For the last 5 years, I’ve been running year-long and multi-year containers. This year, I’ve put those long-frame containers on pause to reflect on all the major life shifts those programs have catalyzed and to create more infrastructure for Phase 3. 

As I reflect on both my own experience over these last years and the leaders who have emerged from my group programs with the desire to lead their own, one of the things that’s very clear is that YOU MUST BEGIN. Where you are. With a group of real humans and beyond the ruminations in your mind of what the perfect group coaching program, retreat, design circle, men’s group might look like. Because it will never look like that. 

I was a professional artist for many years before this calling, and I can tell you there is nothing more dynamic, more unpredictable in form, or for me more satisfying than the medium of human experience. Like a potter at the wheel, you have to get your hands in the clay to make something brilliant. 

I see so many people try to begin with Phase 3–the website, the shiny platform, the perfect copy. I’ve just started building web pages for my programs. Because, before you’ve had your hands in the clay, they usually fall pretty flat. And that failure experience can leave you feeling more certain that you’re just not cut out for groups, which is just not true. The secret is that the people who need you want YOU, not your perfectly polished page. For great human experience design, you have to begin with a direct relationship with your material. Other humans!

This work can begin with the simplest inspired invitations. Once you have clarity that you are ready to share that which is most deeply true for you. 

It isn’t after the next credentialing program. Or when you’ve perfected your funnel. Or when you’ve mastered Facebook ads. The time is now. When you’ve heard the internal call to BUILD COMMUNITY.

Group experiences can come in any scale. You’ve probably been to conferences or programs that have convened hundreds or even thousands of people.

Our focus will be on intimate-scale containers, where the intention is to create space for each individual to be seen and addressed at some level. Think of a circle where everyone will be known by name, and you’re in the zone of the cozy container.

I’m not saying that smaller is better. But it’s specific. And it’s my zone of genius.

I started my teaching journey 27 years ago as a graduate teaching assistant, breaking out small groups of a dozen or so undergrads from the herds of theater-sized lectures to help them turn information into understanding.

The intimate container is not about purveying information. It’s about helping people learn to use it. In real life. Often in real time. And guiding it well takes a certain set of skills and understanding that can only be cultivated in the practice of doing.

To be clear…

Even if you have dreams of speaking to the masses, there is a true proof-of-concept you can only get by going deep in the dozens.

Photo Credit: Summer Hokulani

My name is Kianga Ford, and I’m the very real woman behind Love + Freedom Education. Almost 9 years ago now, I exited the university system that I’d grown up inside of to become a free range educator out here in the world.

I started teaching in university classrooms when I was 22 and barely older than the undergraduates in my classes. I loved teaching and learning, but too many times I found myself facing the limits of how and what the university was prepared to teach. I knew I wanted to teach whole people. In contexts that matter deeply to them.

At the end of my academic career, I was a full-time university professor and a full-time fine artist. I was also a full-time program director, hiring and training faculty and running one of the top fine arts programs in New York City. All those full-times added up to not enough sleep.

When I left the academy, I thought I might spend the rest of my days sleeping off my exhaustion in the jungles of Hawaii (which is literally what I did for the first 6 months). But…as it turns out…my passion for teaching is strong. Not long after The Deep Sleep chapter of my life, I found myself enrolled in a coaching program and learning to work with people around their sexuality (talk about contexts that matter!).

I’m now a full-time entrepreneur with a coaching business that focuses on helping men and women come into creative and relational aliveness through understanding and mastering our masculine and feminine energies. And I do that largely through group programs, workshops, and retreats. Love + Freedom has 7 distinct and ongoing group learning containers.

When I first transitioned into working with adults outside of an institutional context, I made the same mistakes I see so many other people making. I kept working like I always had as an artist–toiling away in the studio, waiting until the masterpiece was complete to unveil it to its audience.

But crafting live human experience doesn’t work that way. It isn’t actually a product that you polish and put on the shelf. It’s a dynamic process of working with people.

I bring the decades I’ve spent thinking about pedagogy together with my love of creating immersive experiences (I was an installation artist) to create group programs that are alive, responsive, and that genuinely move people from an A point to a B point in their lives.

While I’m taking a pause from running my regular programs to dive into the Phase 3 vision, I want to convene around how we run programs without getting stuck in the ego traps of trying to look like the expert and polishing our content to the point of lifelessness. In my most soul-nourishing teaching experiences, I am learning by facilitating. And this feels like a model that is both more sustainable and more sustaining. I wish this for all of us growth junkies who have made our passions for people’s well-being, expansion, and creative expression the center of our professional lives.

In case you’re reading for the titles, I have a PhD (abd) in cultural theory and an MFA in fine art. I’m also a certified coach, Orgasmic Meditation trainer, and ordained intuitive healer. But what really qualifies me to do this work is living the process.