# Banter 103:  21Jan26   Work that Reconnects, with Linda Aspey

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### Presentation:

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### Meeting Summary:

Jan 21, 2026 11:49 AM London ID: 834 5460 8536

### Quick recap

The meeting began with administrative discussions about recording and format preferences for an upcoming session, which the group decided would be a 90-minute workshop format with breakout discussions. Linda presented on the Work That Reconnects framework, which helps people address climate change and systemic issues by fostering connection and empowerment, while the group shared personal experiences and discussed the importance of nature and volunteer engagement. The session concluded with exercises on gratitude and emotional processing, along with discussions about different world narratives and available resources for engaging with climate psychology and environmental issues.

### Next steps

* [Mike: Get in touch with Linda to catch up and continue conversation about the training program for trainers in the Hay Community Resilience Initiative.](https://us02tasks.zoom.us/?meetingId=5Zp8QiDxT0GNhG05f6Fl%2Fw%3D%3D\&stepId=302a21cc-f6ce-11f0-8116-e2ee3b861a9a)
* [Linda: Share the text of the slides with the group (as mentioned to Graham at the end).](https://us02tasks.zoom.us/?meetingId=5Zp8QiDxT0GNhG05f6Fl%2Fw%3D%3D\&stepId=302a2616-f6ce-11f0-8b61-e2ee3b861a9a)

### Summary

#### Workshop Format Decision Meeting

The group discussed the format for an upcoming session, with Linda offering a choice between a one-hour presentation with discussion or a 90-minute workshop format. After a show of hands, the majority voted for the longer workshop format, which would include breakout room discussions. The session was expected to have about 8 participants, with Graham noting that Andrew would only join in if specifically needed. Linda also expressed concerns about AI and data colonialism, which Graham humorously acknowledged.

#### Work That Reconnects: Climate Psychology

Linda introduced a session on the Work That Reconnects, incorporating climate psychology, and discussed its relevance and impact on individuals and communities. She emphasized the importance of self-care and responsible communication when dealing with the emotional and psychological demands of climate work. Linda encouraged participants to reflect on their reasons for attending the session and shared plans for the day, including breakout discussions and optional experiences of the Work That Reconnects.

#### Community Resilience and Climate Action

The meeting began with Graham expressing his appreciation for the Great Collaboration Banter sessions, which have been an anchor activity for him and a source of reassurance. Stuart shared his experience with the Great Collaboration since its inception, highlighting how it has evolved from a simple volunteer effort to a significant commitment. Participants discussed the challenges posed by climate change, particularly for those living in isolated areas, and the importance of sharing information about national emergency briefings. Mike introduced the Hay Community Resilience Initiative, which aims to achieve self-sufficiency in locally grown food and community energy by 2030 and 2035, respectively, while also addressing mental wellbeing in the community. Andrew mentioned his role as a citizen scientist in Somerset, involved in various environmental initiatives.

#### Empowerment Through Earth Connection

Linda presented on the Work That Reconnects, a set of practices developed by Joanna Macy to help people address climate change and other systemic issues. She explained how the work helps shift individuals from despair to empowerment by fostering connection, reframing pain, and mobilizing for systemic change. Linda discussed psychological defenses and cognitive biases that can impede our ability to face difficult issues, and she highlighted how the Work That Reconnects can help overcome these barriers by reconnecting people with the Earth and fostering a sense of collective action.

#### Nature and Volunteer Engagement Insights

The group discussed the connection between nature and volunteer engagement, with Graham noting that nature-related activities attract more volunteers than other activities. Stuart, a former intensive care consultant, shared insights about humanity's deep connection with nature and the planet, while Linda discussed the concept of active hope and the work that reconnects, emphasizing the importance of gratitude, honoring pain, and seeing through ancient eyes to foster new perspectives. The discussion highlighted the use of simple practices from the work that reconnects framework to frame meetings and community gatherings, with a focus on mind-body work, trauma awareness, and anti-oppression efforts.

#### Gratitude and Connection Exercise

Linda led a group exercise where participants were asked to reflect on something, somewhere, or someone that makes them glad to be alive. The exercise aimed to foster a sense of gratitude and connection with the present moment. (This breakout session not recorded)

#### Gratitude and Outdoor Connections

They and other participants shared what they were grateful for, with Jacky mentioning future reading plans and Andrew noting a shared interest in Isaac Newton. Linda explained the psychological and physiological benefits of expressing gratitude, including the activation of the parasympathetic nervous system and release of connecting hormones like oxytocin. The discussion concluded with Linda explaining how gratitude helps build connections and resilience, referencing the root systems of trees as a metaphor for these connections. (This breakout session not recorded)

#### Gratitude and Global Emotional Awareness

Linda discussed the importance of gratitude as a practice that focuses on personal experiences of abundance rather than societal scarcity, contrasting with the current economic system that thrives on unmet desires. She introduced the concept of balancing gratitude with acknowledging pain for the world, and led a group exercise where participants shared their feelings about global issues. (This breakout session not recorded)

#### Understanding and Processing Feelings

The group discussed the nature of feelings and their temporary duration, with Linda explaining that feelings cannot last long neurochemically unless someone has depression. They explored how children need to be taught that temporary negative feelings will pass, and Penny shared her experience of avoiding news consumption to manage overwhelming feelings. Linda introduced exercises like the Truth Mandala to help process and express difficult feelings, emphasizing that expressing feelings leads to clarity and that sorrow is often rooted in love and passion for justice.

#### Choosing Our Story's Direction

Linda discussed the concept of three stories of our time: business as usual, the great unravelling, and the great turning. She explained how these stories shape our perception of the world and emphasized the importance of choosing which story to focus on. Linda shared resources and tools for engaging with these concepts, including books, websites, and exercises. She also highlighted the work of the Climate Psychology Alliance and the Work That Reconnects movement. The session concluded with a reading of a poem and expressions of gratitude from the participants.

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### Chat:

01:42:35 Mike HayResilience.org: I think the point is that both feelings and clouds have movement
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01:46:03 Penny Q - Weymouth Climate Hub: Gratitude

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### Audio-transcript (for AI search engine):

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Linda Aspey: Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for coming here.

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Linda Aspey: doing the formal intro. So today we're going to talk about the work that reconnects, and some of this will be new to some of you, and I'm also… I've also, for this talk and session, woven in a bit of climate psychology. So I've got some slides to share, and I'm going to talk them through.

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Linda Aspey: And then we'll take… we'll ask… there'll be some questions, and then you can go into small groups, into pairs, and have a few minutes in pairs to think about this

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Linda Aspey: come back out, discuss that. If I then do any more input, I might then ask to put the recording back on. So, you okay with that? So just, we'll kick off with this.

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Linda Aspey: So,

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Linda Aspey: And I want to be able to see you all, so why can't I see you all at the moment?

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Linda Aspey: Okay.

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Linda Aspey: There we go.

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Linda Aspey: Don't like to not only to see not nobody. So, the work that reconnects is an introduction. So, I want you just to start this session, to take a minute, if you will, to bring to mind

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Linda Aspey: Something, someone, or somewhere that makes you feel glad to be alive.

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Linda Aspey: And as you do that, you might just notice your breathing shifts, your whole body might even shift, and you might even be smiling as you think of it.

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Linda Aspey: It has Somewhere, someone, something.

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Linda Aspey: And we'll be revisiting that when you go into your breakouts, and you might want to tell someone what came to mind when you thought about this.

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Linda Aspey: So the session aims today are to introduce the main ideas and the frameworks of the work that reconnects.

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Linda Aspey: And for you to consider how it might benefit you and your team or your community. And as I said, optional to give you the chance to experience it for yourselves, a little of it.

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Linda Aspey: So what I'll do, and it just is worth mentioning about this idea of doing climate work, which I know we all do. You see there the cartoon on the right. My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to stay sane.

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Linda Aspey: Whoa, and what's been happening in the last couple of weeks and 24-hour hours, it's just… how do you stay sane in this world?

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Linda Aspey: How do you not switch off?

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Linda Aspey: And the whole session really is thinking about how we switch off, and the impacts of that, and how we can

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Linda Aspey: Not switch off, but still stay sane.

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Linda Aspey: So, doing climate work, just to… this is just really to land it, really, is understanding the science and facing the reality is emotionally

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Linda Aspey: Psychologically and physiologically demanding.

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Linda Aspey: Anyone who's doing this work and who's engaging with it is going to be impacted in some way at some level.

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Linda Aspey: emotionally, psychological, or physiologically. And, of course, this… we now know so much more about the impacts of trauma inherited, genetic trauma, and lived trauma on our bodies as well as our minds. We are all connected.

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Linda Aspey: We're an ecosystem in ourselves. So we know this work is demanding on many levels.

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Linda Aspey: And of course, the impacts are amplified when we meet resistance, you know, we're trying to convert people, engage people, and galvanize people from others, or when we feel alone, and the impacts are amplified.

