Ways of Knowing™ Symposium: Exploring Cultural Based Healing Traditions & Practices

Participant Comments
Following Symposium

What Participants Enjoyed

Cultural Diversity

• Diversity of presentations & materials presented
• The opportunity to experience acts of worship from a variety of cultures, something I’ll never forget
• Hearing from leaders in this field, all pioneers
• Speakers/presenters were very well chosen, fabulous opportunity
• Respectful inclusion of cultural communities
• Privilege of sharing with people from other cultures
• Loved diversity of presenters and centering people
• Cross-cultural healers’ work and spirit
• Choice of presenters and theme of diversity of cultures
• I am very touched and amazed, it was a deep insight into worlds unknown to me…they connected, touched, and are so real

Organization & Atmosphere

• Spiritual focus
• Spirit based, spirit led, spirit blessed
• Hotiou (Thank you) for putting spirit first, very well done
• Openness of expression
• Openness of presenters and participants
• Openness to each other, and to Spirit
• Being & meeting so many open-hearted people
  Thank you for the eloquence of the prayer and the beauty of the songs
• Well-oiled and well-run conference
• The planning and organization behind the scenes that support the flow was ‘holy’
• Same circle throughout was very special connection-building

Speakers

• Magnificent individual teachers/presenters
• Heart-filled presentations
• Great presenters
• Fantastic speakers!  All were knowledgeable, bridging world, able to communicate with great depth to others from different traditions
• Outstanding speakers
• Wisdom & diversity of presenters and participants
• Marilyn Schlitz
• Wonderful people speaking!

Rituals & Ceremonies

• Ritual and experiential opportunities
• Incredible ceremonies
• Truly amazing rituals & opportunities to learn and honor a variety of traditions
• No ‘woo-woo’ talk, greatly appreciated depth of rituals, ceremonies, spirituality and amount of walked talked, true professionals, not New-agey. Thank you!
• Hoorah for meaningful, beautiful rituals
• Ceremony, indigenous cultural language
• Ceremony---actually doing it
• Cultural healing practices & shared experiences
• An historic event, profound healing, ancestral healing

Everything….

• All
• Wow!
• Beautiful…good energy
• So much great information, great people, so healing, overwhelming, incredible
• Loved longer conference
• Experiential is brilliant. More! More!

What Participants Would Like Added or Changed

Organization Suggestions

• Cluster conversation suggestions
  - Have cluster times with speakers for informal Q & A
  - Longer cluster conversations
  - More cluster conversations
  - Cluster conversations and self-care, not one or the other
  - Cluster time with speakers for informal Q & A
• Try and have full circle sharing
• More structured activities to get to know other participants
• More ‘play time’ for group
• More participants presenting together, more circles & less individual talks
• More time for dialogue & processing timeTime to process and reflect increased and structured
• Still more circle or group time
• Increase time for dialogue among participants
• More time to processing, digesting…missing this doesn’t promote healthy balance
• More time to reflect and digest between profound experiential sessions
• Still more time for integration and open time
  - Perfer circle sharing over Q & A
  - More Table Rotation of People
• Shifting tables more often, meet more people
• Mix up tables more, don’t stay with same table, meet more people
• Change up table number arrangements
• Switch tables each day to be with new group of people
• Need to rotate people, not just tables
• Change tables in middle of Symposium

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