The Great Work – Seeding Our Future

Dreams against Despair: Thomas Berry and the power of myth

Dreams, in the sense of inspiring visions, and myths, in the sense of powerful beliefs, have a huge influence on our world. Think of Mandela and Gandhi: two lone figures whose dreams overturned a myth which upheld a powerful Establishment. Deep down, I feel a lot of pain and despair for the state of our … Read more

Woodland Resilience Immersion Retreat For Doctors

Nature-based ways to resource yourself and your practice Tuesday 20th July at 5pm until Thursday 22nd July at 5pmSingle accommodation. Vegetarian food locally sourced where possible. Total £275 The impact of prolonged overload, COVID working and the stress of facing ever-rising demands with shrinking resources, is calling us to respond creatively. This Woodland Resilience Immersion will offer you some insights and skills, and different ways for raising resilience and nourishing wellbeing. In 2018, Westminster Centre for Resilience recognised that health professionals need something more than the typical half-day resilience session in an urban training room. Hazel Hill Wood is an off-grid conference centre set in a 70-acre wood near Salisbury. Hazel Hill Trust and Westminster Centre for Resilience have jointly developed a woodland retreat programme. We have many years’ experience of delivering nature-based resilience programmes for front-line services. The next two-night, 48-hour residential Woodland Immersion will offer a unique combination of our teams’ expertise. There is growing evidence for the benefits of Nature contact in offsetting high levels of stress, ‘Directed Attention Fatigue’, information overload, and excessive ‘screen time’. The pilot programmes at Hazel Hill – evaluated by Westminster Centre for Resilience – showed statistically significant impacts. There is a brief summary below. Find peace in a beautiful 70-acre woodland – healing/nourishing in its own rightTry a range of ‘forest bathing’ and mindfulness techniquesExplore what nature’s cycles can teach us about our resilience as human ecosystemsTime to experience some movement, including some brief practical conservation workTo feel nourished by being part of a transitory community of shared experienceApplying the neurophysiology of the recovery responseCampfire circles: personal/professional stories of living in turbulent timesTime for resting and to share good food FACILITATORS David Peters worked for many years as a GP, and since 2000 in a range of professional and research roles in the NHS . He co founded and directed the Westminster Centre for Resilience (WCR), where he is now Emeritus Professor. https://www.londonfirst.co.uk/newspublications/blog/what-a-university-can-do-resilience-and-leadership-in-challenging-timeshttps://www.westminster.ac.uk/news/westminster-centre-for-resilience-in-conversation-with-michel-van-der-bel-of-microsoft Marcos Frangos has many years’ experience as a person-centred counsellor, and in groups working with ecosystems as a model for human resilience: http://www.wellspringchange.com For information please email David Peters. Link to Nourishing the Frontline Resilience: Intensive Preliminary Evaluation
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Grow your own Happiness

