PROGRAMS
LIVE ONLINE CLASSES
Singing the Bones
6-Week Online Experience led by
Lydia Violet and Leah Song of Rising Appalachia
Gather at the wellsprings of story and song! Find healing and meaning through ancestral reconnection
Join the Waitlist for our next cohort
Work That Reconnects Facilitator Group
Whether you are an aspiring facilitator or arrive here with decades of experience under your belt, we all need community support to develop our craft and continue to deepen our understandings of the content and facilitation of Joanna Macy’s work in our unfolding planetary moment. And we need to know each other, both locally and internationally!
In-Person Offerings
Workshops : Retreats: Conferences : Festivals: Direct Action
Group Work : Keynotes: Song Circles
School for The Great Turning’s in-person programming is typically offered through short-form, group education venues, hosted in a variety of settings that accommodate workshops anywhere from one-hour to 5 days. Our in-person programming is typically facilitated primarily by our founder and dedicated student of Joanna Macy’s, Lydia Violet Harutoonian, in collaboration with our robust department of guest teachers. Lydia emphasizes local collaboration in her facilitation, encouraging partnership with local artists, educators, and community organizers.
Singing The Bones Music Salon Oakland
Singing the Bones Music Salon w Lydia Violet and special musical guests M’Gilvry Allen & Kele Nitoto.
A Celebration of Ancestral Reconnection in the Diaspora: featuring live music and community singing, hosted at Euclid Manor in Oakland, CA.
Day-long Intro to WTR Facilitation : Oakland
In this one-day immersion, Lydia Violet Harutoonian will lead an introduction to facilitating the “Work that Reconnects,” Joanna Macy’s experiential group work. Lydia will offer skills and resources for conducting community process metabolizing climate anxiety and empowering action.
Work That Reconnects
Joanna Macy’s “Work that Reconnects” (WTR) is a dynamic, interactive body of work developed over the past 40 years by Macy.
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How do we resource so that we can stay present in our work without collapsing into paralysis or panic over the future of our planet?
Joanna Macy’s “Work that Reconnects” (WTR) helps us do just that. The WTR is a dynamic, interactive body of work developed over the past 40 years by Macy, a scholar and respected elder in systems theory, deep ecology, and Buddhism as well as 50+ years of international activism. Through re-invigorating our energy for action and resiliency, this work has helped thousands of people to engage in the Great Turning, the transition to a life-sustaining society and the essential adventure of our time.
This workshop offers:
*A space to speak openly and honestly about the challenges currently facing our species, and by acknowledging the grief, anger, paralysis, apathy, and fear we may feel.
*Assist and support to begin metabolizing these often overwhelming emotions into profound care for all of life from which they stem. Such metabolization brings us into deeper communion with our world.
*Encourage us to be heard and recognized. Hearts opened by grief and celebration want to sing their songs of longing, despair, reckoning, valiance, belonging, and gentle loving-kindness.
Music As Medicine
Joanna Macy’s Work That Reconnects in combination with facilitated, community singing.
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Music As Medicine is an offering of Macy’s Work That Reconnects in combination with facilitated, community singing.
Communities have come together to make music for millennia, keeping their spirits strong and nourished through hard times, while also celebrating the gifts of life. Together we hold a space that can heal the wounds inhibiting our ability to make music, learning both technically and emotionally how to free our voices into song.
*These workshops are open to music-makers of all levels. Singing in a council of friends is one of the most healthful, encouraging, invigorating, and nourishing things we can do.
In past workshops, Lydia has partnered with different artists and music groups such as Rising Appalachia and MaMuse, exploring songs passed down through generations to uplift and nourish while drawing from international cultures, the Civil Rights movement, medicine songs, and improvisational experimentation.
These workshops nourish our hearts and minds, keeping our communities strong during this pivotal time on Earth.
Singing the Bones
In Singing the Bones, we explore the relationship between cosmology, myth, psyche, and culture.
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Singing the Bones asks: “How can conscious ancestral reconnection heal the wounds enacted by cultural erasure, generational severance, materialism, and systemic oppression?”
In Singing the Bones, we explore the relationship between cosmology, myth, psyche, and culture. We deepen our understanding of cultural inspiration, resonance, exchange, and appropriation. We discover that diasporic healing includes conscious research of those stories, traditions, instruments, songs, dances, and more that are the bones of the cultures of our ancestors. We learn how history can encourage amnesia, and how to acknowledge and respond to that amnesia, and ultimately heal.
Self-Paced Classes
The Song Catcher and The Muse :: Anthology Series
You are invited to a rare and unique opportunity to join Chloe and Leah in their gathering of the muses and the minds…over the course of 6 sessions that are a compilation from Chloe and Leah’s past songwriting courses, these two bards will analyze and share their process behind some of their favorite original songs
Cultivating Wisdom for These Times with Joanna Macy
12 pre-recorded webinars led by Joanna Macy, reviewing 45 years of her literary legacy and central teachings.
Gathering at the Well
If you missed your chance to contribute, you can donate to receive the recording with Joanna Macy & Rising Appalachia!
Music As Medicine's Learn To Sing Series
A complete set of exercises and songs for empowering your voice and encouraging community healing.
Emergent Healing
A 3-part Pre-recorded webinar exploring adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy + Teachings of Joanna Macy.
BRING US TO YOUR COMMUNITY
If you are interested in bringing this work to your area, we would love to hear from you.
Please fill out this short survey, and we will be in touch soon!
What Folks are Saying About
School for the Great Turning
“...thank you, for your work, your music, the songs (my voice is slowly coming back after years of silence and I’m writing one-line songs of gratitude thanks to you)!!”
“Thank you so much for this class and all of your sharing. Yesterday was an accumulation of so many emotions, but I am so happy to have shared my story. I truly believe in the Music As Medicine project and excited to see it grow.”
“I am lingering in the joy of our time together…I loved being in community with everyone y’all gathered. Thank you! With tears and solidarity in everything we are doing…”
questions about our courses?
