Imagine yourself a leader of change at your workplace, using embodied, mindful awareness (somatics). Imagine an educational or work setting which includes breathing exercises, stretching, yoga mats as alternative to chairs and desks. Imagine working together by dancing together, celebration vs. competition, knowing that together you are in touch with the earth, not destroying it, collaborating, not undermining each other, enhancing well-being, instead of bullying. Become part of a community of empathic awareness, shared collaborative understanding, mindfulness, earth awareness and enhanced consciousness. Become part of the solution in instead of part of the problem. Become an author and leader for social change for the good, while enhancing your own well being. The Communicative Leadership doctoral concentration will give you the tools and self-confidence to transform conflicted and stressful work environments into centers of creative energy.

The Somatics, Phenomenology and Communicative Leadership doctoral concentration combines and integrates scholarly theory and mastery of embodied, mindful awareness (somatics) with substantial grounding in transformative phenomenology (consciousness and deep personal reflection), along with the interpretive and practical dynamics of social constructionism (Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM), Symbolic Interactionism, and related communication and social construction disciplines).

Why Somatics, Phenomenology and Communicative Leadership?

Over the past several decades, scholarship across the social and human sciences has come to claim the body as an essential part of experience, knowledge and practice. The enculturated patterns of working and of educating persons from early childhood through old age have ignored both the body and lived experience (phenomenology), as a result of objectification, the mind/body split, and overemphasis on external goals over building well-being and collaborative, rewarding relationships. Somatic and phenomenological awareness and leadership can turn this around.

This concentration brings in knowledge from diverse fields, from neuroscience to non-Western philosophies, such as Buddhism and Vedanta, offering greater power to scholar-leaders. The incorporation of creative practices, such as somatic dance, art, music and creative writing are all tools which can enhance the happiness of the situations in which the leaders create change. Somatics and phenomenological methods place the scholar-leader in the center as the instrument of change. As such her or his own being, as the primary instrument, is enhanced to create more effectiveness in practice.

Objectives

The Somatics, Phenomenology and Communicative Leadership doctoral concentration will help students:

• Enhance learning and leadership skills through somatic awareness and mindfulness;
• Bring the tools of transformative phenomenology (practices of consciousness reflection and change) into leadership for well being, building collaboration, and enhancing communities of learning and care;
• Bring whole person practices of learning and being into the work of social and environmental justice;
• Engage with other scholars and researchers to develop and promote phenomenology as an empirical research methodology both within and external to academia.

Outcomes

Graduates will:

• Develop a portfolio of progressive engagement with self and others through somatic awareness and transformative phenomenology;
• Have “essence based” evidence for their practice. (Phenomenological techniques result in the clarification of essential aspects of experiences, which leads to more effective practice);
• Demonstrate via writing a deepening of scholarship and awareness of consciousness and well being in themselves and their collaborators and clients;
• Conduct research with translational impact, as well as theoretical significance.
• Have a deeper awareness of and help facilitate collaborative reengagement of those who are effected by personal, culture and environmental trauma.
• Promote a form of leadership for healing relationships with self, others, and the earth.