Instead of trying to go over there, I point to the right corner of the room.
We can think of it like a spiral - I move my finger in a swirling motion, similar to how water moves down the drain of a bathtub.

I was teaching a session on wayfinding, we were in the third session focused on enacting, one of the three phases from the framework that arose through my PhD research.

As I gestured I was trying to highlight how putting something into practice - rarely moves in a linear path. As living beings, we seem to move in zig zags, loops and spirals. To enact something is to put an idea or possibility into practice, to do the thing we’ve been longing to do, waiting to do or afraid to do - because we know it’s needed and we sense it will bring about changes we can predict.

The whole idea came into being as I sat with the questions: What is enacting? How is it different from acting?

Then through conversation we, the class and I, came to realise that it wasn’t just a spiral that radiated outward from a centre point and stood flat on the page, rather it was one that travelled. More like a seashell or cyclone - a spiral that travels, expands and contracts in response to other forces.

First, what is the difference between acting and enacting? Put broadly - we can think of acting as getting something done to perform or carry something out. In contrast, enacting means to put into action, or to put into practice. With the prefix “en” it has a subtle nod to how we embody or inhabit an action. How an impulse is brought into being from the inside out.

That distinction matters here, because sometimes we may approach a process that’s meant to be enacted - as something we can just do, more like a tick box activity than an iterative practice or unfolding.

I decided to revisit this topic in this month’s OGI, because how we conceive of enacting has implications for how we think about goal setting, successful action, and strategy.

Here’s why: Instead of looking at a horizon in the distance, described through KPI’s, where we want to be in 1-5 years or our strategic priorities - and trying to get someplace, we’re currently not, when we conceive of enacting as a spiral “progress” becomes less about getting somewhere different or departing from where we are now. Instead it acknowledges the point of departure, our lived experience and what we’ve gone through to get to this moment.

It would look at how we loop back to revisit parts of our path we’ve been through before, this time from a different vantage point because time has passed and we, our team, and organisation have changed. In this looping “back” we could recognise how our perspective and manner of relating to these themes, challenges, relationships or topics has changed.

In this sense the shift in perspective and manner of relating could become a metric of change, a signal of how we’re evolving.

In other words - instead of getting somewhere different, we become able to relate differently. This capacity to relate is transferrable. As we become able to relate differently to the past, we open up possibilities for engaging with the present and opening to possible futures, that might not be apparent - if we’d been focused on following a more linear path.

This capacity to relate differently is also a core part of embodying a relational approach, where the space of potential arises through how we tend and attend to what we encounter and how we relate to anything beyond our current identity.

From a spiral - success wouldn’t be seen as a line that gets us from a to b - but more of an unfolding, similar to how an artichoke or peony unfolds. There would be a radial quality, a blossoming informed by the elements around that entity or being.

So the spiral would always be in conversation with our relationships, stakeholders and the larger ecosystem in which we’re living, working and dwelling. The overall direction and intention would be focused on spiralling into more of what we intend and are being invited to do.

Addressing Pain at the End of Life: How to Die in Mexico, with Transpersonal Psychologist Wilka Roig

How well do we tend to the little deaths that occur over the course of a day, a week, a month? How do we lean into the inevitable changes that life brings, especially the ones that urge us to let go of what we knew and surrender to what we’re becoming?

Wilka Roig, a transpersonal psychologist, death doula, artist, phenomenal human and friend of mine, poses a question along these lines in this episode. While the episode focuses on death at the end of our life, it covers so much more. She touches on death as a space, that is all about letting go at different levels, and how this process is mirrored at different stages throughout our life.

Coming into Your Own: A Woman’s Guide Through Life Transitions, by Barbara Cecil

I recently met Barbara through a dear friend. When I met her, I didn’t know anything about her past or her work. Months later when we got to connect and spend some time together I learned that Barbara has been doing work with women around the world for decades supporting them through life transitions and finding their way in the liminal spaces between one chapter of their life and the next.

While I am just starting to read this book, I am already noticing many synergies with the notion of wayfinding and other adjacent themes I’ve been drawn to for years. I am really looking forward to delving further into this book and learning more about Barbara’s approach. Also very grateful to have a new elder in my life here in Victoria, BC.

Wayfinding: Engaging the Texture of the Moment

A course in developing the capability to meet what’s arising in uncertainty, change and transitions.

On October 8th I’ll be hosting a three-part workshop on Wayfinding. This is for those interested in finding language for a way of engaging uncertainty, orienting when what you’re experiencing falls of known maps and you’re asked to learn, think on your feet and know as you go.

Wayfinding is the practice of moving into the unknown, drawing upon our lived experience, the practices we’ve inherited and iterating our capabilities as we adapt to meet what’s arising. Across three sessions we will explore how we orient to what is actually present, make sense of our experience and translate that into responsive action. The course is grounded in research and built around direct experience, offering both a framework and a practice you can bring to your work and the people you work with. Learn more and register here

Wayfinding for Modern Life: Tap into a sense of direction beyond any map

Registration is now open for the next cohort of Wayfinding for Modern Life, a 9-week cohort experience for those looking to meet uncertainty, transition, and change with greater clarity and self-trust. This cohort begins October 22nd, and for the first time we’re bringing in life myth, the archetypal blueprint encoded in your earliest recurring dream, memory, or life-bending event, as a resource for finding steadiness in liminal spaces. It’s an addition that came directly from past students asking to explore the connection between wayfinding and the mythic patterning of their own lives.

The program includes six main sessions, three integration sessions, a library of practices and readings, and a private cohort space to stay in conversation with fellow participants between sessions. Early registration closes September 5th, if you’re navigating a transition or simply want a more embodied way of moving through uncertainty, you can apply and learn more here.

I walked off a path today, into a field.

Away from the buildings, away from the group I’d been sitting with for the past few hours. Earlier, a few hours before the sun had climbed to its peak above the mountain to the east, I’d learned that the word reclaimed comes from the Old French reclamer, which means to call back, or to call back the hawk to the glove.

Held loosely, this can be understood as calling something wild, from the more than human world, back. To summon something that has left, that we have lost touch with back into closer proximity.

I was walking into this field to encounter something I’d fallen out of contact with, even though I didn’t fully know what this was.

Instead of picking a direction or choosing a spot to walk toward, I let myself be led by where I was drawn, listening to the sounds in the landscape, and letting an array of impressions guide me.

The hum of the bees buzzing around the grass that brushed against my calves, the sensation of the wind against my face, the subtle fluctuations in temperature, all directed me, as a conductor might coax a piece of music out of an orchestra.

At some level I was being played.

As I walked through the field I heard the sound of the wind, the grass bending beneath my feet, and a layered improvised composition of birdsong. What first sounded like a continual unfolding of sounds morphed into a looping. I could hear a circularity in the wind, the birdsong, the rhythm of my footsteps.

It all moved in a loop of call and response, pressure and release, ebb and flow. Bees hum, a robin calls out, the coo of the mourning dove returns.

While we can focus on what comes back to us, even the act of calling out, of stepping into a space with an openness to encounter something beyond our plans, sets something else in motion.

We can walk into a field, a new role or relationship, on instinct and find over days, months and years that part of what drew us there was a desire for reclamation, to call back to something some part of us knows we need, even if we can’t fully explain why, or what this something is.

Even the meander, the step or leap off the known path into a new space, can bring us back into the rotation of this conversation, back into a spiral whose motion creates a vortex, a field that expands as it pulls down and into a focal point beyond where my eyes can see.

I arrived at a cluster of cottonwood trees. On the ground were fallen branches that formed a kind of jagged semi-circle. Some were buried, overgrown with grass. Others had fallen recently and rested on top. I start to see a nest. I step into it, and in this space I notice, I listen, I take in as much as I can.

Leaves of the cottonwood trembling, a sea of grass beyond swaying, the flickering of dappled sunlight on the bark of the cottonwood tree before me.

All is moving.

Stepping off the known path, a ceiling lifts, nudging and then gently plunging me into the potency that had always been there, reverberating beyond the edges of the path.

I left wondering if this is also a part of reclamation.

When we step out of our known patterns of moving and relating to the world and all that is within it, what more becomes possible? How do these possibilities arise through our senses?

I wonder, where are you feeling drawn to veer off the known path, even at the smallest level? And if this were to initiate a process of reclamation, what might come back to you?

What I’m Reading:

When Death Comes, by Mary Oliver [an excerpt]

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

—Mary Oliver

Winter: Effulgences and Devotions, by Sarah Vap

Emily Dickinson once said reading poetry can have the sensation of the top of your head lifting off. This is what I felt reading Vap’s work. The immediacy of her writing drops you into a scene, quickening your breath, then slows it all right down to feel all the bumps and hidden points of friction encoded in a single moment that feels viscerally human. Written over a twelve-year period, this book documents the process of trying to write a poem amid the swirl of mothering and becomes a confrontation with the rampant and insidious features of late capitalism. This book moves between being evocative, sobering funny, bold touching into the messiness of being human in these times.

Aligning with the Moment - A Free Session

• July 8th, 3:00-4:00 pm PDT

• July 10th, 10:00-11:00 am PDT

This July I’m offering a free live session for those times when you feel stuck, flat, or unsure how to proceed, when you’re giving it your best and things still aren’t flowing, or you sense your usual approach won’t carry you into what’s next. Bring a real question or challenge, a decision, a stalled project, a transition, and we’ll explore ways of engaging the stuckness so you can connect with additional insight for how you might engage moving forward and a felt experience of a more grounded, responsive way of moving through uncertainty. Reserve your spot here

Wayfinding: Engaging the Texture of the Moment: A course in developing the capability to meet what’s arising in uncertainty, change and transitions.

• Thursdays August 13th, 20th, and 27th, 3:00-5:00 pm PDT

• Fridays, August 14th, 21st, and 28th, 8:00-10:00 am AEST

In August I’ll be hosting a three-part workshop on Wayfinding for therapists, coaches, guides and leaders navigating uncertainty and transition.

Many of us might feel that something is shifting in our work, in the systems we operate within, in what is being asked of us. At the moments when we feel the shift, find we’re off the map and facing uncertainty we may notice ourselves looking outward for answers, reaching for frameworks or insights from others.

Yet as we reach we can lose touch with one of the most vital sources of input: our own direct experience of what is happening right in front of us.

Wayfinding is the practice of moving into the unknown, drawing upon our lived experience, the practices we’ve inherited and iterating our capabilities as we adapt to meet what’s arising. Across three sessions we will explore how we orient to what is actually present, make sense of our experience and translate that into responsive action. The course is grounded in research and built around direct experience, offering both a framework and a practice you can bring to your work and the people you work with. Learn more and register here

Wayfinding for Modern Life: Find Your Way in Uncertainty.

Starts September 24th (PDT) - A 13 week immersive cohort learning experience.

As the world gets louder and our sense of direction is getting lost in the noise.

Wayfinding for Modern Life is a series focused on helping you find your way in the face of uncertainty, transition and change. Over the course of 18 hours of live sessions and time to practice and connect with others, you will be supported to find a pace and manner of engaging that aligns with your way of being, that draws upon the wisdom born out of your lived experience, works with your current reality and adapts with the possible futures you are sensing.

It invites you to shift from a stance that views life as happening to you, into an active participant, co-creating with what is arising as you move through your days. Learn more here

The day started with a blue sky sprinkled with clouds. Some were nimbus clouds. Others were long lines, striped “clouds” the kind that come from the jets which fly back and forth across the sky from sunrise to sunset.

Both dotted the sky. One created shapes that appeared soft, the other drawing lines that seemed to cut the patch of sky above me in half. I knew where the lines came from.

The soft ones came unbidden, and that was what held me, the way the unpredictable so often does.

Life has its own way of unfolding. No matter how much we plan, how hard we try, something else will likely happen. Something slightly or very different from our predictions seeps in through the cracks, rushes in unexpectedly, or suddenly becomes visible, leaving us questioning if it was there all along.

When I look up and see stripes in the sky, focusing on the possibility that some things defy human plans gives me solace.

As much as there are things I can point to and measure, they are not what’s been holding my attention lately.

The moments that linger the longest are those when the sun is shining and I notice how the light filters through my lashes. When the echo of an idea I’ve been exploring suddenly reverberates through a conversation with someone I’ve just met, and this time it is in an entirely different domain. Or when I look back and see how two disparate events that occurred at two distinct periods of time carried similar seeds which helped lead me to where I am today.

I cannot help but think something else is at work.

…

When I look back at the pivotal experiences which fed into the current that has carried me to where I am now, their edges are soft and even blurry. One small decision would lead to a response that then, months or years later, created a confluence I could have never predicted. One chapter bled into the next. Still there was an artistry to it all, the way one crescendo rolls into the next, a certain musicality seemed to be driving it all.

I am starting to question if there is such a thing as a finite and discrete ending, a clear cut.

…

All of this was sparked by something that kept coming up in conversations over the past few weeks, with clients, people I love, and people I am still getting to know. It goes something like this:

I want to get over the grief before I fall in love.

Once I am over this person, then I will meet my soulmate.

Each of these implies an assumption that there is a certain sequence, a chronological flow with which things “are meant” to happen. An expectation that they should wait to fall in love once the other pieces of their life are in order. That once they’re over their grief, the right opportunity will come.

Meanwhile something else is already flowing into their reality. Another current that doesn’t go along with how they think things should go. A love, a change at once immanent and imminent, a feeling that seems inconvenient, a rushing in of vitality, nudging them to move in a direction that threatens their status quo.

As these possibilities arise that don’t go according to the plan, they can challenge our ideas of how things are meant to unfold. When we let thoughts about how things should happen guide our direction, we may miss an opportunity to connect with the intelligence embedded within the experience itself.

It’s as if there is a hidden assumption that living in accordance with what is “right” is tidy, orderly in the way a clean house can be.

You could say trying to make decisions based on assumptions that don’t track with the messiness, unpredictability, and beautifully complex nature of human reality, may lead us away from where life is trying to guide us. That image of the clean house stayed with me, because I know the pull of it firsthand. How tidiness in a space, especially when it is done with care, evokes a sense of calm within me. When things are orderly, I find it easier to think and engage with my creative work.

