THE MOVEMENT
We are a growing field of leaders, practitioners, visionaries, and stakeholders, who believe that inner work is essential and integral to creating positive and systemic social change. Our purpose is to build community, bring greater visibility and resources to the field, and share our insights and wisdom in support of deep transformation.
Our Purpose
We need a more conscious approach to systemic social change for greater impact, inclusivity, and sustainability. Mindfulness is critical to effective leadership and is an integral design tool for understanding issues, building solutions, and engaging stakeholders towards positive change. We endeavor to support and accelerate the most innovative models in this field, by building community, channeling resources, and collaborating to share wisdom for the greater good.
Mindfulness is the foundation of everything we do. We use mindfulness as a design tool for developing more holistic, impactful, and sustainable solutions for social change.
Collective wellbeing for all depends on a community of change agents committed to their own inner work and a more conscious approach to systemic social transformation. We are working to define and advance the field of conscious social change through collaboration, cutting edge insights and stories, unique offerings, resources, and community for the individuals and organizations operating at the intersection of inner work and social change.
We strive to support a more conscious approach to systemic social change, which is essential to overcome global injustice, political division, violence, climate change, racism, misogyny, and the oppression and disadvantage of so many vulnerable people. We offer training programs in conscious social change, resources to accelerate the work of existing conscious change agents, fellowship, and visibility to advance the field.
Innovation is fueled by inner work, inclusive collaboration, curiosity, and compassion. Circles for Conscious Change is a transformative education firm and pioneer in the realm of conscious social change, working with social entrepreneurs, non-profits, and corporations to use mindfulness as a design tool for social innovation.
We believe in leading from within. Conscious social change is a new paradigm for creating systemic social change that begins by understanding change from the inside out. We live this value by training and supporting conscious leaders, and embodying conscious leadership in the ways we operate as a learning organization.
Take a closer look at the extraordinary work of these conscious change agents and how a more mindful approach to systemic change is being applied around the world.
Click below to view their profiles and TEDTalks to learn more.
Organizations Integrating Contemplative Practice and Mindfulness into Social Change.
Auburn Seminary equips leaders with the organizational skills and spiritual resilience required to create lasting, positive impact in local communities, on the national stage, and around the world.
Awake in the Wild Experience is a mindfulness-in-nature art project that brings participants into intimate connection with the natural world through nature-inspired contemplations.
CARE for Teachers Project is a unique professional development program that helps teachers handle the stresses and rediscover the joys of teaching to help students thrive socially, emotionally, and academically.
Center for Contemplative Mind in Society: transforms higher education by supporting and encouraging the use of contemplative/introspective practices and perspectives to create active learning and research environments that look deeply into experience and meaning for all in service of a more just and compassionate society.
Center for Transformational Practice is a meeting place and practice center for anyone wishing to advance sustainability through inner transformation.
Center for Transformative Change is the first national center entirely dedicated to bridging the inner and outer lives of social change agents, activists and allies to support a more effective, more sustainable social justice movement.
Compassionate Schools Project is working to transform 50 schools involving 20,000 children by teaching elementary school students to cultivate focus, resilience, and wellbeing for academic performance, physical education, character development, and child health policies.
CTZNWELL is a political movement working towards a nation of wellbeing for all people using practice, community, and action to respond to issues with conscious and creative disruption for impact at a systemic and global level.
CuttingEdgeLaw provides resources on Integrative Law, an emerging movement crafting values-based, creative, sustainable, and holistic solutions that build and strengthen relationships within the law built on dignity.
Dalai Lama Fellows Program cultivates and supports a global movement of next generation leaders applying universal values to solve global challenges.
EILEEN FISHER, INC. is the largest women’s fashion company to be certified a B Corporation and is passionate about business acting as a movement towards sustainability, human rights, and personal wellbeing.
Empowerment Institute is a global consulting and training organization specializing in the practice of empowerment to achieve measurable and sustainable behavior change at the individual, organizational, and community level.
Enneagram Prison Project is dedicated to the self-awareness education of the incarcerated and the reduction of recidivism rates, using the Enneagram combined with mindfulness meditation and sensate-awareness practices.
