The Transformational Listening Playground
What If There’s Nothing to Figure Out?
The Power, Promise and Practice of Transformational Listening™
April 20–24, 2026 • Rising Circle Ranch at MEAWisdom • Santa Fe, NM
A Circle of 12 | With Gail Larsen
Welcome to the Listening Playground™…
…where curiosity and play become the antidotes to serious times
Created by Gail Larsen, founder of Transformational Speaking™ and a long-time guide in authentic expression. For three decades, Gail has supported small groups and individuals in listening for what’s true, living in alignment with who they are, and speaking from that place with clarity and courage. Transformational Listening™ is the natural next step in this work.
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Sit, be still, and listen,
because you’re drunk
and we’re at the edge of the roof.
—Rumi
Are there questions you hold that seem unanswerable? Problems that seem insurmountable?
In these times of rampant uncertainty, many of us are asking how we are to show up and step up.
As Rumi suggests, our minds and ideas are not solving our problems. In fact, we’re drunk on words that may be making things worse.
Listening holds the promise of a way forward that might just work.
Join us in this experience, exploration, and experiment in Listening in new ways.
What if life didn’t require more effort or figuring out… but more listening in?
What if clarity emerges not from strategy or striving, but from allowing, noticing, and letting Life show you what’s ready to unfold?
Transformational Speaking calls forth our truth.
Transformational Listening calls forth what is waiting to be born.
“What was remarkable about Transformational Listening was that it was experiential. We didn’t have to ‘work’ to find insight; we simply opened ourselves to being found by it. Wisdom and connection arrive in the most unexpected ways—and often at the most unexpected times.”—Bruce Mezan
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This is an invitation to step into a playground of possibility — a place where your mind can rest from trying to figure things out and your soul can lead.
In a circle of just 12 “important strangers,” we’ll explore the four dimensions of listening that can reshape how we live, lead, love, create, and serve.
“Gail’s workshop genuinely changed how I listen. I’ve spent about thirty years relying almost completely on my analytical mind, and I never realized how much I was missing. She showed me that listening isn’t just a head exercise. There are other tools I can lean on in both business and life, and I’ve already started using them. I’m listening at a much deeper level now, and it’s opening doors in my relationships and in how I lead.”
—Derek Gehl, CEO, MEAWisdom
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The Four Dimensions of Listening
Over three+ days, we explore four dimensions that reveal a deeper compass for your life.
- Listening to Yourself
Where are you in your story? What thread has guided you all along? What is your body asking you to notice, release, reclaim, or trust? How do you recognize your “Holy No” and your “True Yes”? How do you know you know?
- Listening to Life
When we put aside our busy minds, new forms of guidance emerge — synchronicity, intuition, timing, dreams, symbols, and the inner knowing that says “this way.”
Here, we learn to notice the ways Life is already speaking to us.
- Listening to Each Other
There is a way of listening that awakens wisdom rather than debate.
In this kind of circle, presence is medicine and conversation becomes alchemy.
- Listening Together
When a group aligns, something extraordinary happens.
We begin to sense what wants to emerge among us — ideas, direction, possibilities, and stories none of us could access alone. Around the big questions that matter!
This is collective intelligence.
This is where the future speaks.
“The future enters into us, to transform itself through us,
before it ever happens.”
—Rilke
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The Land that Holds Us
At MEA’s 2,600-acre Rising Circle Ranch, the world beyond words is a constant companion — the land, the wind, the sky, the animals, the silence. Here, listening naturally expands across species, across generations, and across time.
We listen not only to the land but to the beings who share it with us, and to the ancestors whose lives made ours possible.
“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread — places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.”
—John Muir
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Why This Matters Now
We are living in times that ask us to stay awake to complexity while staying connected to ourselves, one another, and the future as it takes form through our vision and intention.
We can’t force clarity.
So let’s invite it — and listen for it.
As alumna Amy Hosford reflected:
“It’s not enough to know your story; one must listen deeply for what’s on the horizon. Transformational Listening doesn’t just change how we listen, it changes who we are when we listen. This work has fundamentally transformed how I show up as a listener, a leader, and a human being in this changing world.”
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What We’ll Explore Together
This is not a curriculum.
This is a co-created field of play, exploration, and discovery.
Expect:
- Spacious embodied listening
- Soulful storytelling that sparks your own
- Partner practices for presence and clarity
- Listening rituals on the land
- Shared inquiry that awakens wisdom
- Creative discovery
- Laughter, wonder, and permission not to know
- A collective listening process toward a new story for our times
All held in the high-desert beauty, expansive skies, and ancient whispers of the 2,600-acre Rising Circle Ranch • Santa Fe, New Mexico.
