An Indigenous/Ecological Approach

Katia Sol (Madjidi)

THE ECOLOGY OF TRANSFORMATION

Overview of Presentation•Who am I?• Global Context • An Opportunity for Global Transformative Learning• Relational Epistemology• A Journey of Transformation• Reconnection to Self

Reconnection to Nature• Reconnection to the Village• Engaging in the World

• What Becomes Possible?• Potential Course Offerings

Overview of Presentation• Who am I?

• Crisis on multiple levels• Global• Individual• World

• Village

• Nature

• Self

• A journey of global transformation:• An Opportunity for Global Transformative Learning (to address crisis?)• Practices that cultivate transformation

• A Journey of individual transformation• My journey to RDI• Research Methodology• Reconnection to Self

Reconnection to Nature• Reconnection to the Village• Engaging in the World• What Becomes Possible?

So What – for the Great Turning? Back to the Global – connection

So what – for me?• Who am I?...Now?

• Potential Course Offerings

Who am I?

Indigenous Epistemology

Ecopsychology &

Permaculture Principles

Spiritual/Transpersonal Psychology

Transformative Learning & Consciousnes

s Studies

• Indigenous Worldviews & Ways of Knowing• Transformative Learning • Global Studies/The Dynamics of Global Change• Ecopyschology & Deep Nature Connection • Spiritual & Transpersonal Psychology• Participatory Education & Deep Education• Rites of Passage/Initiation• Consciousness Studies• Divine Feminine & Masculine• Social Movements • Latin American Studies• Intercultural, Interracial and Intergenerational Dialogue • Qualitative Methodologies – participatory action research, community-based, arts-informed, mixed methods, Indigenous, relational, regenerative, transformative • Engaged Praxis – Research & Teaching

Organize & Pare down

Context/The Big Picture

Humanity is passing through a time of great transition, an unprecedented convergence of immense global crisis and opportunity.

A World in CrisisUnprecedented levels of crisis currently facing our globalized community, placing us at a threatening tipping point for economic, environmental, social, political, psychological, and spiritual collapse (Earth Charter, 2000; Hawken, 2006; Homer-Dixon, 2006; Diamond, 2005; IPCC, 2007; Peterson, 2009; Gore, 2006; McKibben, 1999; Heinberg, 2007; NASA, 2010; Miller, 2001; Lerner, 2000) • Environmental impact and climate change• Diminishing availability of and increasing demand for energy

resources, food and clean water• Population growth/migration• Widening gaps in income distribution• Violence, war, civil unrest, domestic abuse, gender violence• An unjust justice system• Clashes of ideology and faith • 1/3rd of US public on anti-depressants/anti-anxiety meds, increasing

numbers of children on medication for ADD, ADHD, increasing prevalence of autism• Addictions – unhealthy use of food, materialism, drugs, alcohol, work,

sex, television, video games, internet, gambling, etc

A Global Disconnect Disorder

• People have become fundamentally disconnected from• THEMSELVES (THEIR OWN HIGHER SELF/PURPOSE & MEANING)• THE NATURAL WORLD• ONE ANOTHER

• “The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers; wider freeways but narrower viewpoints; we spend more but have less; we buy more but enjoy it less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences but less time; we have more degrees but less sense; more knowledge but less judgment; more expenses but more problems; more medicine but less wellness. We have multiplied our possessions but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom. and hate too often. We’ve learned how to make a living but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years. We've been all way to the moon and back but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We've conquered outer space but not inner space... (student survivor of Columbine shootings, quoted in Miller 2001: 2)

Opportunity for Global Transformative Learning

The possibility that the scope and impact of our growing global ecological, economic, political, social, psychological and spiritual crises could, rather than resulting in collapse, instead invite humanity into a great global process of transformative learning that catalyzes us to move into an ecologically regenerative, socially just and spiritually connected world.

