The New Dimensions Café

Jane Hirshfield is the author of nine books of poetry and two collections of essays, and has edited and co-translated four books presenting the work of world poets from the past. Her books have received the Poetry Center Book Award, the California Book Award, and the Donald Hal-Jane Kenyon Prize in American Poetry. Her poems appear in a wide range of prestigious outlets. A resident of Northern Cal...

Judith Prager, Ph. D., CHT, is a clinical hypnotherapist with a Ph. D. in psychology and a practice in the Los Angeles area. As a consultant to Cedars-Sinai Medical center, she developed a “Guided Imagery for Surgery” series of pre-, intra- and post-operative and ICU creative imagery CDs that has been used with significant results in a pilot program in the Cardio-thoracic Surgery Unit. She’s train...

Mark Nepo is a poet and philosopher and a most eloquent spiritual teacher. In 2015, he was given a Life-Achievement Award by AgeNation and in 2016 was named by Watkins: Mind Body Spirit as one of the Most Spiritually Influential Living People. He was part of Oprah Winfrey’s The Life You Want Tour in 2014 and has appeared several times with Oprah on her Super Soul Sunday program on OWN TV. As a can...

BJ Miller is a hospice and palliative medicine physician who has worked in many settings, inpatient, outpatient, hospice facility and home and now sees patients and families at U.C.S.F. Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. Miller speaks all over the country and beyond on the theme of living well in the face of death. He’s also the founder of the Center for Dying and Living. He is co-au...

Regina Leffers, Ph. D. is the retired Director of the Center of Excellence for the Built Environment, and Professor of Sustainable Construction for the College of Engineering at Purdue University in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Her undergraduate degrees are in Psychology and Philosophy, and her doctoral degree is in Philosophy from Purdue University. She teaches classes on consciousness and meditation and...

The RAIN Process (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture) reminds us to pause and reconnect with a wise and compassionate presence allowing us to align our lives with our hearts. It can assist us when we get lost in unconscious, mental, emotional reactivity, fear, and are living on “autopilot.” RAIN is a healing process available to us that opens us to our inner radiance. Tara Brach, PhD, is...

Mary Mackey, Ph. D. is a novelist, screenwriter, and poet. She is Professor Emeritus of English and former Writer-in-Residence at California State University, Sacramento. During her twenties she lived in the rain forests of Costa Rica. Recently she’s been traveling to Brazil incorporating her experiences in the tropical rainforests into her fiction and poetry. Her historical novels include Earthso...

SPECIAL ONE-HOUR NEW DIMENSIONS CAFÉ: SCIENCE SET FREE with DR. RUPERT SHELDRAKE British biologist Rupert Sheldrake asks questions that most scientists haven't thought of or have been discouraged from asking. He is best known for his morphic-field theory, which explores aspects of reality that are unexplained in terms of current physics and biology. In this talk, he proposes setting science free f...

Alan Briskin, Ph. D. earned his doctorate in organizational psychology and is a pioneer in the field of organizational learning. He is co-founder of the Collective Wisdom Initiative and has been consultant to many large corporations including Lucasfilm, Sutter Health, Kaiser Permanente, and the Goi Peace Foundation. His books include The Stirring of Soul in the Workplace (Berrett-Koehler 1998), Th...

Glenn Aparicio Parry, Ph. D. is an educator, an ecopsychologist, and an author known for integrating indigenous wisdom and holistic thinking into contemporary society. He's the founder and past president of Seed Institute, where he facilitated landmark dialogues between Native American elders and Western scientists. He currently serves as president of The Circle For Original Thinking and host of i...

Glenn Aparicio Parry, Ph. D. is an educator, international speaker, entrepreneur, and visionary whose life-long passion is to re-form thinking and education into a coherent, cohesive whole. He’s the founder and past president of the SEED Institute , and is currently the president of the think tank: The Circle for Original Thinking. Parry organized and participated in the groundbreaking Language of...

