Associate professor and healing touch practitioner Julia Storberg-Walker is an alumna of the e-Co Leadership Coaching Certification at George Washington University. In this conversation with Ina Gjikondi and Bonnie Buckner, she opens up on how it impacted her profession and reoriented her everyday life. Julia talks about rediscovering her young self, gaining a deeper understanding of her purpose, and experiencing self-healing. She also explains how she achieved balance between her feminine and masculine energies, as well as how a single drop of grace can change the course of a person’s entire life.
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A Drop of Grace with Julia Storberg-Walker
In this episode, we have Dr. Julia Storberg-Walker. Julia is an Associate Professor in Human and Organizational Learning at George Washington University. She’s also a certified Healing Touch Practitioner and an alumna of our e-Co Leadership Coaching Certification program. She has been recognized for her teaching, research, and service as the recipient of multiple awards. In 2012, she was inducted into the Academy of Outstanding Faculty Engaged in Extension by North Carolina State University.
In her voice, “For the past four years, I have been led to redefine myself and my work in leadership studies. While my history illustrates a sustained commitment to legitimizing diverse ways of leading and justice, I am in a place where I see the immense value of contemplative practices in leading, justice, and peace. I believe human and planetary flourishing cannot be accomplished without humanity re-connecting to their unity and their diversity within their unity.”
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Welcome, Julia. It’s a treat to have this space together with both you and Bonnie. You were in our very first coaching cohort, the one that many said we’re building the plane as we’re flying it. I’m curious to know what has shifted with you since you left the program. Any stories or anything you can share?
Thank you, Ina and Bonnie, for having me. It’s just coming to my mind at this moment that in that first cohort, many of my classmates talked about falling into that opportunity at the right time. There seemed to be some larger purpose for that first session and gathering. I did interviews with people afterward and there were many stories of, “I’m at a transition point in my life. I have a big change that’s brewing in me.” It’s like with everyone that was where I was as well. The timing was interesting and serendipitous.
At that time after graduating, two things were going on. One was the power of trusting that the answers lie within the person that I’m working with and being in companionship with. The other one is, how is this going to impact my teaching in the classroom as a teacher in a university? I have enough to apply for ACC accreditation. I’ve been consumed with teaching and other research since then. That taught me the power of presence is everything. I can trust the unseen in a way. It’s more than just intellect and cognition.
As a doctor and educator, I was trained so rigorously in cognitive and intellectual development that I forgot that I have a body and different ways to sense and know the world. The coaching program opened that up a little bit. It was like a little drop of water. I was thirsty to keep learning more about the different ways to learn and know the impact that it’s having on the doctoral redesign of the program.
We’re including what we’re calling a nimble mindset that’s translation for being a whole person knowing the world. Being engaged in the classroom with students, my presence is wildly different. I’m much more comfortable in front of the classroom being vulnerable, not knowing, and being curious. In every way, it profoundly shifted how I orient my work and my life.
A great line of conversation that I wanted to explore with you is what the learnings or takeaways from the coaching program can do when applied in other areas, not just as a coach upon graduation but in all other aspects of life. I wonder if you could tell us a story about how the coaching program impacted you and what that means in your regular everyday.
I want to reiterate the magic of timing and how time can fold back and forth. Time isn’t linear and we don’t know what time is. All the stuff that we learned about clock time is partial. In that space of landing in the right garden at the right time, I had a dream session with Jovani. You invited me to imagine a garden somewhere or a space. I imagined a mountain meadow with tall flowers, grasses, a few trees, and some breeze. I remember you had asked me to go look for my six-year-old self.
In that first session with you, I was in the meadow looking around. It took me a while to find her. She was lying in the meadow playing with Barbies. She had all the pieces of the Barbie equipment. I remember the car, wardrobe, little hangers, shoes, bags, hats, and everything. She was just focused on playing this Barbie game. I stood watching her for a while and she just ignored me. I said, “Can I play too?” She looked up and said, “Yes. Do this, that, and the other thing. Go over there and do it.” She’s a very bossy girl. I went over and did what I was told.
After that session, I was asked to go visit her again every day. Sometimes I would find her up a tree. Sometimes I’d find her sleeping and I would sleep next to her but no touching. I was very cautious about getting to know her, giving her space. I did this for several days. One day, I couldn’t find her so I was looking. All of a sudden, I turned around and there was a tree. She was up in the limb off to my left. Behind her was the sun. All these golden rays were coming from her. I could see the shape in the outline. She turned and was so furious at me. She was spitting and shaking in anger. She yelled at me, “I am not broken.”