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Linda Aspey: And it's worth mentioning that getting it, and we know what we mean by getting it, because you're here, is a constant process of assimilation. New data and warnings coming by the days. We've not only had the Trump thing going on, we've just seen the government's latest published report on risk factors and,

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Linda Aspey: Significant,

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Linda Aspey: dangers for the UK. It's very quietly slipped into the government website. It was released yesterday, it's not been announced, instead of which the, Ed Miliband has announced some stuff on green homes.

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Linda Aspey: So we know that there's some very heavy data out there, and these warnings are coming in by the day, so it's not like you've had something big happen and you can get over it.

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Linda Aspey: This is every day, in different ways.

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Linda Aspey: For people all around the world, of course.

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Linda Aspey: And so I believe that care is not a luxury, but it's a necessity, both for ourselves

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Linda Aspey: And it's a responsibility to others as they take it on board.

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Linda Aspey: You know, if a broadcaster showed a horror film, you'd expect them to say, this is a horror film, and here's the watershed time, and…

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Linda Aspey: If somebody does a BBC, if they have some news, they say they give a trigger warning.

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Linda Aspey: So I think this… we have a responsibility when we communicate as well to others.

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Linda Aspey: Rather than just blurt out, you know, do you know that we're doomed? Which we might not be, by the way.

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Linda Aspey: And so I'll signpost some resources at the end.

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Linda Aspey: And, let's just let… help you to land in the room. It's just a… just to say your name and what brought you here today. I know you know each other, but it's always fun to do that.

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Linda Aspey: What brings you here? So, what's your name? Where are you coming in from, and what brought you here today?

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration -: I'll start, and I'll say that I live here. It's,

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration -: Great collaborations. Banter sessions are my, what's the word?

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration -: anchor activity, and it's… I must say, it has been an extremely reassuring activity, because I'm amazed to find how many really talented and, powerful

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration -: people that are around the country working on things at parish council level that are really uplifting. It's actually my way of finding out a bit of sanity.

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Linda Aspey: That's great, lovely to hear, Graeme.

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: My name's Stuart, and I've been with the

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: Great collaboration, I think, since its inception. I remember getting a call from Andrew shortly after I met him.

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: And he just called for volunteers, anyone could spend half an hour a week helping him out.

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: That has morphed into half your life, but there you go.

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Linda Aspey: Right.

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: And I do appreciate Graham's concerns. Obviously, living on an isolated island, he is at great risk from climate changes.

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Linda Aspey: Thanks, Grett. Thanks, Stuart.

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Linda Aspey: Anyone else?

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Jacky Lawrence, Napton on the Hill, Warwickshire: Well, I'm here just because I thought it sounded interesting, and it rang a bell from something that I came across a long time ago, so I thought it would be interesting to, remember it.

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Linda Aspey: Go ahead.

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Penny Q - Weymouth Climate Hub: Yeah, I can go next. So, I'm… I'm Penny, I'm from Weymouth, from the Climate Hub. I sort of check in every now and with this. And a bit resonating with, Graham. It's… it's good to…

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Penny Q - Weymouth Climate Hub: come into these things, and you realize how much, sort of, connection is going on around the country. I know Linda's doing a talk for the CEC network this evening. It's like, oh, I thought I'd got the wrong one and got muddled up, but, yeah, I might see you on that one as well, Linda. And the reason I'm here is…

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Penny Q - Weymouth Climate Hub: Really because of the climate stuff, I work with, alongside

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Penny Q - Weymouth Climate Hub: Activists, some of whom are actually quite

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Penny Q - Weymouth Climate Hub: in difficult places because of the work they've done. They… they're… they're not well. And…

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Penny Q - Weymouth Climate Hub: we're looking locally at how we can push out the national emergency briefings in Dorset, And…

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Penny Q - Weymouth Climate Hub: You know, one of the concerns, and maybe we'll cover this, sorry, this is a bit of a long check-in, is, is a worry about what we share and how it will land.

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Penny Q - Weymouth Climate Hub: And I… I really feel that we… the time for being careful around that is over. We have got to share this stuff, and it is uncomfortable, so the important thing is knowing how we manage that, and how we can help people, and those of us who have been around it long enough

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Penny Q - Weymouth Climate Hub: some of us, at least, have found ways. We've found, you know, our medicine in the community in different ways, and I think

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Penny Q - Weymouth Climate Hub: We've got a big role to play in holding the space for others as they Get it.

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Linda Aspey: Great. Thanks, Penny.

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: I would like to say thank you for mentioning the National Emergency Briefing.

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: I'm amazed at how many people even…

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: concerned about climate and the environment. It's completely passed them by.

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: And the mainstream media, did virtually nothing on it.

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: I think there was an article in The Guardian.

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: But that was about it, as far as I could see.

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Linda Aspey: Great. We're going to come back to that, because I think it's really relevant for the session. Thanks, Stuart, for raising that.

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Stella Brown: I'm Stella, I'm currently in Sutton, although I… Sutton cold feel that I'm… I'm normally… I live in Herefordshire. I just feel a bit out of the loop at the moment, and I… I was going through my emails, and I just thought that, you know, I just wanted to…

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Stella Brown: get back into thinking about climate issues and things like that. Thanks.

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Mike Eccles: I'm Mike. I run the Hay Community Resilience Initiative, and Graham gave me an opportunity to talk about it.

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Mike Eccles: A couple of years ago.

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Mike Eccles: And that talk cleared the path to us actually getting money, which was fantastic. And,

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Mike Eccles: I'm also working with Linda. We have three pillars. One, to become self-sufficient in locally grown food by 2030.

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Mike Eccles: One to generate, and become self-sufficient in community energy by 2035.

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Mike Eccles: And the middle pillar which holds it all together is to do with addressing mental well-being in the community. And, Linda is very kindly working with us in order to get

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Mike Eccles: Come up with a training program to train trainers who will train other people in the community.

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Mike Eccles: To be able to identify those of us that are feeling a bit down, or slightly depressed, or slightly anxious, and find ways of

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Mike Eccles: Teaching us how to communicate with them in such a way that we can engage them, either in activities we're doing, or support them through however they're feeling, and

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Mike Eccles: I mean…

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Mike Eccles: It's going to be quite exciting to see what that looks like, Linda, when we get there.

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Linda Aspey: Slightly.

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Linda Aspey: Absolutely. I didn't know we were definite. I'd heard that we, you know, so I'm gonna… looking forward to conversation with you, that… that's gonna be good. Yeah, I'll get in touch and catch you up. I mean, I…

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Mike Eccles: It's been a nightmare the last month. But anyway…

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Linda Aspey: That's… that's great.

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Mike Eccles: Fantastic. Andrew, anything you want to say, just to land?

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Andrew Clegg - Martock, Somerset: Yeah, I'm… I'm… live on the edge of the Somerset levels, and that's been subject to quite a lot of activity because of, nutrient pollution.

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Andrew Clegg - Martock, Somerset: stemming from a High Court action, a Supreme Court action, when we were part of the EU about 10 years ago.

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Andrew Clegg - Martock, Somerset: And, I seem to be the sort of citizen scientist in Somerset, and I get, sort of consulted on the… I've never been consulted so much in my life, which is interesting, because I've been a professional consultant. And,

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Andrew Clegg - Martock, Somerset: I've been involved with quite a number of the councillors and Somerset and Somerset Council over the whole question of the pollution of the Somerset levels. And I just keep an eye on what Graham's doing, because there's a lot of useful stuff comes through this session on Wednesdays.

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Linda Aspey: So that's why I'm here now.

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Andrew Clegg - Martock, Somerset: Lovely. Well, welcome, one and all.

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Linda Aspey: That's great.

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Linda Aspey: Good, so we're going to go back to the slides, so I'll do a bit of a talk, and share some slides, and just, if you've got questions, if you wouldn't mind writing them down…

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Linda Aspey: just as bullet points, because then we can come to them, because I'll do a couple of slides… a few slides at a time. It's not a massive slide thing, but it helps us to sort of give… it also helps people who have different needs. Some people like to hear the spoken word, some people also need to see something written.

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Linda Aspey: But there's not a lot of… they're not text-rich, and there's no charts, no graphs, you'll be really pleased to hear.

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Linda Aspey: And the session is aimed to be resourcing of you. It's not intended to be distressing in any way at all, but I will be flagging up resources at the end.

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Linda Aspey: So here we go. And just to point on that, Stuart, I'm also working with the National Emergency Briefing Team on… and also Penny, on how we… how we can best galvanize and communicate

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Linda Aspey: And help people facilitate really lovely spaces, because it's the… if we don't get the soil right, you can plant anything in it, and it won't take… so we're focusing on that kind of philosophy, is how do we create the right conditions for people to feel held and contained and ready to engage with this.

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Linda Aspey: In a way they haven't done before, because we've tried everything. Not everything, but we've tried a lot, and it's not been working, so we have to do something different. So I'm working with them, and the team, and Mike, and all of those people.

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Linda Aspey: So, let me go.

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Linda Aspey: And the brilliant Utopia team, who are doing incredible climate communications work.

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Linda Aspey: So, back to the slides… Right,

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Linda Aspey: It's funny, I keep going to a different default view today, it's very odd, doesn't normally happen. So, there we go, understanding the client work, understanding the context of this.

