June 15 - August 31, 2022
Climate change is a scientific and technological challenge, yet how each of us faces it is profoundly personal.
The ecological and climate crises affect us emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. Although you may wish to engage in the creation of a sustainable world, if you feel discouraged, hopeless, and anxious, you may feel too overwhelmed to even begin. Psychologists across the world are recognizing a rise in difficult and complex emotions people experience as a response to ecological destruction and climate change. Terms like eco-grief and climate anxiety are increasingly used to articulate these emotions.
In this remote workshop, we will explore the impact of the ecological and climate crises on our personal experience and work towards finding individual and collective empowerment, inspiration, and courage to face these issues. We will also explore ways we wish to be a part of solutions and co-creating a resilient, thriving future for all. We take a holistic, and broad view of what "solutions" might even mean, and how we may be a part of bringing them into being.
This 12-week workshop is interdisciplinary by design and includes some of the most powerful ideas and practices I have experienced over years of environmental work, including research from eco-emotion researchers like Ashlee Willox, concepts from activists like Joanna Macy, and practices from teachers like Thich Nhat Hanh. I incorporate ideas from prominent thinkers and draw on ecopsychology, meditation and mindfulness, deep ecology, Buddhism and Taoism, activism, justice, indigenous ways of knowing, and ethics. I share resources, tools, and techniques that you can use long into the future.
This offering includes:
Schedule
We will meet for the first time on June 15, 2022, 5:30-7pm ET online. This initial meeting will introduce everyone, and the workshop. Then we will meet every other week, starting June 22, 5:30-7pm ET online until August 31, 2022. On the off weeks, you will receive an email with exercises, reflection prompts, and/or resources to dive more deeply into the themes.