New Culture Oasis Presenters
Irina Feygina is a process-oriented facilitator and psychologist who supports individuals and groups to deepen self-awareness, strengthen relationships and communication, and embrace conflict as a doorway into discovery and transformation. She is excited to be sharing Processwork and its call to authenticity, presence, and inclusion of all parts, and its welcoming of the unknown.
Her passion is working on the human dimensions of climate change – conflict and cooperation, skepticism and engagement, and holding space for complex personal and community processes around this vast challenge.
She has worked in government, non-profit orgs, and academia, and currently facilitates conflict and growth using a combination of insights from Processwork and the behavioral sciences. Irina holds a PhD in social psychology and a Diploma in Process-oriented facilitation.
Sarah Taub, Ph.D., (www.sarahtaub.com) teaches relationship and community skills and helps groups deepen their intimacy. She facilitates group processes including consensus decision-making, business meetings and retreats, conflict resolution sessions, and ZEGG Forum (www.zegg-forum.org/en), and has co-created consent policies and led consent support teams for retreats and festivals of 50 to 1500 people.
Sarah has been organizing with Center for a New Culture (www.cfnc.us) since 2004, putting on multi-day camps and other events that create a culture based on awareness, compassion, and freedom rather than on fear and judgment. Since 2011, she has co-managed Abrams Creek Center (www.abramscreekcenter.com), a retreat center and community in the mountains of West Virginia, where she now lives with her intimate network of lovers and co-creators.
What excites Sarah most is holding space for the deepest group conflicts so that an even deeper level of connection, understanding, and creativity can emerge.
Dawson Robert (They/Them) is an activist for love and light in the world. Their passion is to create spaces for anyone and everyone to feel seen, heard, and loved. Their dream is to help create a widespread culture that works for all humans; based in authenticity, personal empowerment, radical acceptance and compassion, informed consent, and touch positivity. And they strive for these goals as facilities manager and presenter for Center for New Culture (cfnc.us) while living and spreading those values wherever they go. Their current, largest project is building intentional community in the DC area and Mt. Storm, WV (Allegheny Crest Intentional Village).
Michael Rios is an entrepreneur and practical visionary with a creative genius for freedom and empowerment; as some have said, “Michael doesn’t have a box to think outside of.” In 1964, he founded a commune based on service, spirituality, and sensuality that lasted 30 years and (among other projects) provided emergency shelter and support services for homeless people and troubled young adults. In addition, he started one of the first domestic violence hotlines in the US in 1971, and one of the first computer business in the US in 1976.
Michael co-founded and lives at Chrysalis, a small urban intentional community in Arlington, VA, whose mission is to support activists and healers (https://chrysalis-va.org). Since 2004, he has been a major organizer of Center for a New Culture’s East Coast Summer Camp and other events aimed at creating a culture based on awareness, compassion, and freedom rather than on fear and judgment.
In 2011, Michael became the director of Abrams Creek Center (www.abramscreekcenter.com), a retreat center in the mountains of West Virginia. His current passion is creating an “intentional village” there and in the nearby town – a place where people live consciously with and near one another, building a life based on personal enterprise and freedom, economic independence, and a web of social interconnectedness (https://aciv.cfnc.us).
Indigo Dawn (they/them) is an impact-oriented love activist who lives and works to create a more humane, sustainable, abundant world. As program director for Center for New Culture, Indigo teaches skills and mind-sets for sustainable relationships and communities– including self-awareness, open communication, authentic connection, and healthy boundaries. They also coach clients towards personal empowerment and share therapeutic touch as a Certified Cuddlist. Their most recent project is building intentional community in the DC area (New Culture DC) and Mt. Storm, WV (Allegheny Crest Intentional Village).