We at Circle of Life Rediscovery are happy to be working in partnership with Ecodharma in Spain. Ecoharma honours the web of life drawing on Buddhist Dharma and emerging ecological paradigms of our time. Circle of Life Rediscovery’s vision is to transform education, health and family life through nature. This partnership enables us to be support mutually beneficial aims and to reach out to a wider audience.
Together, we successfully won a European-based Erasmus grant to pay for free participation on a number of trainings that will support personal development and our future work.
Marina Robb, Director of Circle of Life Rediscovery, is preparing to deliver this unique training starting next week – applying a nature-centric developmental model, looking at our values and how this support our action in the world, and fostering a deeply personal and life affirming relationship with nature.
“When humans investigate and see through their layers of anthropocentric self-cherishing, a most profound change in consciousness begins to take place. Alienation subsides. The human is no longer an outsider, apart. Your humanness is then recognised as being merely the most recent stage of your existence, and as you stop identifying exclusively with this chapter, you start to get in touch with yourself as mammal, as vertebrate, as a species only recently emerged from the rainforest… “I am protecting the rainforest” develops to “I am part of the rainforest protecting myself. I am that part of the rainforest recently emerged into thinking.” What a relief then!’
John Seed, Beyond Anrthopocentrism
Nature connection work can help us to bring forth an ecological consciousness – an empowering sense of connection and identity that affirms our solidarity with life. Rediscovering this for ourselves and helping others to deepen this connection is crucial for both personal healing and the social transformation we need today. This work can enable us to recognize that ‘we are nature defending itself’, and to draw on the empowerment that such a realisation provides.
This training is offered to those who want to learn how ‘ecological consciousness’ can empower their action in solidarity with nature, and for those involved in nature based education who wish to deepen their experience of sharing such work with others.
The training includes the following threads:
Ecopsychological Developmental Wheel: A nature based understanding of human development. The developmental wheel provides a framing for questions such as: What developmental tasks (both social and ecological) are we called to attend to as we mature from childhood to adolescence to adulthood to elderhood? What is the role of the more-than-human world in our own maturation? How can we apply and give value to this through our work with others?
Immersion in Nature: Providing deep nature connection experiences, exercises and use of natural materials, we will open up our senses and the inner space to listen to the natural world. Through immersion we will find our own way to deepen our relationship to the living world, to open our perceptions to the ‘other’ and reaffirm our kinship to nature.
Inner Contemplative Work: Reflective practices that support the exploration and cultivation of the space of deeper self-awareness and connection with the motivating forces that drive us. We explore ways of applying this awareness to empower our actions.
Engaging with the Ceremonial: Creating the opportunity for deeper forms of connection to exist, we ask: What role does ceremony have in opening us to the felt sense of the sacred in our lives? How can ceremony help connect us more deeply with ourselves, with each other and in service to the wider Earth community? How can we draw on that which has been gifted to us by those who have gone before (ancestors and traditions) and yet co-create something that fits our place and times?
Living Together as Temporary Community: What is the role of community in witnessing, empowering, and nourishing each other? How can we find renewed inspiration in human community, knowing we are not alone and finding solidarity in these times? We explore how craftwork and creativity contribute to community and engagement with nature.
In the beautiful land and retreat space, we will model a participative and emergent approach to learning that draws on our own backgrounds yet is responsive to the interests and needs of the group, acknowledging the richness found in collaborative learning.
Marina Robb, Director – Circle of Life Rediscovery.
Circle of Life Rediscovery is a not for profit CIC company in East Sussex. They provide outdoor learning and nature based experiences including bespoke Camps for schools, Forest School sessions, Enrichment Days plus Forest School Training Level 3 and CPD’s for adults as well as funded programmes. Find out more here.