At the same time I’ve also experienced spaces that are so orderly they lack a sense of humanity and feel void of soul. They lack spark.

Any kind of imposed order, no matter how beautiful, feels like an approximation of the incredible symmetry that can arise when something I could have never expected happens. When what is unfathomable comes into form.

I am speaking about the kind of symmetry that underpins meeting just the right person when you are in a foreign country, who becomes a friend, tells you just what you needed to hear, or helps you find your way both literally and figuratively.

Or when a day unfolds in a way you could have never planned, and yet looking back you can sense an utter rightness throughout, even in the moments of tension. A clean room, an exquisite painting, an exceptional meal, all feel like they are gesturing toward some creative aliveness that surges through matter and can never be pinned down. All I can say is it feels closest when something lights up, catches our attention, creates friction or resonates, when we gravitate somewhere outside the lines and are moved by something beyond our rational mind, and deep down we know this impulse is more than just a whim.

People may call it intuition but it doesn’t always feel internal. In some moments we may find ourselves being pulled toward a larger horizon, coaxed up a mountain toward the very thing that scares us most, and in that movement we may simultaneously feel utterly alive.

What if the very things that disrupted our ideas of how things should be were some of our greatest guides?

A practice, a manifesto that’s balm for the soul, an article, and a book.

Spiral Journal - A Practice to Focus our Attention, by Lynda Barry

The spiral journal is a wonderful practice for focusing our attention, tuning into the moment and becoming aware of additional layers of our experience. Originally developed by Lynda Barry, there are now multiple interpretations and iterations of the exercise. A few are listed below:

Austin Kleon, author and illustration, has a version for working with anxiety by helping us shift our relationship with the things that contribute to feeling like we’re spiraling out. You can find that version here

Wendy MacNaughton, of Drawing Together also has a version, which you can find on this 8min podcast

What I’m Reading:

Burning Testament, by Terry Tempest Williams

Earlier this week I watched a conversation with Parker Palmer and Terry Tempest Williams, two wise and caring elders who hold great respect for each other. One theme that arose in the conversation was about engaging in something deeper than hope. At the end of the call, Terry read this piece aloud. It’s an essay that reads like a manifesto, in which she explores grief as a form of love, proposing that mourning is the first step in a process of renewal. Her words speak to a form of care that goes beyond hope, offering a glimpse of another way of loving and caring amid challenge, upheaval, and destruction.

We May Be Entering A Second Axial Age, by Otto Sharmer

In his recent article Scharmer proposes we may be living through a second axial age, a time when humans develop new faculties of discernment and sensemaking catalysed in part by the larger cultural and societal shifts happening around them. He speaks about in the last axial age we came to develop subject-object knowing. Now with AI picking up these capabilities we are being invited to expand our range of human perception, interaction and connection.

He states that AI “ is a brilliant automation of subject-object knowing: intelligence without interiority, pattern without presence, prediction without deep sensing” and yet just as reflexive modernity backfires onto its own foundations, as seen through climate chaos, social fracture and political polarization, AI is an intelligence that depletes its own soil.

Because the deepening of our current rupture creates space for a possible intentional shift from intelligence without interiority to intelligence with interiority. From pattern without presence to pattern with presence.

Transformations, Wilfred Bion

It was a single idea that drew me back to this book: Bion’s notion of truth in the moment, what he calls O. I dipped into Bion’s work during my PhD but never dove in completely. O is ultimate reality, the essence of a thing as it actually is, available to us only in the present instant before our minds rush to name it. Bion suggests that real transformation cannot come from our theories or interpretations, however clever. It comes only through O, in those rare moments when we set down our ideas about what is happening and let ourselves experience it directly. To feel it, absorb it and meet what is there at a depth and dimensionality that reason alone can never quite reach.

Wayfinding: Engaging the Texture of the Moment: A Course in Developing the Capability to Meet What’s Arising in Uncertainty, Change, and Transitions

• Thursdays August 13th, 20th, and 27th, 3:00-5:00 pm PDT

• Fridays, August 14th, 21st, and 27th, 8:00-10:00 am AEST

In August I’ll be hosting a three-part workshop on Wayfinding for therapists, coaches, guides and leaders navigating uncertainty and transition. Here is a little about what drew me to it and what we will explore together.

For a long time I had a sense that there was another way of making sense of the world and finding my way within it, even when this didn’t look like what I saw around me. Wayfinding gave me language for what I was engaging in already and lean into the unknown. It helped me find my footing in uncertainty and access a wider perspective.

Many of us might feel that something is shifting in our work, in the systems we operate within, in what is being asked of us. At the moments when we feel the shift, find we’re off the map and facing uncertainty we may notice ourselves looking outward for answers, reaching for frameworks or insights from others. Yet as we reach we can lose touch with one of the most vital sources of input: our own direct experience of what is happening right in front of us.

Wayfinding is the practice of moving into the unknown, drawing upon our lived experience, the practices we’ve inherited and iterating our capabilities as we adapt to meet what’s arising. Across three sessions we will explore how we orient to what is actually present, make sense of our experience and translate that into responsive action. The course is grounded in research and built around direct experience, offering both a framework and a practice you can bring to your work and the people you work with. Learn more and register here

Wayfinding for Modern Life: Find Your Way in Uncertainty

• Next Cohort Starts September 3rd

Wayfinding for Modern Life is a 4-month series focused on helping you find your way in the face of uncertainty, transition and change. Over the course of 18 live sessions and time to practice and connect with others, you will be supported to find a pace and manner of engaging that aligns with your way of being, that draws upon the wisdom born out of your lived experience, works with your current reality and adapts with the possible futures you are sensing.

It invites you to shift from a stance that views life as happening to you, into an active participant, co-creating with what is arising as you move through your days. Learn more here

Opportunity to Join a PhD Research Project!

My dear friend Nancy Zam is looking for mission-driven teams to participate in a doctoral research study exploring how strategic decisions are formed in complex environments. This research looks at what happens when teams integrate embodied and relational awareness into their decision processes—shifting from agreement to shared perception, and from compliance to genuine commitment.

Participation involves a facilitated inquiry process working with a real, live decision, alongside interviews and collective sensemaking sessions. The aim is both to support your team’s work and to contribute to new approaches to strategy and governance in complex systems.

If this resonates, please feel free to reach out to her at: nzamierowski@mymail.ciis.edu OR www.linkedin.com/in/nancyzam/

Invitation - Ask me a question

What’s your question? Some of the most potent questions arise in the space between knowing and not yet knowing. If you’re navigating something complex right now or finding yourself facing some kind of uncertainty around a decision, transition, or a tension you can’t resolve, I’d love to hear about it!

I’m responding to questions from this community through short videos. Reply to this email with something you’re curious about. I read everything that comes in.

I learned a new word today. Apophatic.

It describes things; concepts, and phenomena that can only be defined through negation, known through what they are not.

We get closer to the apophatic through reduction and negative space. By peeling back the layers to recognize what remains.

The apophatic invites a way of understanding the world beyond classical definition. It reveals how some of our most vital experiences defy descriptions that seek to pin down or categorize.

In other words, certain experiences are best understood through descriptions that trace around their edges without closing in or seeking to box them into a single, contained form.

Have you ever felt up against something you can’t quite see?

You sense there’s something present that’s influencing your perception and behaviour, but you can’t quite put your finger on what it is, or even discern its form.

You may have noticed that I tend to write about lived experience. Part of why I do this is because when I focus on my direct experience, I find I can move closer to what feels largely invisible yet visceral and real.

It starts to feel possible to move closer toward some kind of truth, not in the objective sense, rather as a way of aligning with what is arising between my felt experience, the world around me and what feels most alive. It helps me connect with the subtle layers of experience that shape the spaces in between, and get closer to the realm of the apophatic, all that we engage with but can’t quite grasp or see.

The past few months, I’ve spent a lot of time up against things I can’t quite comprehend, at least not with my rational mind. It can feel like a gap, a void, a mountain, a wall of resistance, but it’s not quite any of these things either. I can only describe the presence of these forces through my experience of them, what they do and don’t feel like.

Still, these forces inform me. They affect my thinking, outlook, and decisions.

I’m starting to wonder whether these forces are, in fact, among the most influential. This possibility is mirrored in science.

Earlier this week a colleague shared that NASA confirms that roughly 95% of the universe is made up of dark matter1 and dark energy2, forces that shape everything, yet remain invisible and largely unknown. Most of what governs the universe cannot be directly seen or measured, only registered through its effects.

This got me thinking, what might this mean for our experience of reality and how we engage with the world? Perhaps the same is true of our inner lives, more of us is formless and invisible, than is perceivable with our usual ways of perceiving.

I’m continuing to sit with these possibilities. And, I wonder, are you noticing forces in your life right now that you can feel but not quite see or name?

Feel free to hit reply, I’d love to hear from you!

Envisioning Information, Edward Tufte

How do you convey information visually in a clear and evocative way?
This question led me back to the work of Edward Tufte, a statistician, professor, and writer whose work focuses on the presentation of information and data visualization.

This month I’ve been turning back to his work for inspiration and guidance, as I create exercises, slides and other resources.

Deep Listening: A Composers Sound Practice, by Pauline Oliveros

Deep Listening is a practice developed through Oliveros’ lifelong inquiry driven by a desire to widen our aperture and capacity for listening. She wanted to become receptive to the whole space/time continuum of sound rather than focusing on the noises we typically hear. Her work also deals with what could be considered “invisible”. She suggests that to access a wider continuum of sound we need to listen differently; to let sounds come to us, to receive them as they are rather than as we expect them to be.

In a sense, Deep Listening, as a practice, seems to lean into the apophatic, as a way of being present to what cannot quite be named, but still be experienced and related with at a sensory level.

Works in the Centre - Live Sessions in a Co-Learning Format

Last one for 6-months!

May 1st, 3:00-5:00 pm PDT // May 2nd, 8:00-10:00 am AEST

Works in the Centre is a space where I work with someone in real-time on a question, challenge or situation where they are seeking insight or wish to get unstuck. After that we debrief the work, focusing on patterns, including edges and aspects of the process that were closer to and further from the person’s identity.

Over the course of the two hours there will be an inner work, time to connect in small groups, a demo of me working with someone in the centre and a debrief of the work followed by discussion. Learn more and register here

Wayfinding for Modern Life: Find Your Way in Uncertainty

Starts May 8th (PDT) - One spot left!

As the world gets louder and our sense of direction is getting lost in the noise.

Wayfinding for Modern Life is a series focused on helping you find your way in the face of uncertainty, transition and change. Over the course of 18 live sessions and time to practice and connect with others, you will be supported to find a pace and manner of engaging that aligns with your way of being, that draws upon the wisdom born out of your lived experience, works with your current reality and adapts with the possible futures you are sensing.

It invites you to shift from a stance that views life as happening to you, into an active participant, co-creating with what is arising as you move through your days. Learn more here

In the end, the question that offered the most clarity was:

Is it the right container?

I thought of all the places I could be, the programs I could join, the teachers I could study with.

In this case, “right” wasn’t the ultimate standard. It was more of a gauge for alignment, a metric for discerning the kind of space that could meet me where I was at, hold me as I grew, and stretch with my becoming. The container needed to be spacious enough, but also stimulating and challenging. It also needed to offer enough stability and support.

This question seemed to answer another question that had surfaced weeks before.

I was sitting in my office. Outside, the sky was grey. Clouds hung low, pressing gently on the tops of the tall office buildings across the street.

I was on Zoom with my writing mentor. In her part of the world, the sky was bright blue.In the space between us, there was a pause.

We were both pondering - sensing into what was there.

Even as I sat still, my mind was travelling - exploring one direction then another, and another. I could make a case that all of these threads were connected.

I turned to my notebook on the desk and quickly wrote down a few words in an attempt to land some of the ideas that were arising. I looked up from the page - toward the screen where my mentor’s face lit the screen.

There are so many threads! I exclaimed

She nodded.

We need a sifting mechanism, something to help us sift through the ideas and discern what stays and what falls away. She paused.

I nodded. I thought of the Russian folk tale, Vasilisa the Beautiful, in which Baba Yaga sets Vasilisa the task of separating poppy seeds from dirt

What if the sifting mechanism was love? She asked.

Weeks later this question lingered in the back of my mind. I kept reaching for an answer with my rational mind only to have the experience of entering a fog or bumping up against an invisible wall of resistance.

Perhaps this was because the kind of love she may have been referring to was more of a frequency and a way of being than a sentiment or emotion. To sift from love, I needed to be closer to this state of being.

Then one day, out of the blue, arose an answer to the question:

Is it the right container?

Once again, my mind had been travelling - visiting all manners of opportunities, relationships, and areas where I could contribute, learn, and spend my time. Focusing on the kind of container, different people, places and amounts of time could provide - felt like a sifting mechanism, a structure I could use to focus my attention and help me make decisions.

At a time when it feels like so much is spinning out of control on this planet, knowing where I can focus my attention to gain more traction and greater capacity in my day-to-day life has become a focal practice.

Practices are, in essence, bundles of activities and objects that give our lives a sense of order and form. And yet, decades into what theorists called the ‘practice turn,’ there is still a gravitational pull toward focusing on individual action or large systems, rather than what arises in the spaces in between.

Sifting became a practice that helped me orient. It offered a particular form of discernment- the mechanism was the notion of a container, the process was rooted in a search for alignment, and how I would find the right ones.

…

We’re all familiar with the word container. They are devices we carry things in, vessels that hold different objects, and spaces that offer holding and support.

Some containers we carry as objects.

Others stack onto our lives. Sometimes they help focus our attention; other times, they can feel like another thing we need to show up for and track. They can feel additional, almost adding a sense of clutter.

Other containers exist outside our direct context. They feel further away. We may find we have to make an effort to show up to them and work to translate the experiences and insights that arise within them, so they can feel applicable and practical in our own lives.

Then there are containers that help us focus and gather our attention so we feel less stretched and scattered.

These help us reflect, connect dots, hone our skills, and become better at what we do across multiple domains. These are liberatory containers.

They provide just enough support to catalyse our creativity, to amplify the quiet whisper of know-how that’s been moving in our sternum, gut, or heart.