• “The Great Turning” (Macy and Brown, 1998; Korten, 2006)• “The Shift”• “The Fulfillment of Prophecy” (Leading Earth Woman/Longboat,

2009), • “Catagenesis” (Homer-Dixon, 2006),• “The sunset of an ecologically illiterate civilization” (Ausubel,

2010)

Transformative Learning•Transformative learning involves experiencing a deep, structural shift in the basic premises of thought, feeling, and actions. It is a shift of consciousness that dramatically and permanently alters our way of being…Such a shift involves our understanding of ourselves and our self-locations; our relationships with other humans and with the natural world…and our sense of the possibilities for social justice, peace and personal joy. (O’Sullivan 2003: 11)

Transformative Learning As Rite of Passage/Initiatory Pathway

Separation

Purification

DeathNew

Knowledge

Creation

How to cross the great divide• Foundational to this shift and critical to our survival and prosperity as a global community will be the speed and depth with which humanity is able to transform our ways of relating with our selves, one another and the earth.

•My scholarship (teaching, research, and praxis) focuses on the practices and pathways that support people to make this great individual and collective transformation

A Relational (Indigenous/Ecological) Research Epistemology

• According to Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Lather’s chart of Postpositivist Inquiry (1991) sets out various critiques of positivist science (e.g. post-modern, emanicpatory, etc.), but “significantly absent are the organic and indigenous approaches to research” (Smith, p. 167).

• Smith purports that most post-positivist approaches are regarded as deriving from a Freirian pedagogy, and are therefore framed as relatively recent; however, this denies the possibility that alternative research frameworks could pre-date positivism and therefore also precede “post-modern” approaches such as “participatory-action” research.

• The choice to frame my methodology from an indigenous-ecological standpoint is therefore an explicit choice to centralize worldviews and methods that come not from a Western paradigm, but rather from ancient, earth-based ways of knowing and that arise from organic, indigenous, natural, ecological, and intuitive standpoints.

Core Principles of Relational Epistemology (Katia Sol)• Knowledge is grounded in a particular location, community and

natural ecosystem• Learning happens through observation, participation, intuition, and

mentoring• Centralizes the importance of relationships and connections within a

community or eco-system• Allows for the organic, natural unfoldment of processes and

discovery• Emphasizes the role of recovery, healing and regeneration in natural

and human systems• Honors diversity and the individual stories of the diverse members

of an eco-system, as well as the collective story they come together to uniquely tell• Respect for all members of the community and ecosystem• Responsibility to care for the land, for the community of which we

are a part, and for the knowledge and traditions that are entrusted to us• Reciprocity (law of return) – giving back to the community and the

ecosystem

• Lakota - Mitakuye Oyasin, or “All My Relations”, speaks to the understanding that relationship is not defined as only our human or blood relations but as our living relationships with all beings in Creation, including mineral, plant and animal life.

• Maori- whanaungatanga, “the process of establishing meaningful, reciprocal and familial relationships through culturally appropriate ways, establishing connectedness and engagement and therefore a deeper commitment to other people.” (Bishop, 1999).

• Requires that the researcher place the “interests, knowledge, and experience” of the community as central to the research (Rigney 1999: 19).

• This means that the research aims to establish meaningful connections and relationships with the community, organization, and ecosystem being studied, which may carry beyond the scope of the research into potentially “life-long” relationships and commitments (Smith, 1992).

The Ecology of Transformation

Arriving at the Garden Gates…

• “it was a longing or yearning for a deeper connection to just, kind of, everything…at that time, I didn’t even know that that’s what I needed so bad. It just felt like a longing for something more.”

• “I could tell that my ecologies were disconnected, not well nourished, not regenerative.”

• “I felt like there was this really big disconnect…..I was really shut down, and closed down and scared to be myself in the world.”

• “I was arriving…pretty depleted, pretty disillusioned, very frustrated… because in some ways I was getting all of this affirmation for being so great at what I was doing and getting more compensation financially than I ever gotten in my life and yet I was not happy.”

