Free book event this Wednesday, July 22, at 6:30 pm at Darvill’s Bookstore

||| FROM AYN GAILEY for DARVILLS BOOKSTORE |||

Please join Michelle & Joel Levey, the founders of Wisdom at Work, International Center for Corporate Culture and Organizational Health, and the International Center for Contemplative Inquiry, for a conversation about their new book.

The Leveys were invited by Pentagon leaders to develop the once-secret “Jedi Warrior Program” for the Special Forces, where they led the advanced “biocybernautic training” (integrating neurofeedback, “mind-fitness training,” and guided a month-long, silentmindfulness-style Vipassana retreat for this once-secret, six-month, full-time program. Military leaders described Jedi Warrior as “The most exquisite orchestration of human technology we have ever seen.” Advisors Michael Murphy and George Leonard called Jedi, “the most advanced leadership development program to be offered in modern times.”

Jedi’s profound success opened the way for their work with leaders at NASA, Navy, NOAA, Surgeon General’s Office, NIH, NHS, West Point, Swedish military, and British Parliament’s Hearing on The Vital Role of Mindfulness in the Military and Blue Light Emergency Services.  

Dr. Joel and Michelle Levey are regarded as leaders and early pioneers in the global “mindfulness revolution”, the “contemplative science”,  “compassion science”, and the “collective wisdom” movements.  Their inspired wisdom at work demonstrates the profound sensibility of integrating contemplative science, interpersonal neurobiology, and contemporary mind-fitness training to develop the extra-ordinary capacities of leaders, teams, and organizations in these complex modern times.

The Leveys were among the very first people to develop and introduce Mindful Leadership, Advanced Mind Fitness, and Contemplative Science-based programs for realizing extraordinary levels of human potential in mainstream medical, higher educational, organizational, sports, government, and military arenas beginning in the mid-1970s.  

The Levey‘s extensive experience, expertise, and enduring success in making mindfulness practices and teachings relevant and accessible to corporate and organizational audiences distinguishes them from many others working in this field who have far less personal and professional experience.  Their unique approach to introducing mindfulness into workplace as a “vital organizational operating system” has far wider and deeper impact than merely teaching mindfulness as an app that is used by some but not widely understood or integrated into enhancing the quality of every aspect and encounter of life-work within an organization.

Over the past 40+ years, Joel and Michelle have worked with thousands of leaders in hundreds of organizations around the globe, including: NASA; Google; World Bank; NHS; NIH; M.D. Anderson Cancer Center; Clinton Global Initiative; Stanford Research Institute International; Intel; M.I.T., Prime Ministers Office of the U.A.E; U.S. Army Special Forces; Surgeon General’s Office; U.S, Federal Court System; the World Government Summit; and World Business Academy.  They were honored to be advisors for the Mindfulness All-Parliamentary Group (MAPPG) at British Parliament in their development of the historic Mindful Nation UK Report and recently offered a workshop on The Future of Leadership at the World Government Summit hosted by the Prime Minister’s Office of the United Arab Emirates.

The Leveys have served as Chairpeople for the Center for Corporate Culture and Organizational Health Taskforce for the Institute for Health and Productivity Management, and as core faculty for the International Institute for Organization Design. They currently serve as clinical faculty at University of Minnesota Medical School and Bastyr University. They helped design the Contemplative Education and Transformational Learning Graduate program for Mahidol University in Thailand, and taught a post-graduate MBA course on Mindful Leadership and Resilience at IIM (Indian Institute of Management) in Ahmedabad, India. The Leveys are advisors for Mindfulness programs at Universities in Madrid and Barcelona, Spain.  They stewarded the development of some of the first “mindful organizations” in the Western world – at Hewlett Packard, Intuit, Weyerhaeuser, Intel, etc.

Nobel Laureate, the Dalai Lama, an advisor on a number of the Leveys’ projects once wrote in a letter to the Leveys: “You are presently engaged in work that has great prospects for bringing the Dharma (the inner sciences of human transformation) to a very wide section of people who may not under ordinary circumstances come into contact with these teachings. I am very pleased about the work that you are doing and send you blessings and prayers for your success.”

The event is free on Wednesday, July 22, at 6:30 pm at Darvill’s Bookstore.