They are containers of integration and distillation that amplify our existing projects, deepen our capacity, and add just the right kind of support, helping us make sense of our experience, foster our discernment and weave together the different threads of information and meaning we’ve gathered. These are the kind that don’t add to your load, but help you carry it differently.

Containers like this help us digest so we can be nourished. Without them, we risk becoming depleted - caught on a treadmill that keeps us running after the next soundbite, coach, healer or headline to help us find our way. They keep us in a loop of outsourcing our discernment and agency.

Perhaps this is what my mentor was pointing to when she asked: what if the sifting mechanism was love?

Beyond a sentiment or emotion, love could be a frequency and way of orienting. Maybe to sift from love is to ask: is this the right container?

Does it meet me where I am? Can it hold me as I grow and stretch into who I am becoming?

Next time you’re faced with a decision as to whether or not you want to participate in an offering, engage in a relationship or give your attention to any particular cause, what if you paused and sensed into the kinds of container within each of these - and asked yourself which of these is the right container for where you are and where you’re longing to go? Which ones leave you more scattered than when you arrived?

Which ones help you gather, digest, and become more fully yourself?

Those are the ones worth tending.

A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness, Michael Pollan

I was so excited when this book came out - because for me it marked a shift in the collective dialogue around perception and consciousness. Pollan has a remarkable way of exploring complex questions in ways that make them feel more approachable. All the while he brings you along, taking his readers by the hand as he leads them to meet a host of characters and explore a topic from many angles.

In this book he turns his curious gaze toward an exploration of consciousness: what it is and how we come to know it. To explore this question he draws on science, philosophy, literature, psychedelics, and Indigenous epistemologies. He delves into the terrain of subjective experience, the felt sense of being alive that all of us know intimately and none of us can fully explain.

What I find most compelling is how he refuses to let science have the last word, opening the inquiry toward wilder, less materialist possibilities, including the notion that consciousness may not be confined to the human brain at all. It is a book that takes seriously what practitioners and contemplatives have long known, that reclaiming our attention and learning to inhabit our awareness more fully is not a luxury but a practice essential to how we live and lead.

Midwife of the Intellect, Peter Sloterdijk

I’ve been reading this small, colourful book as I try to wrap my head around some core philosophical ideas that point to the nature of reality. After hearing about it from a friend, I thought it might offer some useful insight.

In just 45 pages, Sloterdijk explores how the ideas of Meister Eckhart relate to some of the core challenges we are grappling with today. He offers evocative interpretations of medieval mysticism and Eckhart’s work, raising ideas such as the relationality of all things: that nothing exists on its own, and that reality is, in essence, symbiotic.

Among the ideas he shares: serenity arises from emptying oneself of memories, expectations, and judgements. From that stillness, we become able to access expanded creativity and what Eckhart calls “God’s thinking.” In the Anthropocene, when planetary symbiosis has never been more threatened, finding ways to remember how we fit into the world and to question what our nature actually is feels increasingly urgent.

Upcoming Offerings

Works in the Centre - Live Sessions in a Co-Learning Format

Last one for 6-months!

May 1st, 3:00-5:00 pm PDT // May 2nd,, 8:00-10:00 am AEST -Early bird registration until April 20th- $39.00, after that $46.00

Works in the Centre is a space where I work with someone in real-time on a question, challenge or situation where they are seeking insight or wish to get unstuck. After that we debrief the work, focusing on patterns, including edges and aspects of the process that were closer to and further from the person’s identity.

Over the course of the two hours there will be an inner work, time to connect in small groups, a demo of me working with someone in the centre and a debrief of the work followed by discussion. Learn more and register here

Wayfinding for Modern Life: Find Your Way Through Uncertainty

~Starts May 8th, PDT~

As the world gets louder and our sense of direction is getting lost in the noise.The art of wayfinding is one of humanity’s oldest capacities. For millennia, we’ve moved through unknowns by engaging our felt sense, orienting beyond the confines of our identity and responding practically to what is arising, when no clear path was given.

Over the course of 18 hours of live sessions spread out over 6-months this program brings these ancient principles and tacit forms of know-how into modern life as practices you can embody and carry into moments of transition, choice, and change.

It invites you to shift from a stance that views life as happening to you, into an active participant, co-creating with what is arising as you move through your days. There are 4 spots left. Learn more here.

Work with me 1:1

I am opening up two spots to work with clients in a coaching capacity. My work is a weaving of processwork, systems thinking and depth psychology. I am deeply informed by the practice of wayfinding - how we find our way when there is no map, and cultivate a sense of “knowing as we go”. My work focuses on the intersections between individual, relational, and systemic.

This is an offering for those who feel fragmented, who notice their attention being pulled in multiple directions, and long for a sense of continuity, alignment and connection. It is for those who are seeking to listen to what is arising through them, stay in contact with the pulse of these times and find ways to bring more of their capabilities forward into the world.

In our work together you’ll cultivate your connection with this layer of your experience - which supports you to think on your feet and meet uncertainty from an awake and aligned stance. You will leave with:

• A clearer understanding of the innate capabilities that have been born out of your lived experience. How these capabilities get activated and how you can engage them with intention

• Practices for engaging in unpredictable and conflictual terrain

• Practices and moves to cultivate your attention so you can discern your next steps and get unstuck

Learn More: If you’re interested please respond to this email

At the end of 2025, I found myself reaching into a familiar space, one I had been tapping into for thirty-some years, only to find it empty.

I reached further into myself, and then beyond. I started taking iron, returned to old journals, and imagined my own death. Still, nothing seemed to give me the traction I knew I needed.

The PhD had been one climb, and now another mountain was coming into view. I was reaching for leverage, for reserves, for something that could carry me into the next stretch.

After years of being on the move, I had begun to wonder if I would ever feel rooted in the way I imagined others did.

Maybe I am more like an air plant, able to be transported, sustained by something other than the nutrients of soil.

There were plenty of reasons I was meant to start climbing again. But something within me felt disconnected, not yet knowing how to sync with the current moving toward me.

In the end, it led me back to a particular spot. One I had passed by in waking life and in dreams, but never fully inhabited. Until I was dropped right into it.

In the following pages, I share something of that experience. My hope is that it resonates, rekindling some ember of knowing that helps you find a stance, a place from which you can meet this particular moment, in your life and in our world.

Maybe you feel hungry, and sense there is another source of nourishment you haven’t quite located yet. Some hungers can only be satisfied by the other worlds that exist within this one, by forms of sustenance that only a particular kind of imagination can provide.

..

There’s a place, a subtle, visceral point, where if you pause and gather your attention, the world begins to open up. Suddenly, details you’d overlooked begin to reveal themselves. In this delicate space of alignment, confusion starts to fall away. What matters most comes into focus, your awareness sharpens to the here and now. A wellspring within you rises to meet the moment.

This place isn’t just a physical location; it’s an experience of yourself in the world, a space that opens when more dimensions of your presence sync up to connect with certain qualities in your environment.

As you change, it evolves with you. As much as there is a sense of stability, it also moves and changes form, while carrying the same essential qualities.

…

For the past few weeks, I’ve been falling in and out of touch with this spot. Bumping up against invisible walls of resistance, getting pulled in different directions, and reaching for something I sense hanging around that I can’t quite grasp or see.

As I do my best to adapt, I’ve been thinking about wayfinding, about how many indigenous people around the world found their way through deep relationship with their environment.

Whether engaging with the stars or the sea, this depth encompassed the subtlety of their own sensory experiences as well as a robust understanding of the patterns, rhythms, and signals of the natural world. There are people still engaging in these practices today, in parts of Polynesia and Hawaii, and likely in other places too.

Meanwhile, much of my day is spent finding my way through spaces that are largely invisible, at least from the outside. I engage with systems that are miles away, take in images from the media that linger in my mind for hours after I’ve closed my screen, and think about things that generate real pressure but also feel quite abstract. My attention goes to finances, health, and the systems I am part of that are meant to support me in these areas.

I think of Appadurai, a philosopher born in Mumbai, who wrote about the invisible landscapes many of us move through daily: the financescapes and ideoscapes of modern life. His words give form to something I experience in my own days. There are hours when I haven’t left my desk and yet have traveled enormous distances, carried through screens, images, and sound bites from around the world.

By the time I surface, I am catching my breath, returning to the felt sense of my body. Even as I settle back into my immediate surroundings, something within me feels cluttered. There is still a hum of other people’s voices, making it harder to hear the quieter aspects of my own experience.

At the same time, I cannot shake the sense that there are other sources that can help me find my way, other forms of attuning to what is unfolding within and around me. I move through shifting circumstances and invisible currents, relying not only on what I know, but also on a subtle sense of direction. The traditions of wayfinding inspire me to look for cues, whether in the environment, the space of my relationships, or within myself, that can help guide my next steps.

Wayfinding reminds me that even here, surrounded by concrete and noise, I can cultivate a relationship with my surroundings, listening for patterns and signs, finding a way within complexity by paying close attention, over and over again.

It was over twenty years ago that one of my favourite scholars, Robert Chia, noted that our minds and imaginations were becoming cluttered:

“There can actually be too much culture, too many layers of representations that generate ideological pluralism and hence too many confusing views and opinions in the West is an interesting insight. For it suggests how easily those who live in the West can be seduced and distracted by the regimes of signifiers generated by the media on a daily basis1” (p. 966)

He highlights a concern that too much information can impede our ability to see the world clearly, with an innocent eye, a capacity he claims is vital for engaging and finding our way in dynamic and complex times.

Meanwhile, I hear the cry of a seagull outside our bedroom window in the morning. I watch the sun come up beyond the tall office building across the street. I notice the impulse to reach through the pavement, to send imaginary roots down through the sidewalks, to cast attentional threads up into the sky, and attune to any murmurs of aliveness in the city streets, any echoes of something beyond blunt matter in the architecture.

In each of these impulses lies a desire to sync up with something beyond the concrete, metal, and wires of the traffic lights, to orient to something I can continually return to amid the seen and unseen complexity of these times, to come back to the direct experience of that place where the world opens.

Then there are days when I notice an impulse to leave, to go elsewhere. It’s a fleeting thought, a bit like a daydream, driven by a desire to be closer to nature, to a pulse that moves through the soil, trees, and sky, extending all the way to reverberate within me. It resonates at a frequency that opens a space where the boundaries of my identity soften, and the world around me feels closer.

Living in the city, I can find it harder to access this kind of openness, to not brace, even if ever so slightly, and yet that is precisely what I feel I am called to do, to abide here and work this nexus. When I say feeling, I don’t mean it in a sentimental sense; it’s more that there’s a conviction that resonates throughout my being. Its movement tells me this is what I am meant to be doing.

Certainty isn’t always static. It can be rooted in a conviction that has a buoyancy to it, and an aliveness that can push us up against our edges, generating a sense of friction.

Two years ago, when I moved to Victoria, I felt a pull to live right downtown. At the time, I told my husband I wanted to be able to walk to coffee shops, so I could get out of the house and work on my PhD. Moving to a new country during a phase of life when I was spending most of my waking hours studying or writing, I wanted to find ways to be around other people.

While all of these points informed our decision, another part of it was less obvious to me at the time. In hindsight, it’s becoming clear that a part of me wanted to sustain a connection to what I felt in nature while living in the heart of the city. I wanted to see if I could inhabit a spot at the nexus.

Engaging this softening when there is so much I could brace against is part of inhabiting this spot. Here I can stand in the face of uncertainty and look it in the eye. I can feel the generative friction of being right up against the edge that hones me.

As I go through my days, I am finding that being in this spot is not static, not even still; it’s more like walking on a rope that’s swaying in the wind, pushed from side to side. I have also noticed that I am not alone in this; many of us find ourselves wavering, losing and regaining our footing as we navigate what life brings.

As I move through the day and the week, I can find the spot again and again, and I am reminded that this movement is not just mine but something familiar to many who are reflecting and finding their way.

So I return to that place, that way of meeting the world beyond any fixed location. When I access it, I remember what it feels like to look uncertainty in the eye, to stand close enough to sense the shape of what is moving toward me. The world opens slightly. Much remains a mystery, and yet I feel a different kind of traction, a resource I hadn’t known how to reach for, and with it, hope. I can sense my next steps.

What I’ve been listening to:

Alan Watts - On Water

In this 17-minute recording, Watts riffs on water and the role it plays in the essence of all life. Following different threads, he touches on the nature of time, the cycles of life, and the ways water and the sea can pacify the messes of human life. There’s a rough, textural quality to this recording which almost makes you feel as though you are there at the water’s edge with Watts in Sausalito. Note, that the actual recording starts about 3min into this Youtube link.

What I’ve been reading:

In the Name of the Mother, In the Name of the Red, by Sylvia V. Lindsteadt

In this essay, Sylvia delves into the myths of the Bronze Age to shed a different light on some of the roots of the disturbing events of the past month, namely the release of the Epstein files and the violence enacted by ICE in the United States. Her writing follows the likes of Demeter and Clytemnestra, who was the sister of Helen and wife of Agamemnon, who commanded the Greeks during the Trojan War. In reaching back into history, she illuminates how what transpired then, and the ways in which we interpreted those stories, shapes the patterns that are playing out now.

