Sera Beak
Presenting a workshop entitled:
Redvolution: Dare to Disturb the Universe
This redvolutionary workshop will remind you – with as much authenticity, humor, fire, and sass as possible – that you embody an incredibly empowering, fiercely-loving, extraordinarily-needed facet of the divine SheBang! Through creative exercises, intuitive journaling, meditation, and vibrant discussion we will listen to our own red hearts, express our unique truth, and dare to disturb the universe. You’re not here to play small; you’re here to start fires, and have a blast in the process!
Sera Beak is a world-traveled Harvard-trained scholar of comparative religions, author of The Red Book: A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Divine Spark, the forthcoming book, Redvolution: Dare to Disturb the Universe, and director of the upcoming feature film also entitled Redvolution. Sera’s raison d’etre is to remind young women – with as much authenticity, humor, fire, and sass as possible – that they embody an incredibly powerful, fiercely-loving, extraordinarily-needed facet of the divine SheBang. She has been featured in The New York Times Sunday Styles Section as one of the new “Carrie Bradshaws of self-help spirituality,” People Magazine, Skirt!, Washington Woman and Publishers Weekly, and the Dr. Oz show on Oprah and Friends, Martha Stewart’s “Living A Charmed Life,” NPR’s New Dimensions, Father Paul Keenan’s Catholic radio show, and Stuart Davis’s HBO T.V. show: Sex, God, Rock and Roll. Sera has facilitated Red workshops and presented Red talks at Omega Center, The Open Center, Mount Madonna Center, and The Sophia Institute. Sera now happily deems herself a spiritual cowgirl and redvolutionary and has a strong affinity for gold body glitter.
Websites: Sera Beak, Spiritual Cowgirl
Gabrielle Bernstein
Presenting a workshop entitled:
Add More ~ing To Your Life
Motivational speaker and author Gabrielle Bernstein speaks on releasing the blocks to your inner guide (aka ~ing). As a teacher and student of “A Course in Miracles,” Gabrielle translates the Course’s text in a modern-day language. Her relatable approach to metaphysics reminds us of where we came from. Prepare to journey inward with Gabrielle’s lecture “Add More ~ing To Your Life.”
Recently featured in the New York Times Sunday Styles section as the next generation guru, motivational speaker, life coach and author Gabrielle Bernstein is making her mark. Expanding the lexicon for the next generation, on January 2010, Gabrielle launches her first book Add More ~ing to Your Life – A hip guide to happiness published by QNY. In 2007, she launched the brand Falling in Love with Your Future: A Young Woman’s Guide to Passion and Happiness, which takes the form of books, life coaching, lectures and more. An integral part of the program is the emphasis on guidance and mentors. Gabrielle recently launched her social networking site www.HerFuture.com for young women to find mentors. Gabrielle has been featured in media outlets such as The New York Times Sunday Styles, Marie Claire Magazine, Crain’s, NBC10!, WPIX11, NYBTV, WCBS2, Fox & Friends, PBS “To The Contrary”, Fox Strategy Room, WNBC, Wall Street Journal, AdWeek, Sirius Satellite Radio, Am-NY and New York Moves Magazine. Gabrielle is a regular blogger for the Huffington Post NY and www.crazysexylife.com. In addition she can also be seen riding around the West Village on a unicycle.
Website: Add More -Ing
Vanessa Codorniu
Presenting a workshop entitled:
“IN BODY”ing the Power of Divine Presence- Express Your Sacred Feminine Self
Unblock, ground, center, release, celebrate and reveal your spirit! An invitation to connect to your deep awareness, your senses, breathe freely, stretch, sound and move your Sacred Luscious Self into Divine flow. Explore your limiting beliefs about spirit, the body and sexuality. Connect with your body and your intuition. Release what no longer serves you while gaining practical tools for daily connection and wellness. Unveil your unique sensual presence by fusing various drum rhythms, undulations, hip work and movement with a new awareness! Dare to shine brightly and shake what your Momma gave you!
