Trainings
Level I
With a particular focus on deepening the ability to hold space for difficult conversations in relation to structural inequality, participants will get hands on opportunities to engage in interactive dialogue to explore and facilitate the Contemplating 400 Years of Inequality process.
Level II
This training builds on Level and helps participants to develop a deeper awareness of the historical forces that have created what scholars call an “ecology of inequality” and how to help others become more capacious as they explore complex parts of our past.
Level III
This training builds on the themes within the Level I and Level II trainings. This training will support participants with grasping the intersection of mindfulness, intergenerational trauma & healing, and contemplative education and how this all relates to the new wave of practices that are emerging in the field.
"Angel Acosta is an inspiring guide through the timeline of our lives since the first slave ship arrived on North American shores that has shaped the history of the United States over the last four hundred years. Each of us can benefit as individuals and organizations in deeply experiencing this journey of our modern world to bring more wisdom, understanding and compassion to our collective lives."
Daniel Siegel
Clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute
"I walked late into the session... a hotel ballroom filled with people in silence...slowly pacing in and around the laminated words and images on the floor. I could tell from the intensity on their faces, there was a message in those laminated sheets that dug deep into each person's experience. As I got close enough to see what was holding everyone's attention so closely, I was surprised to see the 400 year history of my ancestor's painful yet resilient journey laid out on a graphic timeline. I was fascinated! I couldn't skip over ANYTHING! I wanted to read every word. To know those pieces of American history that speaks to the truth of our racist past and present. Angel's facilitation of the process was exquisite, as he was able to make the experience as digestible as possible for everyone."
Konda Mason
Filmmaker, activist, social entrepreneur, and Strategic Director of Jubilee Partners
"Angel Acosta’s work on 400 years of slavery and institutional racism focuses on what matters most: moving marginality to the center of collective attention. That shift in attention might well be the only way to truly address the increasing polarization in society today. He is a master facilitator that can hold these deep structural tensions in ways that allow for healing and possibility."
Otto Scharmer
Senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-founder of the Social Presencing Institute
"Angel Acosta has developed an embodied, emotionally powerful, and highly meditative first-person experience in which we literally walk at our own pace past large canvases on the floor depicting a time- line of major events in US history, most of which we hardly ever learn anything about in school or reflect upon as adults—events that mandated inequality, and legalized and institutionalized horrific injustices of all kinds. These legacies have huge and ongoing repercussions for all of us to this present day. Angel’s guidance in this reflective process gently invites us to learn and to heal, individually and collectively. Hopefully, it will also inspire us to act, to take stands both little and big, in the service of true equality and justice."