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Linda Aspey: So, what is the work that reconnects? Well, it arose from the 1970s from Joanna Macy, whose name you probably know well, and the work was originally called Despair and Empowerment.

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Linda Aspey: And Joanna was around in the 70s when nuclear was a real threat. Who says it's not now? Nuclear was a very real and present threat, and she worked a lot with activists.

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Linda Aspey: And she noticed how… and she's a Buddhist, and an eco-philosopher, and a scholar.

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Linda Aspey: And she'd noticed how easy it was, not easy, but how people were getting burnt out, how exhausting it is when you're fighting systems of power that make you feel small, when you're trying to manage and deal with and challenge oppression.

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Linda Aspey: When you feel despair, and you don't know what else to do. And she knew that we're in this for the long haul, so the work that reconnects came out of the despair and empowerment work, in conjunction with many people. She's known as the root teacher because she really did

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Linda Aspey: excuse me, bring the roots a bit, and then lots of other people developed it. And I trained during COVID, I was looking for something different, because I was talking at the time about climate science. I was trying to get leaders to get it… take it in, you know, listen to this, listen to the science.

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Linda Aspey: And that wasn't working for me or for them. So, and I'm a therapist, as you probably know, I'm a therapist and a coach.

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Linda Aspey: I'm a time to think consultant and faculty member, so I teach how to create conditions for people to think well, and I've done a lot of work around trauma, and a lot of work around facilitating groups, so it all kind of came together for me very beautifully, I hope.

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Linda Aspey: So, it's developed to overcome despair because these are times which can push us into despair, and when we feel despair, we can get paralyzed.

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Linda Aspey: We can get emotionally stuck, psychologically stuck, and we lose our creativity.

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Linda Aspey: It helps to foster connection. We live in fragmented times, in fragmented societies, and we're going to need each other more than ever before, so it helps to foster connection.

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Linda Aspey: It helps as well to reframe pain. In a pain-avoidant society. Now, of course, there are people with physical pain through to illnesses, but on the whole, one could say, particularly in the Western world, we don't like psychological or emotional pain. We self-soothe ourselves with alcohol, with drugs, with

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Linda Aspey: Dopamine hits on social media, and we… we try to do it, we do anything to avoid feeling pain.

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Linda Aspey: But actually, there is a lovely side to pain, and we're going to look at what that actually is, and see if she wanted to reframe pain.

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Linda Aspey: As something that's really to be welcomed, because it's alerting us to something really important, and flagging up that we do have massive capacities to care.

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Linda Aspey: And she also wanted to unlock the sense that we can have, inherently, of power with… with…

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Linda Aspey: During those times, and then, and now, power over often feels like the predominant power in our lives.

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Linda Aspey: But actually, we can have power with

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Linda Aspey: And it reminds us of that.

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Linda Aspey: And she wanted to mobilize people for what she called the Great Turning.

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Linda Aspey: Which was turning away from an industrial.

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Linda Aspey: Exploitative, extracted, life-damaging society to a much more regenerative, life-affirming one.

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Linda Aspey: And so that's… and we're going to look a bit more at the Great Turning shortly.

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Linda Aspey: So that's how it came about.

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Linda Aspey: And what is it, then? It's a set of practices and tools which help us to explore the world and our relationship with it.

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Linda Aspey: So that we can bring about systemic change.

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Linda Aspey: collaboratively and effectively.

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Linda Aspey: And what it does, and I can vouch this for myself.

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Linda Aspey: Is support people to shift their hearts and minds.

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Linda Aspey: From feeling isolated and despairing.

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Linda Aspey: To having a sense of participation, that there is something we can do, and there is a way we can be together.

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Linda Aspey: In facing these many contextual challenges, and it is used all around the world, and we'll see shortly the kind of practices that it draws upon.

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Linda Aspey: And it's not a one-off event, because what we're experiencing is not a one-off event. We're experiencing multiple daily traumas.

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Linda Aspey: And we're adding those on top of the traumas that we were born with, the traumas that we inherited, the traumas that our cultures create.

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Linda Aspey: And so it's a journey that benefits regular visiting, revisiting, and it's a practice you can apply every day. There's a spiraled journey.

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Linda Aspey: Which I… when I remember to, and it's not every day I remember to, but I start my day off by just 15 minutes going through a spiral on my own. And it's not a spiral that goes downwards, it's not a spiral of despair, it's a spiral that gets me somewhere new every time.

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Linda Aspey: And the key, really, feeling behind this is that we're not turning into our pain, because it's hard to… it's very hard to turn into. It's hard to imagine how bad things are, and how bad they will get.

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Linda Aspey: And Jana knew this then, and she said, yet of all the dangers we face, from climate chaos to nuclear warfare.

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Linda Aspey: More, none is so great as the deadening of our response.

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Linda Aspey: And you might recognize this yourself in the groups you're with, in yourself, when you like to have a… I call it a mental spa, a day when I just don't want to think about it, an hour when I just don't want to think about it. But none is so great as a deadening of our response, because you can't face

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Linda Aspey: You can't deal with something that you're not facing, and this is a very well-known thing, but as a society, we've got the luxury at the moment, a lot of the time, of being able to turn away.

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Linda Aspey: And deaden our response.

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Linda Aspey: But the refusal, Jana says beautifully, the refusal to feel.

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Linda Aspey: Takes a heavy toll.

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Linda Aspey: Not only is there an impoverishment of our emotional and sensory life, Flowers are dimmer.

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Linda Aspey: And less fragrant.

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Linda Aspey: Our love's less ecstatic.

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Linda Aspey: But this psychic numbing also impedes our capacity to process.

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Linda Aspey: and respond to information. It's a bit like if you're… if you've got,

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Linda Aspey: A large member of family that represents all the different characters in your family, and half of them aren't speaking.

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Linda Aspey: half of the month, talking or engaging or connecting, you've not got the whole range of experience there.

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Linda Aspey: And the energy that we expend in pushing down our despair is then, of course, diverted. We've only got capacity to do so much inter-psychically, and if we're pushing despair and turning away from it, we're also pushing away our capacity for creativity, for more creative uses.

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Linda Aspey: It depletes our resilience and imagination needed for fresh visions and strategies.

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Linda Aspey: Anybody that's been to Kaimabon in Wales will know… in Snowdonia will recognise this bridge, which Chaimabon is at the foothills of Snowdonia. It's an eco-village.

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Linda Aspey: Where you can just really soak up nature.

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Linda Aspey: So the price of emotional numbness, I mean, just look at that picture. Isn't that uncomfortable?

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Linda Aspey: That grey blob.

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Linda Aspey: It makes me feel uncomfortable just looking at it. There's no clarity. I can't… I can't look at it for long. But it's… it's what emotional numbers do, it does to it. It takes away our capacity for engaging. It takes away our capacity for clarity.

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Linda Aspey: And we know this today from modern-day neuroscientists and therapists.

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Linda Aspey: The attempt to escape from pain is what creates more pain. That's Gabo Mate, who's a world-leading expert in trauma, in trauma in our bodies.

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Linda Aspey: So, what's going on behind the scenes? We're just going to look… some of you know this already, because I've done these talks, and some of you will be here. I'm briefly going to talk about psychological defences, but this is not a climate psychology talk, but we can't talk about the work that reconnects without acknowledging what's going on.

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Linda Aspey: To push us away.

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Linda Aspey: So these are primitive strategies, they're shock absorbers for the truth, they're protective processes that stop us

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Linda Aspey: They try to stop us from looking at difficult feelings, and having difficult feelings.

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Linda Aspey: There are around 40 identified. We use them all the time, but many have come into… they're on steroids right now around climate change, and they're similar to the ones we experience around death and illness.

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Linda Aspey: And, of course, they can prevent us from perceiving or coping with reality, because they're numbing us and protecting us.

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Linda Aspey: Psychological defences normally soften as we mature and we adapt to knocks of life.

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Linda Aspey: And then normal, we all have them. We will have times when we don't want to think about that, and sometimes when we're not aware, we don't want to think about it, but we don't think about it.

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Linda Aspey: Another way of, looking at them is somebody else wrote about them called the unthought known.

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Linda Aspey: Sometimes we know something, but we just haven't thought about it. We've not found words for it from childhood.

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Linda Aspey: So we know something's wrong, we just turn away from it. They're not all deeply repressed Freudian impressions. Some of them are something we know, you know, you feel it in your body, but you haven't got words for it.

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Linda Aspey: And they carry on in the background, and sometimes it means we behave in ways that we and others don't understand. I've had people say, I can't understand that person. They went on a climate talk 5 years ago, they went on climate much, and they've just had 10 kids.

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Linda Aspey: You know, you have… well, don't they know what's going on there? We've got to cut… so you have all these kind of ambivalences and weird feelings, and they can be or become pathological.

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Linda Aspey: and lead to maladaptive or self-destructive behaviour. And I would say Trump is their case history in many, many layers of psychological defences, completely unaware

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Linda Aspey: of what's going on in his world. He's got lack of self-awareness, he's got lack of awareness and impact on others, etc.

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Linda Aspey: So some of the key ones are negation, denial, disavowal, you come across these all the time. Different forms and ways of saying, it's not happening, it's not true.

