Participatory Design and Facilitation

Are you running an educational and training program or hosting a conference and want to make it even more engaging, co-creative, generative for your participants? We can support you with innovative design and program facilitation to make your work come alive to whole new levels.

“Shilpa was one of the first people we reached out to when we were putting together the curriculum for our inaugural cohort of Creating Freedom Movements, and we have been thrilled that she has returned to teach her facilitation skills workshop with us every year since then. CFM is a year-long program for people who want to increase justice and joy in their communities, and our curriculum incorporates social analysis, the arts, healing/resilience practices, and practical skills. Shilpa is one of those rare people whose work sits at the intersection of all these areas, so she has been an ideal part of our teaching team. While the workshop she offers for us is on the practical skill of facilitation, she offers this in a way that is attentive to power dynamics and models/teaches concrete healing/resilience tools in the process, too. This is essential because, so often, in social justice communities, our multiple traumas from being targeted by systems of domination can be triggered, and we need tools to keep us grounded and connected so that we can work through whatever is arising. Shilpa’s depth of experience and years of practice have resulted in someone who not only brings immense expertise, but EMBODIES what she teaches. Moreover, even as she has become more well-known and sought after, she has remained humble and generous, a weaver of webs, connecting people and organizations to each other and to numerous resources. We are so grateful to be part of that web with her!” ~ Cecilia Lucas, co-founder, Creating Freedom Movements, Bay Area, California

Building Bridges Towards Your Impossible

“They say there is a doorway from heart to heart. But what is the use of a door when there are no walls?” – Rumi

One of the things that stands in the way of our impossible are the walls we place or have had placed between ourselves and others. Many of us long to work in diverse groups and teams, with people from a variety of backgrounds and life experiences, and yet, we don’t know how to build the bridges and create the kinds of relationships and cultures that make that possible. We sense intuitively that we are wiser together, and still feel stuck when it comes to actually generating the kinds of relationships across difference that feel meaningful and authentic. Join us for an exploration, using practical tools and skills, of what we can unlock in ourselves and with each other to open up and build the bridges that are vital for creating the world we want to see. Hint: It starts with listening from our hearts more than from our heads.

Conflict Transformation

Are you in a challenging situation, where there has been missed understandings, hurt, and stuckness? We can support you with powerful and simple tools to slow down, go deeper, see the wholeness and humanity of each person involved, and find meaningful solutions to carry forward.

“I have had the great blessing to work with Shilpa on 7 different workshops that we designed and co-facilitated for 3 different clients of mine: the Latino Community Fund, Heart of Los Angeles, and Cooperative Home Care Associates. Shilpa also facilitated several conflict transformation/mediation processes that helped to heal long-standing rifts amongst executive leadership. I have also referred several other individual coaching clients to her. Shilpa and I met virtually at a Jam in fall 2020, and I fell in love with her energy and incredible skill she exhibited in all of her capacities: as Jam co-facilitator and Executive Director of YES! We developed a friendship and a professional relationship that I am so grateful for – all of my clients absolutely loved her and the simple but powerful conflict transformation curricula she has developed at YES. She possesses a peerless emotional intelligence, strong energetic presence and leadership, and is also very funny and warm! I have personally and professionally grown so much from our work together, and I can’t wait for more.”
~Amadeo Cruz Guiao, Organizational Healer/Consultant and Facilitator, Lunas Consulting, Seattle, WA.

Community-building and Teamwork

Are you seeking to strengthen the ties within your team and/or wider community? We can support you with a variety of games, arts-based activities, creative challenges, storytelling practices, visioning exercises, and more, to bring you all together in robust and profound ways.

I had the pleasure to have Shilpa provide a workshop for a group of college freshman. The intentional manner of the workshop as well as all of the “life tools” introduced provided a great way for these students to connect to themselves and each other in a deep way and frame the start of their year with purpose and meaning- and set a foundation around values that will serve is well into the future.

~Rebecca Liebeskind, Change the World Program Manager, Verto Education.

Facilitation Coaching

Are you a facilitator or teacher and want to improve your skills and/or get insights into challenges you’ve had? We can support with our collective wisdom of over 100 people working for the last 30 years to facilitate passionate, powerful, healing spaces in a huge variety of contexts.

Shilpa has coached me through some very difficult moments of conflict and decision making. I have gone to her in moments of organization breakdown, after painful callout / cancelling experiences, and in moments of just wanting extra support with my life partner. Our work together has had a huge influence on my work as a somatic healer and an abolitionist project partner. She’s also facilitated healing with my sharp and shaming inner dialogue. She’s been a key guide for me in slowing down to the pace of real integration, leaning in to community accountability, and building greater conflict fluency.

When we work together, Shilpa holds incredibly skilled space for ex-forming the body’s own knowing and then helping apply that into steps that allow for deeper alignment and healing in the situation at hand. I first experienced her as exuding the kind of genuine, humble “we got this” capacity I recognized as sourcing from depth of experience *and* breadth of training. She offers simple tools and works from very deep within the heart of the nonviolence tradition–a combination which calls you to engage authentically with the change that’s being asked for–either from yourself or in your community.

Sessions with Shilpa are more than supportive, they are transformative. I leave knowing I’ve been held as a whole person with my stories and needs, and I also leave clear on the ways I can show up more wholly and skillfully with my community.

Char CA , New York, Somatic Resilience Companion and Facilitator, Abolitionist Organizer