This urban priestess, writer and healer is one of New York’s best kept secrets. As co-creator/co-facilitator of SOL Women’s Healing Circle since 1999, Vanessa has worked to create safe space where women can meet, share stories, explore alternative forms of worship and spiritual expression as well as assist each other on their journey. Steeped in her Latin American heritage, she has studied her own metaphysical/spiritual traditions as well as Celtic, Indigenous, African and world religions. From 2008-2010, Vanessa has combined art, healing and awareness as a performer/director/mentor for Eve Ensler’s VDAY movement in NYC. She has created MuzeWorks to further assist women on their journey of spiritual and earthly empowerment. With almost 20 years experience as an intuitive, Vanessa “ tells it like it is” with humor, optimism and a call to passionate involvement in the creation of our most precious work: Life!.
Dawn Copeland
Presenting a workshop entitled:
Turning Your Shame Into Your Strength
This deeply transformative workshop is for you if you are truly ready to powerfully break through the stories, judgements, and self-destructive thoughts that keep you stuck in being small and in your pain. Be ready to shift and heal on a very deep, body level. You will learn how to release the shame and the self-criticism that persists on a daily basis, and then access that place inside of yourself that holds your sacred wisdom, compassion, transformation and self-love.
Dawn Copeland, M.F.A. is a Co-Founder and Director of Programs for REVEAL. She is an Assistant Professor of Communications at Rider University and Co-Director of WomanVision. Through WomanVision, she has taught over 250 workshops at such renowned places as Omega Institute, Renfrew Foundation National Conference on Eating Disorders, V-Day’s Worldwide Festival and to women in Botswana, Africa. She Co-Founded Journey to Yourself, a 6-month training program based in NYC for women to access and integrate different archetypal types of feminine power.
Through her coaching business, A Divine Solution, Dawn also inspires and teaches women to use their struggles and pain to forge a deeper connection with spirit in order to transform their souls and lives to become 100% responsible for their unique gifts.
Websites: Dawn Copeland; Woman Vision
Donna Freitas
Presenting a workshop entitled:
Listening for Voices, Becoming Divine (On the Page): Writing Through Grief and Trauma toward Healing
Finding and claiming your voice has long been a staple of feminist theology, and listening for voices has been a divine activity since the middle ages, at least for women mystics. In this workshop, you will have opportunity to open up the deepest parts of yourself AND allow your connection to the Divine to come through. Combining personal experience with scholarly background, Donna Freitas will show you how writing is central to spiritual growth, transformation (both personal and communal), and healing, and invite you to explore the page as a space for “becoming divine.”
Donna Freitas is a Visiting Scholar of Religion at Boston University. She received her Ph.D. from Catholic University in 2002 and her B.A. in philosophy from Georgetown (CAS ’94). Donna’s most recent nonfiction book is “Sex and the Soul: Juggling Sexuality, Spirituality, Romance and Religion on America’s College Campuses” (Oxford University Press, 2008), and she is the author of two novels, “The Possibilities of Sainthood” and “This Gorgeous Game,” both with Frances Foster Books/FSG.
RHA Goddess
A Presenter for REVEAL‘s Young Women’s Spirituality Panel
& Presenting a workshop entitled:
Divine Currency & the Art of True-Paid-Good
I want to challenge the notion that being “spiritual” or “socially conscious” means being poor or negligent about our financial sustainability or our market value. Drawing on ancient wisdom and the Universal Laws of Prosperity and Success, participants in this workshop will explore how honoring your unique vision, mission, and purpose can create unprecedented opportunities to do what you love, earn what you desire AND make a difference in the world.
Rha Goddess is a world renowned performance artist, activist and social entrepreneur. Her work has been featured in numerous international compilations, forums, and festivals. As CEO, of Divine Dime Entertainment, Ltd. she was one of the first women in Hip Hop to independently market and commercially distribute her music worldwide. In her 30+ year tenure as an organizer, Rha has worked on issues of racial justice and equality, electoral politics, youth empowerment, offender aid and restoration, mental health and young women’s empowerment. She is a 2008 recipient of the prestigious Freedom Flame Award for her outstanding work in Arts and Civic Engagement and a 2009 winner of the Alpert Award’s Hedgebrook Prize. Rha is the founder and interim executive director of 1 +1+1= One; The mission of 1+1+1=ONE is to use Arts Based Civic Transformation™ to empower individuals, communities & societies in affecting positive social change. Rha Goddess is also the editor, along with J-Love Calderon, of the New York Times bestselling book, “We Got Issues: A Young Women’s Guide to a Bold, Courageous, and Empowered Life.”