Drawing a parallel between what’s coming to light in the release of the Epstein files and what happened thousands of years ago, she points to a “double standard laid down at the foundation of a cultural pattern we are still living within, that the bonds between men are elevated and protected well and way above the bonds of mothers and their children, and women in general.” She suggests it is not men that are the problem but the weight of the lineage some of them carry, an un-metabolized grief and bloodlust that can spring up anywhere at any time, unless we meet it in a different way. You can access the essay here

Repetition–(Loops)–Return - by Joshua Bergamin, latest extract from Dark Mountain: Issue 28

In this piece, Joshua Bergamin, a philosopher, musician, and academic whose work I deeply admire, describes his experience of a music installation at the Venice Biennale. His writing goes further to explore the Italian diaspora, his own family’s migration to Australia, and themes of home and place, all grounded in a visceral depiction of improvised sounds. What stood out to me about this piece was the inherent sense of movement and texture captured within it. Reading it felt like I had been transported to Venice and then on to a place beyond time. You can access the essay here

Upcoming Offerings:

Pattern Literacy: Group Supervision

• Wednesday March 18th, 2-4pm PDT / Thursday 19th, 8-10am AEDT

• Thursday March 19th 2-4pm PDT / Friday 20th, 8-10am AEDT

Pattern literacy is a 2-hour group supervision session for therapists, facilitators, guides, and coaches. During the session each participant will have the opportunity to bring a question or case they wish to explore from multiple angles. The session is called Pattern Literacy, because hearing multiple cases can help hone our pattern recognition; our ability to notice themes across diverse cases and expressions of human experience. Learn more and register here

Works in the Centre - Live Sessions in a Co-Learning Format

• March, 26th, 2:00-4:00 pm PST // March, 27th, 8:00-10:00 am AEDT

• Early bird registration until March 7th - $39.00 - after that $45.00

Works in the centre is a space where I work with someone in real-time on a question, challenge or situation where they are seeking insight or wish to get unstuck. After that we debrief the work, focusing on patterns, including edges and aspects of the process that were closer to and further from the person’s identity.

Over the course of the two hours there will be an inner work, time to connect in small groups, a demo of me working with someone in the centre and a debrief of the work followed by discussion. Learn more and register here

Wayfinding for Modern Life: Reclaiming your sense of direction in a world that pulls you off course

The art of wayfinding is one of humanity’s oldest capacities. For millennia, we’ve moved through unknowns by engaging our felt sense, orienting beyond the confines of our identity and responding practically to what is arising, when no clear path was given.

This 6-month program brings those ancient principles and tacit forms of know-how into modern life as practices you can embody and carry into moments of transition, choice, and change. It invites you to shift from a stance that views life as happening to you, into an active participant, co-creating with what is arising as you move through your days. Learn more here

Work with me 1:1

I am opening up three spots to work with clients in a coaching capacity. My work is a weaving of processwork, systems thinking and depth psychology. I am deeply informed by the practice of wayfinding - how we find our way when there is no map, and cultivate a sense of “knowing as we go”. My work focuses on the intersections between individual, relational, and systemic.

This is an offering for those who feel fragmented, who notice their attention being pulled in multiple directions, and long for a sense of continuity, alignment and connection. It is for those who are seeking to listen to what is arising through them, stay in contact with the pulse of these times and find ways to bring more of their capabilities forward into the world.

I see 1:1 work as wayfinding - a practice that brings you into closer contact with your way of engaging in the world; the path that is being made as you walk it. The way in wayfinding is also your approach to meeting the opportunities and challenges you’ve faced up to this point. It is the tacit, felt dimension of who you are that knows more than you can describe in words.

In our work together you’ll cultivate your connection with this layer of your experience - which supports you to think on your feet and meet uncertainty from an awake and aligned stance.

You will leave with:

• A clearer understanding of the innate capabilities that have been born out of your lived experience. How these capabilities get activated and how you can engage them with intention

• Practices for engaging in unpredictable and conflictual terrain

• Ways of focusing your attention so you can discern your next steps and get unstuck

Learn More: If you’re interested please respond to this email

“It’s been weighing on me,” she said.

I was sitting in the rocking chair in the corner of the room, listening, when I turned to look out the window. There across the street was a rainbow. I’d never seen one like it before. Instead of curving into an arch it was vertical.

Framed between the two buildings across the street, its colours appeared to open a small slice in the grey sky.

It looked perfectly natural yet also surreal. Depending on how I looked at it, both could be true.

I had the urge to take a picture, but I stayed present to what my client was saying.

She was recounting an event she’d attended over the weekend where she felt she’d stepped out of line.

“I was so direct,” she said. Her voice had a tone of judgement to it. “We needed to go, my friend was in pain. I’d told the facilitator we had to leave early.”

Listening to her I couldn’t help but think her response made perfect sense given the larger context. She’d been in a group where the facilitator wasn’t keeping time. Seated in a circle, participants were meant to go round and briefly share why they were there. Prior to her turn three people had gone on long tangents and then started asking each other questions.

When it came time for her to speak, she had to let the group know she had to leave.

“Alma and I have to dip,” she said after sharing why she was there and appreciating her friends who were also seated across the circle.

Viewed differently, it could also be said that by bringing a more direct energy to the group she opened the way for other forms of expression. Maybe others were also aware of the time, or wanting to speak up.

In a moment when one person feels friction, another person can experience relief. Both can be true, depending on how we look at the situation.

Hours later, in my mind’s eye, I saw the rainbow appearing between the two tall buildings, again and again. When images endure within me for hours, and even days, I cannot help but wonder if they’re trying to show me something, or speak to me in some way.

As I reflected on this rainbow, a question that had been lingering in the back of my mind for weeks came forward:

In a single moment, how can two seemingly conflicting things be true?

This question had been echoing through conversations with my clients, my husband and friends.

In recent weeks, clients were navigating grief, heartbreak, numbness, and fear. Others were in the thick of betrayals, lawsuits and ethical dilemmas.

So many were reaching for clarity, but no single narrative could explain the complexities of the realities they were facing. Depending on how they looked at the situation, different things could be true.

One client described a moment when they were walking through the forest - and felt an urge to place their hand on the trunk of a nearby tree. When they followed this impulse and placed their palm against the bark, they felt a sense of rootedness in their own body. Later in the day, when they faced a challenge, this experience helped them access a more resourced stance.

When I saw the rainbow, I experienced a similar shift. The focus was no longer on right and wrong, good and bad. Instead there was something else opening between the two buildings.

In a world saturated with images, soundbites and information, letting my attention linger in direct sensory experience brings me closer to what feels real and vital.

What feels most real is phenomena, like this rainbow, that catch me by surprise. In doing so they momentarily suspend my assumptions, opening up a space where multiple truths can coexist and move together without needing to be collapsed into existing categories.

Sure I could call it a rainbow and explain its appearance based on the weather, but that explanation would limit the whole other dimension of information, the subjective layer that moves and animates me, the inexplicable way the rainbow offered insight into a much larger question I’d been carrying for weeks.

The rainbow was an image in the sky and a space of possibility.

As 2025 draws to a close I am noticing an increasing desire to inhabit these spaces, to not only notice them but let them imprint upon me. Not to collapse them into a known frame, but to let them resonate within me so I can know their full dimensionality.

When the things going on in our world defy rational logic, moments like these offer something else. Like the vertical rainbow framed between two buildings, they hold space for seemingly conflicting truths, inviting us to see what opens in between.

Perhaps you’ve encountered your own vertical rainbow, something that defied your expectations and opened up a third space. As we move through this transitional time, I invite you to consider the following:

When have you felt caught between two truths? What might open if you focused on the space between them?

What I’m Reading:

Out of Our Heads by Alva Noë

After reading Noë’s book The Entanglement I was keen to read more of his work. In this book he turns the conventional view of consciousness on its head. Rather than treating the mind as something trapped inside your skull, Noë argues that consciousness is something you do: an active, ongoing dance between your whole body and the world around you.

Drawing on philosophy and cognitive science, he challenges the idea that neuroscience will find consciousness by looking deeper into the brain. Instead, he proposes an “enactive” view where consciousness emerges from how you move, sense, and interact with your environment. The brain matters, of course, but it’s more like a facilitator of experience than a container holding your mind. Noë dismantles the computational model of the brain as computer and makes a compelling case that gets right to the heart of his subtitle: “We are not our brains.” Your self, your awareness, your experience, all of it extends beyond the boundaries of your skull into the living world you’re part of.

Dark Mountain Project

Taking the form of a substack, journal and network of creatives, the Dark Mountain Project is a movement that brings together creatives, practitioners, scholars, scientists, foragers, and activists who are exploring the “deep cultural roots of the mess the world is in” and are looking for other stories, ones that can help us make sense of a time of disruption and uncertainty.

I love reading the stories and articles within Dark Mountain Project, because they help me learn about the many forms of work happening around the world to reshape how we engage with each other, society, nature and the planet. Beyond being informative, the writing is frequently beautiful, and will include images from a variety of artists.

Images that caught my attention:

Pattern Literacy: Group Supervision

Wednesday, January 21st, 1:00–3:00pm PST // Thursday January 22nd, 8:00–10:00am AEDT

Thursday, January 22nd, 1:00–3:00pm PST // Friday January 23rd, 8:00–10:00am AEDT

Pattern literacy is a 2-hour group supervision session for therapists, facilitators, guides and coaches. During the session each participant will have the opportunity to bring a question or case they wish to explore from multiple angles. The session is called Pattern Literacy, because hearing multiple cases can help hone our pattern recognition; our ability to notice themes across diverse cases and expressions of human experience. Learn more and register here

The Wayfinding Intensive

A 1:1 coaching intensive for the phase you’re in, the shift you can feel, and the future taking shape beneath your feet.

Sometimes, the familiar architecture of life begins to loosen and the ground that once held you feels thin.

Your own knowing flickers in and out like light on water, when something in you is stretching toward a horizon you can sense but not quite name. These seasons ask more of us. They ask us to stay awake inside the edge spaces, to listen beneath the noise and to move in relationship with what is emerging rather than what is already known.

The Wayfinding Intensive is a 1:1 immersion for those in transition, who can feel the old shapes dissolving and new ones forming, those asking:

• Where am I inside the arc of my becoming?

• How do I move wisely when the map dissolves?

• What is this moment asking of me?

• How do I stay connected to the deeper current beneath the surface?

Wayfinding gives you the tools, attention, and attunement needed to navigate these questions as living currents that guide you and moment-by-moment practices. You can learn more about this offering here

We made our way along the water past islands covered in evergreen trees, with rocky edges that sloped down toward the sea. As the ferry continued to move on, carrying us toward our destination, I walked around the vessel.

Looking out the window, I noticed a sense of openness within me - a space that was so vast I could easily interpret it as being empty.

Looking down at the beige linoleum floor tiles, I sensed something else was happening along the edges. There was a movement at the periphery of this space within me. As I turned the corner into the cafeteria, I focused on this movement, and as I did, I just caught the tail of an idea that had nearly slipped away.

Moments later, it wasn’t so much the idea that stuck but the pattern its movement revealed to me:

Ideas are coming quicker now. They’re also fleeting.

If I don’t catch them in time, they disappear back into the sea of thoughts, images and soundbites that move through my mind. Over time, it can be easy to start to believe that I don’t have ideas.

For the past few months, I’d been noticing a whisper of a belief creeping in. At first, it was quiet, but then as I gave it more attention, it grew louder. It got me thinking I wasn’t having enough ideas, that I wasn’t inspired the way I used to be.

This belief led to the assumption that there was something within me that needed fixing. That I needed to find ways to be more inspired, to read more, put myself in different spaces and take in new inputs.

What I didn’t realise was that this perspective was based on a quiet assumption that having ideas should feel a certain way and unfold at a certain pace.

The truth was, ideas were already there they just were moving at a pace I didn’t register until I caught the tail of an idea that day on the ferry.

When I was learning to work with dreams, one of my teachers, Amy Mindell, spoke of catching our dreams by the tail.

The idea was that if, upon waking, we remember an image, an atmosphere, a sensation, a sound, etc., we can grab onto this signal and pull more of the dream back into our awareness.

Have you noticed how life has a mismatch of speeds - how the world around us can move slowly or fast depending on how we engage with it?

Or how can time expand or contract depending on which elements we choose to attend to?

I can look at the rocks that jut out of the earth here in Victoria - and sit with how long they have stood here and all the changes that must have unfolded around them. As I focus on the lifespan of these rocks, time stretches out.

I can scroll through my phone, watching content zoom upwards at a rate faster than my eyes can register. As I do, I start to feel like I’m trying to catch up at a pace much quicker than my body and senses are accustomed to.

Just as the world around us moves at different speeds, facets of our experience will unfold at different rates and for varying durations. There’s pace, and then there’s also volume - the intensity with which things occur and how loud or quiet they may be.

Next time you have the sense that something is absent or missing, what if you considered the possibility that it was unfolding at a rate that’s different from your expectations?

What I am reading:

Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, John Koenig

This book offers words for experiences that we may feel most viscerally, yet lack the language to describe. Fischer Qua, a friend, introduced my husband and me to this book, and we have been reading a definition for a word each day.

One example is the word Zenosyne, which is defined as “the sense that time keeps getting faster” - the feeling that each year is worth a little less than the last, as if your birthday arrives one day earlier every year. The book includes many other words like this that help bring language to subtle and vivid experiences we know but may never have been able to fully describe.

The Need for Roots, by Simone Weil

Written in 1943, this book points to the importance of rootedness, suggesting that it is our direct participation in our communities that will connect us to the past and future—that is one of the most fundamental needs we have as humans. Weil diagnoses modern life’s core problem as “uprootedness”: we’ve lost our ties to community, place, and meaningful work.

In reading this book, what’s really stood out to me so far is Weil’s view of compassion. She describes it as arising from an ability to be with suffering without reverting to the impulse to fix it and instead learning just to be present with what is. For her compassion is rooted not in abstract ideals but in how we attend and pay attention.

Works in the Centre - Live Sessions in a Co-Learning Format

• Thursday, January, 29th, 1:00-3:00 pm PST // Friday, January 30th, 8:00-10:00 am AEDT

This 2-hour session will focus on practising a process-oriented approach to working with others. There will be an inner work, time to connect in small groups, a demo of me working with someone in the centre and a debrief of the work followed by discussion. Learn more and register here

Pattern Literacy: Group Supervision

• Wednesday, December 17th, 1:00-3:00 pm PST // Thursday, December 18th, 8:00-10:00 am AEDT - 1 spot left

• Thursday, December 18th, 1:00-3:00 pm PST // Friday, December 19th, 8:00-10:00 am AEDT - 2 spots left

Pattern literacy is a 2-hour group supervision session for therapists, facilitators, guides and coaches. During the session each participant will have the opportunity to bring a question or case they wish to explore from multiple angles. The session is called Pattern Literacy, because hearing multiple cases can help hone our pattern recognition; our ability to notice themes across diverse cases and expressions of human experience. Learn more and register here

Coaching as Wayfinding: See, Shape, and Enact Your Way

For those who want to feel more alive and less fragmented in their work I have one spot available to work with clients in a coaching capacity.

