BD101™
WHOLE SYSTEM
TRANSFORMATION SERIES
When you mean to radically change the system: including you!
The world is crying out to remember and act!
Our society is in an absolute state of falling apart and yet we see beautiful expressions of human interconnection, resistance, imagination, and nurturance. While many work to hold in place a power based in separation and domination, many are committed to not only reject and de-structure those systems but to boldly create and sustain life-affirming communities that are organized around radical truth and love.
In November 2023, Niyonu offered BD101 WST for the first time excited to share from over 30 years as an organizational development and transformation practitioner. That 5-Day offering further convinced her that the time is right to invite a cohort of people who commit to learning and strengthening their skills together; to ferociously engage dynamic tools, reflective and somatic processes, spiritual ritual and creative arts.
“What is called for now is unearthing root assumptions, core beliefs and practices that are baked into the culture to separate, diminish or dominate. We must peel away assumed limitations and call in boundless possibilities through imagination, prayer, remembering and activating what our hearts are yearning for.”
— Niyonu Spann, Lead Facilitator
Cultivate understanding, dream new worlds, strengthen skills, and practice through application and feedback.
BD101™ WST provides mental, spiritual and somatic models and practices along with opportunities to apply methods and practices; to consciously hold and guide transformative processes.
This 4-Part series includes training and practice to:
Understand the difference between incremental change & whole systems transformation.
Work with the field of knowingness.
Engage Body, Mind and Spirit as essential.
Take action and build movements.
Understand the necessary elements of liberation.
Create and tap into the mystical.
Fully include the somatic.
Design and facilitate for liberation.
Join a Cohort of Conscious Co-Creators Committed to Transformation.
WST Cohort members work and play together inviting and developing conscious ‘creator-ship’ (to know self as creator within communities of co-creators). Some are called to sit on councils that help community to run smoothly, others bring artistic expression, some are led to teach while others master plant medicines and other forms of healing. Regardless of the particular role or the medicine that you bring, making the jump from a culture of domination and separation to one that realizes interconnection and shared responsibility — I call this jump, whole system transformation — requires re-engaging the imagination, practice in skill-building, and courageous movement.
“If you seek to use all of who you are - unleashing liberatory energies - to respond to this call, join us! Think of this series as a “T for T” ... Training for Transformers. It is for facilitators, organization leaders, trainers, artists, healers, and others who are ready to unleash a tremendous love and who have signed on to co-create whole systems transformation.”
— Niyonu Spann, Lead Facilitator
Tap into decades of practice in organization development, transformative studies and spiritual discernment.
Learn more below about the Whole System Transformation Series lead facilitator and guest teachers.
Niyonu Spann
Lead Facilitator
Niyonu created Beyond Diversity 101™ in 1999. In November, 2023 she offered BD101™ WST for the first time, excited to share from over 30 years as an organization development and transformation practitioner. That 5-Day offering further convinced Niyonu that the time is right to invite a cohort of people who commit to learning and strengthening their skills together; to ferociously engage dynamic tools, reflective and somatic processes, spiritual ritual and creative arts. Niyonu will be joined by four amazing guest teachers, each of whom she has been blessed to study with.
Niyonu earned a master’s degree in Organization Development and is a PhD student at the California Institute for Integral Studies in Transformative Studies. She is currently writing a book titled, Whole System Transformation: When you mean to change the system, including you!
Guest teachers include:
Zhenevere Sophia Dao
Zhenevere Sophia Dao, a transgender woman, is a poet, novelist, playwright, and existential and cultural philosopher. She was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University in Poetry and Literature, before leaving academia for the equestrian professions and to become an independent scholar. She is the founder of Mythosomatics, an original body of mythopoetic movement art, and the philosophies of Post-Daoism and Neo-Romanticism.
Dr. Darya Funches
Dr. Darya Funches is an author, inspirational speaker, educator, consultant, coach and ceremonial leader who has dedicated her professional life to the evolution of humanity to reach its highest potentials to benefit current and future generations at work, home and in community. In different professional practices, she is a corporate consultant, executive advisor, transformational guide and teacher, as well as a spiritual scientist and intuitive.
Lisa Graustein
Lisa Graustein first attended Beyond Diversity 101™ (BD101) in 2003, looking for a place to make sense of what she was encountering as a public school teacher in Boston and a gay rights activist. BD101 transformed the way that she teaches and approaches her activism. Lisa views BD101 as sacred time, and with the current political environment, she knows that this work is greatly needed.
