Course Overview

Integrating Polarities will teach you more integral ways of thinking, and help accelerate your development toward more integral ways of being.

Just as we teach ‘critical thinking’ to help people enter the rational stage of development, and we teach ‘creative thinking’ to help people grow into the pluralistic stage, this training represents the next step in this unfolding, designed to help people grow into integral stages of maturity.

This isn’t just another way to use and apply the integral map. It’s a way to learn the type of thinking that produces things like ‘integral maps’ in the first place.

What is Polarity Thinking?

Polarities describe the tensions and competing forces inside any occasion — inside vs. outside, interior vs. exterior, individual vs. collective, transcendence vs. inclusion, and on into every realm of the universe (conservative vs. progressive, masculine vs. feminine, individual freedoms vs. collective responsibilities, globalization vs. nationalism, etc.)

Notice that in the middle of each of these poles is the word “versus”. Because that is exactly what they feel like when these polarities remain unintegrated — they are in opposition, they contradict each other, they create friction with each other. And we can feel the burning heat of that friction in our own lives, in our communities, and in the world around us.

When we have a process to identify and integrate these polarities within our own hearts and minds, and in relationship with others, the tensions and conflicts begin to feel more manageable. We can harmonize these tensions and step into more adequate ways of seeing and being, individually and collectively. We begin to understand that neither pole is inherently “positive” or “negative”, but rather that they can both produce positive or negative qualities depending on whether they are in a healthy relationship with each other, or dissociated from each other.

In other words, Integrating Polarities is designed to help you supplement this “either/or” mentality with a flexible “both/and” mentality that is capable of bringing vastly different and divergent views together into a more complete vision of health and wholeness. And perhaps more importantly, it helps you to take the next step — to focus upon skillful and strategic actions that can help alleviate suffering and produce a more beneficial outcome.

The Only Way Out Of Polarization

Whether we are talking about politics, culture, or economics, it’s no secret that our world is more polarized today than any other time in recent history. We can see it in the world, we can feel it in our relationships and communities, and we often struggle with it in our own hearts and minds. This increasing polarization is beginning to overwhelm and paralyze our governing institutions, and tearing at the very fabric of civilization itself.

There is only one solution to polarization. And that is to learn how to skillfully manage and integrate the fundamental polarities that are driving so many of these deeply entrenched conflicts, both within ourselves and in the world around us. As integral philosopher Ken Wilber puts it, it’s either that… or it’s war. There just aren’t a whole lot of other options.

Which is precisely why we are so excited for Beena’s new Integrating Polarities training — a program that is designed to help us meet the most significant challenges of our time, and to help free our minds and hearts from the violence of limited and partial thinking.

What You'll Learn

• Recognize the fundamental polarities at play beneath the surface of any given conflict,
• Uncover your own hidden biases, shadows, and assumptions that have prevented you from integrating both sides of a given polarity,
• Trace the dynamic patterns and relationships that exist between poles that appear to be in opposition,
• Transform the conflicts and tensions inherent to unintegrated polarities into an ongoing source of harmony, inclusion, and deeper understanding,
• Expand your consciousness to embrace more complexity, more curiosity, and more humility, and becoming more empathetic to others’ perspectives,
• Help liberate others from the pains and conflicts of polarized thinking, and become a genuine conduit for greater love, insight, and appreciation.

About Beena Sharma

Beena Sharma is Founder and President of Vertical Development Academy. Beena is an International Consultant committed to embedding developmental theory and Integral approaches in human and system development. Beena brings with her significant experience in applying vertical development theory, and facilitating leadership and organizational learning and development, including designing and anchoring complex large scale change efforts. Partnering with Susanne since 2004, Beena is a certified MAP scorer, having completed a rigorous certification training. Beena actively employs the LMF and MAP in Leadership coaching and systemic organizational development.

Beena Sharma also is deeply versed with Polarity Thinking and its applications. Beena has been working with Dr. Barry Johnson over the past thirteen years in learning, teaching, applying and embodying Polarity Wisdom™, which integrates Polarity Thinking and Vertical Development. The Polarity lens is a high-leverage tool that Beena integrates with ego development theory particularly in service of catalysing the move from conventional to post-conventional levels of development. Beena is trained in using Real Time Strategic Change (RTSC) methodologies, is a certified Action Learning Team Coach and has led several projects in Leadership Development using Action Reflection Learning (ARL) as an associate consultant with LIM LLC, and faculty at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL). Beena works with Voice Dialogue (Hal and Sidra Stone) and Clean Language (James Lawley and Penny Hopkins) in intimate ways in her coaching clients through developmental stages.

Course Curriculum

Frequently Asked Questions