love + freedom

education

your highest potential, unlocked

love + freedom education

relating for anew world

The world of matter is made of up of two complementary forces–masculine and feminine energy.

When well-mastered and united, they comprise the energy of creation and contain everything we require to make new worlds. 

Whether our application is greater intimacy in relationship, new pathways of innovation, or more integrated leadership, understanding these two dynamic forces helps us to unlock our fullest potential.

We work with individuals, leaders, and organizations to unlock the understanding and creative potential of the masculine and feminine aspects: internally, relationally, and collectively.

We are committed to a world of healthy, whole individuals who are able to contribute to the evolution and peace of humanity from their deepest gifts in ways that are authentic, fulfilling, and sustainable.

We do that by helping people understand the principle of gender as something beyond and distinct from designations of biological sex. 

Each of us contains both masculine and feminine aspects.

And, when we find the unique and healthy balance of those forces within us,

we are free to love, to create, and to serve at deeper levels.

love + freedom education

relating for a new world.

Love:

the highest calling of the feminine

Love

The Feminine Path (for women and feminine-identitifed folx).

We work closely with the principles of desire, surrender, masculine/feminine understanding and creation to unlock sustainable feminine power and self-expression.

Freedom:

the highest calling of the masculine

Freedom

The Masculine Path (for men and masculine-identified folx).

This path focuses on unleashing passion, understanding purpose, and acting from personal leadership as the three core pillars of creating an agentful and self-expressed experience of life.

Union:

the ecstasy of mutual compassion

Union

For everyone.

How the masculine and feminine come together to amplify both Love + Freedom.

Culture:

the expression of understanding

Culture

For groups and organizations.

Bringing a solid understanding of masculine/feminine principles to our communities and workplaces in order to support the greatest contribution from all people.

If you’re reading this, you are alive in a time of massive cultural evolution. In the last 100 years, women have gained the right to vote, significantly increased their numbers in the workforce, risen to top leadership positions around the world, and become head of household at unprecedented rates. 

But, with little exception, the rise of women in the public and professional sphere has seen little increase in the participation of the feminine aspect. Women have been asked to adapt to established masculine ways of working and being in order to be seen as valuable contributors. The net result is significantly more women in positions of power, but almost negligible shift in bringing feminine values (like cooperation, multi-valent thinking, and feeling/sensing)  into the ways that we govern, do business, or attempt to remedy some of our most intractable social problems. On a personal level, this has left many women exhausted, especially as they approach mid-career. But the greatest collective loss is that this leaves a treasure trove of innovative approaches to life and work untapped and under-resourced within them. 

On the flip side, this same time period has asked men to become increasingly more emotionally fluent, sensitive, and constrained in some aspects of their masculine self-expression. The result has been men who have been feminized to a point of ineffectiveness or who have tried to hide or tone down their masculine aspects in ways that cause harm to their internal well-being. 

While these over-adaptations may have been a necessary part of introducing important change, we have now arrived at a moment in human evolution that requires more wholeness, more self-awareness, and more understanding of these two complementary aspects. 

We are now moving from an equity/parity model where we all need to behave alike to a complementarity model where we can have mutual respect for our divergent strengths while embracing our internal wholeness. 

The power of gendered expression is one of the most fundamental and least understood factors of true diversity.

Photo Credit: Summer Hokulani

About Our Founder

love + freedom education was conceived and created by Kianga Ford

Photo Credit: Luis Tejeda

My name is Kianga Ford, and I’m the very real woman behind Love + Freedom Education.  

The Call 

When I first heard the call of this path, I was a university professor and a fine artist, running one of the top fine arts programs in New York City and traveling the world for artist residencies and commissions. And I ran nearly all of that from my masculine aspect. I was very successful, and I was also very tired. 

Then I had a series of encounters with teachers and practices that showed me the deep potential of the feminine way. I left the university, moved to the jungles of Hawaii, and started trying to find my own surrendered path. 

And it was HARD. I still had to keep myself alive in a world that wasn’t attuned to the possibility of another way. I’d learned to soften, but I also found myself working multiple dead-end jobs to escape the pressure of a masculine-dominant career path. It took me a long time to learn my own balance. To master how to soften and sustain. How to build big vision with relaxed receptivity. 

