Sacred Inclusion Challenge

Interested in broadening your circle of inclusion and taking a look at what keeps you trapped in a place where everyone you meet looks, thinks or talks like you?

Then participate in the Sacred Inclusion Challenge!

The Sacred Inclusion Challenge is a dynamic six-week interactive course designed to help you reverse-engineer the factors that keep you living in your bubble. We meet Tuesday evenings and take part in discussions and interactive challenges between weekly sessions.

Although meeting participation is strongly encouraged, you can participate exclusively online.

During each of the six weeks, you'll take a look at factors that shape our perceptions about others, then craft a way to broadening your circle of inclusion. We'll do this in community, with the aim of transforming ourselves and breaking the cycle of polarization.

We're living in an age of intense polarization, where people not only disagree, but judge and loathe people who look differently or profess contrasting beliefs. Many of us live in silos, in which everyone shares the same point of view and sees outsiders as "Other" and less than ourselves.

We all pay a toll for this polarization. It effects our physical, emotional and societal health. Studies show, for example, that individuals who harbor racial prejudices and fears experience elevated levels of stress and other physiological responses that, over time, can wear down their muscles and damage their immune systems.

The good news is that there are well-known ways to heal these divides. As Harvard social psychologist Gordon Allport demonstrated as far back as the 1940s, people can learn to overcome intergroup biases. They can do so through the simple strategy of increasing exposure to out-group members, which in turn will improve attitudes toward that group and decrease prejudice and stereotyping.

In the six-weeks of the Sacred Inclusion Challenge, we'll put Allport's theories to the test. We'll gather together, gently examine our perceptions of those who are different from us, and create weekly personal activities to broaden our circles of inclusion.

Each class will begin with a short overview of a challenge subject, followed by an illustrative video, and experiential discussion on how the challenge subject relates to how we live our lives. During the time between classes, each participant will engage in one of the suggested experiential challenges or create their own, then post their progress in the Sacred Inclusion Networks community site.

The challenge will be facilitated by Bill Kelly, a former UCLA professor of intercultural communication and Angelo John Lewis, the founder of the Sacred Inclusion Network.

Bill Kelly taught communication studies at the University of New Mexico, UCLA and California State University, Northridge. In his post-academic career, he's written frequently about relations between Asia and the West, domestic US racial, cultural, and political issues, and historical trends. He lives north of Los Angeles, California.

Angelo John Lewis the originator of the Dialogue Circle and Sacred Conversation methods, and the author of Notes for a New Age. He is also a facilitator, coach and consultant whose work with individuals and groups emphasizes challenge, risk and discovery. As a coach, he specializes in working with leaders and people in transition. As a facilitator and consultant, his work focuses on team effectiveness, group problem solving and community building.