We live in an extraordinary moment, as we witness and experience tremendous threats to life on Earth as well as a time of great opening and positive potential.  

 

It’s natural to respond with fear, overwhelm, anger, and grief to the suffering that we are witnessing or experiencing in these times. These uncomfortable emotions can paralyze us, and sever us from our power and wisdom. And yet, when we work with them skillfully and in community, they can reconnect us to an expanded self, to one another, and to our living Earth.

 

Over the past five decades, Joanna Macy has created a body of teachings and group work that helps participants transform despair and apathy, in the face of social and ecological crises, into constructive, collaborative action. 

 

These interactive workshops include grounding exercises, small and larger group activities, teachings and reflections structured on the Work that Reconnects, including tools and processes to: 

• connect with people who share similar cares, dreams and concerns for the earth

• feel and honour our pain for the world, including ecological grief

• turn anxiety, grief and anger into courage, creativity and joy

• nourish your capacity to act for positive change

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Heart Land introductory workshop formats and events include:

 

The Work that Reconnects in two-hour, three-hour, daylong and mulit-day events

Tools and processes to support you to clarify and take your place in the Great Turning.

The Great Turning is a name for the essential adventure of our time: the shift from the Industrial Growth Society to a life-sustaining civilization (peace, justice and ecological restoration).  These workshops are designed for groups of 6 or more.

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Rituals of Collective Mourning

Community processes to connect with natural places that have been damaged through human or natural acts and with others who share this care and pain.  Giving gifts of attention, remembrance and acts of beauty to a place supports human healing and the revitalization of place.

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See for example, the Community Vigil Heart Land faciliatated for the Rideau Canal Skateway 

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Listening to the Land, liberating the Power to Act

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Integrating the Anishinaabe Medicine Wheel teachings and the Work That Reconnects, this interactive workshop centers on human creativity and empathy as powerful tools to mitigate the climate crisis and repair relationships. 

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Music and the Work that Reconnects, combining community singing and the Work That Reconnects.  This is similar to the Introduction to the WTR with the added element of singing  as a source of rejuvenation, healing and connection.

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Earth Writes:  

Structured on the Work that Reconnects, this workshop offers a brave space and tools for emerging and established writers who desire:

 

• An increased capacity to notice and give expression to what is true in your life

• Attention as reciprocal offering

• a deeper relationship with the greater body of earth and place

• to experience your writing life as part of your ecological self, writing with and from the natural world

• Practice in transforming anxiety, grief and anger into courage and creativity

• connection with supportive and creative community

• to contribute to the great turning towards a life sustaining society

 

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