By Peter Moore

Hosted by the House of I, China
October 13 – 16, 2019

I was invited to attend the Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) Ambassador Training Conference by my friend and colleague Dan Hines, a trainer extraordinaire who teaches internationally at many holistic centers. For the better part of this year he has been based at House of I, a center in China that offers programs and services as part of a development north of Beijing improbably named “Jackson Hole”. HOI does its work in a beautiful set of buildings and park-like grounds at the base of the Yanqing Mountains, and is managed by a wonderful staff of people headed by Annie Liu. My friend Dan humorously terms HOI “the Imaginarium” and, as I spent a few days and became more familiar with the emerging social reality there, I began to understand the deeper symbolic truth embedded in this name. Truly, the House of I is a place where improbable dreams can (and do) become everyday reality. It is a wonderful setting. [Read more…]

By Peter Moore

Word in the West re: China, our neighbor in the East, is bad! China poses multiple challenges to USA dominance: economically, culturally, militarily. One Belt One Road is changing the worldwide geopolitical landscape. They’re ripping off intellectual property by studying models developed in the West and perfecting them in the East.

There is truth in the above, but something quite distinct from these conventional claims is also emergent in that vast country. I visited China during the month of November, 2018, and my takeaway was progressive. I was invited to Beijing to participate in a 5-day conference titled “Holistic Wellness International Forum.” There I gave a speech titled “Universities of the Soul in a Network of Light.” Corollary to that flowery title was a more focused subtitle, “How Holistic Centers Proliferate Across Our World.”

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Jeffrey Williams is an innovative multi-disciplinary visionary who has taught and facilitated transformation and vitality arts since 1999. He has synthesized traditional and alternative wellness and medicine systems from all over the world with modern science to develop his cutting edge modalities for experiencing human potential and increased vitality and longevity. Jeffrey has taught at Holistic Centers for 18 years and in November 2018 joined us as a keynote speaker for the International Holistic Wellness Forum in Beijing. [Read more…]

A month before the Centers Gathering at Hollyhock in B.C. Canada, 12-17 May, I received an email from our friend and HCN Board member Sean. “Bene Wellness is going to hold a new product launch on May 20th in Beijing,” he wrote. “Songlin sends his invitation to you as VIP guest for the ceremony. We totally understand if you can’t make it.” The invite to return to China in a few weeks came as a surprise.

Although I knew the date clashed with our annual HCN Board meeting I was intrigued to find out more. “It’s a new program series that’s been inspired by our experience at Findhorn last year,” Sean explained and I smiled at the news. He’d already booked his flight which meant missing the HCN Board meeting and I knew that wasn’t an option for me. I had a week in my diary where I could potentially travel though and knew I wanted to support our partnership with Bene Wellness. [Read more…]

Separating and Uniting:
The Haven and the Art of Self-Responsible Relational Living

Rachel Davey was the Executive Director of The Haven on Gabriola Island, BC, Canada for ten years. Now a Board member of HCN she offered this keynote during our Holistic Forum in Beijing last year. During the talk she demonstrates how the underlying philosophy of The Haven, a Centre for Transformative Learning, has contributed to the increased wellbeing of both individuals and societies throughout the world.
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Transformative Programs: The Omega Institute & the Art of Inspiring & Educating Audiences

The Omega Institute for Holistic Studies in upstate New York has created innovative programming for more than 40 years. Founded by Eastern scholar Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, holistic medical doctor Stephan Rechtschaffen, and educator and author Elizabeth Lesser, Omega was conceived as a university for lifelong learning and serves as a gathering place for great thinkers, creatives, spiritual teachers, and social visionaries. [Read more…]

Esalen was started in the 1960’s when the two founders, Michael Murphy and Dick Price, realized that the exploration of human potential was being constrained in the academic world and there needed to be a place where people could explore the edge of what was possible for humankind. Today Esalen has a long legacy of exploration, creation and research on the edge of what is possible. Names like Abraham Maslow, Alan Watts, Joseph Campbell, Ida Rolf and Fritz Perls have birthed ideas and movements at Esalen. [Read more…]

Peter Moore is a practical idealist and successful entrepreneur who works ardently over time to bring principle-based projects into reality. He helped found the Holistic Centers Network and has attended the annual International Holistic Centers Gathering for many years. In 1978, Peter co-founded Breitenbush Hot Springs Retreat & Conference Center, and is its current Business Director. “Together we create the world we want to live in through linking up holistic centers the world over. I think of holistic centers as conscious communities whose mission it is to evolve and reify human potential, while having fun.” [Read more…]

The last 40 years have seen an explosion of interest in the West and worldwide in consciousness, personal growth, holistic practices, and green and sustainable values. This profoundly creative impulse of renewal, with its many positive consequences in wellness, psychology, meditation, ecology and the embrace of a globally interconnected future, has had an invigorating effect on a society that might well have continued on a course of decline and empty materialism. [Read more…]