Cynthia Spring is a media producer and for 20 years was deeply involved in local ecology in the San Francisco Bay area. Her most recent book, is a collaboration beyond the veil of death between herself and the late Dr. Francis Vaughan who passed from this life in 2017. Cynthia's books include The Wave and The Drop: Wisdom Stories About Death and Afterlife (Wisdom Circles Publishing 2018) and Seven...

Terry Tempest Williams is a naturalist, environmentalist, and award-winning author. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and her work is widely taught and anthologized around the world. On the 50th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act, Ms. Williams received the Sierra Club’s John Muir Award honoring a distinguished record of leadership in American conservation. She currently i...

Jenny Odell is a multi-disciplinary artist and writer based in Oakland, California who teaches at Stanford University. She has been an artist-in-residence at such places as the San Francisco dump, Facebook, the Internet Archive, and the San Francisco Planning Department, and has exhibited her art all over the world. She is the author of: How To Do Nothing: Resisting The Attention Economy (Melville...

John Fullerton is the founder and president of Capital Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to transforming finance and economics to serve life and the planet through “Regenerative Economics”. In 2001, he walked away from a two-decade career at JPMorgan, where he served as Managing Director and oversaw capital markets, derivatives, and investment businesses globally, including acting as C...

Michael Cepress is a multidisciplinary artist celebrated for his dynamic creativity—he is a musician, a storyteller and poet, a craftsman, a designer, and a cultural curator. In addition to his musical talents he has excelled in textile arts and fashion design, with exhibitions of his work showcased internationally. Michael recognizes the boundless potential for good that arises when artistic expr...

Françoise Bourzat is a consciousness guide and counselor. She has a master’s degree in Somatic Psychology and is a Certified Hakomi Practitioner. After traveling the world, she became an apprentice to an indigenous Mazatec woman leading healing ceremonies with sacred mushrooms in the high mountains of Southern Mexico. Drawing from years of her close apprenticeship with this Mazatec curandera , as...

Diana "Di" Percy is the founder of the internationally acclaimed Organisation Development Australia, a director of Vogel Percy and past chair of the Dharma School, with experience in psychology, Gestalt Therapy, business, leadership education and governance. She has served as a corporate advisor working with Boards of Directors and CEOs. She is also a poet, leads pilgrimages to oceans and forests...

Mark Nepo is a poet and philosopher and a most eloquent spiritual teacher. In 2015, he was given a Life-Achievement Award by AgeNation and in 2016 was named by Watkins: Mind Body Spirit as one of the Most Spiritually Influential Living People. He was part of Oprah Winfrey’s The Life You Want Tour in 2014 and has appeared several times with Oprah on her Super Soul Sunday program on OWN TV. As a can...

Lama Palden Drolma is a licensed psychotherapist, spiritual teacher, and coach. She has studied Buddhism in the Himalayas with some of the preeminent Tibetan masters of the twentieth century, including Kalu Rinpoche, who authorized her to become one of the first Western lamas. She is the founder of thae Sukhasiddhi Foundation, a Tibetan Buddhist center in Fairfax. California. She is the author of...

Martin Shaw, Ph. D. is a storyteller and mythologist. He’s a wilderness rites-of-passage guide and is internationally regarded as one of the most exciting proponents of the mythic imagination. He tells “prophetic stories” that speak deeply to the challenges we face today, in the world and in our personal lives. He has devised and led the Oral Tradition course at Stanford University, is a visiting...

Stephen G. Post, Ph. D. is among a handful of individuals awarded the distinguished service award by the National Alzheimer's Association. In 2001 he founded The Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, which researches and distributes knowledge on kindness, giving and spirituality. Post served as a co-chair of the United Nations Population Fund Conference on Spirituality and Global Transformatio...

William Arntz is a physicist and filmmaker and creator of the film, “What the BLEEP Do We Know!?” Deirdre Hade is a modern-day mystic, poet and leading visionary in the ancient arts of the wisdom traditions, and creator of “The Radiance Journey” a path to mystical knowledge that unites the magical with the material. Together, husband and wife team William Arntz and Deirdre Hade explore how science...