Inquiring into living regeneratively

We just finished a three week exploration into: 

How can we cultivate practices for living regeneratively where we are while learning from others in different places?

 With our mates and friends Maria Scordialos, Vanessa Reid and James Ede. We were accompanied by Ticha Masai who were doing graphic recording and it was truly amazing to see his harvest, especially of the second session, which was about Regeneration in Degeneration diving into What are we learning about the dance of regeneration and degeneration - life and death, growth and decay.

Our starting point for this conversation was the Ecocycle that describes:

• Germination Phase (Re-organisation)
  Germination/exploration: a time of new beginnings and potential, but there is vulnerability as the new may not yet have traction.
• Growth Phase (Exploitation)
  Capacity building: the soil is right for an idea to take off, there is some structure but it is not proven yet, lots of energy for growth and a level of readiness.
• Maturation Phase (Conservation)
  Conservation/systemic: mature, good systems, proven success and reputation. There is stability but a vulnerability to stagnation.
• Creative Destruction (Release)
  Dissolution: letting go, creating space, mourning, loss of structure and endings. A time of inquiry and being in the unknown, a fallow time, a wide open sky.

This was an important reminder for tending to the parts of our lives and we need to let go of. Vanessa also shared her TEDx talk on Conscious Closure and the Wild Life of Dying which was deeply moving.

A reflection about what we need to cultivate in ourself from one of the participants really resonated with me: 

"The ability to hold the discomfort and grief or moving and working in systems that are falling apart and not let that get in my way, or stop me from planting seeds of hope and inspiration. The grief and despair of loss needs to live together with the seeds of strength and hope."

Have a look here to see the framing of this collective inquiry, where we were both building our muscles for being in inquiry together as a core skill in times of collapse and disruption. The inquiry had three entry points: 

• Place and Potential:
  What are we learning from being in relationship to place and its potential?  
• Regeneration in Degeneration
  What are we learning about the dance of regeneration and degeneration?
• Practice individual and collective
  Harvest the skills and capacities we need to cultivate to practice individually and collectively?