The impact of Enspiral through a contributor
From Business to Catholic Girls School Mindfulness
I wanted to change my life and work — from disconnected engineering and cafe work to something meaningful. I felt a need to work with the big challenges our world faces — climate change, inequality, violence etc.
Over 3 years, Enspiral has given me the
- People
- Physical spaces
- Support
- Skills
- Ideas
To change the direction of my life from fear and disempowerment to love and creativity.
I now feel I am giving important gifts and working on what matters deeply to me.
Gifts that Enspiral has catalysed:
1. 😌 Delivering Mindfulness (today at a Catholic Girls School)
14–17 year old girls had their first experience of mindfulness at my Mindfulness workshops today. Opening a space and sharing tools around mental health and flourishing, in a context where mental health has not been acknowledged or addressed previously.
Enspiral catalysed my journey into Mindfulness three years ago. Google’s Search Inside Yourself book was part of the required reading at Dev Academy. That was my first experience of Mindfulness. I needed mindfulness for the course, to help me with the immersive technical and emotional intelligence learning. This helped me establish a daily practice.
After completing Dev Academy I stayed on for a while as a Teaching Assistant. I loved sharing learning journeys with students — discovering how to engage them and gently guide them towards understanding.
I went on to do mindfulness courses, retreats, facilitator training and now, after 3 years practicing, I am teaching and feeling great joy as I see the benefits people get from mindfulness!
2. 🌱 Growing people and projects in the Mindfulness for Change network
Mindfulness for Change was seeded by Nick Laurence after he came through a LifeHack Flourishing Fellowship. LifeHack was a beautiful and impactful Enspiral Venture. LifeHack’s government funding finished, but they’ve left a number of valuable resources online, and the wonderful LifeHack team is now creating different inspiring things…
Mindfulness for Change is currently connecting and making spaces for people to imagine and collaborate on more ambitious systemic change projects across diverse sectors — Politics, Government, Education, Health, Business and Non-Profit.
The facilitation skills I learned largely through observation of Enspiralites, as well as agile project management, web skills and emotional intelligence I learned at Dev Academy enabled me to step into the Kaitiaki of Mindfulness for change and give a lot of gifts — create the website, design the online collaboration spaces, host meetings, and recently coordinate and host huis.
3. 📝 Poetry — making space for truth, humanity and beauty
I was kindly critiqued, encouraged and supported with some small Fairy Blogmother $$ by Rich Bartlett for one of my first pieces of writing. I kept zgoing and discovered a love for writing, which turned into a love of Poetry.
Here’s a fresh one: Power is
4. 👾 A career as a Web Developer
I went through Dev Academy. Now I have a super valuable skillset that lets me earn a good livelihood in an interesting way and less time, which gives me more space to give to other impactful projects.
5. 👨⚕ A health and performance company
I was talking to an Enspiralite — Rohan Wakefield I think? — about my skills and what I was interested in. They suggested that I meet Bart DeVries, who turned out to be a delightful and powerful man working in Business Strategy with a background in Physiotherapy.
We walked along the beautiful Wellington waterfront, and he told me how he’d noticed his body suffering from all the desk work he was doing as a business strategist. He told me he wanted to make a desk that would let people access their full range of body motion through a work day. We discussed the parameters and agreed that I’d make a prototype within two weeks.
This is what I made:
Bart pulled in Rebeka & Simon, and 2.5 years later we’re user testing version 15 with Xero:
Keep an eye out for a launch in 2018!
6. 👫 A coaching partnership
A still, mooned and starry night at Castlepoint. In the middle of the 2016 Enspiral summer retreat. I was walking, reflecting on my challenges and fears. I saw a person approaching. As she came closer I saw it was Chloe Waretini.
I’d seen the awesome work Chloe was doing — and the way she was doing it — as an Enspiral Catalyst and as founder of Otakaro Orchard.
I asked her if she’d mentor me.
She said something non-commital.
A month later I meet Chloe’s wonderful parents at the first Mindfulness for Change Hui. They mention that Chloe is experiencing a lot of challenge with many difficult things culminating at once. I call her to check in. We have a really generative conversation, and agree to continue every day for a week.
1.5 years later and we’re still checking in every day. Our relationship is a core part of our lives — we co-navigate our fears and challenges and share our loves joys.
🙏 Thank you Enspiral.
Thank you Enspiral, thank you to the people of Enspiral, and the people who support Enspiral. There are so many more gifts I’ve received and seen given throught the network. It hasn’t been painless or perfect. Life isn’t painless. I’ve seen conflict and challenge, mistakes made, some lessons not yet learned, issues unresolved. Mostly though, I’ve seen the care, energy and love you’ve all been putting in over these many years. Enspiral is something different. We are breaking new ground, opening new possibilities. It’s been so good for me and so good for the world I see around me.
Let’s keep growing possibilities and opportunities together…
🌱
