Why Co-Creation is Key to Personal, Community and Global Change
by Jill Robinson
With the abundance of online classes and infinite amounts of accessible resources, it can sometimes feel that our personal evolution is a lone endeavor. At its extreme, cultural conditioning has led us to believe that transformation and healing are individual pursuits, outside of our relationships and community network.
Innately, we know this is an illusion. Many of us have experienced the transformative power of being held in a loving community as we navigate our personal growth. Our yoga practice, which is deeply personal in its unfolding, requires a trusting community to support and guide us. The experience of evolving and practicing alongside fellow practitioners can be uncomfortable in its vulnerability, but so often is a necessary piece toward realizing our higher self.
It’s not just in our personal practice that co-creative spaces are vital for development. When engaged within larger community, we are able to tap into an expanded field of shared wisdom, creativity, and even productivity toward community transformation. We are energetically nourished by being part of a larger group with a shared vision.
SYF Presenter and author Jivana Heyman reminds us that “transcending our individualism is a thread woven throughout the history of yoga.” Transformative change of any kind doesn’t happen alone.
Amplifying A Wave of Co-Creative Energy
Jivana’s words resonate with the Sedona Yoga Festival belief that “evolution is a collaboration,” inspiring a vision to create a total energetic transformation co-created by our attending practitioners. The Festival will be a launchpad for personal evolution, amplified by community support. The aim is to carry this transformative experience outward — in ways that effectively transform — after the time we spend together. Because the teachings of yoga are not about personal evolution and transformation alone; in our practice and intentional community building we have the opportunity to inspire a ripple effect of community activation. It’s why SYF has partnered with the Holomovement, to help support yoga practitioners in putting their elevated practice into social action.
The Holomovement aims to catalyze a worldwide movement that ignites a critical mass of individuals and groups to activate their purpose through inspired collaborative action that serves the good of the whole. Just like our personal practice is exponentially enhanced by being in community, so too does global change occur when we embody the co-creative spirit of collaboration.
As political scientist Erica Chenoweth said; “No movement that mobilized 3.5% of the population has ever failed.” That’s 280 million people on the planet aligned in co-creative collaborative action to heal and change the world.
This social movement, guided by science and spirituality in a unifying worldview, puts theory into practice through its network of Holons. A term coined by Hungarian British author and journalist Arthur Koestler, ‘holon’ refers to a whole that is simultaneously part of another whole. It is the tiniest, holistic part of the entire unit.
It’s an inspiring validation that ever since the Big Bang (or the Big Breath), everything, every living form, has been connected all along. Perhaps this is why our personal practice and evolution depends so much on the health and vitality of our communities. We truly are all in this together!
Everyone is Invited (and Needed) to Co-Create Change
Within the context of the Holomovement, Holons are three or more people engaging in a transformative project while sharing and co-creating with fellow Holon community members (and beyond!). SYF participants will have the opportunity to speak with stewards of the Holomovement to learn how to form and even register Holons as they emerge during the Festival.
Projects of all scopes and timelines are valued in the Holon community, as well as projects already in motion that are aligned with the Holomovement’s core principles. A few examples to get you inspired include:
- Meditation or Interspiritual Prayer Circles
- Community park, beach or trail hike clean-ups
- Regenerative farming or permaculture projects
- Mentorship programs or other nonprofit organizational work
- Yoga programs for children or vulnerable communities
In this social experiment, the Holon network connects organizations and projects around the globe to create a culture of trust and support opportunities to learn and share with fellow change-makers.
Members within the Holon network engage and participate within a community hosted by Hylo, an online platform designed to support collaboration. In this emerging space, we are all empowered to shape the trajectory of the Holon network through story-telling, revolutionary impact stories of innovation, online meetups, events and grant funding.
Perhaps even more exciting is that as members of this Holon network, we are co-creating the next frontier of community engagement, operating with a new worldview of interconnected wholeness. This is not a top-down vision, but the conscious tending of a symbiotic relationship, where we all are able to joyfully serve a vital role in a regenerative and compassionate society.
In this empowering and uplifting play-space it is unity, not uniformity, that boosts our creativity and potential for finding solutions to our global challenges. We don’t have to sacrifice our individual soul and calling. In this co-creative group consciousness, we have the ability to enhance both our individual and collective transformative potential to heal and change the world. Look for stewards of the Holomovement participating and leading conscious conversations about Holons throughout the Sedona Yoga Festival!
Join us in March for a chance to activate your personal practice and connect with an extraordinary community ready to take their personal practice into action. Tickets on sale now!
