Centering Inner Work
Centering Inner Work
Inner work is our individual and collective practice of nurturing health, vitality, clarity, and wholeness in ourselves as individuals and as groups.
It is what keeps us connected to our ability to be our better selves. It is what supports the transformative healing needed to simultaneously hold the elements of a thriving justice ecosystem.
Our ability to create meaningful and equitable change, as individuals and collectively, depends on our ability to embody and reflect the transformation we wish to see in the world as we engage with ourselves, each other, and with the systems around us. This relationship—between inner and outer change—is generative. The more we nurture and experience change in one, the more we long for and believe it can be so in the other.
Forward Together is a cross-movement leader for reproductive and gender justice who adopted inner work practices years ago as a group. During a time of crisis, they collaborated with Norma Wong of the Institute for Applied Zen to develop Forward Stance, a mind-body practice that helps activists step fully into leadership, build powerful organizations, and align movements. Forward Stance practice “provided us with ‘a powerful way to learn and gain new insight through physical movement and by reconnecting our bodies with our minds,’” says Forward Together’s Eveline Shen, who is also a member of the Northstar Network and a former Network Leadership Innovation Lab participant.
Catalyzed by the integration of inner work practices and strategic thinking, Forward Together expanded their sense of themselves and what was possible, becoming a national multiracial organization anchoring the Strong Families network. For more on this story, please refer to our article, Toward Love, Healing, Resilience & Alignment: The Inner Work Of Social Transformation & Justice, in the Nonprofit Quarterly.
Inner work is critical to connecting us to our purpose, knowing that we are part of something larger than ourselves, and joining with others to advance this greater vision. When we practice inner work, we increase our capacity to continually replenish our reserves; to skillfully allow and guide the transformative energy of emotions; to catalyze skillful action grounded in our individual and collective purpose; and to increase our synergy, alignment, and collective strategic action, including healing rifts inside ourselves, our organizations, our networks and movements.
Inner Work in Action
Acorn Center for Restoration and Freedom
Acorn Center for Restoration and Freedom is a refuge for seeding, growing, and applying healing/arts/spiritual (HEARTS) justice practices, rooted in Black Diasporic wisdom, for the sake of manifesting our collective freedom. Acorn creates spaces for BIPOC, Queer, and Trans* people to experience healing, restoration, and wholeness. They offer retreats, healing spaces, mentorship and communities of practice for practitioners, and other ongoing opportunities that center healing, creativity, and community building.
Learn MoreCo-creators Centering Inner Work
We partner with many incredible people exploring individual and collective inner work as key to advancing equity and centering creativity, joy, and healing in our work. Here we name just a few that inspire us to learn and deepen our practices.
Kawelokū
Kawelokū supports people in developing a practice of experiential learning to increase awareness, interrupt habits, and shift being to lead toward a vision of whole and healthy people and planet. The online, in-person, and asynchronous space brings together a “far flung sangha” of movement makers who bring the wisdom of breath, posture, centering and aloha into everyday life.
The Hidden Leaf Foundation
Our work together is focused on integrating practices of inner work within Change Elemental, and within our partnerships.