Meet Sonal
Sonal’s vision sees steadiness, joy, and holistic well-being for all at the center of our systems.
As the founder of Centered in Peace Consulting, Sonal Kavia has dedicated the last decade to growing collaborative relationships and cultivating conversations that vision slow, deep, and mindul ways of being in our world. Engaged in teaching and learning since 1996, Sonal roots her leadership coaching and educational consulting in awareness, embodiment, and creativity-based experiences which foster deep relational presence.
Sonal engages with leaders and practitioners in school systems, healthcare, non-profit, and private sectors, as well as families to create a platform for shift and change in how each of us shows up in the world and orients towards center, in both our personal lives and as part of a collective. She is a certified trauma-sensitive embodiment teacher, activist, speaker, and educational consultant who finds joy in the poetic imagination.
Sonal’s heart is the most full when fostering personal and professional development through “inner knowing and outer radiance”. She is particularly interested in the inner landscapes of humanity and our rootedness in place. As an embodiment practitioner, she feels awe and gratitude for the sacredness of life, and is often pouring herself into various personal expressions, from painting and poetry to gatherings and conversations.
Inner Knowing. Outer Radiance.
ADVOCACY THROUGH EMBODIMENT, EMERGENCE, AND EXPANSION.
Important To Know
Educational & Organizational Leadership Approach
Sonal’s education and leadership studies include her own experiential learning and training with Margaret Wheatley, Demers Group, David Whyte, Presence-Based Coaching, and the Presencing Institute. She believes each of us stand in a circle and offer our presence as our gift, in a non-hierarchical, and relational manner. Sonal offers personal and professional leadership coaching which is rooted in embodied presence.
The following have been integrated into her work and learning journeys with communities and organizations:
bridging well-being into systems - mindful relational presence for change making
generative inquiry and appreciative inquiry
exploration of voice and storytelling
identity making through play, joy, beauty, wonder
connective and compassionate culture-building
expressive and experiential learning
Mindfulness & Awareness-Based Education
Sonal is a certified facilitator of cultivating attention and awareness, nourishing breath patterns, mindfulness meditation, and yoga. She is trained in and integrates somatic cognitive based interventions in private and group embodiment sessions.
Her award winning research thesis, Mindfulness as Practice: Shifts in Teacher Awareness and Identity, explores teacher relational presence and identity, contemplative education, and compassionate school culture. Sonal is experienced in facilitating personal professional development of education, and beyond. Her training in presence-based coaching draws from the fields of mindfulness, somatics, developmental psychology, complexity theory, and interpersonal neurobiology.
Sonal has written curriculums that centralize wellness, belonging, identity, and leadership and aims to integrate holistic programming into school systems and non-profit organizations. She is an advocate for collective wellness in communities and has worked extensively with youth and adults in urban, rural, and first nation communities.
BEd~MEd~PhD studies in progress
Sonal is currently continuing her learning journey through the Simon Fraser University, Contemplative Education, and University of Saskatchewan, Educational Foundations pathways.
“The ‘learning spirit’ is the entity within each of us that guides our search for purpose and vision” ~ Marie Battiste
Sonal gratefully lives on the Nêhiyawak (Plains Cree), Nahkawininiwak (Saulteaux), Nakota (Assiniboine), Dakota and Lakota (Sioux),Niitsitapi/Siksikaitapi (Blackfoot) and Denesuline (Dene/Chipwyan) Peoples territories and the ancestral lands of the Metis Nation. She believes that land acknowledgement is one step in action towards reconciliation, and actively supports Indigenous local businesses and initiatives for flourishing nations and communities.
GRATEFUL TO HAVE SUPPORTED…
