We live in challenging times. Looking around us, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the environmental and social crises currently threatening our world. How do we live without shutting down, giving up? When we come together and tap into our shared care for the natural world and each other, we actively deepen our sense of connectedness. This gives us the strength to move beyond business as usual, and beyond despair, to co-create fresh visions and tools for responding with courage and resiliency to the challenges before us.
In this day-long workshop, participants begin by anchoring in gratitude. Together, we will create a safe place to honor our pain for the world and to connect with our fundamental resilience. What distresses us becomes our fuel for transformation. Seeing with new eyes, we come away nourished with greater clarity and strength. We find a fresh connection to our own inner resources and are inspired anew to act on behalf of a life-sustaining future.
Co-facilitators Carol Russell and Grace Burford look forward to sharing with workshop participants this Work That Reconnects, pioneered by Joanna Macy and rooted in deep ecology, ancient wisdom, and systems thinking.
Participants will meet at Thumb Butte Recreation Area at 8:30am. (NHI will cover parking). This day-long event will take place in and around the accessible Thumb Butte Pavilion, next to the restrooms.
Grace Burford, Ph.D., brings to our workshop a lifetime of experience in Deep Ecology. In this approach to learning about ecological relationships, we integrate personal and scientific perspectives to deepen our human connections with the natural world and each other. Grace’s experience of Deep Ecology is enriched by her lifelong engagement with traditional Buddhist teachings and practices. She has this in common with Joanna Macy, who first developed the four-stage Spiral Journey model of practicing Deep Ecology in the 1980s. Since Grace met Joanna and participated in some of Joanna’s early workshops and facilitator trainings, she has led Deep Ecology community gatherings and has applied the Spiral Journey structure in her college and university courses. Grace sees this work as mutually beneficial for all beings in the interdependent web of life. She is delighted to share this healing experience with the Prescott community she has been part of for over 25 years.
Carol Russell is a Prescott artist, architect, and facilitator. Having lived in Prescott for 43 years, she is steeped in the natural environment of Prescott. Her work as a painter, sculptor and architect has been informed by the land, the changing light, rain and drought, and the rich and varied community of life around us. Unsettled by the devastating global crises we are facing along with the increasing division between people, Carol has focused on creating opportunities for connection, mutual understanding, and resilience through workshops. She completed the Facilitation Training with the Work That Reconnects Network in 2021.
This workshop is part of our “Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves” series. Sign up for other events in the series on their Eventbrite pages, linked below.
There is a growing awareness of the positive mental, physical, and physiological benefits that humans can reap from time spent in nature. Join the Natural History Institute in this new series where we ask: how can we heal ourselves in nature? And how can we, in all gratitude, work to heal the earth? Joined by a writer and philosopher, a local nonprofit, our partners at Prescott National Forest, and mindfulness leaders, we explore how to heal and how to give back.
Other events in the series:
4/12 – Gratitude – “Gratitude is a Way of Life,” a webinar conversation with philosopher and nature writer Kathleen Dean Moore. FREE.
Sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/586178705287
5/13 – Healing the Earth – a volunteer erosion-control project in collaboration with Friends of the Verde River and Prescott National Forest. Participants will spend the morning helping to build loose rock structures and distributing seed balls. FREE.
Sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/586189367177
5/17 – Reciprocal Healing – “Natural History, Reciprocal Healing, and a Sense of Kinship,” a speaker series talk by NHI emeritus director Tom Fleischner. FREE.
Sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/588345185287