Each of us has the power to change the ways we think in manners that will increase our happiness, improve our resilience, and promote inner calm. Attendees of “Hardwiring Happiness: Turning Passing Experiences into Lasting Inner Strength and Peace” at Augsburg College will learn practical tips and proven methods from a leading, national neuropsychologist during a one-hour presentation that includes time for audience questions.

Who

is a neuropsychologist and senior fellow of the at University of California, Berkeley. He is an author of numerous books, including the 2013 New York Times bestseller, “Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence.”

When

11 a.m., Thursday, Oct. 16

Where

Hoversten Chapel (in the Foss, Lobeck, Miles Center) at Augsburg College located at 625 22nd Ave. S., Minneapolis. .

Cost

Free and open to the public. Seating available first come, first serve.

About Augsburg College

This program is sponsored by Augsburg College’s Center for Counseling and Health Promotion which provides a range of services to Augsburg students including mental health counseling and health promotion programs. Each year, CCHP hosts a convocation that is free and open to the public and on a topic related to developing knowledge and strategies for coping with life’s stressors and enhancing health and well-being.

Augsburg College is set in a vibrant neighborhood at the heart of the Twin Cities, and offers more than 50 undergraduate majors and nine graduate degrees to nearly  4,000 students of diverse backgrounds. Augsburg College educates students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders. The Augsburg experience is supported by an engaged community committed to intentional diversity in its life and work. An Augsburg education is defined by excellence in the liberal arts and professional studies, guided by the faith and values of the Lutheran church, and shaped by its urban and global settings.

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Luskin is the director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Projects, a senior consultant in health promotion at Stanford, and a professor of clinical psychology at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. Currently he also serves as the co-chair of the Garden of Forgiveness Projects at Ground Zero in Manhattan.

Luskin has completed 10 successful research projects on the training and measurement of forgiveness therapy. Luskin’s research demonstrates that learning forgiveness leads to increased physical vitality, hope, greater self–efficacy, enhanced optimism and conflict resolution skills. His research also shows that forgiveness lessens the physical and emotional toll of stress and decreases hurt, anger, depression, and blood pressure.

On three occasions he successfully worked with men and women from both sides of the violence in Northern Ireland who had family members killed. In addition, he worked with seven different groups of financial advisors after the stock market crash of 2000 to enhance their conflict resolution and stress management skills.

Luskin is the author of Forgive for Good and Forgive for Love as well as Stress Free for Good.

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Before his birth, in 1956, the elders of Somé’s village knew that his purpose in coming into this world was to carry the message of indigenous technology and spirituality to the western world, a place where modernity was growing increasingly hungry for a reconnection to ancient wisdom. Little did he know, as a young child stolen from his family and village, that the years he would spend under the harsh tutelage of the religious order would prepare the way for the eventual challenge of integrating old and new, the sacred and the mundane. For more than twenty years, Malidoma Somé has shared the wisdom of his ancestors and tribal elders, awakening a deep knowing in the hearts and bones of those who have recognized in his name, his books, his voice, the spirit world inviting the renewal of a powerful and abiding relationship with all beings on earth.

Somé is the author of several books, including Ritual: Power, Healing and Community, Of Water and The Spirit, and The Healing Wisdom of Africa. He has earned two doctorates—one from the Sorbonne in Paris and a second from Brandeis University in Boston. Somé is also an initiated elder in his village in Dano, Burkina Faso, W. Africa. He travels throughout the world bringing a message of hope, healing, and reconciliation through the powerful tools of ritual and community building. Through his lectures and the introduction of ritual in a way that the western psyche can embrace, he offers life-altering medicine and the opportunity to explore the meaning of purpose within one’s community.

“It is possible that we have been brought together at this time because we have profound truths to teach each other. Toward that end, I offer the wisdom of the African ancestors so that Westerners might find the deep healing they seek. From an indigenous perspective, the individual psyche can be healed only by addressing one’s relationships with the visible worlds of nature and community and one’s relationships with the invisible forces of the ancestors and Spirit allies.

The spark of this ancestral flame, which I have brought to the land of the stranger, is now burning brightly. Increasingly, I have been and will be encouraging westerners to embody these traditions as a testimony to the indigenous capacity to assert itself with dignity in the face of modernity. In this way the ancestors will know that this medicine has found a true home- that it is more than an honored guest.”

Center for Counseling and Health Promotion convocation

Water and the Spirit

Friday, February 11, 2011

3:30-5 p.m., Hoversten Chapel, Foss Center

The Healing Wisdom of Africa

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Noon-1 p.m., Hoversten Chapel, Foss Center

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