Eventually, I created a roadmap from my experience. We might call it–how a tenacious, hyper-independent, alpha girl, survivor who had already made it against-all-odds found the joy and power of living from pleasure and flow rather than strategy and control. And it’s the basis of both how and why I teach.

Joining Forces 

Along the way, I also developed a compassion for my male counterparts who were also struggling to find their own unique varieties of healthy masculinity that were also not well-represented in the mainstream.

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About Our community

Community is at the core of what we do. We prize the transformative capacity of the presence, support, and reflection of a safe group of peers. 

There is nothing that compares to watching the lights go on around the proverbial circle (which often in Zoom is actually a square). 

The diversity of our community is one of our greatest resources. In the space of transformational development, which can often be very monocultural, we are pleased to be able to look around our rooms and see faces that hail from all parts of the world, that have a variety of experiences with mobility across geography, class, and opportunity, and that are empowered to bring their stories as individuals and not as representatives of a group. 

This is not an accident. It’s a commitment. If you would like to work with us, we will do our best to make sure there is an opportunity for you to do that in a way that fits the context of the economy within which you live.

Thanks to the beauty of the internet, the Love + Freedom community has had participants from all six of the inhabited continents, from all walks of life, and many journeys of experience. All who are curious are welcome here.

We work with organizations, leaders, and everyday individuals through a variety of group coaching programs, 1:1 coaching, retreats, workshops, and custom-designed curricula.

deep dive with us

the 3-year curriculum

At the core of our work with individuals is a 3-year study curriculum, with unique and distinct masculine and feminine pathways. We believe we come together most constructively when we create safe environments that speak first to our differences and allow us to cultivate those differences into strengths.

Grounded in the power of community-based learning, they are a unique series of distinct year-long group programs that focus on cultivating a generative understanding of the masculine and feminine aspects of our being. 

It is not necessary to commit to all three years at the onset. Each year is its own deepening adventure.

Two Distinct Paths

What the masculine and the feminine require to cultivate deeper expression is quite different. 

At the core of this work, we support women to recover from the over-masculinization that typically results from our encounters with the professional world and success metrics that still come predominantly from masculine values. We support women in becoming intimately familiar with the inherent power of the feminine aspect, so that it’s a choice available to them across the spheres of their life experience – from parenting, to intimate partnerships, to work and vocation.

We work with men to reclaim the power of healthy masculinity that they may have eschewed to feel safer as allies and supporters to the women in their lives, so that they can enjoy the full power of all they have to offer in service to humanity.

There are key points throughout the process, like The Coed Dialogues, which happen at the end of Year 1, where we come together to expand our mutual understanding and compassion for what the work looks like on the other side.

We welcome people of non-conforming gender expressions to begin with a consultation with us to determine which paths and programs would be most supportive for them as individuals.

the love side: The Feminine Path

These three years are designed to connect women with their fully empowered and expressed feminine aspects. It also supports them in a depth of understanding of the masculine aspect, as it expresses within themselves and in their interactions with romantic partners and the broader world.

The curriculum is an experiential progression from learning key concepts in Year of Love, to embodying those concepts deeply as a way of living in Year of Surrender, to expressing that way of being in public-facing projects in Creation to joining a powerful collaborative sisterhood that supports new ways of being on the planet in Co-Creation.

Our foundational program, Year of Love focuses on restoring the connection to oneself. Organized into four quarters, we put our attention on reclaiming desire, understanding the masculine, learning the principles of creation, and dialoguing with the masculine from a place of self-awareness.

Year of Surrender represents a quantum leap from learning new principles to allowing life to be primarily guided by them. We learn about the cycles of self-transformation through the Surrender Map. And we develop a nuanced ability to practically guide our days, relationships, goals, and decisions through the lens of feminine wisdom.

Creation is our project incubator. Once Surrender is at the center of our lives, we want to do everything from that place of being fully connected to ourselves and our wisdom and present to the guidance of Source. Rather than going out to the masculine best practices that underlie most business development programs, we bring our non-profits, social impact movements, land projects, online businesses, and brick and mortar storefronts into the space of surrender. You’ll receive support in clarifying your project, finding your most authentic voice, and integrating the principles of surrender into the way you serve and do business.

