Chriscion was envisioned and implemented by its founder, Dawn Ely. For decades, Dawn operated as a health care executive and business owner as her face to the world, while pursuing her spirituality and transcendental connections and practices privately. In 2016, she felt she was being asked to commit more fully to what she is to bring into and be in the world. So, she made a deep, full, soul commitment to aligning her human will to the sacred, divine, and transcendental will and dharma for her soul. This commitment included her stated willingness to “sacrifice everything” and a request to keep her away from any distractions. The ways her life changed from that moment cannot be overstated. She spent nearly 10 years just being, connecting, listening, and practicing the subtle discernment for each next phase and step.

She pursued medical-spiritual healing with a Sufi order, indigenous shamanism/medicine woman training and practices, she read extensively, she developed more spiritual practices, and created curricula for mastering the human ego and aligning more with the higher self, including a spin-off stand-alone series on processing emotions. As she states, this program came through her rather than from her. This curriculum was also published by a small publisher in 2020 as, Perfecting the Soul: Remembering Who You Are. She obtained a Masters in Divinity with concentrations in Justice, Peace-building, & Conflict Transformation and in Society & Personality. She simultaneously obtained her Masters in Public Health in Behavioral, Social, Health Education Sciences with certificates as a Mental Health specialist and an Injury & Violence Prevention specialist. She is ordained in the Disciples of Christ denomination.

Throughout this process, Dawn began to see how our relationship with self ripples out into our relationship with others, our relationship with the natural world, and our relationship with concepts like justice, equity, restoration, and reconciliation. She believes that what underlies all of this is our spiritual relationship – our sense of identity and connection to the transcendental. This is not limited to one’s religion, though religion can play a large part. This is more about who we think we are and the value we have in just existing, which can derive from a number of sources. This spiritual health directly impacts our mental health and relationship with self which then flows into all other relationships. This is the Chriscion Wheel of Peace & Wholeness. Each relationship wedge both impacts and is reflected in the other relationships of the wheel.

Chriscion is the culmination of Dawn’s vision and discernment of how to bring awareness, healing of all of these relationships, deeper learning, practices, inter-connectedness, restoration, and reconciliation more pervasively in this world.

Enjoy. Explore. Connect. Learn. Contribute. Heal. Ripple. Repeat.