Youth On Fire: Birthing a Generation of Embodied Global Leaders - Paperback

by Melissa Michaels (Author)

Like our planet, young people across the globe are heating up. As they come of age, some are boiling with outrage about the environmental toxins, unconscionable injustices, and social challenges they face. Some are setting their communities ablaze with gang warfare, bullying, hazing, or other destructive acts of violence. Others are barely flickering, having dimmed their light through self-destructive behaviors, lost in addictions or a variety of numbing habits that sublimate their life force. Many youth are simply invisible, lacking the encouragement of adults, disregarded or discarded with no opportunities on the horizon. Yet at the same time, there is an ever-expanding group of youth on fire. In positive ways, they are collectively ignited-illuminating the path from addiction into action, from fragmentation into integration, from isolation into community. Youth On Fire tells the timely story of hundreds of diverse young people rising from the ashes and dancing into inspired leadership and creative action-bringing light to people and places suffering around the world. The processes, protocols, and practices described within these pages galvanize individuals and communities on every continent. If you are a young person or working with youth as an educator, parent, rites of passage guide, mentor, counselor, somatic practitioner, or community organizer, this book is for you.

Author Biography

Melissa Michaels, Ed.D., creates movement-based cross-cultural journeys focusing on the potential that is available at all of life's major thresholds. For three decades, she has engaged in the healing, initiating, educating, and mentoring of young people and the adults who serve them. She developed the first contemporary youth leadership rites of passage program rooted in dance. Youth On Fire tells the story of her life-changing work-in settings ranging from college campuses to inner city schools, from refugee settlements to the United Nations. Melissa is also the founder of the SomaSource Process and Golden Bridge, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving and empowering the lives of people around the world. Melissa is a first generation teacher of the 5Rhythms(R), a Fellow at the Fielding Graduate University's Institute of Social Innovation, along with being a registered Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist. Melissa is a social artist dedicated to our collective renewal through the liberation of the creative Spirit.