Coming back to life during corona: a weekly Work That Reconnects gathering

September 2 - 23 2020

Online by Zoom

Due to the popularity of the first series we ran in May we are running it again through June for those who missed out on the first series. This will be a four-week series, a continuing experiment in exploring the Work that Reconnects online and building community through this process. The course will run every Monday night from 6.30 pm-8.45 pm for 4 weeks starting on September 2 and ending on September 23. This is not a drop-in gathering. It is especially important that you don't miss the first week. Read on for more detailed information.

We are living through difficult times, witnessing immense injustices, the sixth mass extinction and more recently the coronavirus pandemic. Many of us feel called to act, and while political engagement is crucial, many are also asking, how do we sustain ourselves on this journey? How do we live with the fear, the heartbreak, the anger? How do we create a regenerative culture from within as we move toward a life-sustaining culture and society?

We build resilience when we come together and share our grief and our love for the world. To advocate for the flourishing of life we ourselves must return again and again to the ground of our own aliveness.

These weekly online gatherings have been set up in response to living in these times of coronavirus and will offer a unique opportunity to deepen in the Work that Reconnects Practices and to build community with like-minded/hearted others.

While there will be evident differences from gathering in-person to share in these exercises, our hope is that the activities we do together and the ones we set for you to undertake solo between our online meetups will give you a real flavour of the Work that Reconnects and support you in getting familiar with this body of work, and the gifts and challenges of living in these times. While we are not offering facilitator training through these online workshops it will certainly be supportive for those who are interested in ultimately facilitating this work for themselves and we will be making space for reflecting on how these exercises work from the inside as facilitators rather than just experiencing them from the outside as participants.

This initial series of weekly gatherings will offer you tools to ground in the present moment. Together, we will learn how to bear witness to the suffering – your own and that in the world all around us. We will open to fresh ways of seeing and understanding who we are and our interconnectedness with each other and the earth. We will support you with ways to think about how to go forth, with exercises that invite you to discover what is yours to do in these times. This is an invitation to those who are curious and new to these practices to dive in and experience them for the first time, as well as an opportunity for those more familiar with Joanna Macy’s wisdom and deep ecology, to return and re-kindle connection with this work.

This is an experiment. We do ask that you sign up for all four weeks - this way we will create a wonderful container of practice. Following these four sessions, we may shift to more of a ‘drop-in’ style model for those who attended the first two series, or we may offer another series for those who would like to continue to deepen. If you are unable to attend one of the weeks due to other commitments but you are really interested and available for the other three weeks, please do reach out and let us know. We will try to accommodate people’s differing circumstances. If you are strained financially at the moment for any reason and you need a scholarship spot please email Beth directly to arrange.

Tickets available here

Facilitators

Claire Dunn

Claire Dunn is passionate about connection - to earth, self, and other - and believes that a rewilding of our inner world is the key to rewilding our planet. For the last 15 years, Claire has been facilitating groups and individuals to dive deeply into soulcentric nature-based transformation, through the pathways of traditional earth skills, deep ecology, nature observation and tracking and contemporary wilderness rites-of-passage. In 2005 Claire completed a month long residential training with Joanna Macy and since then has facilitated dozens of workshops and retreats in The Work that Reconnects. Claire currently lives in Melbourne where she writes, facilitates rewilding workshops, offers personal mentoring, and lovingly tends her garden. Claire is the author My Year Without Matches: Escaping the City in Search of the Wild, a memoir about a year she spent living wild. www.naturesapprentice.com.au

Beth Hill

Beth is a writer, researcher and facilitator of the Work that Reconnects. She has had a dedicated Insight meditation practice over the last ten years and is passionate about the wisdom of the body as a gateway to insight, healing and action in these troubled times. Beth has been facilitating the Work that Reconnects since 2013, learning directly from Joanna Macy over a number of years, and currently works with Psychology for a Safe Climate offering workshops to climate activists and others, supporting them with grief, burnout and conflict. Bethemilyhill.wordpress.com