Daniel Hunter
Daniel Hunter is an activist, trainer, strategist and author of multiple books: Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow, Climate Resistance Handbook, and Strategy and Soul. He co-founded Choose Democracy to train tens of thousands about what to do in case of a Trump coup and has trained pro-democracy movements in Burma/Myanmar, Thailand, India, and many other places. He has recently worked as Associate Director for Global Training at 350.org, where he has developed numerous open source training materials available in many languages.
A 4-part, cohort-based, holistic
learning laboratory
The WST Series takes place in 2025 over three, 5-day in-person sessions & one 3-day virtual session. In-person sessions will be held at Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center located on the homelands of the Lenape people in what is now Northeastern Pennsylvania.
PART 1
Shaping the Vessel
With guest teacher Zhenevere Sophia Dao
March 19 – 23, 2025
Kirkridge Retreat Center
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Where I/we come from, What I/we yearn for in our life/our communities/our world
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Support grounded in seeing, reflecting, vulnerability, and holding
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Ways of sensing, ways of knowing, ways of making meaning, ways of expression
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Why BODY is essential
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Our blueprint ~ What we’ve signed on for
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Introduce Primary Frameworks through which we access whole-system remembrance/ whole-system transformation
PART 2
Workin’ at the Roots
With guest teacher Dr. Darya Funches
June 26 – 30, 2025
Kirkridge Retreat Center
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Foundational Change
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Understand the differences between incremental change processes, which are generally approached in a linear, rational fashion, and whole system transformation, which calls on imagination, creativity, and the capacity to release (and ride!) generative energy waves: to manifest on many levels at once
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Working within the field of knowingness
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Why SPIRIT is essential
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Planning toward a practicum
PART 3
Clarifying What We Are Up To
September 26 – 28, 2025
on Zoom
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What are you talking about, really? - Inclusion/Equity/Diversity/Belonging/Liberation
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The necessary elements of liberation/of liberatory ways of educating, counseling, creating, leading, worshiping, organizing, etc…
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Why MIND is essential
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Applying The Three Circles & Eliminating Patterns of Oppression
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Polarity Thinking/”AND” Thinking
PART 4
Focus & BE it!
With guest teachers Lisa Graustein & Daniel Hunter
November 19 – 23, 2025
Kirkridge Retreat Center
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Liberatory Design & Facilitation – workshop design/meeting design/community actions
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Movement Building – Why Action is essential
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Community Care
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Creativity & tapping the mystical
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Somatic
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Discernment – Practicing, Supporting
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Vision Energy
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Exciting the system
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This is HEARTWORK that we are doing
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Open-Hearted AND Disallowing Harm
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Learning in mixed groups AND Learning in Affinity Spaces
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What we are offering our home communities
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Closing Ritual
Resonating? Ready to take the next step?
If your heart is resonating with the outline of the Whole System Transformation series we recommend you consider the following inquiries before applying.
To consider before applying:
Does this feel to be a strong leading? Does the idea keep coming back to you? Do you see/feel yourself in this learning circle?
It was apparent in the response to the November, 2023 offering of BD101-WST, that there is a strong, collective pull to this depth of co-learning and co-activating. Sit with what is calling you here...listen to what that calling is before considering the financial commitment, calendar, distance or anything else. Once you honor and investigate your interest, other considerations will be easier to reconcile.
Are you prepared to make the full commitment?
This is not an in-and-out kind of process. Each intensive weaves concepts and practices, deepening mind-body readiness. You will join a small group who will meet throughout each session and once a month in-between sessions.
Are you open to a level of intimacy that will invite stimulation and feedback on many levels: spiritual, academic, emotional, physical.....?
Do you want a “back-home” application?
The Practicum - applying your learning and practices in your community/ organization/family etc. The Practicum invites you to integrate key learnings and practices and design a specific intervention for/with your larger community. The intervention is an opportunity to create a space for shared learning and co-holding.
Application Process and Fees
Click on the button to start your application. After we receive your application, you will receive communication from BD101 staff to schedule a short (less than 30 minutes) phone call or video conference. If, at the close of the call, there seems to be a fit, you will be considered accepted and invited to register through Kirkridge Retreat Center’s registration site.
The fee for the complete series which includes program fees, room and board for three in-person 5-Day Intensives and one virtual 3-Day workshop are:
Standard Rate = $4,800.
Sponsoring Rate = $6,000.
Low-Income Rate = $1,500.
BD101™ Whole System Transformation Series is
co-sponsored by Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center located on Kittatinny Ridge in the Pocono Mountains, homelands of the Lenape people.