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Linda Aspey: Disavowal being the most prevalent one in society, which is

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Linda Aspey: We all kind of know, but we all not… we all prefer not to know at the same time.

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Linda Aspey: Distancing, you know, it's over there, splitting. It's all bad, it's their fault.

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Linda Aspey: Intellectualization. Oh, that's really interesting. That… did you see that chart today, that graph, that data?

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Linda Aspey: Ambivalence. I'd like to change, I wish I could, but I can't. I want to do this, but I don't want to do that, because I've… we live with these. Apathy. Don't want to engage, there's no point. Doomism. Ugh, just… we're all doomed anyway.

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Linda Aspey: And there can be maladaptive and unhealthy optimism, otherwise known as hopium.

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Linda Aspey: And then, of course, we've got lots of cognitive biases, loads of them, you know, cognitive dissonance, shortcuts, little shortcuts in thinking, group-in bias, likability bias, credibility bias, you name it, they're all there. There's around 150 cognitive biases.

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Linda Aspey: And around 45 or so psychological defences. So it's no wonder we're thinking about difficult stuff at all.

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Linda Aspey: And the one that we're most encountering, of course, is in widespread society in the media. Just as you mentioned, Stuart, you know, things haven't been talked about on the BBC. There's a socially constructed silence, which is a collective defense.

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Linda Aspey: Which is, let's not talk about it.

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Linda Aspey: It's difficult to talk about it. Let's not… let's not upset people. Let's not give them the bad news. So don't talk about it, and of course, if you're not talking about it, the general public aren't thinking about it.

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Linda Aspey: And it sends a message that everything will be okay. It's a soothing, social soothing process.

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Linda Aspey: So we're all… that's the world we're living in, that's the water we're swimming in.

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Linda Aspey: And that's the water we also experience ourselves, and I can regularly experience. That, as a social constructive silence, I go somewhere and I think, I can't believe they're not talking about this. And then I go somewhere and I recognize that the social constructive silence is so huge, I can't open my mouth about something.

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Linda Aspey: Friends and family, as an example, but many people, you know, an activist often experience this.

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Linda Aspey: So, let's bring us back to the work that reconnects. How does… so what is it about this work that reconnects that can help us here?

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Linda Aspey: In overcoming some of these difficulties in facing it.

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Linda Aspey: The assumptions are that the Earth is alive, it's a resource, and it's life, and it's our larger body, so that… the assumption is that we need to reconnect with all of us, all parts of us, including the Earth.

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Linda Aspey: Our true nature is far more ancient in encompassing the separate self.

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Linda Aspey: And of course, neoliberalism and the industrial growth society wants us to feel individual in so many ways.

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Linda Aspey: I begin to sound like a conspiracy theorist once I get on this, and of course, there's plenty of those to jump on. But our true nature is far more ancient and encompassing. We are… we are born, we are… it's our… it's our birthright to be in nature. The air that we breathe is just the right air for us.

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Linda Aspey: The water we drink, or used to drink, was just the right water for our bodies. It's the birthright that we are part of this earth, just like it's the birthright of any plant, any animal.

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Linda Aspey: Our experience of moral pain springs from the interconnectedness.

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Linda Aspey: With all beings, including humans of all cultures.

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Linda Aspey: And this also, our experience of pain, from this can also arise our powers to act on their behalf, if they're unable to.

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Linda Aspey: And our unblocking occurs when our pain for the world is not only intellectually validated, but also experienced and expressed, despite how hard we try to not do that.

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Linda Aspey: Understandably.

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Linda Aspey: But when we reconnect with life, but we reconnect by willingly enduring pain, the mind retrieves its natural clarity. That horrible fuzzy grey square.

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Linda Aspey: stops that… it loses that sense. We become crystal clear about what needs to be done, and what our role and our collective role, more importantly, is. People often say, what's mine to do? And I say, no, what's ours to do? Because that's really where it needs to be.

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Linda Aspey: And so the experience of reconnection with the Earth community, human and other than human, arouses our desire to act.

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Linda Aspey: When we care about something, we… it re-triggers and reminds us of our desire to add.

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Linda Aspey: And collective liberation within the species is essential to the larger web of life, planetary life. If we don't live… if we continue to live very separately, and think we're separate and better than.

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Linda Aspey: we will not enable the flourishing web of life. So those are the core assumptions. I'll stop there, because I've rattled, and let's see if anyone's got any observations they just want to share.

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Linda Aspey: Or questions they want to ask.

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration -: I have one thought, Linda, which comes from several of the presentations that you've had, which is that

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration -: anything connected with nature brings out far more volunteers than any other activity. They're all desperate to get back in touch, whether it be you're planting trees, or you're building a nature reserve, or you're just setting up allotments, but that seems to be bringing out people by the hordes.

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration -: So, what you say about connecting to planetary life does indeed get borne out by volunteering.

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Linda Aspey: Oh, that's lovely to hear, Graeme. Really, lovely.

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Linda Aspey: Any other thoughts or reflections, questions?

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: I thought you didn't go deeply enough into…

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: how much we are connected with the Earth, the planet, and nature.

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: And the… I mean, my background is medicine. I was an intensive care consultant for many years.

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: But recently I've been learning about how intimately we are part of nature.

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: a lot of our, sort of, DNA derives from viruses, bacteria. We've grown up with these organisms. Some are kind to us, and some are not so kind to us.

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: We've evolved to… Hang on to the bonds which are kind to us, and our immune system

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: To fight off the ones which aren't been kind to us. So, we have actually evolved, and you saying the water is just right for us.

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: we've evolved to be just right for the water. I think would be a fairer way of putting things.

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Linda Aspey: And the environment which we've…

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: evolved in over millions of years.

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: has affected how evolution has taken place, and we just happen to have

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: come good in a very nice, stable part of Earth's history.

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: And currently, we are wrecking it.

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Linda Aspey: Absolutely, and beautifully put. And it's a… I love… I quite agree with your reframe. I quite agree with that. The planet isn't there to serve us, but we've become to think… we've come to think that it is there to serve us.

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Linda Aspey: And just… I didn't know you were a former consultant. I'm a former nurse and a paediatric nurse, many years ago, many years ago. One thing I would also.

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: Not great on the street, I hope.

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration -: No question it's children's.

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Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: Excellent.

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration -: But they're originally French here in Bristol.

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Linda Aspey: But one of the, the aspects of this is, I mean, if you think of our own, our own bodies, N. Catherine Hales, who's a very well-known, writer on, and literary critic on AI and bacteria and all sorts of things, she's written a book called From AI to Bacteria, Bacteria to AI.

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Linda Aspey: she's in her 90s now, but she had, she's, there's some amazing podcasts of her out there, I can put her name in the end.

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Linda Aspey: And she and many other scientists would say that actually we have 10 ti… between… the amounts vary, but people say between 4 and 10 times more non-human cells in our bodies than we have human cells.

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Linda Aspey: Gut microbiome is just one example.

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Linda Aspey: So we have viruses, we have fungi, we have all sorts of animal life. We are an ecosystem in our own right, and we're part of a wider ecosystem, too.

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Linda Aspey: Lovely. So, I'm going to come back to the slides, unless there's any other point anybody would like to make.

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Linda Aspey: Alright.

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Linda Aspey: Oh, what are we doing there?

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Linda Aspey: Do that, share… there we go.

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Linda Aspey: So, coming back to this, so active hope, you've probably heard, often people hear about work that reconnects, and they say, well, isn't… what's active hope, and is there a difference? What's active hope, and what's the work that reconnects?

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Linda Aspey: And Active Hope is actually, it is essentially the name of a book that, Joanna wrote with Chris Johnston, who himself is a former doctor, and it's a set of practices that use the work that reconnects ideas.

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Linda Aspey: And in itself, it's a definition of what it is. So, often, the terms are interchangeable. People say, I'm doing a work that reconnects workshop, some will say I'm doing an Active Hope workshop, so they've become more or less indistinguishable.

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Linda Aspey: So when we think about the word hope, it's got two different mean… two different meanings. There's hopefulness.

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Linda Aspey: Which is, I hope and I believe, is likely to happen.

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Linda Aspey: But often that relies on us deciding that it's,

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Linda Aspey: that we believe in something before we commit ourselves, you know? I believe it's likely to happen. I hope that the… hope it's gonna happen.

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Linda Aspey: And sometimes we just…

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Linda Aspey: wait for it. It's sort of like a white passive, I'm waiting for that to happen, or I hope it's going to happen, otherwise I won't do it. And we can easily be deterred when we meet obstacles. This isn't everyone's definition, there are hundreds of definitions and interpretations of hope.

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Linda Aspey: from some of the great philosophers in the world, including, you know, people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, so many incredible people. So, these are not, by any means at all, dictionary-specific or person-specific. These are just a general view from Joanna and Chris.

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Linda Aspey: And then there's desire, is I know deeply what I hope for, and even though I'm uncertain about the outcome, I'll commit anyway.