This is an offering for those who notice their attention being pulled in multiple directions, and long for a sense of continuity and alignment with what feels true. It is a weaving of key insights from processwork, my work with leaders facing complex life and work challenges, and my doctoral research.

Coaching as wayfinding is a practice that brings you into closer contact with your way of engaging in the world; the path that is being made as you walk it. The way is also your approach to meeting the opportunities and challenges you’ve faced up to this point. It is the tacit, aesthetic dimension of who you are that knows more than you can describe in words. You will leave with:

• A clearer understanding of the innate capabilities that have been born out of your lived experience

• How these capabilities get activated and how you can intentionally engage them

• What to focus your attention on to find your way and get unstuck

• Practices for engaging in unpredictable and conflictual terrain

• How to cultivate your attention so vital insights and grow and enhance your work

  → Learn more here

It wasn’t her perspective alone that struck a chord within me.

It was the way she brought two seemingly disparate worlds into conversation with each other.

As she stood there, in front of the audience, telling stories, and sharing images and metaphors, the worlds of Western rational logic and indigenous perspectives moved closer together.

A few weeks ago, I attended the RSD14 systemic design symposium in Toronto. The focus of the conference was on relationality—how we engage with ourselves, each other, the systems we are part of, and the more-than-human world.

One of the keynote speakers at the conference was Melanie Goodchild, a systems-thinking and complexity scholar who draws on her roots as an Anishinaabe from the Biigtigong Nishnaabeg First Nation and the Ketegaunseebee (Garden River) First Nation. I was struck by the way she bridged and moved between worlds.

As she did, I could feel a resonance arise in the space between them.

By bringing multiple worlds into conversation with one another, Dr Goodchild opened a third space, one in which the gifts of each world could be received and nourished by the others. 

In this space, I could sense a path forward beginning to open. It wasn’t forward in the way of moving away from the present moment; instead, it seemed to point me toward more of what was already here, to reconnect me with bits of story and information I had been gathering and receiving over the years, and to remind me that there was more to the world around me than meets the eye. 

It is important to note that the integrity of this space allowed each world to exist without assimilating into the other. Sometimes one world can flatten, override or even consume another. 

Some people say that is happening now —that there is a world where we need more information at faster speeds to solve the complexity of the problems we are facing. At the same time, other worlds are not only possible, but already here. 

Worldviews shape how we see the world, understand our place in it, and relate to one another. They structure our perception and sense of what is real. 

Different views give rise to different worlds of experience. When we get convinced that one way of seeing is real, we risk letting our worldview consume and marginalise other ways of seeing, being, and relating.

Different views give rise to different worlds of experience. When we get convinced that one way of seeing is real, we risk letting our worldview consume and marginalise other ways of seeing, being, and relating. 

In the opening that Dr Goodchild seemed to point to, I felt a sense of possibility for influencing the larger systems in which we are immersed, whether economic, educational, agricultural, or health-related. 

In each of these systems, there are cracks—openings for other ways of seeing to enter and be imbued into the sayings and doings1 that keep these systems afloat. 

Sometimes these cracks bring us closer to another world that is already here - one that only becomes accessible when we find a way of seeing that allows us to recognise its presence and begin to acknowledge and engage with its reality.

As much as there are tangible systems that we exist within - families, organisations, educational, medical and governmental systems - each of these is frequently held together by another dynamic and animating structure, one that comes to life through our relationships with others, ourselves and the more-than-human world.

This animating structure is a world in and of itself.

Next time you are lit up by an interaction or an encounter, when you catch a glimmer of hope, I invite you to notice:

What gave rise to this spark?

What less visible systems may have brought it into being?

What I’m reading:

Quotes

“We won’t need to do anything. Just be fresh and receptive to the process, more and more cellularly honest. Allow what will happen to happen. Just become each moment, surrender to each thing. We’ll be sealed in reality in a way we could never have conceived.

Maybe we are not ready yet. That’s okay. Be patient. Be honest. Let the honesty saturate the process in reality. It is so humbling.”

~Corey Hess - Texture of Life, Substack

“There are times when the world is rearranging itself, and at times like that, the right words can change the world.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

Articles

Relational Systems Thinking That’s How Change is Going to Come, From Our Earth Mother

Melanie Goodchild

In this article, Melanie and others explore the sacred space between Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of thinking and knowing. Drawing up these approaches they identify pathways for peaceful co-existence of epistemologies (knowledge systems). Based on conversations with Haudenosaunee elders and Western systems thinkers, along with data from a webinar, they identify cross-cultural dialogues as a doorway to healing, to transformation and to spiritual understanding. They propose that reconnection with Mother Earth and with each other is fundamental to disrupting global patterns of trauma and mass corrosion of the spirit.

PLURIVERSAL SYSTEMS PRACTICE: Beyond systemic design

Victor Udoewa & Palak Dudani

I got to hear Victor speak at the Systemic Design Symposium a few weeks ago. I was struck by the way he described a variety of approaches to working with groups and organizations—and highlighted the importance of considering how we determine what approach is appropriate for those we are working with. He spoke about power dynamics and creating more equitable relationships by honoring their choice and agency. In this paper, Victor and Palak build on part one of the pluriversal systems series that explored alternatives to system mapping for visualizing and sensing systems. They expand their focus beyond individual methods to examine the broader systems methodology of systemic design itself, recognizing that just as there are pluriversal approaches to visualizing systems, there are also various alternative systems practices beyond systemic design.

They intentionally use the term “systems practice” rather than “methodology.” A systems practice refers to the lived, embodied ways people work with complex situations—the actual doing of systems work in context. Many pluriversal, place-based approaches are not methodologies in the Western sense. Western methodologies are typically collections of methods or guiding principles that help you choose which activity to do at different points in a process. By contrast, many of these alternative approaches are practices or praxes—ways of engaging that are inseparable from the cultural and relational contexts they emerge from. The difference is similar to how Indigenous oceanic wayfinding practices differ from Western maritime navigation methodologies. They examine several of these systems practices, exploring when and why each might be appropriate to use.

What I’m listening to:

Attention as Activism: The Power of Thresholds, Dr. Patrick O’Neill

I am very excited and honoured to share a glimpse of not only the vital and insightful work of my husband, but also of his presence and way of being in this world.

In this episode, Patrick and Rachel speak about many things, including the potency of liminal and transitional spaces and how we engage our attention as we find our way within them. As an organisational psychologist, Patrick speaks to how we encountered the edges of his discipline and how, instead of feeling confined by them, he ventured beyond them to infuse other teachings, ways of being and attending into his work. Patrick works at the nexus of inner and outer—he understands the larger structures we exist within, such as culture, as well as the subtleties of our direct experience.

The conversation is rich, and unfolds with the rhythm and pace of a walk through a beautiful and varied landscape.

Works in the Centre - Live Sessions in a Co-Learning Format

November, 6th, 1:00-3:00 pm PST //November, 7th, 8:00-10:00 am AEDT

This 2-hour session will focus on practising a process-oriented approach to working with others. There will be an inner work, time to connect in small groups, a demo of me working with someone in the centre and a debrief of the work followed by discussion. Learn more and register here

Pattern Literacy: Group Supervision

Wednesday, November 26th, 1:00-3:00pm PST // Thursday, November 27th, 8:00-10:00am AEDT

Thursday, November 27th, 1:00-3:00pm PST // Friday, November 28th, 8:00-10:00am AEDT

Pattern literacy is a 2-hour group supervision session for therapists, facilitators, guides and coaches. During the session each participant will have the opportunity to bring a question or case they wish to explore from multiple angles. The session is called Pattern Literacy, because hearing multiple cases can help hone our pattern recognition; our ability to notice themes across diverse cases and expressions of human experience.

Learn more and register here

Coaching as Wayfinding: See, Shape, and Enact Your Way

For those who want to feel more alive in their work I am opening up two spots to work with clients in a coaching capacity. This is a weaving of the best of what I’ve learned from processwork, my work with leaders facing complex life and work challenges, and doctoral research.

This is an offering for those who feel fragmented, who notice their attention being pulled in multiple directions, and long for a sense of continuity, alignment and connection with what feels true.

Coaching as wayfinding is a practice that brings you into closer contact with your way of engaging in the world; the path that is being made as you walk it. The way is also your approach to meeting the opportunities and challenges you’ve faced up to this point. It is the tacit, aesthetic dimension of who you are that knows more than you can describe in words.

You will leave with:

• A clearer understanding of the innate capabilities that have been born out of your lived experience

• How these capabilities get activated and how you can intentionally engage them

• What to focus your attention on to find your way and get unstuck

• Practices for engaging in unpredictable and conflictual terrain

• How to cultivate your attention so vital insights and grow and enhance your work

• A personal wayfinding arc that serves as an ongoing resource for finding your way when there is no map

Learn more here

The day started with fog, then the sun came out and burned through the mist.

Looking back, this shift from haze and obscuration to a revealing of more of what was already there, spoke to more than the weather; it reflected one of the core patterns I was grappling with in my life.

From seeing one way to seeing differently - from perceiving the shape of something and not quite being able to make out what exactly it is, to gradually seeing more of its lines and defining features.

Beyond my own life, I observed this pattern emerging in my clients, community, and the world at large.

Patterns are useful because they enable us to track what is arising and make sense of our experience. In doing so help connect with a sense of structure and order, even in the midst of chaos. In this way patterns provide scaffolding. They help us connect the dots and stay close to a sense of coherence, even when the world around us seems to be turning upside down.

It can be easy to forget that the world is speaking to us all of the time, that what we perceive outside of us in nature can mirror back more of who we are and, in doing so, bring more of ourselves into focus1.

I start with personal experience because lived experience is an avenue for understanding.

In a world where so much information is abstracted from its original form and removed from its context, returning to notice how I, as a living being, experience the world in its many variations, helps me connect with the granularity of information, to get closer to the sensory-grounded origins of that which I am exploring.

My hope in doing so is that these reflections can help you reconnect with your direct experience of the world—the unmediated sense that holds the potential to bring you into closer contact with whatever it is that you are attending to, engaging with, or seeking to explore.

…

Later that day, after the sun burned through the clouds, I made my way out of our home down the road to a coffee shop in Chinatown.

I walked quickly, my gaze directed a few meters ahead of me. I crossed the street stepping over the painted animals on the crosswalk representing different aspects of the Chinese zodiac.

There were a few tourists beside me who stopped to stand on the animals that represented their birth year. They turn back toward the sidewalk and ask their friend, who was still standing there, to take their photo.

I continued down the sidewalk and passed beneath the arch that lines one of the main streets of Chinatown, when I was suddenly hit with a wall of silence.

It wasn’t that the noise around me had stopped; I could still hear a baby crying, the persistent car honking signalling drivers’ solidarity with the BCGEU workers who were on strike, standing at a street corner a few blocks away, and the sounds of people mulling around me.

Yet, even as I took in the noise, part of my attention was held by this layer of quiet.

As I continued to make my way down Fisgard toward the coffee shop, I noticed how the quiet seemed to move around the people on the sidewalk and between the street and surrounding buildings. In this way, it did not block me from the sounds and movements around me. Instead, it opened a space I had never noticed before, a layer of quiet sandwiched between the noise of everyday life.

This quiet could be seen as a random event or an auditory distortion; however, for the past few weeks, I had been craving quiet. I’d been expressing my desire to find a place where I could hear my thoughts more clearly.

Due to the strike that was happening, car honking had become the backdrop of each day from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and the nights were consistently marked by sirens. Given all of this, the wall of quiet felt like more than a random event - it seemed to be a part of a conversation I was having with something larger than my identity.

As we move through the day, there are invitations that can bring us into contact with more of what is present. This wall of quiet is one example, but there are countless others. Recognising these invitations can occur spontaneously and randomly, and they can be accessed more consistently with intentional practice.

Noticing the quieter aspects, the subtler frequencies, and seeing the more ephemeral shapes—the elements of our experience that are still taking form—requires a way of attending that’s different from how many of us have been taught to see the world. This teaching isn’t always explicit. Often, we learn to pay attention to things that other people notice, focusing on what is tangibly there in a graspable form. In this way, we can inherit a worldview that is habitual and often taken for granted.

Each day, there are invitations to see differently, to hear in a slightly new way, or to feel an additional dimension of what we are experiencing.

These shifts are the micro moves that lead to larger change, as Robert Chia2 would say they create incisions in the fabric of our reality. In doing so they create an opening in our horizon of possibility making way for more ideas and creativity to come toward us. This opening becomes the very space through which we become able to step closer to that which we long to know but see as other.

Currently, in this zeitgeist, a reclamation is taking place through various avenues of thought, bodies of practice, and ways of relating to our world and one another. This is a reclamation of a broader range of possibilities for seeing, knowing, and understanding the world and our place within it.

As we carve our way through these times, we have the opportunity to reshape and repattern some of the foundational ways we engage with the world. In these times, questions can serve as guides, helping us refocus our attention and open up to different possibilities for seeing and engaging.

So, in closing, I’ll leave you with two questions:

What ways of perceiving and knowing are you being called toward?

What invitations are arising in your life, and how might these be nudging you to view things differently?

What I’m Reading:

InnSaei: Heal, revive and reset with the Icelandic art of intuition, by Hrund Gunnsteinsdottir

This book explores the multiple meanings, realities and applications of InnSaei: the Icelandic notion of intuition. Depending on how it is engaged, InnSaei can mean to see from within, the sea within, and to see from the inside out. In this book, Gunnsteinsdottir explores how InnSaei can inform our decisions and facilitate greater harmony with the world around us.

The book is based on the premise that the more we engage our lives from our InnSaei, the more we can connect to a wider and more enduring sense of possibility, which can aid to engage with any of the complex challenges we face.

Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes, by William Bridges

So much of life’s unfolding and the inevitable changes we face on a daily, weekly and yearly basis can also be seen as a kind of transition.

Upon completing my PhD, I found myself feeling stuck, lost and unsure of how to proceed. Many people, including my husband, best friend, mother, coach, and mother-in-law, told me I was going through a transition.

