Mid-month Connect: 9/15/21 ~ RAP: Cultural Harmonizing
Greetings and Happy Midweek!
And it’s also just exactly mid-month today, so it’s time for another of our RAP sessions (Review And Process). In our Global SKILLs training, we emphasize how both ‘Review and Process’ are key components of strategic planning and implementation. Each of these mid-month RAP sessions revisits a cross-cultural theme or topic from a previous Connect, going more deeply into what we’ve begun to explore.
My first Connect RAP was exactly a year ago tomorrow (9/16/20 post, https://www.globalskillspartners.com/blog-1) and the topic was Communicating. So I thought we’d go more deeply into how people communicate within and across cultures, and specifically how harmony can enhance these communications.
I have started doing Tai Chi daily once again, after a several year hiatus. This gentle aerobic practice is from a culture very different from mine, and the teacher I follow each day brings into the practice a spiritual tradition which is quite unfamiliar to me.*
Underlying and woven throughout the exercises is a mental, physical and spiritual focus on valuing and following pathways to personal and community-based harmony and balance. Having embraced the practice because I know from past experience how invigorating and strengthening it is, I have this time around also very much appreciated this harmonizing focus, for myself and for me as I interact within the communities which I participate in each day.
In these unpredictable and crisis-filled times globally, harmony and balance are welcome treasures to be found in every culture- if only we take the time to look!
How about you ~
what is one harmonizing experience you have had lately, within your own culture or across cultures?
Share about that with a friend or note it here.
And check out Global SKILLs LINKs below for a few more harmonizing resources...
Thanks for being part of this growing community. I’d love to hear from each of you!
Until next week, Betsy
* The video my original Tai Chi teachers highly recommended several years ago, and which I have found to be a great daily companion in my own practice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ42w9NZHfA
Global SKILLs LINKs
~ a basic but interesting ‘take’ on cultural harmony, and a site dedicated to spreading some harmony by sharing positive stories about people around the world in a business context: https://beyondexclamation.com/cultural-harmony-great-necessity/
~ harmony & diversity, an empirical study from the region out of which Tai Chi originates: https://ijae.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41257-018-0010-6
2021 ~ Celebrating 40 years of working in
intercultural communications and global community building
Connecting, Collaborating, Cultivating Community