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Linda Aspey: So it's a bit like if you had an ailing child, and someone said it was… the child was… was in… in the last, you know, just unable to help them. You wouldn't say, well, I hope it's going to happen that we can cure this. You'd say, well, I really desire for them to recover, so I'm going to go and find some cures.

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Linda Aspey: And I don't care if they work or not, I'm gonna do all I can.

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Linda Aspey: So the desire part is rooted in courage and imagination. And these two aspects of hope

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Linda Aspey: Then also lead us then to thinking about what does that look like in real life. Well, passive hope is waiting for someone to bring about what we hope for.

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Linda Aspey: And active hope is about becoming

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Linda Aspey: Active participants in bringing about what we hope for.

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Linda Aspey: On… even if we're not certain of the outcome.

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Linda Aspey: And of course, who is certain of any outcome at the moment?

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Linda Aspey: And we never really were certain, we just had things in our life that we put in place to make us think that there's certainty, like a diary, like we booked a concert, we're sure we're going to go there, you know? We don't use God willing in our greetings to people. I'll see you next week, God willing. We don't use those kind of things in some cultures.

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Linda Aspey: So we assume that things are going to happen.

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Linda Aspey: So what does the work that reconnects… what are the tools and resources that we can draw upon?

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Linda Aspey: Well, there's a lot of work in pairs and small groups and large groups.

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Linda Aspey: And at this stage, I should just say as well that, I use Work That Reconnects all the time without naming that I'm doing it. If I'm running a leadership off-site, it's often framed in a Work That Reconnects way, and I don't say, today we're going to do Work That Reconnects.

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Linda Aspey: It's been woven into all of my trainings, all of my listening circles, and all of those kind of things.

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Linda Aspey: It often involves nature-connected practices and rituals.

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Linda Aspey: because of that need to reconnect, and as Graham said, it attracts a lot more people when we do that. It also invites in and includes

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Linda Aspey: Looking at our relationship with time and our ancestors, both past and future.

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Linda Aspey: So there's a lot of wonderful work done around deep time, and seeing ourselves as just part of this massive, massive, massive journey, and we're just a tiny speck in that journey.

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Linda Aspey: Of the world, of the planet, of the solar systems.

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Linda Aspey: It often involves things like meditation, poetry, and prose, because they have a way to help us to access our feelings differently.

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Linda Aspey: Than perhaps other forms, and often music and art and things like that. So, for that reason, it's… it's accessible to a very, very wide range of people.

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Linda Aspey: It involves journaling, you know, we can do exercise on journaling. I do… there's a workshop I do where we spend an hour on drawing things and sharing our drawings, and I never would have done that before as a leadership coach. It wouldn't have occurred to me to bring these practices in when I was in the world of business as usual growth.

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Linda Aspey: It does include mind-body work, and everything we're doing, really, is mind-body work. We don't necessarily name it as that. Everything we are doing every day is mind-body work when we're together with other people, and we're listening and we're sharing.

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Linda Aspey: But it also does include trauma work, but of course that is context and facilitator skill dependent. We don't invite people into traumatic spaces or conversations without making sure that we're… people are grounded and there's competence in whoever's leading that work.

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Linda Aspey: It also includes anti-oppression and inclusion work. How can we not think of those things when we're thinking about reconnecting to the larger-than-me selves that are out there?

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Linda Aspey: And there are lots of leadership and inner development ideas and practices that are part of the work that we connects.

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Linda Aspey: So that sounds like a mishmash, and it is.

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Linda Aspey: Because it takes… I mean, but there are some core things that can be used reliably time and time again by any of you here.

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Linda Aspey: To frame your meetings, to frame your council meetings, to frame your community meetings, to frame your activist group meetings. They're very simple practices, and the more you read about it, the more you can begin to apply some of the little extras.

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Linda Aspey: So the spiral is built around… there's something called the spiral of the work that reconnects.

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Linda Aspey: This is the fundamental core of the work that reconnects practices.

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Linda Aspey: And active hope ideas, which is we start with gratitude.

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Linda Aspey: We start with gratitude because it… like a dandelion, a dandelion has strong roots.

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Linda Aspey: It will root us in our experience, it will root us in what is good, it'll help us to withstand difficult times. You can cut down a dandelion, but it'll grow again, because the roots are strong.

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Linda Aspey: You can only… even… it's interesting how many…

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Linda Aspey: garden shops, well, they call them garden shops, they're plastic centers really aren't, they just sell plastic tat. But how many of them? And they sell weed killers, they have a picture of a dandelion on the front. It's a kind of universal thing for weed killers. It's one of the most beautiful, resilient plants. It's one of the first foods for bees of the season.

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Linda Aspey: It's an incredible plant, and yet, you know, this society's got rid of it. So if we ground ourselves in gratitude.

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Linda Aspey: That gives us strong roots in which to begin to look at our pain in a different way, and we can then honor our pain for the world.

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Linda Aspey: Our pain for what's happening, our pain for what our future generations, for the other life forms on the world, for the life we thought we'd have, all of that, so we can honor the difficult feelings that we've been working so hard to push away.

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Linda Aspey: And when we can do that, that actually begins to open up new perspectives. We can get that clarity. We can see things differently with new eyes. We might see them through old eyes, through ancient eyes. What have our ancestors have wanted and hoped for?

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Linda Aspey: And when we do this, we can then go forth, and I rather love the dandelion. As you might have seen, I've got a dandelion poster on my back wall, and it shows that, actually, as this does, that the dandelion has the sun and the moon and the stars all in the same

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Linda Aspey: life cycle of that dandelion. You've got the yellow flower, you've got the white seedlings, and then you've got them going forth like the stars.

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Linda Aspey: And that's a… that's a more business-like way of doing it. If I'm working with corporate, sometimes they might not appreciate a flower.

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Linda Aspey: So we tune our message for whoever I'm working with. I worked with a group of barristers, and I showed them this, I showed them the first one, and then I showed them this, and I said, which are you more drawn to? And it was a… it was a split in the room, and they said, oh, we like this one, it's simpler to look at, and the other's a bit…

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Linda Aspey: Woo-woo. And others like the woo-woo.

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Linda Aspey: So we start from gratitude, we honor our pain, and we see the new and ancient eyes.

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Linda Aspey: So the first thing is something, somewhere, or someone, or anywhere, that makes me grateful to be alive. And,

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Linda Aspey: I'm just wondering now if we could maybe invite people into groups for just 5 minutes, Graeme, is that possible?

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration -: Yeah, sure. I think you should… you have all the ability to do that.

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Linda Aspey: I have the power, do I? Okay.

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration -: W. Nope.

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Linda Aspey: Have I got… I haven't. I'm not… probably need to be a co-host.

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration -: Okay, let me just do that.

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Linda Aspey: And these are called sentence starters.

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Linda Aspey: And rather than ask questions, you can ask questions in breakouts, in these things, but we normally give people a sentence starter.

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Linda Aspey: Did you have a question there, Penny?

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Penny Q - Weymouth Climate Hub: Yeah, while you were talking, I was just thinking that something came up for me around,

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Penny Q - Weymouth Climate Hub: Honouring our pain, and, and owning our pain.

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Linda Aspey: I'm.

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Penny Q - Weymouth Climate Hub: recognizing how that might be different, and… and… Yeah, I have a…

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Penny Q - Weymouth Climate Hub: A lack of clarity around that.

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Linda Aspey: Yeah, lovely. Well, we're going to do a little exercise on that in a moment, as we've opted for the interactive thing. Thank you. So, breakout rooms, so I'm going to do one…

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Linda Aspey: 1, 2, 3, 4… So, I'm going to,

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Linda Aspey: I'll go into a room with someone.

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Linda Aspey: And what I'm going to do is just invite you… actually, no, that looks like we're even. How come I've got an even number?

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration -: Well, it depends on whether Andrew is in a position.

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Linda Aspey: Oh, yes, and Andrew, you're gonna… are you coming in, Andrew?

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Linda Aspey: Yep, so I've got Andrew and Stuart.

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Linda Aspey: I've got Jackie and Mike

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Linda Aspey: I've got Penny and Stella. Oh, I haven't got Graham, so Graham, you and I will stay in this room, if that's okay?

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Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration -: Camille?

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Linda Aspey: So the question I'm just going to ask you to think about, or this sentence starter, is something, somewhere, or someone that makes me glad to be alive. And I'm just going to ask you to take turns, and have just one or two minutes, two minutes each, it's really short, two minutes each.

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Linda Aspey: manage the time, and then just swap over, and then I'll bring you back. So it really is a very, very quick, it's just a taster.

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Linda Aspey: And then we'll come back, and you don't need to tell us what it was, but I'm… Reset…

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Linda Aspey: So, we'll go back to this. So, gratitude gives us roots. These are, there are various… there are very many trees, including the Sequoia.

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Linda Aspey: Tequoia tree, which is otherwise known as the Canadian Redwood, where the roots of the tree

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Linda Aspey: are actually on the surf… mostly on the surface, and they… they don't go very far down, but they go far and wide, and they are only resilient because they connect with roots of other trees, and you… if you tried to dig them all up, you'd be dig… you'd knock all the other trees down, because they… they look after each other, they feed like all trees do, but this is

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Linda Aspey: They're one of the oldest trees, species of trees in the world.