That energy washed through me because I had made up this narrative, this story all my life, that my childhood was broken in a way. Here was this beautiful golden light girl screaming at me so angry that I’d spent 60 years thinking she was broken. I can’t tell you how much that reoriented the story that I tell about myself. I’ve used that story in other settings. I sense that there’s an opening to help someone else and see how their story is bounding them. I’ve gotten it right so far. I don’t say the story willy-nilly but my sensing has been accurate when to share that. Everyone I’ve shared it with, maybe it’s a handful or a dozen, is quiet inside.
Julia, that is such a gift that you’ve given our audience to share that story. I am grateful that you did. I am picking up on so many shifts that have happened, shifting your interactions with others, the way you teach, and the doctoral program. One thing that Ina says frequently is you are the system. That inner shift and evolution is so profound, not just within ourselves but in how it continues to transform everything we touch. Your story is a great illustration of that.
It’s wonderful. I also kept thinking, Julia, in your own words, you were saying, “This has shifted the way I tell my story.” I was curious, how do you tell your story now?
I tell it with much less certainty and very tentatively. I’ve had so many time warps. Something happened to me in 2019 and all of a sudden, it makes sense and it teaches me. Something happened when I was 6 and then when I was 60, something shifted. Time is a new space for me to be dislocated in. I’m much more tentative and this is what I’m experiencing. At this moment, this is how I understand. I can’t get gripped in a story. I was in a meeting and I had to go off Zoom camera because I couldn’t control my emotions. I’m not cured of being a human. I’m a human. I hold it more lightly.
I want to build on it. At this moment, what is your story? How are you experiencing it?
At this moment, I keep getting called back to understanding my deeper purpose and why I’m here to the extent that I tried to resign as department chair. One of you, Bonnie and Ina, said you are the system. A wonderful Indic, Mystic, or Ragu, and you know him, Ina, said something to me. I realized I needed to put my energy somewhere else. I keep getting messages and calling back to my purpose. As a human, I get buffeted by the stories, storms, and emotions. I had coaching with Karen Buckley and that was a profound shift as well that helped me see all of my patterns differently. They’re in me but I can also observe them in a way.
The journey continues. What I was pulling from what you said is that you continue to work also in receiving coaching that’s part of your development and continues to be part of your path.
I try to be careful of that too. I try to discern the best for me. I have a pattern as a human that the fix is outside of myself. I can take this class and that class and get certified in this and do that. The older I get, the more discerning I try to be a continual learner but have that learning be about how to access the answers in me.
You were talking about purpose and how you’ve been called back to your purpose. Can you articulate what that is in this moment to use your language?
All I can say is that in the Sunday class with Ragu, he said the words that were in me that I couldn’t hear but I knew they were in me. He said that I have had remarkable courage to experience the night of the soul. My walking on the earth is to heal and open space for others to heal. Healing could be flourishing, realizing your potential, returning to your origin, remembering why you’re here, and quieting the noise that our daily lives and these cultures create. It’s also about boldly standing in the climate crisis without flinching, running away, or trying to numb out. Returning to origin or health is returning to your purpose.
What’s coming up in this moment is this idea of the divine feminine. She didn’t want herself to be known when I started my deep journey years ago. I got the masculine energy right away. I resonated but I couldn’t nail the feminine energy. I couldn’t understand her. When I tried to draw, it was a swirling mass of energy. The reason is that she creates and destroys, gives birth, and bathes the dead bodies. I want to say both and energy. I needed to be stronger to be able to hold the dark and the destruction part.
I’ve experienced a love of the fall and the winter and seeing a full moon through the bare tree branches, which used to be scary for me. I stand there and I love it. Behind me are dead sticks, mullein branches, dried leaves, and everything. I don’t know how I got to this point but for some reason, she wanted me to talk about her. I needed strength to see and stand in the dark. That’s what I feel called to help others do as well.
I’m hearing a connection of purpose to doing but in this whole moment of you describing that more deeply, purpose was more about being a sense of self-healing and being present to certain things. In the end, I hear you bringing it back to helping others to do that.
That connects the inner transformation with your actions in the world. Maybe practical wisdom. The intellect tells me that could be a phrase for it. For me, it’s trusting the knowledge that I’ve been created with.
Can you give an example of how you play with these energies, the being and the doing, or the masculine and the feminine? I thought what you shared was a beautiful, in-the-moment way to describe your experience. Is there another example where you’ve played with it?
Observing people. I interact in classes with classmates or the students that I have. Checking myself, am I attributing something in my human brain or is this a deeper knowing? That play happens all the time inside me. How do I know what I know? Is this a misattribution based upon some bias or energy block in me? Am I flowing and sensing this? I love looking at you guys but I’m always looking up in the trees in this show. The trees are all glowing and free. They’re alive.
