3. SelfDesign LifeSpiral The LifeSpiral is the map of anyone's journey from conception through birth throughout all the stages of our lives to our eventual death. This model mapped on the logarithmic spiral with the Fibonacci series marking the years and phases provides a powerful reflection and metaphor for understanding our own life's journey. Brent has shared this experience now with hundreds of people around North America and provided many life changing insights for workshop participants. The following are photographs of the LifeSpiral that was built outside the Wondertree Learning Center in Vancouver, Canada, June 2006. This is how we start marking out the LifeSpiral, using a square we set the area to be chalked. This is a group of children in Wondertree's kindergarden who came by to see what we were doing. I talked to them a little about maps and drawings that we make of real things. They had all seen maps of roads and cities and were excited when I talked about the LifeSpiral being a map of their life. I explained that it will show you how old your grandmother is, how old your parents are, and how far you have come since you were born. Here we are placing the stones on the chalked spiral drawn on the grass. One parent is painting the Fibonacci numbers, 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89 on the stones. First we dig around each stone with a knife then carefully lift out the sod. Here John Krotez our SelfDesign Information Technology Director is working with a learner from the SelfDesign Learning Community. They have just placed a stone into the hole where the circular piece of sod has been removed. It took almost two days to plan, layout, dig and lay the stones in the lawn. On the third day we invited the Wondertree and SelfDesign communities to come and open the SelfDesign LifeSpiral. Here we have learners of all ages standing on the stone that represents their current age. You can see me on the far right, as on this occassion I happened to be, at 58, the oldest member of the community at the LifeSpiral. Here we have a parent, a mentor and a friend talking about their experience on the lifespiral and about events that have played a significant role in the unfolding of their lives. We use the sprial for both personal experience and community building. It is transformative to see a map of your entire life, and it is amazing what you can learn about your life's journey by walking on this model. This is a pretty typical experience for almost everyone. By starting at the center we can walk the path of one's life as it unfolds. Each quadrant of the LifeSpiral represents a stage in human development and marks out unique sets of activites and life patterns that are shared by many people. We are open to building a SelfDesign LifeSpiral in your community. All you need to do is contact us and we will begin working with you to plan the event. It is a good idea to plan about 3 days for the event and to have about 10 to 30 people to help build the LifeSpiral. There are many ways to build it depending on your situation and what you want to achieve. Please contact brentcameron@selfdesign.org if you are interested in having me and Barbara Meyer come to your community to help you build the Spiral, and then second work with your community to show you how to use it for years to come.