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Linda Aspey: And so, their roots support each other. And gratitude reminds us of other things, places, people that we're connected to.

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Linda Aspey: And that gives us, routes to deal with difficult things.

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Linda Aspey: And Robin Wall Kimmerer, who's written a beautiful book, one of many books, called Braiding Sweetgrass.

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Linda Aspey: Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teaching of plants.

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Linda Aspey: Gives us a lovely way of looking at this too, which is paying attention is a form of reciprocity with the living world.

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Linda Aspey: Receiving the gifts with open hearts, open eyes and open heart.

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Linda Aspey: What it helps us to do when we're looking at gratitude, we're not saying to someone or ourselves, you should be grateful for.

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Linda Aspey: We're saying, what do I experience gratitude for? It's not a way of, you know, undermining somebody, or saying, I'm lucky because I've got this, and all the… I feel bad all those people haven't. It's a different practice. It says, I'm grateful to have this in my life for what it is.

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Linda Aspey: And I can honor my pain differently, but I recognize my abundance, I recognize

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Linda Aspey: That there is so much out there, you can't take away the smile of a baby.

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Linda Aspey: You can't buy a smile of a baby. You probably can when they're a toddler, and you give them something shiny, but, but recognizing abundance rather than scarcity. The economy we live in

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Linda Aspey: Thrives by creating unmet desires.

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Linda Aspey: Buy more, be more, have more.

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Linda Aspey: be better And so gratitude cultivates an ethic of fullness.

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Linda Aspey: But our economy, the current economy we have, needs emptiness.

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Linda Aspey: So, we are moving away from this economy, as you've probably all seen.

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Linda Aspey: And, and experienced.

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Linda Aspey: So that's… it's lovely to have gratitude in our lives, and if all you did every morning was start the day saying, what am I grateful to have in my life, you might shift how you approach the day.

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Linda Aspey: And one of… anybody that's been fortunate to have coaching will know that many people keep a coaching diary of the things that have gone well that day. Maybe three things that have gone well, and one thing they do differently next time.

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Linda Aspey: Because we also know from neurobiology, that actually when we focus on what is good, we're more likely to be able to repeat it. If we focus only on what's bad, we're not likely to want to confront it, or change it. It's… we need a balance. It's a 5-to-1 balance, actually. Barbara Friedrichson discovered.

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Linda Aspey: Between criticism and, and depreciation or gratitude.

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Linda Aspey: So the second stage of the spiral is honoring our pain for the world.

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Linda Aspey: And so, having done the gratitude, as you're… you've said you want to do the workshop, I'm going to invite you back into pairs.

415
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Linda Aspey: And going to invite you to think about this.

416
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Linda Aspey: And have 5 minutes between the two of you. It's brief again.

417
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Linda Aspey: When we come back, I won't be asking you again to share this. If we were doing a half day or full day, we would be processing this a lot more. So I'm inviting you to only go as deeply as you feel able to at this moment.

418
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Linda Aspey: Some of the feelings that come up for me when I contemplate what's happening in the world, in and to our world, are…

419
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00:57:14.420 --> 00:57:22.069
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Linda Aspey: And if you want a shortcut for that quest, for that sentence starter, just, you know, some of the ways I'm feeling about what's going on.

420
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00:57:24.300 --> 00:57:26.269
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Linda Aspey: Three half day exercise.

421
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00:57:26.940 --> 00:57:32.440
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Linda Aspey: Yeah, so some of the feelings that come up are things like, you might have heard of the Truth Mandala.

422
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Linda Aspey: You might have heard of, well, that's probably one of the most common ones, but walking in nature can bring up feelings. Truth Mandal is a beautiful ritual where you, you gather around a set of objects, and you talk to your feelings, and you have them witnessed

423
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Linda Aspey: So, we've been very brief here, but you can do some beautiful grief ritual work, and you can get good at grief, you can get good at all those feelings, at articulating them, making them real, and through that side, we know that you get clarity when you've been able to do that.

424
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Penny Q - Weymouth Climate Hub: expression of feelings.

425
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Linda Aspey: You get clarity. Again, if any of you have been fortunate enough to have counselling in your life that's been effective for you, you will know that you've come out of some of those things getting absolute clarity, because you've found a way to communicate how you feel.

426
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Linda Aspey: And it takes at least two minds to think a person's most difficult thoughts.

427
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00:58:28.880 --> 00:58:30.499
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Linda Aspey: At least two minds.

428
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Linda Aspey: Thomas Ogden, the American psychoanalyst, said that it takes at least… he said it… in fact, he said it takes two minds to think about a person's most difficult thoughts. And I add, it takes at least two minds.

429
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Linda Aspey: And other questions we often do, we do things like what I find most hard about my feelings, and we might, you know, we can use all sorts of different questions to honour our pain for the world, and different exercises

430
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00:58:57.680 --> 00:58:59.720
\
Linda Aspey: So that's just a taster there.

431
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00:59:00.120 --> 00:59:08.920
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Linda Aspey: So the other side of the pain for the world is that actually our sorrow is in equal measure love. We only really mourn what we deeply care for.

432
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00:59:10.130 --> 00:59:16.069
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Linda Aspey: It connects us to the fact that this something is really important, and we care about it.

433
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00:59:17.060 --> 00:59:23.360
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Linda Aspey: If we talk about fear, we're showing the trust and the courage it takes to speak fear in a fear-phobic society.

434
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00:59:25.670 --> 00:59:31.179
\
Linda Aspey: If we talk about anger and we express that, it's got at its source our passion for justice.

435
\
00:59:31.460 --> 00:59:44.880
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Linda Aspey: Somebody, wrote an article in a magazine, Euronews, I think, saying that, or one of the mainstream papers that, it was anger that was fueling activists.

436
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00:59:45.260 --> 00:59:54.080
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Linda Aspey: And I thought, well, you've got an awful lot of people very wrong here. Yes, the anger is what you see. What you actually… what they're expressing is love and passion for justice.

437
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00:59:55.010 --> 00:59:56.580
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Linda Aspey: Expressing justice.

438
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00:59:57.550 --> 01:00:08.399
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Linda Aspey: And if we're feeling empty, you know those times when you feel absolutely nothing, and you're feeling a bit numb, we don't label that as bad. We say, if we're feeling empty, it makes space for new things to arise.

439
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01:00:09.740 --> 01:00:15.970
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Linda Aspey: So, if we don't know how to express feelings, when we can make space, that will help.

440
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01:00:16.170 --> 01:00:27.420
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Linda Aspey: So, that's what one of the works that we connect's primary aims was to… was to normalize the expression of feeling in a fear-phobic and a feeling-phobic society.

441
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01:00:28.160 --> 01:00:44.059
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Linda Aspey: It's very interesting, in all my work as a leadership coach, if I walked into… if I was working with a group of people I was contracting at the start, maybe a group of leaders on an off-site or something, or leadership development, and I say something like, you know, all feelings are welcome here, all feelings and none are welcome here.

442
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01:00:44.170 --> 01:00:49.499
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Linda Aspey: And a lot of people would interpret, in the corporate world, would interpret feelings as being bad.

443
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01:00:49.800 --> 01:00:58.799
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Linda Aspey: as being a, oh, you know, oh, she's gonna get us going all weepy or something. Feelings, there's a range of feelings. There's joy, there's emotion, there's jealousy, there's…

444
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01:00:58.910 --> 01:01:04.869
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Linda Aspey: There's pleasure, there's this… there's connection, there's all sorts of feelings. And so,

445
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01:01:05.100 --> 01:01:16.840
\
Linda Aspey: I also blame the mainstream psychologists for talking about negative and positive feelings. What a… what a nonsense! What an absolute nonsense. We can have negative and positive thoughts.

446
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01:01:17.820 --> 01:01:32.489
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Linda Aspey: It's kind of nonsense to say that feelings are negative. We've labelled them negative because we don't like them, and yet they're a source of information, and they're a source of energy, and a source of opportunity for us to recognize them and validate them and say, okay.

447
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01:01:32.600 --> 01:01:36.820
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Linda Aspey: I want to feel differently, but they weren't negative, but they just were holding me back.

448
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01:01:37.050 --> 01:01:39.359
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Linda Aspey: But they've been abridged to something different.

449
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01:01:39.860 --> 01:01:44.640
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Linda Aspey: So I, I get really crossed when people write about, oh, get rid of your negative feelings.

450
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01:01:46.500 --> 01:02:03.850
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Linda Aspey: Another key part of the work, I'm just aware of the time, it's just 20 past now, so we won't take too long now. I want to mention the three stories of our time, which you might have heard of, and these are common, these come up a lot in climate circles and things like that.

451
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01:02:04.170 --> 01:02:13.490
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Linda Aspey: Three stories of our time were defined by Joanna and colleagues as these… we're living in a set of different stories all the time.

452
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01:02:13.620 --> 01:02:18.649
\
Linda Aspey: We're living with three key concurrent stories.

453
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01:02:18.760 --> 01:02:23.359
\
Linda Aspey: And we can kind of choose which story we want to be predominant in our lives.

