Engaged Nonduality: Awake Awareness, Wise Action ~ with Itzel Hayward, hosted by Lisa Ferguson
Sunday, February 1, 2026 @ 9:00am-11:00am (Pacific Time)
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Awake Awareness, Wise Action — A Nondual Approach to Anti-Racism
Part of the Engaged Nonduality Series
with Itzel Hayward, hosted by Lisa Ferguson
Recording will be emailed to participants within a week.
You’re welcome to join even if you can’t attend the live session.
Engaged Nonduality recognizes that awareness and response are not separate. The same ground of being that reveals our shared nature also moves as a compassionate, embodied response. In this view, the crises of our time—including racism and systemic injustice—are not distractions from awakening but invitations to live it.
Awakening unfolds as our meeting with reality in all its forms: personal and collective, beautiful and painful, life-giving and unjust. When we allow ourselves to face what is, with clarity, equanimity, and courage, we discover that awareness itself is not overwhelmed. From this ground, wise and compassionate action can arise naturally.
In this session, Itzel Hayward invites participants to explore how awake awareness can support a steady, honest engagement with racism and systemic harm. When we turn toward these realities with awareness, we begin to recognize our participation in them and our capacity to respond differently. This is the meeting point between contemplative practice and social change.
During our time together, we’ll practice in supportive community—turning toward discomfort, reflecting on our own participation in systems of harm, and exploring what non-cooperation can look like in real life. Through guided inquiry, dialogue, and contemplative practice, we’ll invite both clarity and compassionate action.
Recommended Reading/Viewing Before the Session from Itzel:
“This video is offered to support and deepen your experience of my upcoming event. If you have a chance, I invite you to watch it download and read the transcript linked here — before we meet.”
Itzel Hayward is a mindfulness and meditation teacher whose work bridges contemplative practice, equity, and collective healing. After nearly 15 years as an attorney and public-policy advocate serving marginalized communities, she left the law and entered the Integral Yoga ashram, where she lived for three years. Under the mentorship of Swami Ramananda and other senior teachers, she immersed herself in the study and practice of the nondual teachings of yoga in the lineage of Swami Sivananda and Sri Swami Satchidananda. There, she received the name Kamala, meaning lotus — the symbol of awakening, transformation, and compassion.
She creates spaces that support honest inquiry, embodied practice, and collective healing. In 2021, she founded California’s first scholarship-based 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training for BIPOC. She also serves as an Adjunct Professor at UC Law San Francisco, where she teaches Facilitation for Attorneys.
Itzel’s Website: https://www.attunedliving.com
Itzel’s Guided Meditations: https://www.insighttimer.com/attunedliving
Lisa Ferguson, Ph.D. is the founder of the Engaged Nonduality series and sangha, which connects the recognition of our non-separateness with our engaged response to suffering, injustice and separation. She also founded Climate Compassion, which supports the inner and outer work of attending to our world in crisis. Based on decades of practice, she weaves the threads of awakening, healing and service, offering meditative inquiry groups, 1:1 sessions, workshops and trainings that integrate spiritual inquiry, psychological healing, and leadership development as expression of our unique offering.
About The Engaged Nonduality series
This Engaged Nonduality series, hosted by Lisa Ferguson, explores how nondual wisdom may respond to our world in crisis. We live in a time of multiple intersecting crises that threaten the wellbeing of all life, including climate breakdown, unaligned tech and AI, injustice, war and authoritarianism. The recognition of nonduality has much to offer in these times, including a deep knowing of our wholeness and shared Being, as well as opening to the wellspring of our wise and creative response. This series invites guest presenters to explore how nondual teaching may respond to planetary crises through talks, practices and group participation.
Sliding Scale: $15 to $40
However, no one turned away for lack of funds.
If you can’t pay within the sliding scale, contact us to let us know what you can contribute.
Address inquiries to web@opencirclecenter.org
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