That wind, green, and movement are feminine to me. The only way I can describe the masculine, which is my understanding from my times in India, is the lingam, full of potential. It hasn’t manifested yet. I often wonder about that. In quantum theory, it would be the particle and the wave. The wave is more like potential and it keeps moving. The particle is manifested when we observe it. I think about that dance always. Quantum physics studies have shown that human intention and observation change the action of the wave in the particle.
We co-create our future so I play that dance as well. When I’m showing up to lead a faculty meeting or I am having a tough conversation, I can get a little gripped by my human emotions. I realize I want the best potential to emerge so how can I let go of my constriction and be more like a wave? I do believe there’s good in the wave. The wave wants good or the universe is love. If I can let that flow to the best of my ability, that’s what I try to do. I can be so hard on myself when I don’t.
Bonnie, I know you want to build but what I heard is an intentional practice that you have built with yourself, an inner agreement, if you will.
Another profound thing happened with the first Buddhist silent retreat that I went on. At the end of the retreat, I was like my six-year-old self. I was so angry because I was like, “I have to go back in the world. My husband and colleagues didn’t do a retreat so what the hell am I going to do?” I raised my hand and was like, “How do I do this? You’ve given me all this mushing lovely stuff, and I have to go back into this hard yucky world.” The Buddhist teacher very calmly said, “Julia, the retreat doesn’t stop when you leave the space.” What that meant to me was my retreat is just being alive. I remember driving and someone cut me off. I get mad and I’m like, “I’m on retreat.”
It’s a great anchor.
You mentioned drawing from quantum physics that when something is observed, either it takes the form or it has the potential to shift. You talked about having to reenter after the retreat. That yucky world seems to me like having an inner retreat and responding shifts.
What’s coming to me is that it shifts my relation to that world. I can be a drop of grace in a faculty fight. They might still be all off at each other or me, or yelling and screaming but I can be what I call a drop of grace, which is calm, peace, love, and flow. It’s hard in a way but practice is so important and also self-forgiveness. I have self-compassion things all over my room. It changes the world in a way that I don’t understand, Bonnie. All I can do is change myself.
A drop of grace is a beautiful poetic description. If you think about it, I can take a full glass of water and one drop of apple essence changes the taste of the entire glass of water. One little drop of grace is quite profound.
You’re right. In my world as a professor, it’s pretty much mechanical science and cause-and-effect logic. When you think of a quantum world, that goes out of the picture. It’s not cause and effect. It’s probabilities. It’s that drop that can amplify and resonate out. Humankind is in dire straits but there’s hope.
In a quantum world, mechanical science and cause-and-effect logic are out of the picture. That’s why even a drop of grace can amplify and resonate out.
We might have named this show because that drop of grace feels like a very appropriate way to close the conversation at this moment. As you say, Julia, time is not linear. At this moment, is there anything else that you would like to say?
I want to say, Ina and Bonnie, how grateful I am for the work that you’re doing, your commitment to your craft, doing and being, and your kindness.
Thank you, Julia. I am grateful for your courage. You shared a lot of very useful information with many people. Thank you.
Thank you for inviting me.
A drop of grace. Thank you.
Important Links
- Dr. Julia Storberg-Walker on LinkedIn
- https://GSEHD.GWU.Edu/directory/Julia-Storberg-Walker
- www.GCI.earth
About Julia Storberg-Walker
Julia is an Associate Professor in Human and Organizational Learning at George Washington University. She is also a certified Healing Touch Practitioner (CHTP) and certified e-Co Leadership Coach. She has been recognized for her teaching, research, and service as the recipient of multiple awards, and in 2012 she was inducted into the Academy of Outstanding Faculty Engaged in Extension by North Carolina State University. In her voice: “for the past four years, I have been led to re-define myself and my work in leadership studies. While my history illustrates a sustained commitment to legitimizing diverse ways of leading (through theorizing and teaching) and justice (through critical/gender research and activism), I am now in a place where I see the immense value of contemplative practices in leading, justice, and peace.
I believe human and planetary flourishing cannot be accomplished without humanity re-connecting to their unity—and their diversity within their unity. I see my contribution as a leadership studies educator grounded in the sacred feminine—a voice long submerged and whose time is now. I have started to find more and more people who share this type of perspective, and I see more and more people yearning for the profound, the mysterious, and the eternal. I want to spend the time I have left on this planet helping others expand their consciousness in hopes that a tipping point will occur. I am transferring my deep experience with research, grants, educating, and leading from an exclusive scholarly focus and to a more ‘pracademic’ (practitioner/academic) focus. I hope to serve the higher good of the planet and humankind, and to collaborate with others in order to have the broadest impact possible.