454
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01:02:23.560 --> 01:02:30.940
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Linda Aspey: And which stories we want to move away from. Although we will still have them in our lives, but we choose where we put our energy.

455
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01:02:31.860 --> 01:02:36.300
\
Linda Aspey: So business as usual is the story that tells us, just keep going.

456
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01:02:36.580 --> 01:02:46.419
\
Linda Aspey: In an industrialized, consumer-functioning society, where we have what we want when we want it, when we have strawberries on Christmas Day, because we can fly them from Kenya.

457
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01:02:46.620 --> 01:02:54.060
\
Linda Aspey: Where we can have what we want, you know, any time of the day or night. Where growth is good, whatever the cost.

458
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01:02:54.280 --> 01:03:02.690
\
Linda Aspey: All of those sort of stories, where, business as usual is where we can see people on the other side of the planet struggling

459
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01:03:02.900 --> 01:03:14.889
\
Linda Aspey: to find a home, struggling to feed, struggling to stay alive, but, there's nothing, you know, we can do nothing about it. That's just business as usual. Just keep going. So it's a story that allows us to emotionally numb.

460
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01:03:15.180 --> 01:03:23.289
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Linda Aspey: It is a story that perpetuates and props up the industrial growth society and the military-industrial complex for that point.

461
\
01:03:24.120 --> 01:03:43.909
\
Linda Aspey: So it's a story that is not doing us any good. We need some elements of business as usual in the places which… in which it's unusual. We don't need to just degrow, because as a globe… because that's going to impact people who've never even had the chance to grow and, you know, never chance to feed themselves. So there's different lenses through which we can look through this.

462
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01:03:44.070 --> 01:03:51.430
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Linda Aspey: And all of the work that reconnects is… tries to be very sensitive to global oppression, as does the Climate Psychology Alliance.

463
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01:03:52.370 --> 01:04:07.030
\
Linda Aspey: So just keep going is one story, and that's a story that I can fall into when I want to forget what's going on, and I go out… go out, or I pop on Amazon, and I want to buy five things of different colors, because I like them, and I think, no, you're just getting sucked into this machine, stop it. Like a magnet.

464
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01:04:07.440 --> 01:04:10.469
\
Linda Aspey: But it soothes me, and stops me from…

465
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01:04:10.800 --> 01:04:15.649
\
Linda Aspey: Keeping in touch with reality. Keeps me in that world of asphia, as I call it.

466
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01:04:16.720 --> 01:04:33.550
\
Linda Aspey: Well, there's the story of the Great Unravelling, which is, oh, it's all catastrophic, it's all gone horribly, horribly wrong, there is nothing we can do about it, our world is unraveling. Now, that is true in many ways. Anyone that's watched Mark Carney's speech this morning at Davos.

467
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01:04:33.550 --> 01:04:38.820
\
Linda Aspey: Yesterday, says this is not, this is not a transition, this is a rupture.

468
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01:04:39.820 --> 01:04:43.070
\
Linda Aspey: So there is an unravelling going on in the global world order.

469
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01:04:43.210 --> 01:04:53.279
\
Linda Aspey: But it doesn't mean to say we have to live in that story, because it can pull us down into despair and depression. It is happening, but it's not all happening everywhere.

470
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01:04:53.510 --> 01:05:04.570
\
Linda Aspey: people like you, amazing groups, community groups, who are doing the opposite of unravelling. You're forming, you're taking action, you're collaborating, you're pulling together, not coming apart.

471
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01:05:06.070 --> 01:05:14.560
\
Linda Aspey: And the Great Turning is a bigger example of that. That's the transformative change, turning away from industrial growth society.

472
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01:05:14.690 --> 01:05:18.550
\
Linda Aspey: To a life-affirming, life-generating society.

473
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01:05:18.660 --> 01:05:34.069
\
Linda Aspey: Well, we've got chance for transformative change. And again, the Great Turning is the other side of the Great Unravelling, and there are pockets of this happening everywhere, and there's, some great stuff happening, you know, just go and watch some local movies… watch some movies.

474
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01:05:34.450 --> 01:05:43.950
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Linda Aspey: about local actions and things happening. Look at Mike's project in Hay Resilience. That's a terrific example of the great turning in action.

475
\
01:05:44.050 --> 01:05:49.530
\
Linda Aspey: Local people getting together, doing things differently, looking for transformative change.

476
\
01:05:49.920 --> 01:05:58.610
\
Linda Aspey: So these are happening everywhere, so we can choose those stories. And we can also be mindful of when the other stories are sucking us in.

477
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01:05:58.770 --> 01:06:13.789
\
Linda Aspey: And taking our energy away, and taking our resolve away. And when we're… when we're walking, sleepwalking into business as usual, as I said, I frequently do, when none of us are perfect, we live in imperfect systems, and business as usual is just that magnet.

478
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01:06:14.460 --> 01:06:18.380
\
Linda Aspey: It appears most at Christmas in the UK.

479
\
01:06:19.070 --> 01:06:20.789
\
Linda Aspey: The frenzy of shopping.

480
\
01:06:21.020 --> 01:06:31.060
\
Linda Aspey: And the frenzy of food, and the supermarket trolleys packed as if we're gonna starve if we don't eat 5 meals a day, you know, that kind of thing.

481
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01:06:31.400 --> 01:06:43.700
\
Linda Aspey: But it's just a story we've been sold, and we're in the system, so that's why I can get a bit crossed sometimes when people focus so much on individual choice. We are in systems that lock us in, and are very hard to move away from.

482
\
01:06:44.760 --> 01:06:54.500
\
Linda Aspey: So, we're not going to have a chance to do this, but these might be, you know, questions that I'll leave for you, and I'll share some slides. I'll share the text of the slides with you.

483
\
01:06:55.030 --> 01:07:11.879
\
Linda Aspey: Which stories help you to see or re-see. Business as usual, the great unraveling and the great turning. Might be worth conversation with your groups, and even in your own home, which of these stories, because when you see things differently, you can see with the new and ancient times.

484
\
01:07:12.320 --> 01:07:18.539
\
Linda Aspey: Again, there are a lot of rituals that we can do with New and Ancient Eyes. There's some beautiful deep time walks.

485
\
01:07:18.880 --> 01:07:33.720
\
Linda Aspey: There's some lovely processes and practices. I work with a leadership team, and every board meeting they have now, the senior leadership team and the board, actually, but every meeting they have, whether it's the SLT or the board, they light a candle.

486
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01:07:34.660 --> 01:07:44.749
\
Linda Aspey: And this is increasing practice, it's a very old practice, and it's called the seventh generation principle. You light a candle for the generations that have been, and the generations that will come.

487
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01:07:45.090 --> 01:07:51.820
\
Linda Aspey: And the focus often and then in the meeting is, how does this decision we're making today affect 7 generations down the line?

488
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01:07:52.560 --> 01:08:09.570
\
Linda Aspey: That's from Indigenous practices, and there's, you know, we need to be careful with Indigenous work that we don't appropriate it and strip them of stuff, take away stuff that they've had to put in place to deal with what we've done to them. So those things can be done with real sensitivity and care.

489
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01:08:09.920 --> 01:08:13.419
\
Linda Aspey: So there's loads and loads of exercises around new and ancient eyes.

490
\
01:08:13.630 --> 01:08:25.239
\
Linda Aspey: just so many, so many, and the book that is great to get for these exercises, I'll share with you at the end, is Coming Back to Life, and that was written by Molly Brown and Joanna Macy.

491
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01:08:25.720 --> 01:08:33.780
\
Linda Aspey: And then, I'm not going to go into these, but there are various dimensions of the Great Turning, and we can use any of them. We can get into activism.

492
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01:08:33.970 --> 01:08:41.229
\
Linda Aspey: We can get into, setting up new systems and structures, and we can have a massive shift, a fundamental spiritual shift.

493
\
01:08:41.540 --> 01:08:55.630
\
Linda Aspey: So there are aspects of this that we can all play a part in, so even if we're just signing petitions, or gluing ourselves somewhere, or we're setting up a community, they're all parts we can play in the Great Tourney.

494
\
01:08:56.800 --> 01:09:09.860
\
Linda Aspey: So, some resources. We've got the Climate Psychology Alliance, there's loads of stuff on the Climate Psychology Alliance website. We do talks. I'm on the board there, you can contact me and say, you know, I want to talk for my organization.

495
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01:09:09.859 --> 01:09:21.730
\
Linda Aspey: Please share the work that this is doing. You know, we do loads of stuff for free. We want to get more into corporates as well, to talk to people about some of these really critical stuff around climate emotions.

496
\
01:09:22.029 --> 01:09:40.999
\
Linda Aspey: We run listening circles. We run training to how to run listening circles. I look after listening circles training, for the CPA. We run parent and youth circles. We also have a wonderful pool of counsellors and psychotherapists and psychologists that offer one-to-one emotional support to anybody in the general public.

497
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01:09:41.310 --> 01:09:48.279
\
Linda Aspey: A lot of people think climate psychology is just about anxiety. It's far wider than that, as you've probably gathered from our conversation.

