
My name is Marc Coenders. I work as an independent professional in the field of learning and development of people and organizations. I am specialized in facilitating communities of practice and networked learning. I was born in The Netherlands and I have studied geography and educational science. I obtained my PhD at Utrecht University (2008) with a thesis on Learning Architecture. I think and act holistically with respect to learning activities and processes. I look for coherence in learning challenges at different levels of scale. Climate change, for example, not only concerns scientists and politicians, but also young children and their parents. In order to keep our planet habitable and achieve peace and prosperity for all, we will need to learn faster and more in connection and alignment with each other. In 2006 I graduated at Vormingsschool Viniyoga, led by Flor Stickens and Claude Maréchal, as a yoga teacher in the tradition of Desikachar (Chennai, India). Besides philosophy of yoga, other contemplative wisdom traditions are important sources of inspiration for me. Comparative cultural study and forms of Mondial Learning (as outlined by Henri van Praag) are what I stand for. Reciprocal illumination is a form of exploration in which insights from one tradition are utilized to clarify stories and customs from another.