Presented at the Inner Development Goals Summit, 16 of October, 2024
The burden and the weight on our heads and on our reason overshadows the intelligence nurtured by our body and heart.
This sculpture, “The Weight of Thought”, by Thomas Leeroy, depicts our fragmented way of knowing in the education system.
Over-standardised and linear conceptualised methods for teaching, learning and assessing have resulted in the hierarchy of human expression.
Our disciplines are categorised and associated with value. Those using reason are seen as the ones with more power.
But what do we know about power?
If power comes from the word potere, to be able.
The potentiality to exercise it comes from building capacity but also from being able to exert it.
In 2023, I initiated the IDG Higher Education Circle.
Vivien Sung’s scribings show the living experiences of the co-created IDG Inner Development and Sustainability hybrid event for the Australia HUB in Sydney. Co-designed with eight co-facilitators and five guest presenters inspired by and for the Circle.
Being in community for some can be jumping into the unknown.
It is what I have learnt since I became involved with colleagues to co-create, and co-facilitate hubs.
First, in 2020, with the Spanish core team taking the programs like GAIA, and Theory U from the Presencing Institute to Latin America. A hub that has today over 900 members, and over 3000 participants across the LATAM network.
Then, in 2022, transitioning into the IDG Researchers network, connecting with people from different levels of leadership who were curating programs in higher education.
We need to become aware of the culture in the education system.
Structures of power based on hierarchy increase the distance between us and diminish our capacity to relate.
The community has power, but also you leaders to access and open more doors from the bridges of inner growth that creates the power of human agency that comes from the heart and enables those ways of expression to let them be, let them land, just the way they are.
The fragmentation of knowledge is in the education system.
I taught for four years Peace of Mind and Peace in the World to peacebuilders and change agents who are and become the leaders who decide on behalf of those who experienced the unspeakable.
These Master’s students relate to collective trauma at work.
To break the boundaries of linear education, I introduced embodied experiential learning.
Providing the students the permission to introspect on internal processes and encouraging a different language of expression enabled them to access and embody deep knowledge that cannot be expressed in words.
They learnt to see the unseen by being allowed to learn differently.
But, and yes, there is a BUT.
There was the fear that exploring new ways of expression would affect their scores.
Indeed, in our education system, innovative ways to welcome the creative are abandoned after Kindergarten.
Hierarchically categorising our ways of being authentic in how we learn has sacrificed our diverse and rich ways of understanding our capacity to see.
But there is also hope.
The IDG Higher Education Circle co-lead with Yuliya, who is sitting with us here and with Fredrik Lindencrona, Head of Research and leader of the Researchers Network, enable spaces from across the globe, from Peru to Sweden, to come together once a month to share experiences and vulnerability on the challenges we face to overcome when including inner growth in the curriculum, in the assessments, and in the culture of universities.
Today, the IDG HE HUB has over 500 members, professionals, academics, and practitioners.
We are a collective agency that goes from meetings in Zoom boxes, like some of these pictures from 2023 and 2024 to the amazing opportunity to meet as a co-lead team in person last night. We transform and nourish in a community that cares about curing our way of learning, transforming the meaning of education, and enabling human flourishing.
Vivianna Rodriguez Carreon 