Chloe Graef
A Presenter for REVEAL‘s Young Women’s Spirituality Panel
Chloe Graef’s academic and personal interests merged when she took a class called Religion and Gender taught by pioneering feminist theologian Professor Ursula King. Through this profound year-long experience, Chloe was introduced to the works of great feminist theologians like Carole Christ, Mary Daly and Starhawk. She felt a deep connection to the woman’s spirituality movement and became a solo practitioner at that time. Chloe participated in the 9 month long Woman Spirit Journey course taught by Susan Merry Hellerer at the NYC Open Center which led her to join the Womanwheel apprenticeship program. She also participated in the 9 month long Journey to Myself Program taught by Dawn Copeland and Joanna Lindenbaum as part of the WomanSpirit community. Prior to her move to the US from England, she also completed a Masters in History Education at Cambridge University and a Masters in Medieval Studies at Bristol University and is now in her 9th year teaching World History (including world religions) at Herricks High School in Long Island, NY.
Sheherazade Jafari
A Moderator for REVEAL‘s Young Women’s Spirituality Panel
Sheherazade Jafari is a doctoral student in International Relations at American University’s School of International Service. Her research interests include gender and identity in conflict and its resolution. Previously, she led the Religion and Conflict Resolution Program at the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding , where she worked with religious peacemakers from armed conflict zones around the world. Sheherazade has also worked with women’s rights and development NGOs in the Middle East and South Asia, as well as on civic education and rights for Iranian Americans, and has published on related subjects. She has an MA in International Affairs from The George Washington University and a BA in Sociology and Women’s Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Valarie Kaur
A Presenter for REVEAL‘s Young Women’s Spirituality Panel
& Presenting a workshop entitled:
Embodied Sacred Experience: Reading the Body as Scripture
How do people across faith traditions experience the sacred? How can women harness the power of sacred experience to overcome fear? The autonomic nervous system of the body is the physiological site for sacred experience as well as oppression and trauma. Through guided introspection and storytelling, award-winning filmmaker and lecturer Valarie Kaur will introduce women to reading the body as text in order to explore the somatic dimension of sacred experience.
A third-generation Sikh American born and raised in Clovis, California, Valarie is a writer, filmmaker, and lecturer in religion and ethics. She received her masters in theological studies at Harvard Divinity School. For more than five years, she created, wrote, produced, and developed the first feature-length documentary film on hate violence in post-9/11 America - Divided We Fall: Americans in the Aftermath.
The world premiere of Divided We Fall in September 2006 sent Valarie on a packed international speaking and screening tour which continues today. She has been invited as an authority on the subject at more than one hundred universities, colleges, and religious centers across the country. She has been featured in print, radio and television media including CNN, NPR, the BBC, and Frances Moore Lappe’s book You Have the Power: Choosing Courage in a Culture of Fear.
Valarie presently studies civil rights law in post 9/11 America at Yale Law School.
Websites: Divided We Fall-Film, Valarie Kaur’s Blog
Joanna Lindenbaum
Presenting a workshop entitled:
Turning Your Shame Into Your Strength
This deeply transformative workshop is for you if you are truly ready to powerfully break through the stories, judgements, and self-destructive thoughts that keep you stuck in being small and in your pain. Be ready to shift and heal on a very deep, body level. You will learn how to release the shame and the self-criticism that persists on a daily basis, and then access that place inside of yourself that holds your sacred wisdom, compassion, transformation and self-love.
Joanna Lindenbaum, MA, is a co-founder and Director of Programs for REVEAL. Through her work as a coach, spiritual mentor, and workshop leader, Joanna inspires women to achieve their BIG projects by tapping into their feminine wisdom and connecting to their sacred selves. She teaches women to embrace their power so that they heal and transform themselves, their families, their communities and the world.
