An opportunity for leaders, coaches, and seekers to listen more deeply to how life is calling you, to surrender that which no longer serves you, and to lead your life with more connection, presence, and capacity to contribute from what most matters in your heart.
Join your guides Cynthia Luna and Max Freund in a unique six-month developmental learning adventure centered around an in-person 10-day “walking retreat” on the ancient pilgrimage route of the Camino de Santiago in northwest Spain September 21-October 1, 2024. This comprehensive program includes a 6-month process of individual and group coaching for preparation before and integration after the trip, starting in August 2024 and running through February 2025.
A Special Invitation from Cynthia & Max
What is calling to you? Have you ever felt some truth in you whispering your name, calling you towards your true path — but you haven’t found the space, the time, or the courage to listen?
Or maybe you are on your path, but you feel a call to go deeper into it, to listen more intently, to more fully feel each step under your feet? Is that path calling you to a new, unfamiliar way of being?
The Camino — our own path — is always calling, no matter where we come from, where we are going, or even whether we heed its call.
That path challenges us to explore terrain that we often take for granted: What truly matters to me? What identities and commitments have I held that no longer serve me, those I love, or my sense of purpose? What can I release to free space and energy — and what do I want to hold onto? What new possibilities for being and action am I called to embrace?
We invite you to listen deeply and intently to the compass of your own life and let it surprise you.
We created Journey in Leadership as a life-changing experience for leaders, coaches, and seekers to ask these questions for themselves in community as they live into the answers. We only offer this program every two years, each time choosing a new theme that speaks to the collective experience we are observing in our clients and ourselves.
Our theme this year is “Walking with Emergence, Turning Toward our True Path.” It speaks to the recognition that as we navigate transitions both great and small, we are called upon to let go of old fixed ideas and habits, to accept truths that we have long tried to deny, and to step boldly into the unknown of our ever-unfolding life.
At the heart of the program is the time we will spend walking with life-giving questions as we travel the Camino de Santiago — the Way of St. James — an ancient pilgrimage route where for centuries people have sought to step away from their daily lives and undertake a journey of transformation.
Many people choose to walk the Camino on their own, and each person’s true path is unique. However, we have found that making the journey alongside a community of fellow travelers asking themselves these questions — with support from master coaches — immeasurably enriches and magnifies the depth of the transformation and helps it last. Our program includes individual and group coaching as part of the journey to support your own individual deepening and collective unfoldment, as well as continuing support for integration long after the physical return to familiar life.
We would love for you to join our community of like-minded reflective practitioners undertaking the challenge of this 100-kilometer journey on the Camino — and the larger exploration of their life’s unfolding.
“If you are interested in going through something deeply transformational and you are looking to find the depth of who you are, this is the thing for you.”
-Revital P, Journey In Leadership
“The process has been about letting go of a lot of things and creating space for myself, rather than trying to fit in more. It has been physically demanding but extremely supportive — comfortable, warm, and very nurturing.”
-Jeremy M, Journey In Leadership
What You Will Receive
When we build our capacity to hold the ambiguity and paradoxes of our ever-changing reality, we are able to dream anew, engage with more confidence — and embrace life in a way that is at once cleansing, liberating, powerful, and magical.
Journey in Leadership has been carefully crafted for you to:
- Increase your capacity to find quiet, listen within, and trust your inner wisdom.
- Clear space within yourself by releasing regrets, grief, self-expectations, past identities, or other burdens you may have been carrying.
- Become clearer on the direction of your personal calling in your work, your relationships, and across all aspects of your life.
- Discover the precious qualities and gifts that you bring to your life, and learn to embody them more wholeheartedly so that new dimensions of you can fully reveal themselves.
This program will include:
- A fully supported travel experience on the Camino de Santiago, allowing you to focus on your own reflection for renewal, purpose, and connection.
- Companionship with a group of like-minded reflective practitioners from diverse walks of life who come together on interwoven paths.
- Guided explorations, dialogue, and activities that will give help shape and meaning to your outer and inner journey.
- Individual coaching and facilitated group discussion with your guides Cynthia and Max, who are both insightful, compassionate, skilled Certified Integral Coaches.
- An intentional support structure, preparing you to get the most out of the journey and helping you to integrate the shifts you experience into your life back home.
By participating in the program, you will get:
- A total of four (4) live videoconference group sessions with your coaches and fellow travelers: one of initiation of the journey, and three additional integration calls after returning home.
- Session 1: Entering the path
- Session 2: Integrating the learning
- Session 3: Living into your path
- Session 4: Meeting the world anew
- A 10-day immersive program on the Camino de Santiago structured around:
- A full-day retreat upon arrival in Spain, before setting out on the Camino to preparing the inner landscape.
