Rewilding the Mind: Technology for Beloved Community

Our ever-increasing intimacy with technology means we live more of our lives with, through, and mediated by digital technology. This carries both opportunities and risks to our social, emotional, cognitive, and spiritual dimensions. Many are experiencing a sense of soul loss — a contracted disconnection caused by distraction, social comparison, loneliness, and lack of true connection, both inner and outer.

The conscious cultivation of awareness through practices that teach us how to pay attention to our own experience as a witness — to see ourselves as a subject of life rather than an object life is happening to — can be incredibly empowering. Dr (s). Sará King and Eve Ekman, are contemplative scientists collaborating on mapping the intricacies of human emotion and awareness using research, embodied practice and artificial intelligence. Together, they will offer a space of transformation which combines the powerful art of story-telling with relational exercises they have designed for the cultivation of beloved community - an alchemical opportunity to meet, map, and transform how we relate to technology and reveal its liberatory potential for enhancing embodied awareness and social justice.

Eve Ekman, PhD, MSW, is a contemplative social scientist, teacher, and scholar focusing on emotional awareness, empathy, meditation, and interventions to alleviate burnout and promote well-being. Eve draws from interdisciplinary skills and first-person experiential knowledge from clinical social work, integrative medicine, contemplative science, and meditation. She did her MSW and PhD at UC Berkeley and post doctoral training at UCSF Osher Center for Integrative medicine. Eve was recently the well-being Lead at Apple, a senior fellow at UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center. You can learn more about Eve here: https://cultivating-emotional-balance.org

Sará King MA, PhD, is a neuroscientist, artist, political and learning scientist, education philosopher, social impact entrepreneur, public speaker, and meditation teacher. She is passionate about catalyzing humanity’s capacity to heal from intergenerational trauma and is dedicated to creating accessible contemplative practices at the nexus of art, music, and meditation. She is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Public Health at the T. Denny Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion in Human Health and Social Justice at UCSD. She is also the CEO and Founder of MindHeart AI, an AI start-up specializing in building an interactive map of human awareness grounded in neuroscience to support collective well-being and healing. You can learn more about Sará's work here: https://www.mindheart.ai

Host or Publisher The Berkeley Alembic Foundation