498
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01:09:49.370 --> 01:10:06.550
\
Linda Aspey: The Work That Reconnects itself, there's a website called Work That Reconnects. It's a place where practitioners like me meet. There are trainings, there are events, there's loads of reading, loads of exercises, it's a… it's a treasure trove. And there's me! I'm a resource, both in my CPA hat and also my own work.

499
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01:10:07.230 --> 01:10:19.009
\
Linda Aspey: So I do one-to-one coaching, I do leadership development in a climate-focused way. I help people to run assemblies and, teach assembly skills.

500
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01:10:19.150 --> 01:10:27.550
\
Linda Aspey: all that kind of stuff. I do all sorts of workshops. I've got 35 years in the field of leadership and organization development. So, there are those.

501
\
01:10:27.930 --> 01:10:31.999
\
Linda Aspey: And if you're interested in a full day of this, there's a QR code.

502
\
01:10:32.160 --> 01:10:35.240
\
Linda Aspey: And you can take that, it'll take you to the website, have a look at it.

503
\
01:10:35.510 --> 01:10:40.810
\
Linda Aspey: if you take a photo of that, it's called Roots of Resilience. It's a full day.

504
\
01:10:40.930 --> 01:10:43.219
\
Linda Aspey: And it's on February the 20th online.

505
\
01:10:43.550 --> 01:10:48.590
\
Linda Aspey: Where I go through this in a lot more depth, and we do some other exercises around resilience, too.

506
\
01:10:49.700 --> 01:10:51.270
\
Linda Aspey: As you mentioned.

507
\
01:10:51.400 --> 01:11:07.200
\
Linda Aspey: Tonight, Penny, I think you mentioned, tonight I'm doing a talk for the Client Emergency center Network. There'll be some of this in there, but not as much. It's much more focused on some of the climate psychology, the unconscious processes, and what it is we need now.

508
\
01:11:07.590 --> 01:11:25.030
\
Linda Aspey: Most particularly back to, you know, how do we engage people at things like emergency center briefings? How do we… how do we do… hold meetings so that they're… that people are well held and received? So it's called Climate Psychology, Making Sense of Our Inner Worlds. So that's a QR code for that.

509
\
01:11:26.280 --> 01:11:28.760
\
Linda Aspey: And then finally, 4 lovely books.

510
\
01:11:29.040 --> 01:11:40.660
\
Linda Aspey: Active Hope and Coming Back to Life. Active Hope is Joanna Macy's book, which explains the principles of it. Get the yellow edition if you're going to buy it, because there's a red edition, which is older. Red cover.

511
\
01:11:40.740 --> 01:11:50.309
\
Linda Aspey: So this yellow, creamy coloured one is the newer one. Coming back to life is a bit like a workbook for anyone that wants to use this stuff. You don't need to go on a course.

512
\
01:11:50.400 --> 01:11:58.030
\
Linda Aspey: You can, and it's great if you experience it a few times yourself, but you can run some of these things with it. It's beautiful, beautiful book.

513
\
01:11:58.160 --> 01:12:01.139
\
Linda Aspey: There's my book, which I co-edited.

514
\
01:12:01.520 --> 01:12:08.830
\
Linda Aspey: Called Holding the Hope, and it's a series of essays from practitioners, psychologists, community psychologists, coaches.

515
\
01:12:09.130 --> 01:12:18.400
\
Linda Aspey: Chris Johnson from, Active Hope wrote a chapter for us. We've got chapters about working with young people. So it's really for practitioners of any kind.

516
\
01:12:19.050 --> 01:12:24.100
\
Linda Aspey: And then there's Braiding Sweetgrass. It's a love song to nature, I call it.

517
\
01:12:24.340 --> 01:12:29.629
\
Linda Aspey: From, Robin Wall Kimmerer. So I'll share these slides with Graham afterwards.

518
\
01:12:30.780 --> 01:12:32.669
\
Linda Aspey: And just to leave you with this poem.

519
\
01:12:34.630 --> 01:12:42.100
\
Linda Aspey: As I've rattled through, and you've given me very attentive, when despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound.

520
\
01:12:42.500 --> 01:12:46.000
\
Linda Aspey: In fear of what my life and my children's lives may be.

521
\
01:12:47.300 --> 01:12:54.010
\
Linda Aspey: I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty, on the water, and the great heron feeds.

522
\
01:12:56.250 --> 01:13:02.049
\
Linda Aspey: I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.

523
\
01:13:04.110 --> 01:13:08.780
\
Linda Aspey: I come into the presence of still water, Whoops, sorry.

524
\
01:13:09.220 --> 01:13:12.050
\
Linda Aspey: And feel above me the day-blind stars.

525
\
01:13:13.020 --> 01:13:14.740
\
Linda Aspey: Waiting with their light.

526
\
01:13:17.280 --> 01:13:19.460
\
Linda Aspey: I rest in the grace of the world.

527
\
01:13:20.460 --> 01:13:21.859
\
Linda Aspey: And I'm free.

528
\
01:13:27.460 --> 01:13:28.960
\
Linda Aspey: Thank you, everybody.

529
\
01:13:29.490 --> 01:13:37.709
\
Linda Aspey: Anybody like to say a word as a final parting? Just a word of how you're feeling leaving this space today, as you leave this space today?

530
\
01:13:38.210 --> 01:13:40.569
\
Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration -: I have a question. Inspired.

531
\
01:13:40.830 --> 01:13:41.359
\
Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration -: Thank you.

532
\
01:13:41.360 --> 01:13:42.280
\
Linda Aspey: Stella.

533
\
01:13:42.740 --> 01:13:43.559
\
Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration -: They've got a pen.

534
\
01:13:43.560 --> 01:13:44.729
\
Linda Aspey: I have a question.

535
\
01:13:44.950 --> 01:13:50.130
\
Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration -: They've got a parish council meeting this evening. Do you record the sessions? Can I pick up on it afterwards?

536
\
01:13:50.530 --> 01:13:52.260
\
Linda Aspey: Yes, it will be recorded.

537
\
01:13:52.410 --> 01:13:53.420
\
Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration -: Okay, thank you.

538
\
01:13:53.420 --> 01:13:57.090
\
Mike HayResilience.org: Could you put up the QR code for it again?

539
\
01:13:57.090 --> 01:13:58.040
\
Linda Aspey: Yes, I will.

540
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01:13:58.040 --> 01:14:00.519
\
Mike HayResilience.org: I think I signed up for it, but I'm not sure.

541
\
01:14:01.230 --> 01:14:03.079
\
Linda Aspey: Let's go back to that?

542
\
01:14:06.840 --> 01:14:08.950
\
Linda Aspey: There you go, can you see that okay?

543
\
01:14:09.300 --> 01:14:09.950
\
Mike HayResilience.org: Yep.

544
\
01:14:12.860 --> 01:14:13.540
\
Mike HayResilience.org: Right.

545
\
01:14:18.480 --> 01:14:20.109
\
Linda Aspey: Everyone got back if they wanted.

546
\
01:14:20.820 --> 01:14:22.529
\
Linda Aspey: One done, okay, lovely.

547
\
01:14:22.710 --> 01:14:24.249
\
Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration -: Will you let me just say…

548
\
01:14:24.630 --> 01:14:29.330
\
Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration -: Thank you so much for an exciting, and yet again, the thought-provoking session. Very interesting.

549
\
01:14:29.660 --> 01:14:35.590
\
Linda Aspey: Great, thank you. Any other final words anyone wants to say? No pressure to, but if there's anything you want to just leave with…

550
\
01:14:39.310 --> 01:14:40.570
\
Linda Aspey: Thank you, Penny.

551
\
01:14:41.380 --> 01:14:42.640
\
Linda Aspey: Thank you, Stella.

552
\
01:14:43.680 --> 01:14:44.389
\
Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: Thank you.

553
\
01:14:44.390 --> 01:14:45.500
\
Mike HayResilience.org: So, thank you.

554
\
01:14:45.980 --> 01:14:49.589
\
Mike HayResilience.org: Thank you very much, Linda, and I'll be in touch.

555
\
01:14:49.850 --> 01:15:08.229
\
Linda Aspey: Wonderful, thank you. Thank you, Jackie, and thank you, Andrew, and thank you, Graeme, for your wonderful holding of this space, and Stuart, too, but your wonderful holding of this space, and the platform that you provide for people to share their work, and the welcome that you always give us, and the amount of care you put into these sessions.

556
\
01:15:08.360 --> 01:15:11.119
\
Linda Aspey: Making sure they happen for your community. Thank you.

557
\
01:15:11.120 --> 01:15:14.390
\
Graham Stoddart-Stones - Great Collaboration -: It's our pleasure. Look forward to seeing you all again next time.

558
\
01:15:14.650 --> 01:15:15.160
\
Linda Aspey: Boom.

559
\
01:15:15.160 --> 01:15:16.010
\
Cllr.Stuart Withington, Gt Dunmow TC, Essex: Okay, thanks.

560
\
01:15:16.010 --> 01:15:17.000
\
Linda Aspey: Yeah, online.

<br>


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