Collective Well-Being and Compassionate Culture

through

Inner Knowing and Outer Radiance

Welcome to Centered in Peace

SONAL KAVIA

BEd, MEd, CYA-RYT

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 mindful 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 to create a platform for shift and change in how each of us shows up in the world and orients towards center and in relation, in both our personal lives and as part of a collective.

Sonal’s heart is fullest when fostering personal & 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:

Breath ~ Spirit ~ Heart ~ Body ~ Mind

Wind ~ Fire ~ Water ~ Earth ~ Sky

All at once.

The following are some of the organizations with which she has led personal and organizational experiences through programs, workshops, retreats, and speaking engagements:

  • Mental Health on the Prairies Conference

  • Saskatchewan Teachers Federation

  • Saskatoon Public School Division

  • Women in Leadership: Re-imagining Leadership Retreat

  • Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools

  • Northern Lights School Division

  • Saskatchewan Rivers School Division

  • University of Saskatchewan - College of Education

  • University of Saskatchewan - Student Wellness Centre

  • Saskatoon Tribal Council

  • Elementary Teacher’s Federation of Ontario

  • Affinity Credit Union Leadership Team

  • Federation of Saskatchewan Indigenous Nations (FSIN)

  • Discover Saskatoon

  • Tackling Trauma Conference

  • Saskatchewan Leadership in Healthcare

  • School and Community Wellness: Making Investments in Child Health Conference

  • United Way of Saskatoon

  • Saskatchewan Early Childhood Conference

EDUCATIONAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP

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

  • kind and compassionate culture-building

  • expressive and experiential learning

MINDFULNESS AND AWARENESS BASED EDUCATION

Sonal is a certified facilitator of trauma-sensitive mindfulness meditation and yoga,  and is currently training to integrate 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. S

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.

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.