Surrendering to the descent

Your invitation to join us this winter for a Community Solo

The quest for perpetual growth.

That it might be possible, even aspirational. The fuel for human progress.

It is one of the great lies we perpetuate in our modern human culture.

A signal of our deepest disconnection from nature of which we are of course a part of, not apart from.

In order to become crew on this spaceship earth of ours, one of the simplest and most profound questions we might ask ourselves is how we can learn to think like nature works. 

Doing this might mean tuning in, really listening to what is going on around us. It requires sitting by the canal or in the park, back resting against a tree, paying reverence to the places we call home.  Becoming part of the weather patterns and the passing of the birds as the seasons change.

But thinking only gets you so far. 

This too needs to go deeper. 

From the head to the heart and the hands.

How do we incorporate whatever we hear, what we notice?

To incorporate, from the Latin from Latin incorporātus - meaning to make of the body, to embody.

That feels like the work of these times.

Getting out of the clever head and into the discombobulated body.

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I write this in the heart of autumn after (yet another) unseasonably warm spell. There is a promise of more rain tonight finally heralding a move to something colder, more northern.

I can’t wait. 

All around me the land is shedding, withdrawing, moving inwards. The end of a cycle. A steep descent towards the darkness, fuelled by the unstoppable waning of the light, our dwindling energy supply, the declining life force.  

It is only when we take time to notice that we recognise how deeply disconnected this is from the story of perpetual growth.

Compare it to human behaviour at this time. Amongst the onslaught of myriad seasonal virus and tired snoozing alarm clocks there is a gearing up at this time. An acceleration towards the modern-day construction of Halloween and the party season preceding Christmas.

Our hormones change as the light changes, it affects our mood, our immune system - a fundamental shifting of our body chemistry and still onwards we go. A deep collective allergy to the darkness. We must not go there. Must keep going.

Turn the bright lights up, there is work to be done. 

Each year I notice this disconnection more acutely. The more I listen and the more I tune in, then the more madness I notice. But at the same time I also find myself invested in the very system that is driving me mad.

I wonder what we could do, not just individually but also collectively to honour this change?

What would a more cyclical way of living look like?

• Shorter working days in the winter, for kids as well as adults

• Incentivising rest, as a deeply radical act.

• Learning to say ‘no’ to the busyness.

• New ways of measuring progress or productivity, one that has seasonal cycles, one that permits, even welcomes decline in return for rampant growth at other times - just in the way that the descent of November makes way for the riot of May.

• An adaptation of our economic system- beyond the quarterly ‘growth’ report - a managed period to decline to prepare for the next cycle.

One of my go-to books is Environmental Arts Therapy & The Tree of Life by Ian Siddons Heginworth. It is a wonderful book that I dip into continuously throughout the year. The book weaves its way through each month of the year, connecting what it is to be a human at these particular moments in the calendar and the cycles of the turning year. It offers environmental art practice, myth and ritual to reconnect us to those changing seasons. The book comes from a Celtic perspective and in that way of understanding the world he reminds us that the Celtic year begins on the 1st of November. It speaks to the idea that new life requires death and composting and time in the dark earth before it can be ready. 

It reminds me that the secular New Year and all our promises made at midnight on the 1st January are both too early and at the same time too late. Too early to meet the warmth of the growing Spring sunlight and our new resolutions find themselves freezing, exposed to the cold January wind. But they are also too late to be planted in the deep earth for winter, missing out on the dormancy and rest that they need as a seed, an idea or a dream for it to be able to sustain itself in the growing Spring. 

And so here we find ourselves in our single speed existence, desperately avoiding the darkness we so radically need, burnt out, exhausted and hurtling at break-neck speed towards the bright-lights of Christmas.

Community Solo - our Autumn/Winter offering

Community Solo offers an antidote, a dose of medicine, a chance to connect as a crew to what the season is actually asking of us. 

It is a space to embrace the darkness, to connect to this moment in the earth's cycle, to learn together how we might winter well so that it cultivates our capacity to be in service to life. A chance to deepen our belonging to nature locally, in the places we live and work and do so through creative, embodied practices. An opportunity for connection with a crew of people working together to stoke our innate creativity and wild imagination in the darkness through myth, story, creativity and group reflective practices

We only offer it from November to February as it fits what is being asked of us now.

You can do it as an individual and as a team, they both follow the same pattern.

We start by working with the questions we are holding at these times and through practices to support reflection, deep listening and nature connection we alight on a clear intention that we take out onto the land through a Threshold Walk experience.

We’ll learn how to prepare for this Threshold Walk / Nature Solo including how we might make the day walk a ceremony, how to choose the place you venture to and guidance to make it a safe experience.

Then we return, bringing the stories & insights from our Nature Solo back to the community and beginning the process of integrating them into our lives, recognising the seeds of potential we are tending and galvanising ourselves for what comes next through reflection & intention.

 - 23rd Nov- 15th Dec 2023

 - 25th Jan- 15th Feb 2024

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If you are an organisation who wants to bring this idea into their workplace we’d love to hear from you too, it might just be the place where you can replenish your courageous creativity and resilience for the complexity you’ll face on the trail ahead of you.

Meanwhile, I might just head down to the river for a bit and watch the fallen leaves drifting along on the current - a human being not a human doing. 

The virtual hearth fire is lit and we’d love to see you there this winter.