The first few times I heard this, I thought, “Of course, that makes sense”, but I didn’t fully register the implications of what they were talking about. I felt I was processing an ending, but I didn’t realise the extent to which this phase was also a pivotal transition.

Learning that what I was going through was something others had experienced as well was relieving. So far, Transitions has been helping me zoom out and see the larger picture. This shift in perspective has helped me break free from what felt like a rut and feel connected to the larger narrative of my life.

What I’m Listening to:

Words for Leadership: Episode 11

In this episode Dr. Donna Ladkin explores the ways in which a colonizing logic has shaped management and leadership practices. Rather than thinking about how we can de-colonize our ways of seeing the world and engaging with others, she encourages us to unravel the colonizing logic that holds certain assumptions in place. I had the privilege of having Donna as a final examiner for my PhD. She is one of those rare people who is incredibly bright, intellectually brilliant and humble. Even in listening to her voice these qualities all shine through.

Words for Leadership is a podcast series that explores how different language and cultural contexts in multinational organisations can influence people’s experience and perception of leadership. The two hosts Dr. Hugo Gaggiotti and Dr. Kay Galprin explore how to research the experiences shared on the podcast and how the insights shared might inform practical changes.

You can listen to the podcast here

Works in the Centre - Live Sessions in a Co-Learning Format

October 23rd, 2:00-4:00 pm PDT //October 24th, 8:00-10:00 am AEDT

This 2-hour session will focus on practising a process-oriented approach to working with others. There will be an inner work, time to connect in small groups, a demo of me working with someone in the centre and a debrief of the work followed by discussion. Learn more and register here

Pattern Literacy: Group Supervision

Wednesday, October 29th, 2:00-4:00pm PDT // Thursday, October 30th, 8:00-10:00am AEDT
Thursday, October 30th, 2:00-4:00pm PDT // Friday, October 31st, 8:00-10:00am AEDT

Pattern literacy is a 2-hour group supervision session for therapists, facilitators, guides and coaches. During the session each participant will have the opportunity to bring a question or case they wish to explore from multiple angles. The session is called Pattern Literacy, because hearing multiple cases can help hone our pattern recognition; our ability to notice themes across diverse cases and expressions of human experience.

I have been offering these sessions through my PhD studies because they are one of my favourite spaces for learning. Each session I am struck by the depth of participants’ work and the wisdom they share with others who are present. Learn more and register here

Coaching as Wayfinding: Knowing as You Go

For those who want to feel more alive in their work I am opening up three spots to work with clients in a coaching capacity. This is a weaving of the best of what I’ve learned from processwork, my work with leaders facing complex life and work challenges, and doctoral research.

This is an offering for those who feel fragmented, who notice their attention being pulled in multiple directions, and long for a sense of continuity, alignment and connection with what feels true.

Coaching as wayfinding is a practice that brings you into closer contact with your way of engaging in the world; the path that is being made as you walk it. The way is also your approach to meeting the opportunities and challenges you’ve faced up to this point. It is the tacit, aesthetic dimension of who you are that knows more than you can describe in words.

You will leave with:

• A clearer understanding of the innate capabilities that have been born out of your lived experience

• How these capabilities get activated and how you can intentionally engage them

• What to focus your attention on to find your way and get unstuck

• Practices for engaging in unpredictable and conflictual terrain

• How to cultivate your attention so vital insights and grow and enhance your work

• A personal wayfinding arc that serves as an ongoing resource for finding your way when there is no map

Learn more here

I woke up to find myself in a room flooded with pink light.

Outside, I could hear the cry of seagulls interspersed with the sound of traffic, the rush of cars on the road below, and the occasional beep of a dump truck. 

The sun was beginning to rise. 

In a room surrounded by windows with a tall ceiling above me, the colours, light, and sounds stood out against a backdrop of quiet. As I gazed out the window, I saw the soft blue of the morning sky, speckled with tufts of pink clouds. The present moment spilt over the edges of what I previously knew a minute to feel like. No longer tethered to the density I sometimes feel in the present moment, I found myself carried by the lush sensory dimension that permeated my surroundings. 

All around me, I see signals from what I once knew as the future. 

Four years ago, what is now part of my everyday reality was only a vague dream. 

Around that time, I began to feel my life closing in on me. The habits and routines that used to feel like springboards for accessing a wider vantage point began to feel as though they were restricting my horizon of possibility.

Portland was still a city of around 635,749 people, but somehow it felt too small.  All around me, there were novel details to appreciate that held the possibility of opening my mind. It was my relationship to the place and habits that had changed, not the things themselves.

These experiences were highly subjective, but they felt real to me.

Still, the feelings offered clues. When I took them seriously, I realised the smallness wasn't as much about the number of people in Portland as it was about the lack of expansiveness I felt there. It wasn't my habits that were restricting; rather, it was the way I was engaging with them that felt confined.

 I missed the smell of salt water, the expansive views of a wider horizon, and the consistent breeze I felt when I was closer to the Puget Sound or Pacific Ocean. 

It was around this time that I began dreaming about another place. I call them dreams, but they often arose through a sense of misalignment, an out-of-jointness between what I knew and what I was sensing as a possible future. 

These dreams arose through a pull toward change, one that would take hold of me at seemingly random points throughout the day. This pull was made visible through a series of images that arose in my awareness: a space flooded with natural light, a minimally decorated room, and an expansive view. 

Each of these images evoked a range of emotions within me. 

Although I wasn't fully aware of it at the time, these images laid the groundwork for an aesthetic blueprint that would guide the next few years of my life. 

Coming from the Greek word aesthesis, aesthetics refers to "any kind of sensory experience regardless of whether it is sensuous or artistic"1.  Aesthetics also refers to the meanings we construct based on the feelings we have about what we experience through our senses.

These meanings are distinct from those that can be reached through deductive methods without direct experience, such as math, rational logic, and "if then" thinking. 

According to philosopher Alva Noë, aesthetics is primarily in the business of bringing what we already know, or what is already there, into a new and different kind of focus2. It is a practice of bringing that deeper current, of sensing, and knowing that moves beneath the surface of everyday life, into a clearer view so we can connect with the fullness of our experience and perceive more of what is unfolding within and around us. 

Whether we realise it or not, aesthetic meaning is often the primary force that steers our direction and nudges us toward possible futures. 

 It is worth noting that gaps, missing information and experiences of vitality can also be experienced as sensory information and aesthetic meaning3. 

I once had a teacher tell me that the most enduring experiences gain their traction from the feelings and sensations evoked within us at the time of the event. Often, these experiences can be harder to pin down or grasp with rational logic alone. Still, they endure over time and continue to move and influence our experience. 

 Art, in all forms, can bring us closer to these moments and to this experiential undercurrent of the aesthetic. Feelings move us; they stir, rekindle, and evoke a sense of opening or contraction. In this sense, they also guide us, whether we are conscious of it or not, by nudging us closer to some possibilities and inviting us to lean away from others.

Looking back, it wasn't the facts that guided me as much as the felt bodily experience of the adjacent possible. If we trust that our aesthetic sense is already quietly steering us, then perhaps the questions become: what are we sensing that we haven't yet allowed ourselves to fully feel or follow?

• What feelings are arising in our current reality that might hold insights about the direction and shape of our future?

3

Stern, D. (2010) Forms of Vitality: Exploring Dynamic Experience in Psychology, the Arts, Psychotherapy, and Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

What I’m reading:

Seed and Signal (a newsletter) by Amalia Deloney 

A few weeks ago I started following this newsletter. I love the way Amalia weaves insights from her work with communities and organizations. Drawing on her background in foresight, the process of working to learn from and intentionally shape possible futures, critical pedagogy (the work of Paolo Freire) and the wisdom arising out of her lived experiment Amalia shares engaging and poignant insights relevant to teachers, practitioners and anyone who wants to support themselves and others to foster a more just and inclusive world. 

What I’m studying: 

Vector theory of change, Cynefin.io 

Have you ever tried to get a family member to change a deeply ingrained habit by showing them research, making logical arguments, and setting up elaborate reward systems, only to watch them return to their old patterns within days, yet somehow a casual conversation with a friend or a small shift in their daily routine creates the lasting change you'd been hoping for? 

Cynefin's vector theory of change invites us to bring this same spirit of responsive exploration to how we create change in our lives and communities. Rather than the familiar approach of envisioning where we want to be years from now and working backwards, this theory asks us to begin where we are, truly mapping the current landscape of our system with curiosity and care. The "vector" becomes a gentle integration of three elements: the direction that feels most alive and meaningful, the pace that tends to our capacity, and the effort that flows most naturally given our resources and constraints.

Born from the need to engage complexity in real-time, this approach uses what are called "adjacent possibles," those small, reachable steps that lie just within our grasp, like stones across a flowing river. Instead of grand proclamations or lofty mission statements, vector theory encourages us to pay attention to the stories already emerging around us, asking the simple yet profound question: "How might we nurture more experiences like this one, and gently discourage those that pull us away from our intended direction?" This becomes a practice of patient experimentation, where we make small moves, notice what shifts, and adjust our course, trusting that coherent movement can emerge from distributed wisdom rather than centralised control.

Strategy Meets Reality - Podcast 

Last month I had the opportunity to join Mike Jones on his podcast. We had a conversation about how to find our way when there is no map, felt meaning (aesthetics) and practical wisdom, among many other things! You can listen here on Spotify as well as Apple Podcasts.

Works in the Center - Live Sessions in a Co-Learning Format

October 23rd 2:00-5:00pm PDT // October 24th, 8:00-10:00am AEDT

Works in the Center is a 2 hour co-learning session focused on a live piece of work. The piece of work will be a 30 demo of Elsa working with someone from the group who has volunteered to explore a question, challenge, somatic experience, or dream that is alive for them.

The work will be explored through a holistic and process-oriented approach to surface more information and increase awareness of what is present and emerging for that person. We will then discuss the structure of the work and have time for questions and insights from the group. Space is limited to 8 participants. Learn more and register here. 

Coaching as Wayfinding: See, Shape, and Enact your Way

3 openings - for 1:1 coaching

For those who want to feel more alive in their work, I am opening three spots to work with clients in a coaching capacity. This is a weaving of the best of what I’ve learned from processwork, my facilitation work with leaders facing complex life and work challenges, and doctoral research.

Coaching as Wayfinding is an offering for those who feel fragmented, who notice their attention being pulled in multiple directions, and who long for a sense of continuity, alignment and connection with what feels true.

It is a practice that brings you into closer contact with your unique way of engaging in the world: the path that is being made as you walk it. Your way is also your approach to meeting the opportunities and challenges you’ve faced up to this point. It is the tacit, aesthetic dimension of who you are - the part that knows more than you can describe in words.

You will leave with:

• A clearer understanding of the innate capabilities born out of your lived experience

• Insight into how these capabilities are activated and how to engage them with intention

• What to focus your attention on to find your way and get unstuck

• Practices for engaging in unpredictable and conflictual terrain

• Ways to cultivate attention so vital insights can arise and enhance your work

• A personal wayfinding arc - an ongoing resource for orienting when there is no map

Learn more and book in here 

I felt lost. 

But then I realised that there was no map for where I was going. 

Something in me knew that eventually the path would arise. A part of me could sense that in some way, it was already here, waiting for me to recognise its presence.

This path wasn’t visible as much as it is felt. Registered through the resonance of knowing deep within my belly and the unquestioning conviction that this was the next step, I made my way into the future. 

You could say the way was finding me as much, if not more than, I was finding it. 

Over the past 2 years and 9 months, I have been exploring how we find our way when we are in dynamically complex situations. 

This can look like a significant life event, a moral challenge at work, a persistent sense of being stuck, or facing a minor or major transition. 

In essence, these are situations where there are multiple variables and no clear path forward. In a world where we are faced with increasing amounts of information at faster rates than ever before, moments like these can arise everyday. 

That said, it can also be argued that life itself is dynamically complex. As much as we may think we know where we’re going, we cannot predict or control the future. Life is forever changing and full of uncertainty. 

In situations like these, we are invited to engage in wayfinding. Unlike navigation, where we rely on some map or framework and have a sense of where we’re going before we depart, wayfinding is about knowing and learning as we go. 

I studied how we engage in wayfinding, using cues and signals (bits of information) to chart our course. Sometimes the course we’re charting is through a physical environment. Other times, it is through the conceptual realm. Often it is a mixture of the two, as we find our way through ideas, beliefs, conversations with others and the worlds around us.

My research showed that the way arises through conversation, not just spoken interactions, but the exchanges of information and gestures that occur between parts of ourselves, our experience of place, and our relationships with others, culture and our environment. 

In other words, we are not charting a path onto the world; rather, we are co-creating our way with life itself. This is what I mean when I say wayfinding is a conversation. 

Still as ironic as it may seem, now that I have completed my Phd, I have been experiencing an automatic impulse to try and reach for a map. 

I have been reaching out to elders and colleagues to see if they can see the next stretch of the path ahead of me. While they can offer insight and suggestions, I’ve realised that to live a life that feels aligned with a sense of calling, the path forward will ultimately arise between myself and the world. 

Have you ever felt your life calling you to move into uncharted terrain? 

Have you ever felt an urge to move beyond the maps you’ve inherited, consciously or unconsciously? 

Over the coming months, as I integrate learnings from the PhD, I will be sharing insights and crafting some offerings focused on how we find our way and stay in connection with a larger horizon of possibility, while engaging with the challenges that arise from a place of spark.

What I’m Reading 

The Entanglement, by Alva Noë

This book explores the role art plays in shaping human experience. He argues that our lives are inseparable from art and permeated with the aesthetic. 

In my Phd, I dove into aesthetics, a field which extends beyond what we know as beautiful to encompass felt meaning and sensory information. I was drawn to aesthetics because it describes the more subtle yet powerful drives and cravings that seem to make up so much of human experience and drive our behaviour. 

My colleague Joshua Bergamin, a philosopher himself, recommended this book to me. Several chapters in, I am finding that Noë’s ideas are both expanding my perception and reconnecting me with what feel like fundamental truths. 

