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Close to Home: Legacy and Succession Planning Issues

July 11, 2023, Author: Chris Breen

I turned 75 on the 2nd of June this year. By the evening of the 4th June, I was in my hotel room in Johannesburg at the Sanctuary Mandela (‘A Place of Reflection’) getting ready for my session the next day. I had been asked to facilitate the process of taking stock of the personal […]

Leadership, Life, Teaching

Feast on Your Life

January 18, 2023, Author: Chris Breen

The time will come when, with elationyou will greet yourself arrivingat your own door, in your own mirrorand each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, sit here. Eat.You will love again the stranger who was your self.Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heartto itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your […]

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Islands of Sanity: A Drukkie at Pick n Pay and Other Stories.

July 16, 2021, Author: Chris Breen

About 14 years ago, I joined my first Biodanza class and my world changed in so many ways. Biodanza is essentially the Dance of Life and Love, and was the creation of a Chilean, Rolando Toro. The core experience of Biodanza usually centres around a vivencia (a set of experiences and movement to music that […]

Leadership, Life, Online Learning, Teaching, Teaching and Learning

Love (and Work) in a Time of Corona (Part Three)

January 7, 2021, Author: Chris Breen

I ended Part Two of this series of three Love (and Work) in a Time of Corona reflections with the following intentions for future teaching: It is time to start. I have a new determination to do this walking with a measured pace that takes time to play with the nuances of each situation. There […]

Leadership, Life, Teaching and Learning

Love (and Work) in a Time of Corona (Part Two)

September 1, 2020, Author: Chris Breen

Part One of this Love and Corona Blog described my journey from lying fallow (or paralysed by inertia) to being forced to dip my toes into the waters of ZOOM. It ended in a seemingly upbeat manner as I announced that I was ready to return to the world from my place of inner and […]

Leadership, Life, Teaching and Learning

Love (and Work) in a Time of Corona (Part One)

August 19, 2020, Author: Chris Breen

These past five months have been a really strange, disturbing and personally intense roller-coaster experience. The first thing I had to get used to was being classified as a member of the high-risk category. Not only do I fall into the aged category at 72 (well over 60!), I am also a male with ‘underlying […]

Leadership, Life, Teaching and Learning

Marriage to Self

May 31, 2020, Author: Chris Breen

But it’s all right now, I’ve learned my lesson well You see, you can’t please everyone, so you’ve got to please yourself. I’ve been meandering through old photographs, newspaper cuttings and various other memorabilia found in my cupboards during this forced Covid-19 lockdown period, with the inevitable consequence that many intentionally ‘forgotten’ memories have come […]

Leadership, Teaching, Teaching and Learning

Micro-worlds and Micro-identities: A Strategy for Lockdown and Life?

May 19, 2020, Author: Chris Breen

Francisco Varela (1946 – 2001) was Chilean theoretical biologist who, together with his mentor, Humberto Maturana, is best known for introducing the concept of autopoiesis to biology, and for co-founding the Mind and Life Institute to promote dialogue between science and Buddhism. Both Maturana and Varela became very important to me when, way back in […]

Hinge Moments, Leadership, Life, Teaching and Learning

I Raised You Up? A story of parenting (and leadership?): Time for the Sovereign to Show Up

January 21, 2020, Author: Chris Breen

This story starts almost ten years ago when I rather reluctantly agreed to become a silent one-third owner of the house that my daughter and her husband were wanting to buy. I did this as they had been told that, as they were both self-employed, this was the only way that they could get a […]

Leadership, Life

Power and Love (Good Enough Series Blog 3): Let the Lover Be Seen!

November 1, 2019, Author: Chris Breen

There is one more thread I want to tug at before I finish this writing on the topic of being good enough. These past few week’s have been a time of introspection and reflection and it has been hard making myself sufficiently vulnerable to write these deeply personal reflections. Earlier this evening I was putting […]