Co-Creation Is a dynamic laboratory where we begin to collaborate on the projects we’ve been incubating through our journeys of surrender. It represents a shift from a coaching relationship to a generative sisterhood, where we all participate equally and support each other toward becoming our greatest visions of healing and service in the world.

The Freedom Side: The Masculine Path

The three-year curriculum for men is centered around creating a safe and supportive community as a context of deep growth and reflection. For many men, this is the first circle of brothers that they’ve been able to trust fully and journey with courageously. 

We take a purpose-first approach and explore how the feminine and relationship energies as well as other everyday life decisions can all support that. 

Through the course of the three years, each man gets clear on what are his gifts to give, how he can masterfully relate to the feminine in support of those gifts, and how he wants to hold his presence in the world.

Our foundational masculine program,Year of Freedom moves through three key areas of self-awareness before culminating in The Coed Dialogues with the feminine Year 1 program. These three areas – passion, purpose, and personal leadership – support each man to get in direct relationship with his own Beast (this is what we call his unfiltered impulses), to be in true relationship with the gifts that are uniquely his to give, and to be empowered to make daily choices that support that giving.

Year of Mastery moves further into full masculine expression and self-mastery with an emphasis on the energies of exchange.  In this year we cover money, sex, and power in three quarters, culminating with a quarter of personalized inquiry.

Lifecraft focuses on designing a life that is the fullest expression of each man’s unique gifts.

It is a highly personalized laboratory environment for expressing the principles through ongoing self-structured inquiry. It represents a shift from information and internal mastery to manifestation and external creation. It provides structure, support, and accountability to build a pathway toward Legacy.

get to know us

Introductory Courses

Typically, at least once each year, we offer a taster for our year long programs. Over three sessions, we give you a sample of the three quarters that make up our first year programs, excluding The Coed Dialogues. Come and experience the feeling of going deep in our communities.

We devote one session each to reclaiming desire, understanding the masculine, and the principles of creation. So much can change in your life and understanding with this short immersion into the possibility of reflective community.

Haven is a version of Orientation to Love that we host specifically for black women to have a safe space to explore the ways that the masculine and feminine have shown up for them. Black women are generally underrepresented in transformational work and often have a unique experience of feeling excluded from the feminine or expected to relate from the masculine. It is our hope that more black women will come into the conversation about the masculine and feminine aspects of our whole. This course is run by donation for all who identify with black womanhood. Mutli-racial and trans women are encouraged to join. As are gender non-conforming people who feel that “womanhood” has had a significant impact on their lived experience.

This is our short experience for men. We’ll spend one session each deep diving into passion, purpose, and personal leadership, sharing what this language means specifically in our context.

step out of the ordinary with us

in-person Retreats + experiences

Our in-person retreats and experiences allow you the rare opportunity to step outside of your day-to-day life. Different than a vacation where you’re often trying to “get away from it all”, these sojourns provide a supported environment to go more deeply into you. Sometimes with a tribe of fellow seekers and sometimes in a bespoke experience designed to help you become more resourced to handle life’s challenges and to connect with the world from a place that is most deeply you.

Each year, the women of Love + Freedom come together for a 5-day live immersion in the transformative surrender arts. Together we’ve been to Bali, Mexico, and the Pacific Northwest, expanding the range of our own surrender in powerful in-person sisterhood. This program is included in the Year of Surrender and is available to any other women in the school.

Beast Camp is a 4-day retreat with a community of men who want to feel uncaged in the way they relate to themselves and to the feminine. Learn what it feels like to hear your own desires without restriction; what it feels like when women are seated in their feminine and deeply open to receive you; what the feminine truly needs from you; how to approach any situation without shrinking or editing yourself; and how to source the most aligned actions from your body awareness.

The Union Dinner is a 5 and a half-hour experiential deep dive workshop on masculine/feminine relating, for both women and men that includes a 4-course, chef-prepared meal. A highly interactive format, It invites us to ask questions about the ways that we have contributed to each other’s harm but also hold the keys to our mutual healing. Please reach out to inquire about hosting one in your city.

Whether it’s one day or three days or five, we craft personalized experiences for you to get into the heart of how you are balancing the masculine and feminine aspects in your life, your business, your leadership, and your loving. 

