Coach Lotus Allen is a Community Catalyst and the CEO of Femme Fire Productions. She brings her unique perspective, unusual, alternative background and life experiences to the creation, play and work of her practice. Like you, she is a masterpiece of human complexity and evolutionary design, so this is only a small piece of her story.

Joanna Macy & The Great Turning

Femme Fire Productions has been strongly influenced by the work of the spiritual visionary and systems theorist Joanna Macy, among many other wonderful teachers and mentors. Lotus has participated in Joanna's intensive training in the "Work That Reconnects," coupled with David Korten's theory of The Great Turning.

Femme Fire fosters and promotes the transition of The Great Turning to a Life-Sustaining Age. Coach Lotus assists women and social-change leaders in becoming effective change-agents, so we may work together to successfully make the transition to a compassionate, sustainable future for our children, future ancestors, and All Our Relations.

Buddhism... Shambhala Warrior with Divine Feminine Twist

Coach Lotus is a practicing Buddhist, Shambhala warrior and follows the spiritual path of the compassionate bodhisattva. She was given the name Lotus White Tara (or Pema Dolkhar) when she participated in a refuge ceremony with Tibetan Lama Lodu Rinpoche of Kagyu Droden Kunchab, Center for the Study and Practice of Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism in San Francisco. The name means Goddess of Love and Compassion, and it is definitely a name and path to gradually grow into and learn to walk comfortably and confidently upon.

She embraces her sacred womanhood and connection with the Divine Feminine. Coach Lotus embodies and invokes Wicca Goddess spirituality, aspects of the Native American Cherokee wisdom tradition (part of her ancestral line) as well as other Indigenous Shamanic practice. The Goddess is Alive and Magick is Afoot!

Coach Lotus thinks of her devotional practice as her yellow brick road leading her to exactly what she and the world perhaps need most: love and peace. In 1999, while on a pilgrimage to the west coast, she began using the name "Lotus" as a way to honor her path, inner voice, resonance with this particular flower, and an abiding passion for botany, gardens and flowers. Eventually this path led her to the San Francisco Bay Area and into the vision and mission of Femme Fire Productions.

Healer & Coach

Coach Lotus is also a highly sensitive person, intuitive empath, energy worker and healer. She has trained in Reiki and Healing Touch modalities. Her healer's gift, in combination with her mindfulness, skillfulness, compassion, gentleness, passionate activism mixed with elder’s wisdom, makes her an excellent retreat, life and spiritual coach. Indeed, coachness is an essential aspect of who she is. For as long as she can remember, people (many of them strangers) have easily approached her to open their hearts and share their life stories with her, perhaps sensing her ability to listen well, offer empathy and support naturally.

Mediator & Peacekeeper

Coach Lotus' essential nature and spiritual path marry well with her interests and skills in mediation and peacekeeping, nonviolent communication (Marshall Rosenberg), the art of listening, and co-creative group processes. Communication and small group process are two of her deepest passions. She has years of experience within intentional community groups and nonprofits as a small group process facilitator (consensus decision making) and as a mediator. She has mediated court-referred civil disputes and misdemeanors, along with personal and romantic conflicts in community settings. One of her specialties is helping couples and family groups to resolve conflicts.

Studies & Training

Coach Lotus has studied anthropology and Native American Earth traditions and spirituality. She is a shamanic practitioner, leads spirit quests, sweat lodges, and sacred rituals honoring the Four-Fold Way. She has also studied Goddess spirituality and Wicca, Paganism, along with Oriental philosophies. Indeed, theology and philosophy, along with psychology and esoteric studies, are areas of interest and passion.

She studied at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Missouri for undergraduate work in Biology, English and Anthropology.

Coach Lotus has formally trained with Mentor Coach Helene Van Manen of Mountain Coaching/Retreat Coaches Network/Coach U and with Dave Buck of Coachville. She is a professional retreat, life and spiritual coach and a member of the Retreat Coaches Network and Coachville.

She trained with Mary Ellen Bowen to receive her mediator certification from Mid-South Mediation Service. She learned many of her facilitation skills working within the Fellowship for Intetional Community as a volunteer Board and Committee member. Additional learning and practice in facilitation was gained while she was a member of Sandhill Farm, under the group mentorship of founding member, Laird Schaub -- a savvy group process facilitator known throughout the communities movement.

Coach Lotus continues to study and build upon her skills with various training courses and certifications, including staying current with First Aid/CPR certification.

Passions & Interests

Coach Lotus is a woman-centered, radical eco-feminist, mother, and social entrepreneur working for a sustainable future of empowered women. She believes in and honors the sacred divine feminine and grandmother wisdom. She Ioves supporting women and girls, activists, folks with alternative perspectives and orientations, along with social change leaders in reaching for empowerment, prosperity consciousness, unlimited possibilities and their creative, visionary potential.

One of Lotus' deepest passions is building community by calling women, activists, and social change leaders into circles to retreat, share, heal, celebrate, and be renewed in rest, creativity, and inspiration. She brings 25+ years of experience in cooperative, sustainable living within rural and urban intentional communities.

She has traveled extensively as a community networker and visited numerous communities across the US. Lotus provided background support for a documentary called "Visions of Utopia: Experiments in Sustainable Culture," produced by Geoph Kozeny (the "Peripatetic Communitarian") and released in 2007 in it's completed 2-CD set by the Fellowship for Intentional Community.

Prior to becoming a mother and a social change activist, making the leap to intentional community living, and working for nonprofits, Coach Lotus spent many years employed as a legal assistant. Her strong organizational skills and legal background support her work in peace & justice.

The Circle is Complete

Coach Lotus combines the theoretical stuff she has learned about collective living, ecological and cultural sustainability, transformative learning and change with her training and experience as a coach, vision quest guide, spiritual warrior and co-creative council leader. She then weaves it all together with a profound love of nature and Gaia’s interconnected web of life. Lotus is a powerful and effective leader, your success partner, and motivational catalyst for positive change. The circle of community is her home.

http://retreatcoaches.com/rcnetwork.htm