A place made for listening, play, prayer, and possibility.
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Benefits of Coming to the Transformational Listening Playground™
What we want for you:
- A clearer relationship with your inner blueprint — the individual thread of your life and how it is trying to guide you now.
- Greater trust in your inner guidance, intuition, and the subtle cues that arise when you stop overriding what you feel and know
- A sense of orientation in uncertain times, grounded not in strategy but in listening to what is genuinely yours to do.
- A calmer, more spacious nervous system, created through practices that soften the mind’s grip and open you to the Unknown.
- An experience of being met and witnessed in a circle of like-hearted companions who value depth, curiosity, and exploration.
- Tools for listening to Life in real time—through synchronicity, body signals, resonance, and unexpected openings.
- More courage to follow what’s true, even–and especially!– when it leads beyond the familiar. There the new story awaits.
- Relief from the pressure to figure everything out, replaced by an ability to let guidance arise naturally.
- A renewed sense of direction, not as a decision but as a recognition: “Oh. This is what’s next.”
- A felt experience of the Mystery, and how it partners with the greater intelligence within you to create the life you are here to live.
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Who This Playground Is For
This circle is for those who value curiosity, depth, and a willingness to follow the individual thread of their lives — the greater plan that reveals itself as we listen.
- You sense a new future calling and want to listen for what’s emerging
- You want to live and lead in a more aligned, intuitive way
- You are self-aware and curious
- You crave depth, meaning, resonance, and clarity
- You are energized by playing with new possibilities — and by being surprised!
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Who This Playground Is Not For
This circle requires that you be willing to play first… and understand later!
This circle is not for you if:
- You need answers, proof, or certainty before you’re willing to explore
- You tend to question everything rather than enter the unknown
- You’re not curious about collaborating with what you can’t yet see as part of how you grow and move forward.
- You’re in emotional overwhelm or depletion
- You need rest, stabilization, or individual coaching more than exploration
- You’re seeking specific direction rather than open-ended discovery right now
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Program Details
Dates: Begin 3 PM Monday, April 20 • Conclude 11 AM Friday, April 24, 2026
Location: MEAWisdom — Rising Circle Ranch, Galisteo, NM (just outside of Santa Fe)
Group Size: 12 participants
Guided by: Gail Larsen, Playmate-in-Chief & Provocateur of Sacred Possibility
Tuition:
Set by MEA and includes four nights of lodging, exceptional cuisine, and exquisite hospitality at one of the World’s Greatest Places! Modern Elder Academy: World’s Greatest Places 2024 | TIME.
- Private accommodations: $5400
- Shared accommodations: $3600
(50% deposit upon registration; balance due 6 weeks prior)
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About Gail
Gail Larsen is an internationally respected teacher and facilitator known for her pioneering work in authentic expression and Transformational Speaking™. For more than 30 years, she has worked closely with small groups and individuals, helping them access deeper clarity, communicate with greater authenticity, and make choices aligned with what matters most. She is the award-winning author of Transformational Speaking: If You Want to Change the World, Tell a Better Story (Random House & Brilliance Audio)
Her work blends reflective practices, lived experience, and a deep respect for the inner signals that guide wise action. Gail invites people to listen beneath the noise of daily life and notice the threads in their experience that lead to meaningful expression and purposeful direction.
Known for her clarity, compassion, humor and grounded presence, she creates learning spaces where people feel both supported and challenged to show up honestly. Transformational Listening™ is the natural evolution of her life’s work — where listening becomes the foundation for truthful speaking, conscious leadership, and the courage to live in alignment with your true calling.
“Gail is simultaneously a master teacher, laser-focused listener, keeper of ancient wisdom, and comedian . She has an uncanny ability to help us put aside the noise of the world and focus on what really matters. I felt a profound sense of healing while I was there. Regardless of your profession, this is necessary life work … The ripple effects will flow into your sense of self, your relationships, your work, and the world at large.” -Kari Cardinale
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Your Next Step
Are you curious?
Do you find yourself singing or sighing in relief?
You’re listening!
Join us to listen your way back to your own knowing.
Email gail@realspeaking.com to let me know you’re ready to play, and I will send your MEA enrollment link.
We will play, pray, create, and listen
as though the future depends on it.
Because it does.
“There is a voice inside you that doesn’t use words. Listen.”
—Rumi
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