Dr. Rodney E. Donaldson
President of Crazy Tiger Institute for the Cultivation of Living Systemic Understanding & Design

The course will offer:

Dr. Rodney E. Donaldson, President of CRAZY TIGER INSTITUTE for the Cultivation of Living Systemic Understanding & Design, is a past president of the American Society for Cybernetics and was a professor of Whole Systems Design for ten years. Creator of the official Gregory Bateson Archive at The University of California, Santa Cruz, including its 6-volume Guide/Catalog (1987), his other books include a volume of essays by Gregory Bateson entitled A Sacred Unity: Further Steps to an Ecology of Mind (HarperCollins, 1991) and a volume of essays by Humberto Maturana entitled The Biological Roots of Reality and Humanness: An Invitation to Freedom (forthcoming from Hampton Press). A dynamic and stimulating mentor whose profound humanness enables him to deepen the lives of a wide diversity of human beings, Dr. Donaldson has pioneered new modes of teaching and designing and is internationally known for his transformative conferences, workshops, and courses.

The class meets at Crazy Tiger Institute (2404 35th Avenue W. — just off McGraw Street in Magnolia) one evening a week. Participants may select either Sundays, 4-6:30 p.m., beginning April 6, or Tuesdays, 6-8:30 p.m., beginning April 8. The cost for this ten-week course is $1450 (+ reading materials). Reading, to be done outside of class, will include portions of three books by Bateson, and four articles by Maturana.

This course is a prerequisite for all other Crazy Tiger Institute courses.

COMMENTS FROM PARTICIPANTS
IN PREVIOUS COURSES:

"Systemic Understanding"

     This course was the most incredible course I ever took—a genuinely transformational experience! Words escape me. The instructor’s attention to my learning experience was unprecedented.
     Rodney created a context for the richest and deepest learning of my life. Excellent class, outstanding teacher.
     This course has been the most important and relevant in my entire life. I found myself at places of learning which I’ve never experienced. The depth of Rodney’s knowledge and his love for his learners and their learning is truly awe inspiring. I’m looking forward to more!
     This opened a whole new way of observing to me—a whole new way of thinking and a whole new way of being.
     This course has had a profound effect on how I perceive and experience the world.
     Rodney has a really uncanny ability to create a comfortable supportive atmosphere to delve into challenging stuff. I really appreciated his thoroughness and specificity--done in a supportive way with humor.
     This course has improved my life! I now have a totally different perspective on what my relationship with others is. What I learned here perhaps saved my relationship with my partner.
     In this class I’ve developed an awareness of myself that I’ve never experienced.
     This has been the most outstanding class I have ever had. I was challenged at every level.
     I feel honored to be in the presence of such a wise & loving human being as a mentor & teacher.
     This was a chance to examine questions that I have had all my life but never found a source that addressed them like this course. Excellent experience!

"Explorations in Systemic Understanding"
(Prerequisite: "Systemic Understanding")

     I took this class because I heard it was excellent, AND it was. The most important and stimulating class I’ve ever taken. Very valuable subject material and wonderful instructor.
     The experiential exercises were some of the best learning experiences I’ve had in my life.
     Beautifully designed homework & applications that break old patterns & open new ways of seeing, experiencing, & living.
      The course raised my level of personal awareness about nearly every aspect of my life.
     Coupled with the first course, a simply wonderful, beautiful experience.
     Class projects were excellent. Rodney is very present. He loves and lives what he teaches.
     The most amazing whole-person embodied learning experience I have ever had— phenomenal.
     The care that Rodney shares with his class is incredibly encouraging and inspiring.
     Rodney is incredibly knowledgeable, but what makes him remarkable as a teacher is how he himself embodies what he teaches, constantly inviting us to empathy, love, and self respect.
     I was challenged and supported to do my best, to challenge my limits, to explore.
     I loved the high degree to which theory and discussions of ideas were translated into actual experience and then discussed in depth at the next class. I’m seeing connections for applying the learning in my workplace, especially in the area of communication.
     Rodney asks very insightful probing questions that make you think.
     Dr. Donaldson shares a great deal of wisdom and finds a way to get the students to teach each other in a very meaningful way. We formed an intimate learning community.
     The assignments built on each other, providing a journey. Subtly, carefully, brilliantly designed— the learning just sneaks up on you and pow! there you are with a new perspective.

A course taught by Dr. Rodney E. Donaldson
President of Crazy Tiger Institute for the Cultivation of
Living Systemic Understanding & Design

An experiential laboratory for deepening the understandings gained in "Systemic Understanding," this course focuses on daily-life experience, enriched by a small amount of reading. Topics include ethics, aesthetics, the sacred, implicit contexts, emotion, language, ecological determinism, the epistemology immanent in descriptions of assorted animals and plants, Responsibility and Freedom, constitutive and transcendental ontologies and their roles in human interaction, and other topics that emerge in discussion--all with a view to strengthening holistic systemic epistemological habits and deepening systemic understanding. The course also enlivens participants’ experience and understanding of what it means to explore.

Reading includes works by Joanne Greenberg, Konrad Lorenz, Herbert Brun, Gregory Bateson, and Humberto R. Maturana.

The class meets at Crazy Tiger Institute (2404 35th Ave. W.--just off McGraw St. in Magnolia) one evening a week, usually from 4-8 p.m. over a period of six weeks (exact time, day, and dates to be determined by the participants).

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