- Daily morning reflections and coaching guidance for each day’s walk, followed by nightly group reconnection and sharing each evening.
- A half-day retreat and celebratory banquet upon arrival in Santiago de Compostela for integration and completion.
- Two small-group coaching circles mid-journey to deepen and integrate your learnings along the way
- A private walking individual coaching session with one of your two guides while on the Camino
- An individual coaching session post-Camino to support the integration of the learnings into your day-to-day life.
After the program, you are welcome to join our JIL Community, offering opportunities to connect and share your continuing life journey in community. This will entitle you to attend semi-annual reconnection calls with people who have completed the program in previous years, featuring:
- Musical and poetic offerings
- Additional reflections and group coaching
- Featured guest speakers
In years when Journey in Leadership is not offered, we plan to hold in-person gatherings for the JIL Community including walks/hiking, shared meals, fireside conversations, rituals, and community.
If you are ready to join us, click here:
About the Camino
The Camino de Santiago, known in English as the Way of St James, is an ancient network of pilgrims’ ways or pilgrimages leading to the shrine of the apostle Saint James the Great in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain, where tradition holds that the remains of the apostle are buried. For more than 1,200 years people have been drawn to the Camino as a path of self-discovery, stepping away from their daily lives to undertake a rigorous journey of transformation.
We are particularly excited that this year we will be taking the Camino Portugués (the Portuguese Path). This lesser-known and less-traveled route of the Camino begins at the Spanish side of the border with Portugal and will take us up the coast through scenic seaside and inland terrain to the traditional pilgrimage destination of Santiago de Compostela.
Your Guides
You will be accompanied by two experienced integral coaches who will guide both your inner and outer journey:
Cynthia Luna
Cynthia Luna (cis/she/her) is an international entrepreneur who combines multicultural experience with an extensive knowledge of leadership development, executive coaching and group dynamics. In addition to leading Praxsys Leadership, she is a Certified Integral Coach and serves as lead faculty in the highly respected global coach-training program at New Ventures West, where she is also one of the Managing Partners. Her coaching focuses on working with executive teams to build their capacity to achieve organizational goals together. She has served diverse industries including construction, technology, manufacturing, consumer products, education, healthcare, and nonprofit, among others.
Cynthia’s clients describe her coaching style as an artful weaving together of in-depth methodology with direct yet compassionate feedback and a movement to action. For the past 12 years she has been a student in the Diamond Approach, a modern wisdom school dedicated to supporting psycho-spiritual unfoldment through mindfulness and self-inquiry. She loves engaging in the world through travel, art, movement and conversation.
Max Freund
Max Freund (cis/he/him) is co-founder of Praxsys Leadership, a coach and consultant specializing in building teams, organizations, and networks that enable transformational leadership. Max’s professional career has spanned youth development in South Africa to his current work coaching leadership teams and facilitating philanthropic collaborations. Throughout, he has given expression to his passion for collaborative action as a means for people to discover their own authentic leadership while making a positive systemic impact greater than they ever could have imagined on their own.
For his entire life Max has been “running in the dark” — embracing emergence on a journey of self-development and socially engaged spirituality. In his youth, his path took him from exploring Liberation Theology and alternative masculinities in Central America to studying Buddhism among Tibetan refugees in India. For the past 21 years he has been helping himself and other men reclaim their full humanity with the ManKind Project, where he is a Co-Leader Candidate and serves as Intercultural Advocacy Chair for the Los Angeles Area. Like Cynthia, he has been a student in the Diamond Approach for the past dozen years. He applies his insights at the personal, systemic, and spiritual levels in his work as an Integral Coach, certified by New Ventures West — and by leading Journey in Leadership.
Additional Facilitators
In addition to Cynthia and Max, your experience will be held and enriched by three additional emergent facilitators:
- The Community of fellow travelers in the group, on similar paths of discovery.
- The Camino itself with its own challenges, gifts, surprises, and magic.
- Your own Clarity of inner truth, which will unfold with a depth you may have never experienced before as you enter into the space and quiet of the Camino.
“To be able to do it in a community of others, where there’s an opportunity to have that time alone but also to be with other people and reflect is such a gift.”
-Julie C, Journey In Leadership 2019 Participant
“How would I describe Journey in Leadership? In one word: transformative. You won’t go home the same person you were when you left. Your beautiful inner self will emerge, you’ll fall in love with your fellow peregrinos, the Camino culture and history — and something that transcends even those things. Just do it! You won’t regret a single second.”
-Margaret M, Journey In Leadership 2019 Participant
The Program
Pilgrims are persons in motion – passing through territories not their own – seeking something we might call completion, or perhaps the word clarity will do as well, a goal to which only the spirit’s compass points the way.”
