What does it mean to educate from the inside out? How can schools, universities and educators cultivate not only intellectual knowledge, but also the inner life of their students — their sense of meaning, purpose and wholeness?
These are the questions at the heart of the Second Online Symposium on Spiritual Intelligence in Education, brought to you by the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM).
On 3 October 2026, leading thinkers, researchers and educators from around the world will come together for a rich day of talks exploring the role of spiritual intelligence in contemporary education — from scientific evidence to classroom practice, from quantum physics to contemplative wisdom.
(All times are in French time - CEST)
| 01:00 – 01:30 pm | Opening Session (Taynã Malaspina) Teaching from Within: Practical Pathways to Cultivate Spiritual Intelligence in Education |
| 01:30 – 02:15 pm | Talk 1 (Danah Zohar) New Quantum Answers to Life’s Five Oldest Questions |
| 02:15 – 03:00 pm | Talk 2 (Alexander Moreira) Spirituality in Mental Health and Youth Well-being: Evidence and Recommendations |
| 03:00 – 03:15 pm | Break |
| 03:15 – 04:00 pm | Talk 3 (Cindy Wigglesworth) The 21 Skills of Spiritual Intelligence – The Next Step beyond Emotional Intelligence |
| 04:00 – 04:30 pm | Talk 4 (Patricia Cury) Case Study: Implementation of the Spiritual Intelligence Program at the Faculty of Medicine (FACERES) |
| 04:30 – 05:15 pm | Closing Session (Laurence Freeman) The Switch from Left-Brain to Right-Brain Thinking |
| 05:15 – 05:30 pm | Questions and Answers |
Languages available:
The talks will be in English and we will have simultaneous translation into Portuguese and Spanish.
Leader
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Tayna Malaspina
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Director of Young Adults Programme. Postgraduate at Spirituality and Consciousness Studies (PUC University). Taynã is the international director of the WCCM Young Adults Programme. Oblate (monastic in the world) of the WCCM. Graduated in Social Communication (ESPM-SP). In her Masters in Social Psychology (PUC-SP), she studied the relationship between happiness and meaning at work from Generation Y in Brazil. She has a postgraduate degree in Positive Psychology: Science of Well-being and Self-Realisation (PUC-RS), where she studied the development of spiritual intelligence through the practices of mindfulness and Christian meditation. In her postgraduate course in Spirituality and Consciousness Studies at PUC-RS, she studied Christian meditation in times of liquid modernity and burnout society.
Other Leaders
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Danah Zohar
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Physics and Philosophy at MIT. Postgraduate at Harvard University. Author of SQ – Spiritual Intelligence. Danah Zohar is a management thought leader, physicist, philosopher and author. Her best-selling books include Spiritual Capital: Wealth We Can Live By and SQ – Spiritual Intelligence, The Ultimate Intelligence, which constitute ground-breaking work on SQ, spiritual intelligence and spiritual capital; ReWiring the Corporate Brain, The Quantum Society and The Quantum Self, previous work which extends the language and principles of quantum physics into a new understanding of human consciousness, psychology and social organization, particularly the organization of companies.
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Alexander Moreira
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Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Research Center in Spirituality and Health (NUPES), School of Medicine, Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), Brazil - 2025 Oskar Pfister Award of the American Psychiatric Association
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Cindy Wigglesworth
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President of Deep Change. Cindy Wigglesworth, MA is the bestselling author of SQ21: The Twenty-One Skills of Spiritual Intelligence (SelectBooks, 2012), a book that won a Hoffer Award for best spiritual book of 2013. SQ21 spiritual intelligence self-assessment has created a validated and diversity-appropriate way of having spiritual conversations in the workplace.
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Patricia Cury
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A pathologist and palliative care specialist, and an associate professor at the University of São Paulo (USP), she works as a physician at the Hospital de Base-Funfarme in São José do Rio Preto, teaches in the medical program at FACERES, and serves as a facilitator for the Last Aid course
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Laurence Freeman
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Director of WCCM. Benedictine Monk. Author of a number of books on Christian Meditation.Oxford University. Laurence Freeman OSB is an English Benedictine monk and Catholic priest. He is the director of the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM), prior of its Benedictine Oblate community and director of Bonnevaux, the international centre of the WCCM in France. Freeman’s work also involves encouraging the teaching of meditation to children and university students. In 2005 he founded the John Main Centre for Meditation and Inter-Religious Dialogue at Georgetown University
What inspired or touched you the most
during the 2025 symposium?
Q&A with the Speakers
In each talk, you will have the opportunity to ask questions to the speaker
Access to Recordings
By registering, you'll be given access to the talks' recordings
Meet Fellow Meditators
Whatever the stage of your journey meet fellow meditators with whom to reflect and share your thoughts about this series in a safe environment
Meditate Together
We offer the opportunity to meditate together at the start of each session
Image by Beth Macdonald from Unsplash