• “I was at a really challenging moment in my life … I was just feeling generally a lot of discontent with life. I just felt really stuck. I think stagnant is the best word. But I simultaneously wasn’t feeling like I had the motivation to change it either.....and I also was feeling really starved for spiritual connection”

Ecological Transformation• The response to this disconnect disorder must be holistic and integral:

• By addressing the whole human being • Body, heart, mind, spirit• Somatic, vital, emotional, imaginal, intellectual, intuitive and spiritual dimensions

• And ALSO by going beyond the isolated individual to cultivate reconnection to:• THE SELF (HIGHER SELF/PURPOSE & MEANING)•NATURE• THE INTERPERSONAL/VILLAGE• CONTRIBUTION & MEANINGFUL ENGAGEMENT IN THE WORLD

A Holistic/Integral Model for Transformation

Practices that Cultivate Connection to:

1. SELF• Personal practice/personal growth work• Individual psychological healing work

2. NATURE• Eco-psychology• Nature connection practices

3. INTERPERSONAL/VILLAGE• Interpersonal healing• Connection with village – growing, healing, collaborating,

manifesting TOGETHER

4. WORLD• Engaged Application in the World• Integration of self-nature-village practices through application and

praxis

The Ecology of

Transformation

Self Connection

Nature Connection

Village Connection

Engagement in World

Creating a Fertile Field for Transformation“Out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing, there is a field – I’ll meet you there.” – Rumi

• Curiosity • Non-judgment• Observation• Safe space for healing, vulnerability and authenticity

Connection with Self

Practices for Connection with Self• Gratitude practice• Intention setting• Stepping into Rumi’s Field• Landscape Assessment• Life Story• Patterns Journalling• Personal Healing Work• Tree Model• Inner Tracking & Ownership Process• Creative Scenes• Setting your North Star

TREE MODEL/ INNER PERMACULTURE

• Model for transformation from the inside out

• What is in our roots and soil is reflected in our canopy

• Transformation on an outer level begins by transforming our root systems and soil

• Process for inner tracking and inner healing

• Bringing curiosity & loving to our root systems

• “so what’s the little acorn that you’re decision to do something is stemming from? You know … where is the need in your life to or the need that you need to perceive is in the community that then somehow meets a need that you have, and that need is not encumbered by guilt or shame or regret or … you know, it’s just a true, inspired, creative, centered place that you are moving towards that thing, and then it becomes less like an extra limb that you’re trying to grow or maintain, and more of, what you’re really here on this Earth to do.”

Connection with the Natural World

Connection with Natural WorldSit spot practice – sitting still and observing the natural world for a minimum of 20-30 minutes a day – wherever you live – can be in the mission district of SF!

Aspects of Nature Connection:• We are Nature• Being Held by Nature• Nature Connection & Holistic Human Development/Medicine Wheel• Nature as Mirror• Nature Connection and Mindfulness• Nature Connection and Opening the Heart• Nature as Mentor/Teacher• Nature as Metaphor• Nature Connection and Consciousness Transformation• Exchange with Nature• Natural Healing/Cyclical Healing• Regenerating with Nature

Nature Connection & Holistic Human Development/The Medicine Wheel• Body – BODY KNOWING –resetting our selves to earth’s

frequency• Mind – slowing down, stillness– same benefits as meditation

and mindfulness practice • Heart –opening into vulnerability and being literally held by

the land – by the big “mama”• Spirit/Soul –feelings of belonging, oneness/connection with all

things

Being Held by the Land• “Yeah it’s feeling like I’m being very literally held by the land. Like

having that experience of being one part of a whole. And not in the way that you can go inside to meditation, to stillness. There’s a clarity that comes through that but its literally like laying down on this amazing bed of comforting, um, like, mommy (Laughing). That’s what it feels like, it feels like hanging out with Mom.

• “And around that time, as things were moving and maybe coming back to part of my processes around self-love, I would go and I’d sit in this tree. The tree was almost like a giraffe. It was a huge Cypress. I would straddle one of the branches – a huge branch that went out like a dinosaur neck. I would sit there and watch the valley, and the sun would be setting. I felt loved by the landscape. I felt loved by that tree. I felt held… I felt like it was an important part of that healing process to really feel learning how to be loved by nature …allowing myself to connect with it…it felt like for me, it was just getting to that place where I was able to feel loved by the landscape and that for me, strengthened my ability to love myself. “

We are Nature• “I was at a sit spot…and it just hit me. It was like this wave of relaxation. It was like, you already... you’ve got it all right now. Stop trying. Stop trying to outthink it and make it…you are it. It’s present, it’s alive, it’s living. It allowed me to soften into myself and tap into my own intelligence. And it just, it began this journey and this wave of bliss that I’m still riding today. And it’s beautiful –my universe is myself. The universe is within you. That divine baseline presence in within all things. And you can touch it and feel it… And that can be your guide, that connection …maybe there’s something beyond that, but all these ancient teachings saying the same thing is like, to me that’s it. It’s like letting nature do what it wants and being conscious awareness of that. The power of nature that’s in you.”

