Wisdoms@Work
Personal and Professional Development Training
Intimate Group and One-on-One Sessions
Participate on site or virtually from your home.
Modules can be taken toward certification or independently.
Have you been longing to make a radical change in your life? Give a powerful boost to your current work or change careers? Wisdoms@Work can do just that. We engage in a variety of ways to bring out the best of who you are.
“Irini has done a fantastic job translating these profound Buddhist teachings into practical applications for everyday life…[she] points us to our innate authenticity where we can learn to wake up to life’s colorful display, dance with our ever-changing circumstances and open to the richness of being human.”
— Michael Carroll, author of Awake at Work
Wisdoms@Work—wisdom working both within you and in your work—is the internationally respected signature training of the Institute. It is offered on site and online in order for it to be accessed internationally. The training has an emphasis on in-depth experiential learning so groups are kept small. Modules are paced according to the needs of the participants. Ask when a new cycle begins. By application.
Have you had previous Five Wisdoms training? Apply for Advanced Placement!
A Wisdoms@Work graduate is authorized as a Five Wisdoms coach and trainer.
Benefits
• Having a deeper understanding of yourself and others
• Being mindful in everything you think, feel, say, and do
• Awareness of where you shine and where you get stuck
• Tools for empowering yourself and embracing who you are with loving kindness
• Working with where you get stuck, the places that scare you
• Understanding the dynamics in your relationships
• Practicing verbal and nonverbal engagement to enhance effective communication
• Bringing compassionate understanding into all aspects of your life
• Ability to sense the dynamics of a situation and act accordingly
• Tuning in to a subtle energy dynamics that is the heartbeat of our world
• Engaging with a group of people interested in putting their wisdom to work
Testimonials
Training Format
The training consist of 6 modules leading towards certification in Wisdoms@Work. Each module is approximately 3 months long, giving time for personal integration of the material. There is flexibility in the pacing of the modules.
These modules can be taken independently:
- Module 1: To Know Yourself
- Module 2: Understanding Your Emotional Life
- Module 3: The Dynamics of Relationships
Training Content
- Mentoring and Experiential Learning sessions with Irini on Zoom, 3 per module
- Peer-led Reflection Circles, 2 per module
- Engaging with a Practice Buddy, 2 per module
- One-on-one coaching sessions with Irini, 2 per module
- Practice, study and activity, at least 3 to 4 hours per week
Technology
You will need access to Zoom (through a link from Irini), Dropbox, and PayPal.
Training Materials
We will send you:
- A Workbook for each module (30 to 50 pages) includes: writings by Irini pertinent to the module's topic, reading assignments from Irini's books, guidelines for experiential learning exercises, photos and instructions for the Five Wisdoms postures, infographics, links to Dropbox talks.
- Wise Eyes (colored glasses)
- Mentoring and Experiential Learning sessions are recorded and sent to you.
Fees
Series I Personal Development and Series II Professional Development each have 3 modules for a total of 6 for the full training. Consideration is given to those wanting to take a particular module.
Each module is $700.
One partial scholarship per group is given on a need basis.
Series I - Personal Development
Claim Your Inherent Wisdom
Module 1:
To Know Yourself
Discovering the Energetic Dynamics of Your Personality
“We all have our own style and our own particular nature. We can’t avoid it. The enlightened expression of yourself is in accord with your inherent nature.” — Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Discovering your unique way of perceiving and interacting with the world yields enormous insight into how you color what you think, feel, say and do. Your personality has the potential for five energies—simple presence, clarity, richness, passion, and activity. Through Five Wisdom posture practice you become familiar with your personal mix of energies: where you struggle as well as your unique style of brilliance, intelligence, and effectiveness. By developing a sense of self-acceptance and compassion toward yourself, you uncover your strengths, reduce stress, and move towards energetic balance, personal integration, and embodied wisdom. You learn how, moment-to-moment, to align with the best of who you are, an authentic person full of confidence and potential.
We will work with the Five Wisdom postures devised by Trungpa Rinpoche and sourced in tantra to activate our subtle energetic body, which invoke the five patterns of energy of our inherent nature. Meditation, personal process work, creative expression, talks, discussion, and community all come together to guide us into embodied transformation.