Fetzer Institute is working to help catalyze and support a broad-scale, spiritually grounded transformation from an ego-centered way of being grounded in separation and fear to an all-centered way of being grounded in oneness and love.
Garrison Institute convenes and supports those who are exploring the wisdom, values, and insight gained through contemplative practices to catalyze personal and social transformation.
Global Grassroots is working to catalyze conscious social change among disadvantaged women in post-conflict Africa through a mindfulness-based leadership program and social venture incubator.
Global Gratitude Alliance transforms intergenerational trauma into intergenerational healing, resiliency, and transformation.
Good Work Institute develops business education programs that aim not just to bring more knowledge to the professional world, but more wisdom to honor ourselves, the natural world, and all the people in our communities.
Hidden Leaf Foundation is working to expand inner awareness within social change organizations in order to advance a more just, ecologically healthy, and compassionate society.
Holistic Life Foundation is committed to nurturing the wellness of children and adults in underserved communities by helping children develop their inner lives through yoga, mindfulness, and self-care.
International Women’s Partnership for Peace and Justice leads workshops, retreats and training courses, which share in common the integration of feminism, social action, and spirituality for sustainability and transformation at the personal, community, and society levels.
LIFE Camp is working to develop teens and adults into peer leaders, to avoid becoming perpetrators or victims of violence and to effectively implement positive change within their own communities.
Mind & Life Institute is working to alleviate suffering and promote flourishing by integrating science with contemplative practice and wisdom traditions.
Mindful Badge Initiative offers mindfulness-based resilience training to law enforcement officers to improve compassion, awareness, and performance to cultivate humanity, resiliency, and connection to community.
Movement Strategy Center provides training in transformative movement building through sharpening shared purpose and vision, deepening relationships, and embodying the qualities needed for transformation.
Omega Institute offers diverse and innovative educational experiences that inspire an integrated approach to personal and social change.
Patagonia has a corporate mission to build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.
Presencing Institute is a growing community creating awareness-based social technologies for change makers around the world.
Prison Mindfulness Institute provides prisoners, prison staff, and prison volunteers with the most effective, evidence-based tools for rehabilitation, self-transformation, and personal and professional development to transform individual lives as well as the corrections system as a whole.
Reciprocity Foundation is a contemplative nonprofit organization working to help homeless, runaway, and foster care youth from all five boroughs of New York City to realize their full potential.
Reverence Project is an initiative working to shift the social and philosophical construct of present world culture rooted in violence, shame, guilt, and fear into a more balanced world view rooted in reverence, forgiveness, compassion, and truth.
Rockwood Leadership Institute offers nonprofit, philanthropic, and social change leaders from across the globe transformational leadership development trainings to change the way change is done and transform our world.
Roots of Empathy is an evidence-based classroom program that has shown significant effect in reducing levels of aggression and bullying among school children while raising social/emotional competence and increasing empathy.
RSF Social Finance is a nonprofit financial services organization envisioning a world in which money contributes to an economy based on generosity and interconnectedness, and where money liberates human capacity for compassionate action.
Social Health Concepts and Practice is an independent consulting organization that facilitates alternative ways to transform existing oppressive and hierarchical models of individual and community change.
Spring Up is a multimedia activist collective creating a space for analyzing interpersonal and structural violence through storytelling and intentional myth making.
Synergos is a global nonprofit organization that brings people together to solve complex problems of poverty using a unique inner-driven approach called Bridging Leadership.
Thread engages underperforming high school students confronting significant barriers outside of the classroom by providing each one with a family of committed volunteers and increased access to community resources.
UVA’s Contemplative Sciences Center is committed to exploring contemplative practices, values, ideas, and institutions through analytical research and scholarship, as well as to help develop new applications and learning programs for their integration into varied sectors of our society.
Wellbeing Project is focused on both modeling support to social change leaders, and cultivating a shift in the culture of the field toward one that is healthier and supportive of inner wellbeing.
Zen Hospice Project is working to help change the experience of dying and caregiving by creating a space for living that offers the opportunity for individuals, their loved ones, and caregivers to find comfort, connection, and healing in this shared human experience.