Joanna is the creator of The Women’s Intuitive Leadership Program, a 12-week intensive where women make breakthroughs and heart-centered forward movement with their businesses, not-for-profits, creative projects, and relationships. She is also the co-Director of Womanvision and co-creator of Journey to Yourself, a 6-month training program for women who are ready to claim their power and spiritual selves. Joanna has led over 200 workshops and rituals for women at such renowned places as Omega Institute, Renfrew Foundation National Conference on Eating Disorders, V-Day’s Worldwide Festival, Belly and Womb Conference and to women in Botswana, Africa.
Websites: Soulful Coaching for Busy Women; Woman Vision
Nicole Ohebshalom
Presenting a workshop entitled:
Wild Nourishment: Finding Power, Pleasure and Spirit in Your Eating Style
Awaken your own feminine energy while transforming your relationship with food and your body in a new way. We will have fun connecting within to begin breaking the cycle with food by listening to the wisdom of the body and taking care of yourself with true nourishment. This workshop involves discussion, meditation, journaling, and dancing. Every women can cultivate her creative ground and change her core patterns to unlock her natural radiance.
Nicole Ohebshalom is the founder of Radiance Living Wellness, coaches and supports women who are ready to create health, feel wonderful in their bodies and honor their femininity. Through yoga/meditation, nutritional wisdom and coaching, Nicole helps you step onto your path of personal happiness, balance your relationship with eating and your body, and connect you to your inner balance and radiance.
Website: Radiant Living Wellness
Christine Pae
A Presenter for REVEAL‘s Young Women’s Spirituality Panel
K. Christine Pae is a Korean feminist ethicist and assistant professor of religion at Denison University. Her academic research and social activism have revolved around women’s spirituality as a form of resistance to violence. She is expecting to be the first Korean female priest in the Episcopal Church.
Yolanda Shoshana
A Presenter for REVEAL‘s Young Women’s Spirituality Panel
Yolanda Shoshana (“Shoshi”) is a media personality, lifestyle expert, sensualist, courtesan coach, and speaker, known as the “Luscious Lifestyle Diva.” Her talents and expertise span in a wide range of specialties in the lifestyle category where she started a lifestyle company for women, which swirls sensuality, sexuality, and spirituality.
She does a live bi-weekly television show in Manhattan on Channel 56 called “The Luscious Life with Shoshi” and has a radio show, “The Luscious Life,” where she interviews dynamic and luscious guests. Shoshi also has a body product line, Modern Courtesan by YS from body scrubs to perfumes that consists of notes from aphrodisiacs and exotic flowers. When not creating, coaching or interviewing, she can be found officiating wedding ceremonies around the city.
Website: Luscious Lifestyle Diva
Kate Siner
Presenting a workshop entitled:
Creating From Our Depths, Expanding Our Wisdom
Visual art offers a practice that enlightens and provides opportunity for insight. It is through the non-verbal and non-linear understanding of the archetypal feminine that our art can become spiritual practice or a means of deepening spiritual understanding. This largely experiential session will help you connect more deeply to your individual spiritual experience, receive a message from your “higher self” through the art-making process, and engage in dialouge about the role that the deep feminine plays in creative and spiritual practice.
Kate Siner Francis, Ph.D., is a psychotherapist, writer, and teacher. She earned her Ph.D. in Psychology and a certification in Expressive Arts in 2008 after nearly 15 years of self-learning and practice of alternative approaches to growth and development. She is the director and co-facilitator of Priestess Path a women’s empowerment program and has been practicing integrative psychotherapy and holistic success coaching in the Providence, Rhode Island area since 2005 through Larger Visions, her private practice. Dr. Francis’s research and writing has focused on the study of art in psychology, the impact of art-based/non-linear thinking–sometimes considered feminine ways of thinking– on psychological research, creativity, and the use of art for social change.
