Anna Swisher

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Anna Swisher is a community organiser, gardener, movement teacher, and Work That Reconnects facilitator and mentor.  Originally from North Carolina, she lives in western Ireland via a decade in San Francisco. She works in community development, and facilitates courses and workshops for community groups and organisations.

 

Anna holds an M.A. in East-West Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS).  She has further certifications in the Work That Reconnects, Eco-therapy and wilderness guiding, Permaculture, Yoga and Yoga Therapy, JourneyDance™, and Mindfulness Education.  

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Anna has spent recent years deeply studying and facilitating the work of Joanna Macy, Active Hope and The Work That Reconnects, and sharing it in various communities throughout Europe and the U.S.   She has also been deepening her study and practice of permaculture, looking for creative ways to implement permaculture design to support local community resilience.  She facilitates dance and movement-based community programs, leading community dances and teaching classes and workshops around the west of Ireland. 

 

In California, Anna worked with various organizations that offer nature connection and mentoring, rites of passage, nature/outdoor education, wilderness adventure, and nature-based social-emotional learning.  Working with high schools, colleges, sports teams and non-profits, she has focused on working with teenagers and young adults to support self-awareness, emotional literacy, nature connection, stress-relief, team-building and authentic leadership, and social and ecological responsibility. 

​During her M.A. program at CIIS,  Anna focused on Ecopsychology, Tantric and other non-dual traditions, Indigenous wisdom and Earth-based spirituality, and embodied process and practices for psychospiritual growth.  After completing her graduate degree, she focused on teaching yoga and dance, guiding people to connect with their bodies to facilitate inner and outer transformation.  She spent time studying indigenous/shamanic practice, plant medicine, and herbalism.  The learnings from this time in her life have informed her path and her work immensely.​

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She lived on several permaculture teaching sites and eco-farms, where she learned more about growing things, as well as the joys and challenges of operating communities.  

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Since 2019, she lives in a small town in western Ireland, tending a communal garden, building community, and helping develop programs to support regenerative culture and the Great Turning.  She is really excited about creative collaborative work, and sharing Active Hope with anyone who will listen.  She runs community dance every week, works on local biodiversity with community groups in her town, and supports a local arts group and poetry group. She loves singing, horses, her friends, coffee, growing things, laughing loudly, learning, going for a cycle, a glass of red wine, and curling up with a good book.  She is forever learning how to take herself less seriously.