Staying Sane while Driving Change
Practical tools for navigating stress, complexity, and the systems we work in
A six-hour seminar for people who carry responsibility for change – in organizations, public sector, NGOs, or community work. No matter your job descriptions, understanding our leadership potential elevates our work and sense of purpose. The day works in two movements: Personel Development and Community Development.
Content
What is the seminar "Staying Sane while Driving Change" about?
This one-day seminar is a foundation for embodied work, held by two practitioners who bring distinct depth: Self-Regulation and Mindfulness Strategies as Leadership Skills (Dr. Bosler), transformational capability and systemic change (Dr. Pöhlmann). Together, we take current circumstances as they are – developing the capacity to work productively with complexity and building the resilience and stamina to transform both ourselves and the systems in which we operate.
The day works in two movements.
Block I (about three hours) focuses on the Individual – How can we show up with confidence and clarity even in stressful environments?
We make the case for embodied work in professional context, using evidence-based strategies to help participants understand the nuanced relationships between body and mind and how resilience arises from working with these relationships. We begin with the foundations of neuroscience (window of tolerance, foundations of polyvagal theory, regulation as a leadership skill) and how to leverage our physiology towards clarity, confidence, and resilience even in the most stressful of situations. Following the theoretical discussions, Dr. Bosler will guide simple, accessible awareness exercises and give participants personal experience of micro-regulation techniques. There will be space for discussion of how these techniques can be personalized and deepened through personal practice. Finally, we connect these experiences to the evidence and literature showing how such techniques improve decision-making and efficacy.
Block II (about three hours) shifts our focus from the individual to the collective – How can we use our best qualities to impact those around us?
We make the case that systemic change requires more than individual coping – that transformation actually moves through communities of practice, not through isolated effort. Drawing on Transformational Skills research, we open the foundations of collective agency and systemic responsibility, and examine the interplay between individual practice and the organizational conditions in which change either happens or stalls. Following this framing, Dr. Pöhlmann will guide structured cohort exercises: mapping our own transformation contexts, identifying practical leverage points where our work meets systemic conditions, and translating personal insights into shared reflection. We create space for exchange between participants, where individual challenges become collective learning material and the cohort itself becomes a resource for the work ahead. Finally, we connect these experiences to the research on collective agency and cohort-based professional learning – the conditions under which small groups can become genuine communities of transformation practice.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the day, participants will:
- Gain a working vocabulary for the somatic and systemic dimensions of leading change – language that holds in professional contexts.
- Have practiced concrete techniques for nervous-system regulation under load (breath, body awareness, pause).
- Recognize their own “window of tolerance” for stress - learning how to expand it, and how to recognize it was an agent for change.
- Distinguish self-care from community-care and have practiced both in cohort.
- Hold a shared frame for individual versus systemic responsibility in transformation work.
- Have experienced cohort-based learning as a distinct mode of professional development.
- Leave with a small, attainable home practice – the entry point to ongoing companionship.
- Analyze transformation challenges through the interplay of individual, collective, and systemic dynamics.
- Identify practical leverage points for strengthening transformational capacity within their own organizational context.
Self-Learning Elements
- During the day: printed work sheets and handouts for home practice.
- Post-seminar: for six weeks following the seminar, we send a weekly email reiterating the main points and offering inspiration for practice.
- Resource list: a curated short list for those who want to deepen, e.g. books, podcasts, videos, practices. Not overwhelming.
Language of Instruction
The presentation and course materials are provided in English. Discussions, group work, and individual contributions may be conducted in either German or English.
You can find the German version of the text here.
A notice
Please note that participants who need support for disabilities or physical differences are very welcome and accommodations will be made to support you to have the full experience of the event.
Benefit from our combined expertise
Lecturers
Dr. Tammy Bosler
Dr. Bosler is a former astrophysics researcher and educator, science policy manager, and is a certified Yoga educator with over 30 years of experience integrating the ancient traditions of Yoga into a language that holds in western professional spaces. Her academic training informs her approach to complexity, uncertainty, and systems, while her Yoga teaching integrates inquiry-based, intersectional learning rooted in somatics and modern scientific principles. She has developed and taught programs on stress management, resilience, and nervous-system regulation for individuals and organizations across international professional contexts. Her approach is to help people become more self-aware as the foundation of personal agency, resilience, and confidence in the work they do in the world – you are in this world for a reason, let's find out why.
Dr. Kendra Pöhlmann
Dr. Pöhlmann is a researcher and research officer at the OTH Regensburg, Faculty of Business and Management. Her work focuses on Transformational Skills – the individual and collective capacities that enable people, teams, and organizations to navigate systemic change without losing themselves in the process. She researches how transformation actually happens under complexity, and designs learning formats that translate research into capabilities people can use on a Monday morning – not more theory. She works from the conviction that transformation is not a matter of adding skills to people, but of building the conditions under which people can actually change what needs changing.
Julia Geiger
Phone: +49 941 943 1479
E-mail:zertifikate-seminare(at)oth-regensburg.de
