Illuman’s annual men’s gathering, AWAKEN, offers numerous opportunities to go deeper into our true selves as we work to reclaim our hidden wholeness. Among these are breakout sessions with poets, playwrights, and spiritual teachers. See below for the sessions being offered this year and learn more at illuman.com/awaken2023.

Doug Good Feather – Insights into Wholeness from Think Indigenous

Doug Good Feather is Spiritual Advisor at Lakota Way Healing Center in Denver and spiritual leader of Spirit Horse Nation, a human rights and environmental protection organization. From Standing Rock Lakota Sioux Nation and a member of the Hunkpapa tribe, Doug was born and raised in the traditional indigenous ways of his elders. He is the author of Think Indigenous: Native American Spirituality for a Modern World. Doug will be guiding us in teachings and practices inspired by the spirituality of America’s indigenous first nation peoples.

 

Chelan Harkin – Yank the Cork: Unlocking Creative Flow through Radical Acceptance

Chelan Harkin, this year’s Poet-in-Residence, will share on her long journey of feeling deeply creatively stifled beneath the chains of perfectionism and how creating an inner environment of permission through allowing herself to write what she called “a bad poem” every day broke her out of right/wrong, good/bad confines into deeper connection with self, soul, source, muse than she ever could have dreamed. We’ll dive into how the energies we reject and resist and judge in ourself are simply misunderstood trapped life-force and how when we remove our conditioned judgements from them we open to receive compassionate, inspired genius that is life serving and gifts us with wisdom and insight far beyond what we could have concocted or imagined. 

 

Sean Leclaire – Touching Our Better Selves

Coach, poet, playwright, and performer Sean Leclaire will perform scenes from his new solo show “LEELA: Touching Our Better Selves” and engage men with inquiry, dialogue, and coaching. LEELA, a Sanskrit word meaning “divine play,” weaves gritty townie stories with classical sonnets and stand-up comedy. The show calles us to a deeper sense of ourselves and the beauty of a life lived full-on. It explores themes of mercy, stillness, lust and power, asking “What if I stopped? What part of me is still too tender for this world? What passion of mine scares me?” 

 

Craig Neal – Creating Powerful Containers of Welcome, Safety & Belonging

How can you convene meetings, gatherings, and conversations designed for intimacy, depth, and consequence in these uber-disruptive and polarized times? Craig Neal, co-author of The Art of Convening and Vision Holder/Co-Founder at the Center for Purposeful Leadership, will be joined by Illuman Convener and Certified Convening Leader, Terry Chapman, in this circle of men to explore how the Convening Wheel and related practices can support you as a steward of transformation for our families, communities, and organizations.