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explore advaya’s teachers

Explore advaya's faculty of teachers, scientists, practitioners, philosophers and storytellers, 
who share multidimensional, local and diverse 
narratives from across the world.

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Bayo Akomolafe picture

Bayo Akomolafe

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Sophie Strand

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Satish Kumar

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Vandana Shiva

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Veronica Strang

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Manda Scott

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Beloved Sara Zaltash

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David Abram

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Dr Andreas Weber

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David Whyte

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Helena Norberg-Hodge

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Dr. Predrag Slijepcevic

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Charles Eisenstein

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Aisha Paris Smith

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Brontë Velez

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Bayo Akomolafe

Bayo Akomolafe (PhD) is Chief Curator and Executive Director of The Emergence Network.

Author, lecturer, speaker, father, and rogue planet saved by the gravitational pull of his wife Ej, Bayo hopes to inspire a diffractive network of sharing within an ethos of new responsivity – a slowing down, an ethics of entanglement, an activism of inquiry, a ‘politics of surprise’.

Born into a Yoruba family, Bayo graduated summa cum laude in psychology in 2006 at Covenant University (Nigeria), and then was invited to take up a lecturing position. Largely nurtured and trained in a world that increasingly fell short of his deepest desires for justice, Bayo conducted doctoral research into Yoruba indigenous healing systems as part of his inner struggle to regain a sense of rootedness to his community. He has been speaking about his experiences around the world since those moments back in 2011. Bayo understands he is on a shared decolonial journey with his family to live a small, intense life. He often refuses to share pictures of himself that do not include his wife, Ej, who is (everyone can assure you) the more interesting part of their entanglement. He is an ecstatic (and often exhausted, but grateful) father to Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden.

Re-storying Masculinity Picture

course

Re-storying Masculinity

What is the current state of contemporary masculinity and what sociocultural forces, historical events, psychological patterns, mythic stories, and rigid constructs shape(d) it? How do we look into the heart of patriarchal masculinity and heal the wounds of today? In re-storying the future of masculinities, how do we embrace a diversity of expression and forms, and make space for each one as they come into being? Let us embark on the journey of re-storying. The journey begins with diagnosing and contextualising contemporary masculinities and men’s work. Moving into psychological realms we explore how we might heal the inner child, and the Mother Wound often seen to be at the heart of patriarchal masculinity. Continuing along the lines of reparenting, we look at rebuilding fathering cultures and the role of community. We look towards possibilities for liberated futures, examining the intersections of masculinity and sexuality, and masculinity and coloniality. The journey concludes with new-old mythological frameworks for restorying masculinity. Guided by Ian MacKenzie, re-storying masculinity featuring a collective of storytellers, culture workers, wisdom carriers, and more.

Rewilding Mythology Picture

course

Rewilding Mythology

For most of human history, myth was a durable mode of knowledge transmission, kept alive and resilient by the breath-laced web of communal storytelling. But the rise of empire depended on the deracination of mythologies. Just as landscapes were stolen and terraformed so were whole pantheons uprooted from their social and ecological contexts. How can we reroot, rewild, and retell?

Wisdoms of Water Picture

course

Wisdoms of Water

Join this online course together with leading teachers, healers, researchers, activists, and artists, and dive into the spiritual realms of water, discovering the deep sea and the memories it holds. We will resurface to understand how the way that we treat water is intrinsically connected with our bodies and our future.

Kinship: Being Together Picture

course

Kinship: Being Together

A transformative online course exploring community, relationality & belonging in the worlds we live in. What does it mean to belong? What does it mean to be in relationship with the ever-unfurling world we find ourselves a part of? What, exactly, is community? And who do we really mean when we say _we_? The Kinship 2022 course is an exploration into being together in a time when being apart has fractured our relationship to self, other, and the more-than-human in ways that have left us painfully adrift. It is a timely collective inquiry into how community, relationality, and belonging can revitalise our sense of aliveness as creatures of and participants in this animate earth, and how such a renewal might influence our actions towards greater flourishing. _One of the most important things you can do on this earth is to let people know they are not alone._ Shannon L. Alder

A Journey Home Picture

course

A Journey Home

A unique learning journey with leading hearts and minds of our time. Learn new and adaptive ways of being that allow us to navigate these times of transition with resilience and creativity.

Meeting our monsters: what lies at the heart of patriarchy? Picture

film

Meeting our monsters: what lies at the heart of patriarchy?

What lies at the heart of patriarchy? Looking to potential solutions, we ask: how can addressing the Mother Wound allow men to (re)establish a profound sense of connection to this earth, and to others, that they are deeply, and naturally longing for? Continuing on from the previous module, we’ll connect the dots through the psychological and mythic roots of patriarchy, to explain the ongoing, destructive drive for masculine domination. We invite a look within towards internal narratives that shape behaviour and thus, culture. We will also look outwards, through the mythopoetic lens, illuminating ancient stories and revising cultural myths, exploring the stories the patriarchy has coopted and constructed.

Being & Becoming Kin Picture

film

Being & Becoming Kin

The end is near and we are asking, what next? How can we practise kinship in our own lives? How might we be able to help our communities, and those we don't belong to? We will look at how we can reconceive kinship in the context of modernity. After all these discussions and explorations, how have our notions of kinship blossomed? What can we embody going forward?

Rerooting Yeshua as a magician storyteller (extended cut) Picture

film

Rerooting Yeshua as a magician storyteller (extended cut)

Uprooted from the Galilean ecology from which he drew his nature metaphors and translated into the language of his oppressors, the teachings of Jesus have easily lapsed into dogma. How does a storytelling magician get coopted by imperialism and patriarchy? Let us replant Jesus in his original ecological and social context, and his mythic vegetal god mycelium, to recover the environmentally and socially radical nature of his teachings.

What do you do when there is no hope? Picture

film

What do you do when there is no hope?

A strange invitation: the times are urgent, let us slow down. One particular telling of the story of climate chaos is that we are collectively beyond hope: we’ve gone over the tipping point, we’ve burst through the membranes, we’ve passed under the sign that hangs over Dante Alighieri’s hell (“abandon all hope all ye who enter here”). It’s red alert from here on out. The facilitated response to this bit of information has been to double down on efforts to sequester carbon, to beat governments and giant institutions into slowing down emissions, and to turn our attention to speculative carbon capture technologies that promise to fix the problem for us. These complicated ecologies of response come together to try to generate hope to counter the frightening deficit of hope. As a result, many of us are caught up in urgent practices that obscure the power that lies at the end of hope. Bayo uses stories of transatlantic crossings and the myth of libations to suggest why we’ve been here before, at sites of hopelessness, and that it is in the loss and grief and troubles that attend this place that new glimpses of power are known. With this he builds an account of what he calls ‘post-activism’ and ‘making sanctuary’ to offer a very different kind of invitation. Co-facilitated with Toni Spencer, who shares questions of deep ecology, resilience and ‘politics of wonder’.