A BREATHER IN LIFE

Marcelo, Brazil

It has been a real joy to join the Awakening Leadership Training (ALT) program. It is education as it should be: inclusive, participatory, comprehending differences among ourselves and creating collectively. It is a model not based on competition but on co-creating knowledge based on everyone’s life experience. New approaches on a diverse array of issues makes us question many mainstream ideas we reproduce without being aware of it. The course in this sense is very stimulating, as we question old paradigms and challenge ourselves to think of new ones.

The opportunity of living together in Wongsanit Ashram sets the atmosphere for a community-based life in a beautiful nature-abundant place. Our daily practices of Qigong and meditation helps us to be mindful of our actions throughout the days. And the delicious home-made Thai food adds an extra dose of happiness to our learning process.

The courses range from going deep in inner individual issues to world economic and systemic ones. The premise is that it is key to understand one’s self first in order to accept others and therefore to live in a global society. Facilitators are excellent in their field of knowledge and the modules are so interesting and deep that it makes it hard for participants to choose which ones to join. One might as well just do the whole program or most of it, like I did. The staff responsible for the program are not only well prepared but also add a lot to the learning process with their own backgrounds. There is a big difference when the organizers are fully engaged and truly believe in what they do, as can be seen in the ALT.

As for myself, the five months that I joined the program has also been a breather in life, a moment to stop and rethink life and paths taken. I feel sometimes it is necessary to let go, leave home and go away in order to see our lives from another perspective. In this program I found a safe place for sharing, being myself and finding commonalities among people from different places and life stories. In the end, I could say I left home and I found a home elsewhere, in which I made friends I’ll carry on for years to come. For all of this, I’m very grateful for the ALT experience.