#innerandouter • Tenneson Woolf

June 6, 2017

Trusting Your Nature

Tomorrow starts this, a three-session series that I’m offering with my good friend Kinde Nebeker.

It is our third from the body of work that is “Inner and Outer of Evolutionary Leadership (IOEL).” I love having a deliberate attention to both the inner and the outer.

I also love the distinctions that we have created for each session, and woven together as a whole.

It is our nature (we humans) to engage and convene. Not just a desire. We are coded to do so.

It is our nature to listen deeply — I’m sooo looking forward to a day in Utah’s mountains. There are many layers to listen to and from.

It is our nature to evolve. Things change. Systems change.

Below are two resources that shape IOEL for those of you interested further, written by Kinde and me. May they stir in all of us.

A Commitment to Emergence: The Inner And Outer of Evolutionary Leadership

The Magical Wilderness Between People Together

February 22, 2017

This week I was able to spend an afternoon hiking and wandering Tiger Mountain near Issaquah, Washington, where I took this picture. The occasion was my spouse’s 53rd birthday. I love the green of Washington State. Soft moss that grows on standing and fallen trees. Ferns that make their home everywhere. Streams that trickle through the park, as well as a few waterfalls. There is a kind of obvious abundance.

We were out for three hours. Some of that moving. Some of that talking. Some of that huffing and puffing (it’s a fair incline). And some of it just sitting. When I sit in places like that, I can often hear the voice of one of my mentors. “We are nature.” Not, “It’s good to be out in nature.” It’s not external. Rather, it is internal. We too, despite being the incredibly conceptual and cognitive beings that we are, with ability to abstract, are also a living system nested within other living systems. That changes how I pay attention and how I listen for insight and welcome it to arrive.

My friend Kinde Nebeker and I have just finished creating an invitation for another three part series we are offering on The Inner and Outer of Evolutionary Leadership. This series is called Trusting Your Nature. The middle session will be a full day up in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains. If you are reading this and within range to join us, please do.

September 21, 2016

Magical Wilderness

Kinde Nebeker is a good friend and colleague. We continue to develop a body of work together called, The Inner and Outer of Evolutionary Leadership. I love the focus on both the inner (presence and grounding) combined with the outer (convening and hosting). We offered a three-part series in the spring of this year. We are solidifying dates for a fall 2016 and spring 2017 series.

Kinde comes from a background of design and design education, transpersonal psychology and ecopsychology. She guides wilderness rites of passage trips and supports individuals in their psychological and spiritual development. I love this about Kinde. She’s opening so much to the practice of emergence and through her work, I find new layers in myself.

In her recent writing, The Magical Wilderness Between People Together, Kinde says,

“I have an immense curiosity about this territory, this sort of magical invisible wilderness that I’ve stumbled into now and again when I am with other people in a particular kind of way. I am curious because I feel most alive and fully human this invisible wild space together. I am curious because new and amazing things can be created in this space. And I am also curious to understand this phenomenon better because I sense it could be a critically important place for us all to know how to be in as we face unprecedented global challenges.”

Give it a full read on her site.