Robyn Berkessel

appreciative inquiry

A Simple Framework to Deal with Change, Yours or Other People's - PS87

How to deal with change? It's a question that comes up frequently. Afterall, we know change is happening all the time all around us. All is in a state of flux, nothing stays still. Some changes we initiate others are thrust upon us. Changes that we ourselves initiate can paradoxically be more ...

Season 5

Celebrating the Voice of Professor Mary Gergen

Professor Mary Gergen, passed away on the morning of September 22, 2020. Mary was a lively, courageous, and innovative trail blazer of the Taos Institute. I celebrate her life with these lovely words in this 1 minute recording.  Mary is quoting herself in her joyful, fun way.  These words are t...

conversation

What Can Social Constructionist Practice Offer in Times of Uncertainty?

The professionals, researchers and authors in this podcast season have shared their specific social constructionist practice in a pre COVID world. In this episode, five of us reflect how social constructionism as an orientation is relevant and meaningful at all times, in all places and communitie...

Season 5

Social Innovation Practices Through the Lens of Social Construction - Sheila McNamee, Ph.D. and Celiane Carmago-Borges, Ph.D.

This is the introductory episode of season 5 which focuses on social innovations across many domains. We are collaborating with the Taos Institute and supporting a significant publication, The Sage Handbook of Social Constructionist Practice. My guests in this introductory episode are two of the ...

Season 5

Save The Date: Launching A Season Worth Waiting For

Save the Date for Season 5. It’s a collaboration with the Taos Institute. Our inquiry: What are the innovations that Social Construction is bringing to our world? If you are new to social constructionist ideas and curious, this season will give you a lovely introduction. You will be explod...

community

Community Building Practices that Attend to Difference - Janet Newbury, Ph.D.

How do we participate in community building practices in ways that attend to difference? Ways that are genuinely committed to consider power relations and how they play out when working amidst differences? Attending to such interactions opens us to surprises, and adjusts our ideas and practices....

conversation

Social Therapeutics as Play, Performance and Becoming - Lois Holzman, Ph.D.

Social therapeutics as a playful, performatory, philosophical methodology for person and community development is the topic explored in this episode. Influenced by three intellectual traditions, it seeks to bring meaning to our relational processes in collaborative and appreciative ways to eleva...

narrative mediation

How Narrative Mediation Promotes Respectful Relationships - John Winslade, Ph.D.

Helping people move further away from what produces conflict and closer to the relationships they prefer is what narrative mediation seeks to produce. Conflict resolution through the lens of social construction, and framed as narrative mediation, offers that conflict between individuals is usua...

Season 5

What is Transmaterial Worlding and Why Pay Attention? - Gail Simon, Ph.D. and Leah Salter, Ph.D.

Transmaterial worlding provokes us to pay attention. Once we start to realize that we are merely co-inhabitors of this world, we awaken to the notion we are making it or breaking it with each breath we take, each word we utter, and each action we take. The human species as all powerful and in con...

social construction

Approaching Educational Evaluation from a Relational Perspective - Scherto Gill, Ph.D.

Educational evaluation that comes from a relational perspective truly speaks to the demands of a rapidly changing world. Embracing collaborative learning, dialogic pedagogy, and flexible curricula can enhance learning processes, students’ engagement and vitality of relationships in classrooms, ...

innovation

Positive Aging through the Lens of Social Construction - Mary Gergen, Ph.D.

Research into positive aging delivers findings that run counter to the traditional view of aging. Existing views tend to be negative and like to point out that the life span developmental curve is not wonderful for older people. Positive aging research and practice puts attention on the value of...

appreciative inquiry

Transformative Community Conferencing – A Constructionist Approach to a More Hopeful Future - David Hooker, Ph.D.

Transformative community conferencing is an approach to community building or reconciliation. As a narrative practice, it embodies a more reflective orientation to relationships and to systems change. How and when we ask questions helps us think differently. It helps to begin to ask questions ...

social constructionist

Creating School Harmony with Social Constructionist Practices - Gro Lund, Ph.D.

Schooling is at a crossroads. The need for more relational ways of being in schools has been apparent for decades. Creating school harmony with social constructionist practices is one of the pathways to co-create a future for our children.

addiction

Recovering from Addiction by Mobilizing Relational Processes - Pavel Nepustil, Ph.D.

Relational processes are key to recovering from addiction. Addiction's development, sustainability and finally its ending are embedded in family, community and broader societal contexts. In order to recover an addict needs to establish new bonds based on trust respect and love; and together with ...

appreciative inquiry

Mindfulness For Chocolate Lovers - A Sweet, Embodying Practice

Mindfulness for chocolate lovers introduces a lighthearted way to stress less and savor more each day, offering a more playful and sweeter life. This is appreciative embodying in a tasteful, olfactory way! And you don't even have to eat the chocolate.

innovation

How Being Still Super Charges Your Aliveness

Being still is a precursor to truly listening, paying attention and opening up to possibilities, novelty creativity and aliveness. What is beckoning you? Racing around may be helpful, but being still could be even more helpful.

Meaningful alignment

How Meaningful Alignment and Appreciative Embodying are Bedfellows with Susan Steinbrecher

A most practical conversation on meaningful alignment where we talk concepts such as the inner game and self regulation. We focus on interpersonal dialogue preferences and the promising outcomes we can aspire to if we learn how to embody meaningful alignment. We reflect on how to invite people to...

appreciative inquiry

Cultivating Embodiment Practices For an Appreciative Learning Organization, with Miriam Novotny

If you’re interested in human development, embodiment practices, change at the scale of the whole such as the intersection of community, business, education, leadership, life, and learning stay with us. And, if you have a curiosity about exploring the principle of wholeness and embodied practic...

Neuroscience

Neuroscience and Design Are Keys to Conscious Embodiment with Dr. Kyra Bobinet

Neuroscience and Design Thinking offer keys to a mindful, healthy and purposeful life. We talk about the science behind why we don’t do what we know we should. We make the distinction between behaviors and habits and consider practices to adopt new habits. A key Design Thinking process is to...

strategist

How to Cultivate Embodied Consciousness with Dr. Lynda Klau

Insights about the embodied brain and why cultivating a conscious relationship with the body matters at all times, especially when experiencing times of uncertainty. We touch on these topics and the integration of neuroscience and spirit. We offer three practical activities to develop an embodie...

appreciative inquiry

What Does it Mean to Embody?

"To embody" means what? This is a naive exploration. Topics include designing experiences that use the whole body and ways that integrate head, heart and body. We vote with our feet, we make choices through conversations that come from where we are literally standing.

appreciative

How Do You Do Appreciative Embodying?

This show as an inquiry or a search into the topic of embodying, specifically appreciative embodying. How do you move from acute awareness to deliberate action? This is an exploration of how embracing the wholeness of who we are, we embark on a developmental and generative process.

appreciative leading

Reflecting on the Topic of Appreciative Leading - PS116

Reflecting on all the delicious diversity of perspectives on the topic of Appreciative Leading including stories on the significance of the relational process, connection, collaboration, love.

appreciative inquiry

Going Meta to Appreciative Leading with Sheila McNamee - PS115

Going meta on the topic of Appreciative Leading. Sheila McNamee offers us the social constructionist's perspective: what leading means as a relational process rather than as an individual's characteristics, traits or skills.

appreciative leading

Entrepreneur as a Force for Positive Impact - PS 114

A well-connected, social entrepreneur, committed to bringing a positive impact to his city is convening an Appreciative Inquiry Summit, calling all interested stakeholders to come together to imagine the future of their city.