Interpersonal Connection/Village

Aspects of Interpersonal/Village Connection

• Creating a safe container• Collective Healing• Being Witnessed• Deep listening• Vulnerability • Authenticity • Accountability• Intimacy • Healing the masculine/feminine• Intergenerational healing• Healing ancestral wounds & trauma• Collective visioning and manifesting of possibilities

Additional elements of village life• Magic• Song• Ceremony• Creativity• Synchronicity• Physical contact/touch• Sound healing• Collective grieving• Ritual• Dance• Celebration• Play• Improvisation

Vulnerability• “I felt so safe and so held that I was able to really just allow all

that to come up. I mean you have 20 people holding empathetic space for you. It’s really different energetically and much more powerful than just one really amazing person holding a space for you. So all that reflection, surrounded by all that love, and…letting myself be vulnerable to just express all that was off the charts.”

• “it’s only possible through being in a safe environment where you feel really secure and helped and loved and once those ingredients get mixed together then it’s alright for everyone to be vulnerable. Then you see the person next to you being vulnerable and its like “wow, it is okay”

• “The emotion and tears, of course laughter, but just the vulnerability and the modeling of that vulnerability…the beauty of witnessing a group of strangers–being so willing and courageous to share things that, in some cases they may not have shared in their entire life. And to have that feel safe is pretty special. It’s miraculous in some ways.”

Authenticity• “I needed to be able to be who I was, not the story of who I think I am or

the story that I tell. I can’t heal a fiction. I can’t heal an illusion that I create. Healing starts with what is actually real…”

• What I know is, after that experience, I was able to be much more authentic…I would say that’s the biggest piece, because that’s the crux of it all for me. Being authentic, which is then really rooted in self-love... Something just relaxed in me and just allowed me to more fully express myself.”

• “It was sort of like this community or circle where I was bringing this new identity and I wasn’t trying to hide who I was. And in fact I was encouraged to just show up as you are and bring your whole authentic self – whatever state you’re in – into the circle. So it was really supportive and healing for me to be in the circle and be witnessed by a group. And feel loved and supported for who I was/am.”

• “What I found more and more was the more authentic I am, the more people are drawn to that…when I have the courage to allow myself to be vulnerable and authentic, it gives other people permission and it connects people, because what you’re doing is tapping into something that is essentially human, that we all share.”

Collective Support & Visioning• “I remember writing to people just about what I was going through and saying I was in a circle of support I didn’t dream was possible, and then saying maybe I did dream it and that’s why it’s here and I’m in it too, because it’s something we long for but didn’t know it existed in that way. And now I have the capacity to create it so it’s not that it only exists here, which is the beautiful thing about EOL. Is that you’re gifted the tools to just build that everywhere you go, just by being connected.”

Healing the Masculine & Feminine• “one of the bigger things that impacted me…was separating into men’s and women’s circles.... I remember standing in a small circle with the women and the men surrounding us and singing an African honouring song. It was so beautiful. I remember being on the inside of the circle and just having an incredible healing moment and crying and feeling like that was one of the moments that struck me of intimacy, healing so part of me that was so deep and hidden and so related to the masculine and the feminine, but now I see that it was just this archetype of the masculine and the feminine being healed, and it didn’t have to be in an intimate relationship to get to that place. To actually be held by all the men in this community and all the women standing together in this community, and all of us feeling that. It was an Earth shattering, shaking moment for all of us. One woman hit the ground, I remember; just fell to her knees crying. That kind of healing happens there. So that’s magic. And that started a journey. Wow, we can heal this kind of wound that happens between masculine and feminine energy in relationships. It doesn’t have to be man and woman. Just that intimacy in a relationship.”