VIP Days are a single-day experience, typically hosted at a private venue in Nashville and focused on a topic of your choosing. 

Bespoke Retreats can happen anywhere around the world and usually involve assembling a team of supporting faculty and healing practitioners. This is our highest level of service and is best served in the context of ongoing coaching.

shift your way of seeing with us

topical Intensives

While we do the majority of our work in long-form containers, occasionally we have offerings that allow you to journey with us for a brief time to shift the way you see the world in a single meaningful area. We regularly host courses that have to do with what we call the energies of exchange between the masculine and feminine. Money, Sex, and Power are some of the most potent. While some are only available to students with previous experience with our work and principles, those listed below are open to all.

One of the biggest barriers to feeling able to create the lives we want is having access to money. So each year, as we explore the feminine principles of creation, all of our feminine programs join together for an 8-week exploration of the energy of money. This year, we’ll be making this course available to women who have not yet been able to work with us in our deep dive containers–often because the cost feels prohibitive.

ReSourced – Update and Renew Your Relationship with The Energy of Money is a 12-week program that looks at the masculine and feminine dynamics of money. Money is a complex energy of exchange that engages both aspects and is an essential component of most human creations. We guarantee that you’ve never seen money like this before.

Transform Your Leadership with us

1:1 + Leadership Programs

One-on-one coaching brings the insights of our group programs to busy executives and founders who may not be able to coordinate their schedules around our group program calendars.

Our leadership programs are designed to explore the masculine and feminine partnership as an essential component for the creation of any sustainable change, impact, or new paradigm in our current times.

Whether it’s showing male leaders the how-to and the benefits to making room not just for women but for feminine values in the workplace. Or helping female leaders who have found success primarily by driving in their masculine aspect to reclaim effective and sustainable feminine power.

We focus on inside-out leadership, going deeply Into the heart of each leader to help them lead in more self-expressed, authentic, and sustainable ways. It is our hope that through changing this way that people lead, we can impact organizational culture and the lived experience of the people who look to our clients for leadership and direction.

Surrendered Leadership is a highly-personalized one-to-one framework for female founders and executives to bring more feminine power to their leadership through an exploration of pleasure, desire, and vision.  Initial program durations are 4 months (for an accelerated experience with a particular goal or challenge in mind) or  8 months (for a more moderately-paced holistic reflection). This program includes a personalized retreat.

Masterful Alliance works with male leaders who want to strengthen the participation of the feminine in their organizations and in their lives. It’s not enough to say you want to make space, and it’s actually not helpful to abdicate leadership. You have to learn to recognize the very different languages and needs of the masculine and feminine and how to deliver the unique support that each requires to unleash their genius-level contributions. This program can include a personalized retreat.

The Leaders’ Forum supports men and women with a dedicated professional commitment to stewarding the development and expression of the healthy masculine. It is a vetted and ongoing discussion amongst professionals and leaders in the field of masculine health and well-being, including coaches, researchers, and men’s work organizations.

evolve Your culture with us

Support for Organizations

We talk about the masculine and feminine aspects on three levels: internal – the way each of us is made up of both aspects with our own unique balance; relational – how we relate to other individuals and the ways these aspects express through them; and collective – how our society is leveraging or missing the opportunity of understanding these aspects and how they unlock human potential. Every organization is a microcosm of this collective relating. How might understanding these aspects help your leaders and teams feel more “gotten”, connected, creative, and primed for contribution?

We would be delighted to develop a curriculum for your organization to learn more about how to leverage masculine and feminine understanding to get the best from your leaders and to create a supportive culture for your everyone. Every organization’s needs are a little different, so we would love to begin by learning more about yours.

We are available as keynote speakers for your events. We can speak to gender diversity in the workplace, creating truly inclusive culture, understanding the masculine and feminine at work, and the power of understanding the masculine and feminine in innovation. We would be delighted to develop a talk that is tailored to your event or needs.

Which one best describes you:

We would love to learn about you. Who you are has everything to do with how we can best serve you. Please take a moment and share with us a bit about who you are. We’ll add you to our community lists and share more about offerings in this specific area.

Women

+ Feminine-Identified

Men

+ Masculine-Identified

Couples

Organizations

stay connected.

We invite you to reach out any time with any questions or feedback to:  info@loveandfreedomeducation.com.

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