The Light of Spiritual Direction and Companionship
SDI 2026 Online Conference Workshops
Workshops
Below you will find descriptions for all of our workshops. Please note that all of our sessions will be recorded, so you will not miss anything if you cannot attend live. You may watch the recordings at your leisure either during the conference or the following 6 months. Proceed at your own pace, breathe deeply, and enjoy!
Praying with Fire: Rage, Prayer, and Presence
Brenda Bertrand
Anger belongs in sacred spaces. Jesus and Audre Lorde both knew this: Jesus overturning tables in the temple, Audre Lorde insisting she “suckled the wolf’s lip of anger” and used it for “illumination, protection, fire in places where there was no light.” Rage and holiness are inseparable.
Anger reveals what we love and refuse to accept. There are things to be angry about.
As spiritual companions, we know the questions: How do I stay present when rage enters the room I’m holding? What do I do with my own fire? How do I companion anger without managing it?
This session offers contemplative practice for these questions. Through stillness, sacred text, and witness, we explore what our anger knows—and what it asks when we companion others’. This is prayer that makes room for heat.
Please note: We ground this work in spiritual companionship and contemplative practice. It is not therapy, counseling, or clinical intervention.
Brenda Bertrand is a spiritual companion and former chaplain who has walked alongside BIPOC leaders and women for over twenty years. She creates sacred spaces where people bring their full selves – rage and radiant joy, grief and holy longing. All of it held. All of it sacred. Through contemplative practice as spiritual liberation, Brenda accompanies people home to their belovedness and enoughness. She believes the sacred space we hold must be large enough for our whole truth, with all its complexity, tenderness, and hope.
How Does Collective Trauma Affect Us and Directees?
Igal Harmelin
Igal Harmelin is an ordained rabbi, a certified spiritual director, a certified master-practitioner of NARM (an advanced modality for addressing complex trauma), a coach and a meditation teacher.
For decades, Igal has been an avid student of the mystical teachings of the world’s major religions, and he offers courses in applied mysticism to followers of all faiths, as well as with those who profess to follow none.
He has taught meditation to thousands of people on four continents and has spent years in extended meditation retreats under a number of spiritual teachers.
He lives in New York City with his wife, Rabbi Lisa Goldstein.
Spiritual Journaling for Discernment and Deep Listening
Dianne Daniels
Journaling is a sacred act of listening on paper—a contemplative space where self, Spirit, and the written word meet.
Rev. Dianne M. Daniels is an ordained Unitarian Universalist Minister, Spiritual Director, and Course Creator whose ministry bridges spirituality, creativity, and personal transformation. A 2022 graduate ofStarr King School for the Ministry, she brings over 40 years of personal journaling practice and extensive experience in adult formation, pastoral presence, and contemplative teaching.
Dianne empowers individuals—especially women 50 and wiser—to live Dynamic, Intriguing, Vivacious, and Authentic lives grounded in spiritual depth and self-understanding. Through her workshops and SoulScript Journaling programs, she demonstrates how writing can become a sacred dialogue that reveals divine wisdom, fosters inner peace, and strengthens compassionate presence.
Aging as Spiritual Practice
Jane Vennard
We are all aging, however there comes a time in our lives when we are old. What will our spiritual lives look like in these elder years?
Aging itself can become a spiritual practice as we face the realities of accepting our age. Of necessity we must learn to let go, to slow down, to discern the best use of our limited energy.
In western culture agism is sometimes called “the last socially acceptable prejudice.” This workshop will help us explore our own biases regarding aging and examine the many spiritual practices that can contribute to healing.
Most spiritual directors companion have at least a few clients who are approaching or living in old age. No matter your age, you can walk faithfully with us as we face loss inherent in our aging and support and encourage the discovery of new possibilities hidden in this last chapter of our lives.
Reverend Jane Vennard has led peer supervision groups for over 20 years, and has facilitated several SDI webinars. She was called to the ministry of teaching and spiritual direction and ordained in 1987 by the United Church of Christ. She is retired senior adjunct faculty at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, USA. Jane has presented workshops at SDI conferences and offered a Plenary Address at the 20th anniversary celebration in 2010. She has led programs for Spiritual Direction Colorado’s continuing education events including an afternoon on the topic of racism. A number of church groups have also sponsored programs on white privilege including UU, Catholic, Episcopal, and UCC. Jane has taught in spiritual direction formation programs at Garrett Theological Seminary, Columbia Theological Seminary and The Community of Christ spiritual formation program. She is a spiritual director in private practice and the author of eight books. Her most recent is “Fully Awake and Truly Alive: Spiritual Practices to Nurture Your Soul”. Jane lives with her husband Jim Laurie in a retirement center in Denver, Colorado.