Module 2:
Understanding Your Emotional Life
Discovering Natural Brilliance in the Darkness of Your Confusion
Discover how your deeply rooted confusing emotions can be transformed into your natural brilliance: clarity, warmth, insight, and effectiveness! The Five Wisdom energies are key to emotional transformation. They reveal the profundity of Buddhist psychology and the transformative power of tantra: when you are most emotionally intensified, your wisdom is close at hand. Your constricting emotions—in patterns of aggression, grasping, ignoring, pride, and jealousy—can be transformed into awakened insight. When you embrace your energy with unconditional positive regard, the apex of your struggle is the apex of your brilliance. Over time, you learn to align with your wisdom rather than getting caught in your constricting confusion.
We will engage in personal and group process and experiential learning including meditation, posture practice, experiential exercises, and have talks and discussion.
Module 3:
The Dynamics of Relationships
Engaging in the Challenge and the Opportunity
Have you noticed that mystery underlies all your relationships? Why they are both predictable and surprising? Why you feel awkward or comfortable, tense or friendly, aggressive or engaged with different people? Why with some you become confused and with others awakened?
The teachings on the Five Wisdoms have great insight into human dynamics, giving you a language to work with others which recognizes five types of intelligence with infinite variations and combinations. You learn to read the energetic dynamics of people, places, and situations. First, you need to know yourself, where you shine and where you get stuck. Then, you can discover the dynamics of how you interact with others. This brings about deeper self-awareness and more authentic communication. Moments in your relationships—with romantic partners, family members, and coworkers—become opportunities to align with your inherent sanity, rather than perpetuate your mutual confusion and conflict. Instill a motivation to have more conscious and genuine relationships!
We will do meditation, posture practice, and a profoundly transformative interactive practice to cultivate unbiased perception and heart-felt resonance in relationships. We are able to see and feel another in both their confusion and intelligence. The practice of tonglen, compassionate exchange, is introduced.
Series II - Professional Development
Five Wisdoms in Action
All aspects of your life and work are inter-relational.
Some situations bring out your best; in others you can’t get out of our own way. In your interactions with others, you can begin to see a pattern—how you color it and how they do. Once you have discovered your innate natural brilliance, you lead from within and intuitively know what to do. Others will be magnetized by that.
Module 4:
Contemplative Approaches in Working with Others
Establishing Core Practices
This module begins the training in being of service to others. It includes teachings on Buddhist dharma as a path to awakening and a deepening understanding of mindfulness and awareness meditation. This prepares you to guide another person’s meditation by giving accurate and practical instruction.
Module 5:
Engaging Effectively
Honing Your Interactive Skills
In this module you clarifying your intention in how you want to work with others. You cultivate the heart opening practices of loving kindness and compassion and the skillful means of the Five Wisdoms tantra. You engage in experiential learning modalities to train in supporting another in achieving a specific personal or professional result or goal. These include tools for skillful communication, working with negativity and conflict facilitation, creating change, and measuring success.
Module 6:
The Call to Action
Manifesting the Five Wisdoms Mandala
In this module you demonstrate a deep understanding of the Five Wisdoms and can articulate their basic principles and specific qualities. They intuitively inform everything you think, feel, say, and do. You develop more skillful means to take action in the world. In understanding the mandala principle--the profundity and ultimate skillful means of the Five Wisdoms--you see from an energetic perspective: what happens happens. It's just energy. A Fieldwork Project brings to fruition your unique application of the Five Wisdoms in your life and working with others.
As a graduate of Wisdoms@Work...
...you have a deep personal understanding of the Five Wisdoms that intuitively inform everything you think, feel, say, and do. You are able to articulate their basic principles and specific qualities in your personal life and in working with others. By embodying the wisdom energies, you manifest your full potential. Your unique brilliance radiates bringing out the best in your relationships, intelligence in the tasks at hand, and harmony in the environments you inhabit.
Wisdoms@Work Certification
On completion of the training, you will receive a certificate in Wisdoms@Work which authorizes you to engage with the Five Wisdoms in working with others. To maintain certification, active participation with the Five Wisdoms is required.