Engaging in the World

• “For apart from inquiry, apart from the praxis, individuals cannot be truly human. Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.” ― Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed

• Integration of the tools and teachings in one’s daily life is key to lasting transformation• These are not practices that can only be done in a yurt in Bolinas, or in the middle of the woods – they by natural MUST be integrated and practiced in our daily lives, wherever we are and wherever we go• Iterative process of praxis – planning, action, reflection and learning• Regenerative Living and Leadership Pattern

The Ecology of Transformation • It is the unique integration of these four aspects of transformation – of cultivating connection with self, with the natural world, and with one another – and then of integrating our learnings into our engagement in the world – that has the power to cultivate lasting, deep transformation

• Ultimately this is a process for reconnecting, reweaving, remembering, regenerating, and recreating ourselves, in RELATIONSHIP with one another and all creation – for a new day and time

What becomes possible?• “My project was around making Berkley a fair trade town. So I put those wheels in motion in August of 2009, when I got back from EOL. And we became a fair trade town in September of 2010.”• “Well certainly it suddenly became possible that I could be a musical person. That was big.”• “A lot of fears are subsiding.…I just see tons of possibilities. I have fifty people Monday night coming to hear me speak about a community learning garden that we’re starting up next month”• “The more I’m engaged into self love, the more accepting, loving and open, compassionate I can be with others. And it’s really…that’s what’s really transforming some of those key relationships”• “I’m a much more empathetic and compassionate person…In the sense that I can walk through life now and judge a lot less…the magic is walking through the mall and seeing this person that you don’t know and seeing them as a divine human being.” • “This whole integration piece has been amazing and continues and it’s like a spiral, it just keeps getting deeper and deeper.”

• “I made the decision to leave my corporate career of 18 years and with absolutely no idea of what I was going to do, but just trusting that this was – that there was something more meaningful out there for me…now I’m on staff at Transition U.S. and we support hundreds of local community groups and grassroots organizers and leaders in the initiation of their transition town groups and initiatives....For the last few years in one weekend they were able to get over 1,200 1,500 particular actions in one county on one particular weekend around this idea of growing food, conserving water, saving energy and growing community.”

• “It’s almost the reverse for me to say what hasn’t changed for you. I can’t think of any part that hasn’t shifted. When you’re doing all that root work, all that soil work, how does it not shift the entire canopy, no matter where you are? Just having more consciousness about how I intend to show up. If I’m headed toward a meeting, if I’m with my mother-in-law, wherever I’m at….I get to choose how I’m going to show up. It’s changed everything. I don’t know that I can tell you all the ways, but I mean, when you start showing up authentically in every part of your life, every relationship has to shift, because you have shifted. Everything’s different. It’s shinier; it’s brighter. It’s a lot more fun.”

Connecting back to the Great Turning

Who am I now?

Potential EWP-CIIS Course Offerings – Katia SolTransformative Learning & Global Studies• Introduction to Transformative Learning • The Dynamics of Global Transformation• Comparative World Perspectives on

Transformation• The Ecology of Transformation • Mapping the Great Turning• Transformative Music & the Great

Turning

EcoPsychology• Deep Nature Connection and

Consciousness Transformation (also STP)

• Nature Connection and Holistic Human Development using the Medicine Wheel (also IWK)

• Nature Connection and Creativity• Healing our Root Systems and Soil–

Transformation from the Inside Out• Healing the Mother Wound – Nature as

Great Mother (also STP)

Spiritual & Transpersonal Psychology• Exploring the Inner Wilderness - Rites of

Passage and Initiation as Frameworks for Transformation in our Daily Lives (also IWK)

• Living from the Heart – exploring Vulnerability and Authenticity

• Cultivating Group Healing Spaces• Interpersonal Dialogue & Healing

Indigenous Ways of Knowing• Comparative Indigenous Epistemologies• Council as Transformative Practice• Relational Epistemology • Intergenerational Trauma and Ancestral

Healing

Qualitative Research Methodologies• Participatory & Relational Research • Regenerative Research• Mixed-Methods Research

Indigenous Epistemology

Transformative Learning & Consciousness Studies

Ecopsychology Spiritual & Transpersonal Psychology

Place-Based Transformation of perception, thoughts and behaviour

We are Nature

Everything is sacred

Respect

Reciprocity

Relationship

Responsibility

Learning is lifelong and lifewide

SPIRIT

BODY

MIND

HEART