Leadership as Aesthetic and Artful Practice: It's not always pretty, by Donna Ladkin 

In this chapter, Donna explores the way we can be influenced by leaders who appeal to unrequited cravings we’re experiencing in society and our own lives. For example, we may long for a sense of justice or greatness and look for leaders who embody or promise these qualities. 

Using Donald Trump as an example, Donna explores the role of influence in leadership and how leaders can hook us at a level that occurs with little to no thought. She suggests it is through our ability to perceive through our senses (an aspect of aesthetic perception) that we can stay safe in a changing world; however, this ability to receive sensory information also makes us vulnerable. Because aesthetics inform us at a largely invisible level, their effect is more powerful than more rationally based forms of influence. 

I had the privilege of having Donna Ladkin as one of my final examiners. Beyond being an incredible scholar, Donna has a radiant presence. She is full of genuine passion for learning and was deeply present and engaged throughout my defence. 

Group Supervision: Pattern Literacy

• Thursday, August 21st, 8:15-10:15 am AEST

• Friday, August 22nd, 8:15-10:15 am AEST

Pattern literacy is a 2-hour group supervision session for therapists, facilitators, guides and coaches. During the session each participant will have the opportunity to bring a question or case they wish to explore from multiple angles. The session is called Pattern Literacy, because hearing multiple cases can help hone our pattern recognition; our ability to notice themes across diverse cases and expressions of human experience.

I have been offering these sessions through my PhD studies because they are one of my favourite spaces for learning. Each session I am struck by the depth of participants' work and the wisdom they share with others who are present. Learn more and register here

As we move past the Solstice into July, I find myself asking: what is this moment asking of me?What kind of terrain am I in and what is the appropriate way of moving through it? 

Over the past two weeks clients have been speaking about known structures and norms dissolving at the same time they are finding themselves in new terrain. What used to be consistent and reliable now feels fluid, hazy, or out of reach. 

As these structures shift, they're finding themselves in new terrain - both inwardly and outwardly. The dynamics and structures that used to guide how they moved through their day no longer look or feel the same as they did a few years ago. 

In most cases, the terrain is not smooth. Due to the impacts within their local economy, polarization in their communities, city and country, the wars around the world, the funding that used to sustain their work coming to a halt with the changes initiated by the Trump administration, or significant shifts in their personal lives, knowing how to find their way has become increasingly challenging. 

At the same time, these clients also describe new perspectives arising and subtle shifts within their being. The new terrain also invites shifts in relation to their sense of power, identity, and purpose.  

Sometimes, they're not even conscious of these shifts. Initially, they'll describe a sense of disconnection, an out-of-jointness with what was and what is arising now in their personal and professional lives. 

Although these shifts are often paradoxical, unsettling or subtle, arising with the volume of a whisper, they seem to offer clues about the way forward. 

As we move past the apex of the Solstice, one theme that is rising to the surface is this:

The terrain we are facing inwardly and outwardly - is calling us forth in new and forgotten ways. 

I want to explore this theme in two ways. The first is to offer you a question, and the second is to share some experiences I have had in relation to this theme, as a kind of field notes. 

When you look out at this moment in your life, what do you notice about the qualities of the terrain?  In other words, is it smooth and spacious, hilly, dynamic, cluttered, quiet, busy? 

Given the sensory experience of this terrain what approach and way of engaging is it calling from you? 

Below are some notes exploring my experience of the terrain arising in the span of a day. 

I share my experience in case these reflections might help you make sense of where you are in your wayfinding journey and chart your course through whatever terrain you may be facing.  

Field Notes: Living the Question

Without a gap, how would I know my reach? 

Walking up the stairs, I noticed my energy rising. I had been up since 4:00 am, so this surge caught me by surprise. It was evening, but the sun still shone brightly in the sky. 

 Although today started with a sense of lack - it was at this moment that I looked back and noticed how something within me had leaned forward to engage with this space of 'lack' throughout the day. 

Not enough sleep, not knowing - each of these created a space within me from which I had no choice but to engage. 

With a box of deserts in my right hand, I was making my way up from the lower courtyards of one of the squares here in Victoria. I was on my way to have a picnic with my husband and one of his childhood friends. 

As I made my way to the final stair, I wondered if the gap and sense of being stretched was, in fact, necessary. 

Without a sense of being stretched, how could I ever know my capacity? 

I've had friends and elders tell me that the greatest medicine in many of life's crucibles and catalytic endeavours - ranging from parenting,  launching a business, to surviving in the wilderness - is learning what you're made of, coming into contact with a knowing - that can sustain you when you feel stretched. 

In other words, in order to grow, we have to stretch. 

 I thought about how knowing isn't just something we comprehend from standing back and observing experiences from the outside. Today, I experienced firsthand how knowing arises through immersion, from getting to know our edges and the contours and topography of our being. 

The truth was the lack of sleep - the sense of there being too much to do allowed me to lean in and explore my reach - the extent to which I could bridge the gap between what felt probable and what seemed possible. 

I walked down the sidewalk, and as I made my way to the curb, I looked down to see a gap in the pavement in front of me. 

I thought about walking down the sidewalk as a child. How I would pay attention to the gaps between one slab of concrete in the next. How I would try my absolute best to not step on these cracks. To achieve this I would take giant steps, jump and direct the majority of my focus down toward the ground. As a result I would miss seeing the sky above me and all the life happening around me. 

Today I stepped right on the gap. It was the very thing that called forth my capacity and reminded me of what I was capable of.

At this moment in your life, what gaps and constraints are present?

If these could be used as resources, leverage points for being stretched or of fruitful resistance how would you engage with them? 

What I’m Reading: Waking, Dreaming, Being, Evan Thompson  

In this book Thompson explores how the self is a changing process, not a static thing.

Contrasting the difference between when we are awake and asleep he describes how, when we are awake we identify with our body, but if we let our mind wander or daydream, we project a mentally imagined self into the remembered past or anticipated future. 

As we fall asleep, the impression of being a distinct self that is separate from the outer world dissolves. He goes on to explore meditative states and what becomes possible when we let go of the tethers to our sense of self and identity. 

I found the insights in this book connected with the reality of how dynamic our sense of self can be. Reading Thompson’s words reminded me of one of my teachers Lily Vassiliou who would say: “You are a process not a problem”.

Drawing upon neuroscience, philosophy, and personal narrative Thompson describes each of these processes and transformations, bringing depth and insight to some of life's profound questions. 

Sensuous Knowledge, By Minna Salami 

In this book Salami explores the concept of “sensuous knowledge” – a form of knowledge that is registered through the senses, embodying emotional intelligence, intuition and a deep-rooted connection with both the natural world and transnational Black feminist ways of knowing. Sensuous knowledge stands in stark contrast to and challenges more Eurocentric and Patriarchal views of knowledge and truth. Drawing upon a ser outlines a more holistic and interconnected way of seeing the world by prioritising Black women’s lives, experiences, opinions, politics, emotions and stories.

Below are some examples of practices inspired by Salami’s work: 

Embodied reflection

• Before making a decision, pause and notice any physical sensations in your body. For example, do you experience tension, warmth, contraction, or expansion?

• When reading or learning something new, ask "How does this feel in my body?" alongside "What do I think about this?"

Critical questioning of dominant knowledge systems

• Ask "Who benefits from this being considered 'truth'?" when encountering established ideas

• Seek out books, articles, and perspectives from marginalized voices on topics you're exploring or studying. 

• Question why certain forms of knowledge (academic, scientific) are valued over others (experiential, indigenous)

Pattern Literacy: Group Supervision for Practitioners (Therapists, Facilitators, Coaches and Guides)

Thursday, July 24th, 8:00-10:00 am AEST - 3 spots left

Friday, July 25th,  8:00-10:00 am AEST - 2 spots left

Pattern literacy is a 2-hour group supervision session. During the session each participant will have the opportunity to bring a question or case they wish to explore from multiple angles. The session is called Pattern Literacy, because hearing multiple cases can help hone our pattern recognition; our ability to notice themes across diverse cases and expressions of human experience. I have been offering these sessions through my PhD studies because they are one of my favourite spaces for learning. Each session I am struck by the depth of participants' work and the wisdom they share with others who are present. Learn more and register here

I stepped off the last step onto the marble floor. 

We walked down the hallway. 

Looking to the right, I saw Caravaggio’s Medusa. Even though we were making our way toward the exit, I had to make a detour and see this painting up close. 

Several steps later I stood before the plexiglass between me and the Medusa. The image was gruesome but also beautiful. I looked at the other paintings in this room and saw a few heads on trays and a fair bit of blood. 

These are pretty graphic, said my husband. 

I nodded. I wondered whether Caravaggio had been drawn to blood or had been commissioned to depict these gruesome scenes. 

Maybe it was a bit of both. 

Then I thought about the time. 

We better get going, I said. 

We made our way out of the museum, through the crowds of people standing at the front. Now back on the street as we navigate between groups of people, cars, and Vespas, I notice a sense of calm welling up within me.

What was loud hours before is now permeated with a quality of stillness. As the bustle of Florence moves around me - I notice a sense of quiet within me. It's not that I don't hear things, more that the noise doesn't impact me the way it usually does. I feel held in a larger space of stillness. 

For the past few hours, we've been in the Uffizi. We'd made our way from room to room in the museum, taking in countless images and artefacts. On each of the three floors were paintings and sculptures dating back as far as 1200. There had also been crowds of people from around the world. 

When I re-emerged onto the street, I was surprised to feel so calm. Usually, being in any kind of crowd and taking in lots of visual inputs leaves me feeling stimulated and sometimes buzzy. In these instances, it will take me time to return to a sense of being rooted in my own being. 

Today was different. Leaving the museum, I felt more rooted in my being. 

As we made our way back to the vespa we'd rented, I wondered what it was about this experience that led me to experience something different. 

Bringing my attention to the sense of calm I was feeling, I noticed a depth to it—one that I could sink into, one that felt nourishing. This wasn't the breezy kind of calm that flows in momentarily along with a thought or feeling. It was much more expansive and enduring.

At that moment, as I focused on the grounded quiet, I noticed it was rooted in something far beyond the constraints of my identity. It felt much more vast in both space and time.

At that moment, Botticelli's Birth of Venus flashed through my mind. I saw the serene expression on Venus's face.

As I continued to walk down the sidewalk, I thought about how I've returned to this painting again and again ever since I saw it for the first time as a child. Something about it holds my attention, moves me at a level that is difficult to explain in words, and maybe that layer was holding and nourishing me today.

With that image in the background of my awareness, I noticed how, as I moved through the streets of Florence, I simultaneously felt connected to a deeper sense of time—one that extended far beyond the vespas, car horns, and the fast-paced buzzing of modernity. I felt nourished, fortified by something greater.

It was a sense of history but also something else. Something about the images themselves contributed to this sense of nourishment. I wondered if it was their beauty. Philosophers, scholars, and poets, like Goethe, Simone Weil, and Keats, say that beauty has the ability to bring us closer to the truth.

What exactly did I find most beautiful about the pieces I'd seen? The colours of the paintings, the soft curves of the marble and the expressions on the faces all came to mind.

I thought about the artists’ experience creating these pieces. I wondered what attitude informed their work - I imagined how they must have been informed by a sense of dedication or even devotion. How could they create such magnificent pieces without aligning their attention with a purpose that invited them to move beyond what might seem possible?

Nourishment describes being provided with the inputs and sustenance that foster health in a system. In this scenario, my being was the system. We can also nourish a thought or feeling by keeping it within our being and tending to it by giving it our care and attention over a period of time. For example, tending to an idea can be seen as a form of nourishment.

We crossed the street. I noticed the sound of a vespa honking just ahead of me. I looked up at a billboard with an image of a woman holding a Ferragamo handbag.

Then I thought, not all sensory input I take in is nourishing. Some leave me wired, depleted, or, in the case of many soundbites on social media, with the feeling that I need to consume more to be satiated. It's a lot like eating popcorn or chips.

But today, I felt nourished - I recognised the feeling through a sense of being fortified, rooted in something larger than my everyday identity, deeply calm and simultaneously awake.

We got to our Vespa. As I put my helmet on, I wondered if part of the nourishment came from the dedication and devotion that emanated from many of the paintings—was this contributing to the sense of stillness I felt swelling within me?

What I'm Reading

An Inquiry into the Good - Kitaro Nishida

In this book Nishida explores the concept of "pure experience," a state of direct perception that exists before intellectual abstractions and emotional reactions. He suggests that this dimension of experience forms the basis for all understanding.

This book was written during Japan's Meiji Restoration, a time characterized by rapid industrialization and Western influence. Nishida grappled with the alienation felt by many in Japanese society. He believed these experiences stemmed from the influence of rational, scientific thought on traditional Japanese cultural values. I was drawn to this book because, in some ways, the tensions Nishida grapples with are at play today through what some people call the dominance of the right brain or the machine paradigm as well as the influence of AI.

Nishida seeks to address the fragmentation of human experience. To do so, he focuses on a principle of unity that transcends dualistic oppositions, such as the separation between subject and object.

Letting Go by David R. Hawkins

This book explores practices and perspective shifts for engaging with the challenges that hold us back. Drawing upon his background in clinical psychiatry, Hawkins considers how we can transmute the blocks that keep us stuck and inhibit our experiences of joy, ease and fulfilment.

Pattern Literacy: Group Supervision

• Friday June 27th 8:00-10:00 am AEST - SOLD OUT

• Thursday, June 26th, 8:00-10:00 am AEST

Pattern literacy is a 2-hour group supervision session. During the session each participant will have the opportunity to bring a question or case they wish to explore from multiple angles. The session is called Pattern Literacy, because hearing multiple cases can help hone our pattern recognition; our ability to notice themes across diverse cases and expressions of human experience.

I have been offering these sessions through my PhD studies because they are one of my favourite spaces for learning. Each session I am struck by the depth of participants' work and the wisdom they share with others who are present. Learn more and register here

The past few days have been surprisingly warm. They say we're having a heatwave here in the UK. Looking up I see a vast blue sky outstretched above me - it is the kind you could fall into.

Walking down the streets here in Bristol, I hear the songs of blackbirds and the coo of mourning doves. Lilacs hang over the sidewalks, bluebells line the roads. Bristolians are out in sundresses and shorts.