Website: Larger Visions
Gail Straub
REVEAL Advisory Board member Gail Straub will be presenting remarks entitled:
Why I Love REVEAL and Why We All Need To Support It
Over the past thirty years Gail Straub has trained tens of thousands of people worldwide in empowerment, engaged spirituality, and the wisdom of the feminine. Considered a pioneer in the field of empowerment, Gail co-founded Empowerment Training Programs in 1981 and has offered her work to people throughout America, Europe, Russia, China, Africa, and Afghanistan. She co-directs the Empowerment Institute, a school for transformative leadership whose certified graduates are implementing the empowerment model in education, business, health, hip-hop, and social change. With her husband, David Gershon, Gail co-authored the best seller Empowerment: The Art of Creating Your Life as You Want It. In its twelfth printing, the book has been translated into eight languages and is used worldwide as the basis for empowerment life coaching and support groups. She also wrote the critically acclaimed The Rhythm of Compassion: Caring for Self, Connecting with Society, and Circle of Compassion: Meditations for Caring for the Self and the World. Her most recent book is the award winning feminist memoir Returning to My Mother’s House: Taking Back the Wisdom of the Feminine.
Alisa Vitti
Presenting a workshop entitled:
The Feminine Health/Care Revolution: Healing the Body is Divinely Feminine!
So many women embrace feminine ideals, yet when it comes to that time of the month, you find yourself out of “right relationship” with your body. This is made worse when you have a hormonal imbalance like fibroids, PCOS, infertility, painful periods, thyroid, libido and adrenal issues . Alisa Vitti will teach you a new feminine model for women’s health and healing the body that puts YOU at the center of your wellness universe. You will walk away with practical tools for aligning your body with the feminine as a daily path to health, and you’ll see what this new paradigm shift she is creating for women’s healthcare is all about!
Alisa Vitti, HHC, AADP (Holistic Health Counselor, American Association of Drugless Practitioners) founded Laughing Sage Wellness Center, now the FLO Living in Manhattan 9 years ago after experiencing the many frustrating health symptoms of polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), and then healing herself through food and lifestyle changes. Alisa was just nominated by Hay House as their next Mover & Shaker and will be speaking with Dr. Dyer, Dr. Northrup and Cheryl Richardson this fall. She received degrees from Johns Hopkins University and the Institute of Integrative Nutrition, where she fine-tuned her unique approach to helping younger women naturally correct hormonal imbalances using medicinal foods.
She specializes in the areas of reproductive and hormonal health and helping women connect to and express their feminine energy. A transformational speaker, she debunks myths around women’s chronic gynecological issues and inspires women to have better health and better sex through her five-step proprietary nutritional and lifestyle protocol. Her protocol is now the subject of a clinical study in conjunction with a research physician from Columbia University. Alisa has spoken at numerous colleges, workshops, corporations, and women’s organizations. Her work has been featured in the Huffington Post, Fox Business News, Life & Style, Vital Juice Daily, and various internet radio shows. She is currently writing her first book due out in 2011.
Website: Laughing Sage Wellness, Flo Living, Hay House Events
Meggan Watterson
Presenting: Unveiling REVEAL – Opening Remarks from REVEAL‘s Executive Director
Meggan Watterson is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of REVEAL, a feminist theologian, and a sacred cheerleader for women’s spiritual empowerment. With Masters from Harvard Divinity School and Union Theological Seminary in Comparative Religion and Feminist Theology, Meggan has focused her life’s work on the emergence of the divine feminine. She leads a multi-faith women’s spirituality group in NYC called the Redladies. Over hot meals, dark chocolate and red wine, the Redladies encourage each other to find, hear, and to follow the courageous and audacious voice of their soul. Meggan organized and presented at the June 2005 “Womb of God” conference at the G.T.U. in Berkeley, CA., with China Galland and Dr. Rosemary Radford Ruether. Meggan participated as a dialogue facilitator and as a member of the planning committee for the 2006 and 2007 “Faith and Feminism Dialogues,” in NYC sponsored by Ms. Magazine and The Sister Fund. She is currently working on the forthcoming REVEAL anthology titled REVEAL Generation.
Websites: New York Times Sunday Styles section, Sister Fund H.O.T Stories