From Surviving to Thriving: The Ground of Conscious Awakening
Doug Moore
Our instinctive survival system once kept our ancestors safe, yet in daily life it often creates stress, reactivity, and disconnection. This workshop explores how to calm these automatic reactions and cultivate a sustained way of thriving.
Thriving means choosing how to think, feel, and behave. The capacity to choose supports the transformation of the ego from identification with reactive stories to awakening to our deepest nature.
Participants will engage familiar contemplative practices through a new lens, integrating compassionate curiosity, complete acceptance, and self-inquiry with energy-based clearing methods such as Tapping for Thriving™. These approaches invite a direct experience of presence beyond reactivity.
Awakening is not a state to reach but a natural unfolding of presence, a way of being that moves through life with flow that is embodied, loving, and centered in awareness.
Doug J. Moore, Ph.D. is a psychologist, life coach, and spiritual director devoted to helping others thrive and awaken to a greater consciousness. Through his sessions, teachings, and online learning center, he helps others learn how to move out of Survival Mode and choose to Thrive. This transformative process is grounding and essential for a sustained awakening.
For more than four decades, Doug has explored the integration of psychology and spirituality. He draws upon mindfulness, meditation, energy work, the Enneagram, and the wisdom of lived experience. His teaching and guidance help others develop tools for self-discovery such as complete acceptance, self-compassion, clearing reactivity, and conscious awareness.
Doug facilitates a long-standing Deepening Presence® study group and offers online programs for self-discovery and conscious awakening, including The Essence of Thriving and Thriving with Self-Compassion. Learn more at dougjmoore.com and thriveandawaken.com.
The Power of Love: A Transformed Heart Changes the World
Fran Grace
Where is love present, and where is love needed — in yourself, your life, and the world?
The session will include a mini-lecture from the author of the book, THE POWER OF LOVE, in which she shares her own journey of the “Light” and its impact on her life. The experience occurred at age 15, and it is the opening of the book.
She will then guide participants through contemplative exercises and self-reflection, interwoven with group discussion.
Through the use of archetypal story, we will bring lost parts into the Light of consciousness and we will uncover the power of love to heal.
This session is an experience of love more than a study of it!
Fran Grace was certified as a spiritual director in 2001 and received her Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. In 2008, she founded The Institute for Contemplative Life, a 501c3 interfaith nonprofit dedicated to the “inner pathway.” She was Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Redlands for 25 years, where she established a pioneering contemplative education program and was invited to share her spiritual research on CSPAN, NPR, History Channel, etc. Academic life, however, did not fulfill her deep inner quest. In 2003, a life crisis broke open her inner world and she met a spiritual teacher who revealed the “inner pathway” that respects the essence of all spiritual traditions. Her book, The Power of Love (2019) is a Silver Award winner in the Benjamin Franklin Book Awards for “Best Inspirational Books in 2019.” After her son died of Covid, she was certified as a death doula in 2021.
Perspectives on AI
Nicholas Collura
The spiritual direction community is no doubt home to many perspectives on AI: we may be intrigued by its potential to expand our conception of consciousness, critical of its relationship to capitalism and neocolonial empire, and/or fearful of its threat to people’s jobs — including our own. This workshop, illustrated with vignettes from the presenter’s experience as a chaplain and ethicist at MIT, will first present an overview of contemporary ethical critiques of Big Tech, inviting participants to consider their own spiritual relationship to AI. It will then explore some of the spiritual and religious experiences people have with AI — from AI seances performed in Cambridge, MA, to the worship of deities created by ChatGPT, to relationships with chatbots that challenge our models of pastoral care, to the messianic claims of tech entrepreneurs themselves — any of which we might someday encounter as spiritual companions in the twenty-first century.
Nicholas Collura directs the Radius program at MIT, which promotes communities of ethical reflection on technology and culture, and he serves as an adjunct professor of pastoral ministry at Villanova University. A former Jesuit, Nicholas earned an MDiv from the Boston College Clough School of Theology and Ministry, trained as a spiritual director at the Jesuit Collaborative in Watertown, MA, and completed his Clinical Pastoral Education as a board-certified interfaith chaplain at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and at Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia. Nicholas holds a DMin in Spiritual Care and Counseling from Fordham University. He is also a teacher in the Narrative Enneagram tradition.
Sowing the Seeds of Shalom: Spiritual Direction as a Pathway to Racial Healing
Afrika Afeni Mills
What if spiritual direction could help heal not only individual hearts but also the wounds that divide our communities? This workshop invites participants to explore how the contemplative posture of spiritual direction can nurture shalom, the holistic peace of God that restores right relationship with self, others, creation, and God. Drawing from Sowing the Seeds of Shalom: Racial Healing as Spiritual Formation, participants will consider how sacred listening, storytelling, and discernment can open pathways toward racial awareness, repentance, and repair. Through guided reflection and embodied practice, we will plant seeds of hope and courage for accompanying others through the inner and communal work of healing. Participants will leave with a framework for integrating racial healing and spiritual formation within their spiritual direction ministry.
