ones you desire most! It’s about choice here, not completion. You’ll be able to revisit previous workshops while your membership is current, so there’s no rush to take in the materials. This is exploratory space for you to consume at your pace.

  • All our online gatherings are recorded.

    You’ll have access to these recordings within the Platform, so you can learn from our teachers and experience the practices at the time that works best for you. The discussion forum will be open 24/7, so you can always post, comment, and connect with the community.

  • Enrollment closes on July 3rd. Make sure to secure your spot before then if you wish to enter the community and enjoy the exclusive benefits of this enrollment period (the next 3-6 months). We close the community for these periods so we can invest in the new members and create deeper bonds.

  • The majority of our monthly workshops will occur on Monday or Wednesday, alternating between 10am PST and 5pm PST, unless our presenters live in a time zone we need to adapt to accordingly.

    Our Sunday Community Sing happening the first Sunday of each month at 10am PST.

    The workshop recordings will also be available within 24/48 hours after the workshop.

  • If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions, please feel free to contact us at care@schoolforthegreatturning.com. Our team will be more than happy to assist you.

  • It’s completely private! Our courses and forum are hosted by Circle, and only School for the Great Turning members have access. Circle provides a social media-like layout, allowing for posts, comments, links, and direct messages between members, but you will never see ads, or content from outside the School.