— Richard R. Niebuhr
From the time you apply to the program to the time you return from the Journey and apply your learnings in your life, you will pass through several stages.
The Call and Preparation…
If you are reading this, your Journey has already begun. There is something inside of you that is already calling you to step into this journey of discovery and learning — a calling filled with hopes, wishes, and desires, and perhaps some fear or anxiety. Some of these impulses might be clear to you, others unknown. We invite you to be open to the question, even those you don’t yet know how to articulate!
After you register, you will receive a welcome with questions for reflection prior to embarking on the Journey, as well as a list of resources to enrich your pilgrimage and logistical information to plan your travel. The intention of this stage is for you to start creating a clearing and space within you. In the two months leading up to the start of the program you’ll have a chance to meet your fellow pilgrims and guides on a videoconference as we begin to build our community of exploration together.. This preparation will be deepened with a full-day retreat upon arrival in Spain as we set out on our journey together.
The Adventure…
In any ambitious undertaking, there inevitably comes a moment to heed the call and actually set foot upon the path. Stepping away from your community, from your day-to-day responsibilities, you will take on an orientation toward pilgrimage and self-discovery. This is where you give yourself over to the Journey.
Each day, the program will provide an intentional structure for you to take a deep dive into the essence of who you are called to be in this emerging uncertain new reality, and your path to manifest a life of greater purpose and impact. We begin each day with a reflection shared by the guides and a set of questions for individual contemplation, and if you choose, for dialogue with your companions. You are welcome to walk at your own pace, appreciating the natural beauty of the countryside and the unique community of pilgrims on the Camino. At the end of the day we regroup and share additional integrating reflections over dinner. Amid this, you will also have the opportunity to participate in coaching circles and receive deeper individual coaching by your guides.
The Integration…
Once you return home, the program will offer an opportunity to connect with your fellow pilgrims and integrate your learning from your experience in community with the people who accompanied your Journey.
Lastly, the Journey in Leadership doesn’t end in Santiago. The program includes two facilitated calls with your fellow travelers from Journey in Leadership as your guides support you applying your learning to your daily life and continue in the path of discovery and exploration.
Accommodations
We’ll be housed in a combination of historic boutique and luxury properties with private bathroom facilities, with breakfast and dinner included each day. Lunch is on your own on the trail, and there are plenty of bars and restaurants along the way. Due to limited availability, a small number of single room accommodations are available for an additional fee. We encourage you not to let your desire for single accommodations prevent you from participating in this program.
Cost
The all-inclusive price for the program is $7,495, which includes shared twin accommodations with en-suite bathroom, breakfast and dinner daily, luggage transport between hotels, medical travel insurance when in Spain, plus all program content and resources.
A limited number of single bedrooms will be available at some properties for a supplemental fee of $1,000, and will be allocated first-come-first-served, based on date of registration or specific medical needs.
Discounts:
- $500 Early Bird discount for participants registering by February 28, 2024.
- $750 per person group discount for multiple people registering together. This is a great opportunity if you want to experience the adventure along with one or more work colleagues, friends, or family members!
- Equity pricing is available for people engaged in nonprofit, social impact, and community leadership who have limited resources. These spaces are limited; please inquire with us prior to registration.
Note: Multiple discounts may not be used in combination. If you qualify for more than one discount, the greater discount will apply. Click here for full terms & conditions.
Payment schedule:
- Initial deposit of $1,500 per person is due immediately upon registration.
- Interim payment of $2,000 will be invoiced May 1 and is due no later than May 31 (or date of registration, if later).
- Balance of payment (after applying relevant discounts and surcharges) will be invoiced July 1 and is due in full by July 31 (or date of registration, if later).
Travel Logistics:
The program includes airport pickup upon arrival and drop-off upon departure, as well as all local transportation once traveling on the Camino. Participants are responsible for their own transportation to and from Spain.
- Arrival: To take advantage of the group bus transfer, participants should book air travel to arrive at Santiago de Compostela Airport (SCQ) on September 21, 2024 prior to the designated time (to be determined). If you do not use the airport transfer, you are responsible for making your own arrangements to arrive at the first hotel in our itinerary, Casa Caxigueiro in Sarria, by the night of September 21.
- Departure: Plan to book a departing flight from Santiago de Compostela (SCQ) on October 1, 2024.
We will provide information on recommended connecting flights between Madrid and Santiago to coincide with airport transfers.
To Register
The first step in answering the call to your Journey in Leadership is to declare your intention to venture forth — and within.
If you are ready to take up that call, click below:
For More Information
We will be holding a number of informational workshop sessions where you can get a taste of this year’s theme, learn more about the Journey in Leadership, and hear directly from past participants in the program on their experiences.
If you have immediate questions, we would be happy to answer them as well.