Afrika Afeni Mills is a spiritual director, assistant pastor, and writer who helps individuals and communities discern God’s presence in the ordinary rhythms of life. Through her ministry, Soul Compass Spiritual Direction, Afrika offers sacred listening and discernment companionship that nurture peace, wholeness, and belonging. She also serves as Assistant Pastor with Grace Communion Steele Creek in Charlotte, North Carolina, guiding the community’s discipleship ministry. Drawing from her experiences in education, racial healing, and contemplative practice, Afrika invites others to live into shalom — the holistic peace that restores us to God, ourselves, and one another. A member of the Transforming Center’s Transforming Community 20, she is completing her forthcoming book, Sowing the Seeds of Shalom: Racial Healing as Spiritual Formation (InterVarsity Press), which weaves together theology, story, and practice for those seeking a more just and compassionate spiritual life.
Wisdom's Light in Times of Disorientation
Cathy AJ Hardy
You are welcome to join a gently guided, contemplative experience of opening to Wisdom’s light in times of disorientation. Our world is changing and we are invited to be spiritual practitioners who can open to Wisdom’s light in the midst of profound distress and unknowns. This session invites spiritual directors and companions to deepen their capacity to hold disorientation—not as something to fix, but as a holy threshold into wisdom and transformation.
Cathy AJ Hardy is a spiritual director, retreat facilitator, and founder of Soul Care®, Canada, offering courses in spiritual formation, spiritual direction, and leadership. A facilitator of soul work for the past two decades, Cathy is also the author of four books: Love Breathes with Me (2018), Walk With Me (2020), and Love Breathes With Me II (2022), and Pause; A Year of Soulful Meditation (2023). In addition to her passion for guiding others in their spiritual growth, Cathy is also a poet and award-winning singer-songwriter, her most recent album is called Here I Am. Cathy lives in Mission, B.C. among the mountains, rivers, and forests.
Leading from Within - Spiritual Direction, Self-Care and Cultural Inhibitions
Kevin Oodo & Althea Banda-Hansmann
Spiritual directors and companions across diverse African contexts play critical roles in guiding individuals and communities through processes of discernment, deep listening, healing and meaning-making. Their work entails emotional labour and can be demanding, resulting in huge physical, mental, and spiritual strains which often diminish their capacity to serve effectively. While existing literature often focus on the importance of self-care within helping professions (healthcare, education, social work and counselling), far less attention is given to the unique pressures facing spiritual directors and companions. This workshop will explore a unique set of challenges rooted in cultural, social and economic contexts that often inhibit self-care for spiritual directors and companions. The workshop will address the following sociocultural and theological concerns: why many spiritual leaders in Africa do not consider themselves as “spiritual directors” nor desire formal training in spiritual companionship? Why spiritual directors frequently prioritize communal needs over personal renewal? Responses to these concerns will reveal why Spiritual Directors need to lead from within prioritizing intentional rest and holistic self-nourishment in order to sustain their ministry and personal well-being.
Fr. Kevin Oodo, SJ is a Catholic priest of the Jesuit Order (Society of Jesus), a spiritual director and school leader working in Monrovia, Liberia. Besides his current job as the President of Xavier Jesuit School, Liberia, Fr. Kevin facilitates and directs retreats for religious, lay faithful, young adults, and youths in and around Liberia. He has previously worked in Zimbabwe, Nigeria, USA and Quebec, Canada. Fr. Kevin has been part of the SDI since 2017 when he joined the New Contemplatives Cohorts in Toronto, Canada and since then, has been collaboratively working with others to set up SDI in Africa. He is the co-chair of SDI Africa and a current member of the SDI-DEIJ steering committee and spends most of his free time teaching and learning from the less advantaged children in his neighborhoods in Liberia.
Althea Anita Banda-Hansmann is the current Chair of SDI Africa. She is a spiritual director, leadership coach, facilitator, and DEI practitioner based in Cape Town, South Africa. Shaped by life under Apartheid and a Christian, interspiritual contemplative path, she companions people with an embodied, decolonial approach that tends inner freedom, supports relational repair, invites institutional change, and strengthens collective healing. She returns again and again to the Light within and among us, and to the wisdom of the body, especially when inherited patterns come into view. She serves people across faiths and none, working globally with a primary focus in Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. She leads Seasons of the Soul and Transforming Moments Consulting.