Lead Smart Coaching, LLC

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These retreats are designed to rest, renew, restore, and reconnect the body, mind and spirit. They are extraordinary personal growth and learning opportunities, and cultivate societal transformation.

Contact Valerie to design and lead a retreat for your organization.

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October 23, 2019

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The Mindful School Leader: Practices to Transform Your Leadership and School

Named one of the best courageous books of 2014 by the Center for Courage & Renewal, this book is for educational leaders who feel overwhelmed, stressed, and exhausted, and offers explicit practices to help readers avoid burnout and become the mindful, poised, effective leaders they were meant to be. Loaded with real-time encouragement with portraits of educational leaders who are incorporating mindfulness practices, like attentive breathing, mindful walking about the school building, or calming pauses in the office throughout the school day, this book is a must-have guide.

Valerie Brown and Kirsten Olson. Corwin, December 2014. 344 pages.

What People Are Saying About The Mindful School Leader…

This inspiring book makes a strong case for school leaders to include mindfulness in their personal and professional lives. Based on solid research and enhanced by compelling examples of real people, it shows how school leaders can feel more grounded, connected, clear and focused. Mindfulness makes leaders more effective with relatively little effort, but be advised that the benefits can be contagious, transforming your school from the inside out.

Christopher Germer, Clinical Instructor Harvard Medical School

An important support for school leaders, this book is comprehensive, and well thought out. The personal stories within are compelling and encouraging. The Mindful School Leader is a tremendous asset to leaders worldwide to foster greater understanding and compassion within themselves and within schools.

Sharon Salzberg, Author of Lovingkindness and Real Happiness , Co-Founder, Insight Meditation Society

In The Mindful School Leader, Brown and Olson offer with remarkable clarity and depth a thorough introduction to the practice of meditation, the science behind its benefits, and many firsthand accounts of lives and work situations transformed through this practice. Although this book was written for those in leadership roles in education, it will be inspiring for anyone interested in understanding their own minds and finding more ease in life and work.

Joseph Goldstein, Co-Founder, Insight Meditation Society

Masterfully practical, rich with wisdom and the heartfelt experiences of scholars and leaders in the field, this is the handbook to keep at your side if you wish to become more evolved, insightful, nimble and better prepared, in general, to address the challenges of teaching and leading.

Kristin Neff, Associate Professor Educational Psychology Dept., University of Texas at Austin

What People Are Saying About The Road that Teaches:

Valerie Brown takes the reader on a compelling path of self-discovery, where every page relays spiritual insights that feel like your own. This journey is one you can take in the comfort of your chair, yet the depth of her spiritual search will inspire and accompany you on your own journey. As a pilgrim, you encounter the world with fresh eyes, letting go of encumbrances, releasing fear, venturing inside and allowing the experience to guide you to a new and fresh experience of life. It is about …

Gretchen Castle, General Secretary, Friends World Committee for Consulation - World Office

This travel journal is a metaphor for opening up to the unexpected, the disappointments and joys of the present moment, just as one finds while traveling the path of life. The insightful discoveries that Valerie shares are evidence that with right mindfulness of body and mind, our outward journey can inform our capacity to travel inwardly — touching the light and peace that dispels busyness, fear and isolation.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Buddhist monk whose lifelong efforts to generate peace and reconciliation moved Martin Luther King, Jr, to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967

Rich in cultural and spiritual diversity, Valerie Brown’s book, The Road that Teaches: Lessons in Transformation through Travel, demonstrates the many ways in which mindfulness enhances both the inner and outer journeys. The book offers the reader an experience that is personal and global, culturally and spiritually diverse, filled with practical travel tips and enriched with poetry and quotes.

Florence Meleo-Meyer, MS, MA, Director, Oasis Institute, Center for Mindfulness, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts

I was hooked by this book as soon as I began reading the Introduction: “Every journey is both inward and outward, an opportunity to discover new meaning or encounter the world with fresh eyes.” Valerie Brown knows whereof she speaks. Not only has she traveled widely and deeply, but her own life as an Afro-Caribbean American, Quaker, and Buddhist woman represents the convergence of many roads and many pilgrimages. She writes graced and graceful prose, so her book is a joy to read. At the end of e…

Parker J. Palmer (author of "Healing the Heart of Democracy," "Let Your Life Speak," and "The Courage to Teach")

The Road that Teaches: Lessons in Transformation through Travel.

Not your average travel guidebook, this book explores some of the world’s great pilgrimages, destinations, and the author’s reflections on the lessons she learned from them. Read this book to discover how travel can be transformational, how to be more mindful while traveling and every day, the adventures of traveling alone, the delights of encountering new people and places, ancient pilgrimage journeys and sacred travel worldwide.

Valerie Brown. QuakerBridge Media, 2012, 152 pages. Also available from QuakerBooks.

Heartfulness: Renewing Heart, Mind, and Spirit on Retreat and Beyond Valerie

Valerie Brown guides readers toward renewal of mind, heart, and spirit by encouraging them to take time away from the busyness of their lives through retreat. Drawing on her experience as a retreatant and retreat leader, she introduces readers to opportunities for personal restoration within a variety of focused retreats. She wonders how Friends experience of expectant waiting influences the retreat process and how retreats influence expectant waiting. She encourages the “big questions”—What has meaning and purpose in my life? What am I avoiding? What brings me most alive?—and offers specific practices for retreatants to cultivate in everyday life.

Valerie Brown. Pendle Hill Pamphlet #421.

Living from the Center: Mindfulness Meditation and Centering for Friends

Quakers are advised to begin worship by “centering down.” This is the first step in a Friend’s intention to wait in “holy expectancy,” to be drawn by the Light into communion with God. Centering prayer is also a practice used by Christian mystics to prepare for contemplation, and “centering” describes the meditation of a Buddhist in pursuit of that deep awareness called “mindfulness.” Valerie Brown is an explorer and teacher of centering practices, a Buddhist, and an active Friend. Drawing upon her own experiences and wide studies, she describes for Friends how these various traditions can offer us a better understanding and preparedness for our precious, elusive, mysterious, and simple practice of centering into worship. Discussion questions included.

Valerie Brown, Pendle Hill Pamphlet #407. 2014.

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