60-90-minute online workshop Cultivate your wellbeing with gardening skills! Available for group bookingsWith Alan Heeks In these stormy times, we need new skills to stay happy. A cultivated ecosystem, like a garden, is a role model for human nature: this workshop shows how gardening methods can help you grow your own happiness and deepen the roots of your resilience. For example: Mulching and pruning to nourish your rootsComposting stress as a source of energyUse gardening skills like observation and creativityFind new ways to adapt to the climate crisisDraw inspiration from Nature to guide you in uncertainty Alan Heeks has over 25 years of experience exploring Natural Happiness with groups. It grows from creating a 130-acre organic farm and education centre at Magdalen Farm in West Dorset, and from gardening with his wife at home. In this online workshop, Alan will describe the Seven Seeds of Natural Happiness, and participants will have a chance to try some of them out. Alan is happy to take bookings for this event from environmental, community and other groups, at a time of their choosing for a moderate fee by negotiation. CONTACT LINK
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Book blog: Deep Adaptation – Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos by Jem Bendell and Rupert Read
I regard Deep Adaptation as one of the most important approaches to the climate crisis, and this new book will give you a thorough grounding in what DA is, and isn’t, and in the various ways it might evolve over the next few years. It’s not easy to define what Deep Adaptation is: I wouldn’t call it a movement, since it is not trying to recruit members or campaign for a specific set of aims. I see DA more as an approach for exploring the climate crisis and related issues, and also as a network offering support and resources: the best gateway is www.deepadaptation.info. The fact that this book is a collection of chapters by different contributors supports this view. The book is edited by Jem Bendell, who originated the DA approach back in summer 2018, and Rupert Read, a writer and activist who has been a leading figure in the Green Party and Extinction Rebellion. Unlike many such collections, this one is well-organised, avoids duplicated content, and gives a good overview of the insights, uncertainties, and potential of Deep Adaptation currently. The content of this book is far too rich to try to summarise in one blog, so I will give a gist of each chapter to offer a flavour. This explores what climate science can and cannot tell us about our predicament, written by Jem and Rupert. They observe that, “During times of change, rapid collapse rather than gradual change is quite common for both ecosystems and societies.” This is the original paper published by Jem in July 2018, which has now been downloaded a million times. Very clear, and well worth reading. One of the most contentious issues in DA is Jem’s view that societal collapse in many countries is inevitable, a claim which he has not really substantiated, and which I, Rupert Read and many others believe is overstated. This chapter is a well-considered exploration of reasons why collapse is quite possible, by four authors including Servigne and Stevens, who have written two very useful books on this topic. For my blog on the first of these, click here. Exploring the risks of collapse and how to prevent it should clearly be a priority, and they explain how the French government is now doing this. They also quote a 2020 opinion survey which found that 56% of people in the UK, 65% in France, think that “western civilisation as we know it will soon collapse”. This really useful chapter is by Adrian Tait of the Climate Psychology Alliance. It is a useful and encouraging explanation of the various approaches which the CPA are exploring. I share their view that collective processing and healing of trauma and many other emotions around the climate crisis will be increasingly important, and their Through the Door initiative aims to get therapists and counsellors working with people in nature, which could be another crucial factor. This valuable chapter by Jem explores the subconscious beliefs and ideologies which influence many of us, including activists. I have been working with Jem and the DA network since late 2018, and one of the many things I admire about it is a willingness to look at the shadow side, which this chapter does well. Jem looks at a range of beliefs which most white middle-class people hold, such as entitlement, desire for control and autonomy, belief in economic and technical progress. He also offers alternative values, such as compassion, openness and curiosity, mutuality. He highlights the need to become “more aware and less reactive to our emotion of fear”, but also acknowledges how hard it is to see and change one’s own ideology, and he observes that doing so is likely to remain marginal. This chapter, entitled Unconscious Addictions, builds on the previous one: it is written by members of a collective called Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures, who aim to bring in the voice of indigenous and marginalised people. It is a useful exploration of the systemic denials in mainstream society, for example denying that we are “entangled within a living wider metabolism that is bio-intelligent”. They point out that most of us need to wean ourselves off addictions and attachments to ideology and our current sense of self, but the chapter is skimpy on ways to do this. This chapter on facilitating Deep Adaptation processes is by Jem with Katie Carr, who has been a key figure in this aspect of DA. If, like me, you are involved in facilitating groups around climate issues, you will find a lot of valuable, practical pointers here. One of the challenges they point out is that “rather than offering a map, DA is more an invitation into maplessness…”, and enabling this requires a facilitator to create a safe and loving containing space. The chapter also lists some specific processes used in the DA Forum, such as Deep listening, Deep relating, and Death cafes. This chapter on The Great Turning is by Sean Kelly and Joanna Macy. Joanna is one of the elders in climate responses, having been involved since the 1960s. Her Work that Reconnects is widely used in DA and elsewhere as one of the best ways to enable people to engage with painful feelings around climate, such as fear, overwhelm and grief. It is useful in this chapter to hear how she sees WTR relating to Deep Adaptation and the severe worsening of the climate crisis. For example, they comment that “as collapse intensifies, we can expect … the spread of what Buddhists call the ‘three poisons’: greed, hatred and delusion.” Whilst in the past, the Great Turning might have been seen as moving towards a complete resolution of issues, they accept that this is no longer realistic, and describe it as “not an alternative to collapse, but a passage through.” Their view of this crisis as potentially a “collective initiation” is also a helpful one. This chapter by Jonathan Gosling explores leadership and management in the context of DA. He highlights the way […]
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