The opening all around me mirrors the space I sense unfolding before me 

I submitted my PhD this week. In its wake, a new sense of space opened up within me. It's wide open and tinged with a whisper of loss. 

Yesterday, a friend told me that after submitting his PhD, he felt a kind of void within him. 

Even though I can't let go of it yet, I can feel the end moving closer than ever before. 2.5 years of travel, between countries, of working at the edge of what I thought was possible, moving toward an end 

I am beginning to imagine what it will feel like not to be in Bristol every 60 days—to not wake up with the awareness of some milestone I need to meet. 

As I try to imagine what this new phase will be like, I notice a tendency for thoughts and ideas to rush in to try to fill this newly opened space.

Recently I listened to a podcast with Otto Scharmer. He spoke about the practice of "letting go to let come" a core idea in the theory u practice. Listening to him speak I understood this practice to mean letting go of what we know so new thoughts and fresh ways of being can emerge.

Days later, I am left thinking about how maintaining an open space invites us to continually let go and, in some moments, actively resist the persistent thoughts that tend to arise when a space opens. 

As much as there is an opening within me, I have also noticed a part of me holding on to the edges of what I know. I feel like a young bird that is about to fly but still grasps onto the branch where it is perched. I noticed how parts of me would grasp without even realising that I was doing so. 

Grasping is a fundamentally human act. We grasp something in an attempt to know it more fully. We can hold on out of fear or embrace something or someone out of love. Sometimes, we might grasp onto something that defines us because we are afraid of losing a sense of who we are by letting go. 

Without that job, identity, physical feature, or relationship, who would we be?

As a gesture, grasping tends to focus on what is within reach—be that physically or conceptually. Physically, we can grasp onto the closest relationship or object to maintain a sense of stability. Conceptually, we might reach for the closest interoperation or frame of reference to try and understand something that falls outside our known frames. 

When I try to grasp the future, it is often from a place of what I already know or infused with deeper layers of understanding and associations that I have been steeped in my whole life.  Sometimes I don't even realise the deeper stories that are shaping my perception and orientation to the present and the future. 

As I sense into the space before me, there are forces within that space. One that is shaping my sense of the future is AI. I have been trying to understand how I feel about AI. I notice something in me feels hesitant to embrace it wholeheartedly, but I haven't fully understood 

This month, I am ready for a book by Coeckelberg called AI Ethics. 

He points out that the conversation about AI is in essence one about what it means to be human. He gives examples of the ways in which we can relate to AI. One is  through an apocalyptic lens which see's AI as a threat to humanity as we know it. Another is through a posthuman lens which looks at how AI can help us transcend the limits of being human. He goes on to discuss several other as lenses. Each has its own ethical implications. 

Reading Coeckelberg got me thinking about the stories we carry within us that shape how we relate to others and to forces in the present and future, such as AI. Last year on the Alive and Learning Podcast with Ivana Gazibara, she said that changing narratives is systems change. 

Change begins with how we relate to the world, including the future. How we relate is directly shaped by the stories we tell ourselves and others. These shifts are a form of systems change. 

When something ends, be it a PhD, our time in a physical place, a relationship, or the end of an era, a space will open. In this space, before we commit to any single path of action, we have access to a multitude of possibilities. In this space, we can also choose what stories we want to tell ourselves about the world and our place within it. 

 How can we tend to the openings that arise after an ending long enough for something new to be revealed?

What I’m Reading

AI Ethics - By Mark Coeckelbergh

This book goes beneath the hype surrounding AI to explore multiple storylines surrounding this moment in history. The author points out that the opportunities and challenges of AI ultimately raise questions about what it means to be human. Instead of focusing on nightmare or utopian scenarios, Coeckelbergh raises concrete questions for anyone to consider. 

What I’m Listening to:

Otto Sharmer: Changing Systems - Mind & Life Institute

I’ve been familiar with Sharmer’s work for years, but it wasn’t until last week that I felt it grab me. Hearing his story about how he got involved in the work he is doing now helped me connect the dots and understand his work in a whole new way. For example, he spoke about his experience growing up with parents who were biodynamic farmers and how tending to the soil informs the health of everything the garden will produce.

Building upon this notion, he shared the idea of the social soil as a means of tending to the ground from which all of our efforts will grow. He reflected on how the soil worldwide has eroded due to monoculture and pesticides. He compares this to our social systems, suggesting a similar tendency: there is often too much extraction without giving back to the sources that nourish us all. 

Pattern Literacy: Group Supervision

This is a two hour session with up to five practitioners. During the session each participant will have the opportunity to bring a question or case they wish to explore from multiple angles. The session is called Pattern Literacy, because hearing multiple cases helps hone our pattern recognition, our ability to notice patterns across diverse cases and expression of human experience. I have been offering these sessions through my PhD studies because they are one of my favourite spaces for learning. Each session I am struck by the depth of participants work and the wisdom they share with others who are present.

It was when I stopped reaching that the answer came.

I was out for a walk and the sun was shining.

For the past few days, I’d felt like I had been backed into a corner. Up against the walls of what felt possible, I was unclear how to move.

I’d gone for a walk because I was tired of feeling stuck. Movement was the most immediate solution to the tension I felt in my body and in my mind.

I stepped out the door, made my way across the wooden deck, down some stairs, and onto the pavement. Once I reached the road I found my stride.

As I walked, I let my attention wander. Rather than thinking about the issue at hand I thought about other things.

I gazed up at the telephone polls above me and beyond into the depths of the blue sky above me.

For a moment I felt the sky was reaching down toward me. What was far above suddenly felt closer.

I kept walking down the road. It was then that clarity came.

It wasn’t quite an answer, more of an understanding that gradually moved into my awareness.

Like the sun shining through a fog, it permeated my mind, pushing the swirl of thoughts out of sight.

I took a few more steps. As I did this clarity took on form and direction: Keep focusing on this project now, you will inevitably learn things you cannot predict, and opportunities will open that you can’t imagine from where you stand right now.

Looking back, this is how I describe the gist of it. At first the understanding arose without any words. It was as though another part of me was speaking in a different language based on feeling, light and imagery. It offered me insight into a question I’d been carrying for days.

I translated what arose through me into words to grasp this as an answer.

Walking with a question can lead to answers I’d never expect, this happens when I can make enough space for the fullness of my being to listen and stop trying to figure things out.

Answers can arise of their own accord, or we can reach out and grab them.

I thought back to last week when I joined a class with my supervisor at the University where I am working on my PhD. It was an MBA course, and the class focused on attention.

As part of the session, we were divided into groups to come up with a presentation to a prompt. Our prompt was: What are the benefits and risks of the attention economy? The teacher asked us to put away our phones and computers and think about the prompt. Within moments of being handed the prompt, a few students in my group reached for their phones, and more specifically, ChatGPT.

Their hands moved so quickly their reaching looked like an automatic reflex.

At first, I thought about how this response was against what we’d been told to do. As a teacher myself, I wanted to honour the rules of the activity we were given.

Then I thought about the appeal of having infinite knowledge at rapid speeds only a hand distance away. Why wouldn’t they reach for an answer?

There are various ways we can know something and different processes to arrive at a sense of understanding.

I keep walking. I have just walked a loop through the neighbourhood we are visiting. Walking back toward the porch, I hear the coo of a mourning dove. I look up, and in that moment, another wave of understanding moves through me.

We can walk until we find clarity, wrestle with a question until we arrive at an answer, or reach for information that can answer our question in a matter of seconds.

Each has its own pace and duration, and each shapes us as the questioner in a different way.

What I’m Listening to: 

The Telepathy Tapes 

• The podcast has come up repeatedly in conversations over the past few months. Each episode explores people with abilities that challenge norms and dominant assumptions rooted in a reductionist paradigm.

• Ky Dickens has done a remarkable job pulling together research and creating a compelling argument that pokes holes in many dominant narratives about consciousness, normality, and perception. I highly recommend giving this podcast a listen!

Tim Ferris and L.A. Paul - On Becoming a Vampire and Whether or Not to Have Kids

• L.A. Paul is a philosopher whose work focused transformative experiences. These are experiences that fundamentally change who we are and how we relate to the world. One example of a transformative experience is becoming a parent, another is receiving a terminal diagnosis.

• I find Paul’s work exciting because it has applications to any form of transformative work including psychotherapy, systems change and work with psychedelics. It is also inspirational to hear her story as a mother and one of few successful female philosophers in the USA. 

….

What I’m Reading: 

I have been in the thick of writing up my Phd so most of what I’ve been reading has been on the academic side!  Here is one chapter I read that was dense but interesting:

Autonomy, Authenticity, and the Self, By Mark A. Wrathall. In: Heidegger, Authenticity and the Self

• Wrathall explores Heidegger's notion of the self. Rather than being the facets that we experience as parts, he proposes that our true authentic self is the ground from which all other elements of our experience arise. I found his argument compelling since other modalities like IFS focus on different parts of the personality.

Pattern Literacy - Group Supervision

• March 12th (PST) 3:00-5:00 pm

• March 13th (AEDT) 9:00-11:00 am

This is a 2-hour session focused on exploring the patterns and process structure within client cases and our questions as practitioners. In the session we explore up to five cases to draw out patterns, discuss themes and discover opportunities for engagement.

I love these sessions because they provide an opportunity to alongside other practitioners, and feel supported in a community of practice. Learn more and register here

I don't think you can have one without the other, he said.

To be that open and receptive will also bring protection and tension.

I thought about his words. There was tension in the lead-up.

At first, it took a lot of effort to stay focused. Distractions kept coming in, and I needed to redirect my attention back to what I was trying to do. Then there was a shift. The effort it took to focus subsided, and my attention softened, and, with it, the edges of my identity.

…

Before we experience a shift into something we view as desirable, we may feel more of the thing we are ready to leave behind.

Yesterday, we crossed the threshold of the solstice.

Depending on the hemisphere you live in, it was either the peak of the longest day or the valley of the longest night.

At this time of year, we experience an ascent or descent toward the full expression of the two most essential polarities: night and day, darkness and light.

In the descent down toward the winter solstice, I felt a sense of tension building within me. It felt as though the year was catching up with me, and all the moments I hadn't attended to or fully felt were arriving in the here and now to be experienced, processed, and digested.

Whether we're scaling down toward the depths of winter or climbing up to the longest day, at this time of year, different faculties within us will get activated, and parts of our life that are seeking attention will come to the surface, which brings me here to this space and to all of you.

Over the past few months, you may have noticed that it's been quiet here

Not because I haven't wanted to write something here and share what I'm learning with you. Rather, it's because I've been engaged in other endeavours or conversations that have been asking for more of my attention.

One is with my PhD, and the other is with my marriage (yes, I am married!). I call them conversations because they are dynamic, evolving, and based on a continual exchange of attention and learning.

Each day I am learning how it feels to show up in spaces I have chosen to actively cultivate and co-create, to engage in an inquiry I have dedicated my heart and mind to, and to love from all dimensions of myself, even when I feel stretched to the edges of my capacity.

I've also been experimenting with my attention. I've been noticing how much I can attend to from the fullness of my presence without feeling stretched to the extent that my ability to care for what I am involved in gets diluted.

Reading work by Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch, and Silvia Caprioglio Panizza has played a role in forming these thoughts and experiments. Each of their writing emphasises the role attention plays in our ability to connect with the truth and to aspire toward something greater than ourselves.

Weil speaks about our attention as a vehicle that can help us move beyond the constraints of our identity to meet the world more fully. Murdoch proposes that our attention is how we put our consciousness to good use, and CaprioglioPanizza, argues that reality has value in its very existence and that we can learn to see this dimension by giving up parts of ourselves. For each of these women, our attention is a force, the way we care, and ultimately the means through which we love.

Attention is our means of liberation, and one of the greatest sources of tension, especially when it is being stretchedtoward things we did not choose to pay attention to, be that social media or something else.

Sitting with the writings of Weil, Murdoch, and Caprioglio Panizza, I was left with the question, how can I channel my attention more intentionally?

With the intention of pouring my focus into my studies, I took a break from writing OGI. This decision was based on the idea that by stopping some of the conversations I was having, like OGI, I could focus more fully on my PhD.

While this newsletter was one of the conversations I thought I stopped, it continued within me. Even though I 'stopped' writing OGI, my attention kept moving back to this space and to all of you.

During this period, I learned that as much as I can choose what I want to attend to, there are also times when something else is asking for my attention. Rather than adhering to how I think I should be spending my attention, it can be more supportive and fruitful to follow the invitation and attend to something else.

Returning to the idea of any creative endeavour being a conversation, following this invitation involves stepping away from the conversation I am most dedicated to, and engaging in another conversation can help me rediscover the path I am on in a new light.

These 'side' conversations can take the form of writing something unrelated to my research, going for a walk with a friend or cooking a new recipe. Even though these side conversations can look like detours, I've learned that they can also help fortify my energy and resolve to stay on the path and renew my inspiration.

At this stage, the main conversation is my PhD; however, it may be something different at other stages. Whatever the focus may be, the main conversation is the one that invites dedication and asks for most of our time and attention.

Perhaps another way to think of it is as a river. While a dominant pull may lead your life, attention, and energy to flow in a specific direction, this flow is fed in part by tributaries, small offshoots that move through parts of the landscape the river cannot reach.

However, as the tributaries flow into the river, its currents become nourished by waters from other parts of the land. In this way, the tributaries help the river draw upon more terrain than it ever could alone.

In the context of our lives, we may have one dominant focus. However, this focus can also be nourished by 'smaller' paths of exploration, even if they appear as detours from the overall journey. So, over the holiday and solstice time, I am wishing you lots of flow and some fruitful detours that help reconnect you with a sense of spark and vitality.

What I’m Reading…

Social sensitivity and the ethics of attention, by Elisa Magri

This article explores the notion of social sensitivity as an aspect of any interpersonal relationship. Magri describes social sensitivity as being intrinsic to our understanding of others as selves situated in a social world. With this awareness, we can navigate any relationship with greater care.

This article examines the relationship between habit, attention, and critical thinking and how these form the nexus of self-awareness that lies at the core of social sensitivity.

What I’m Listening to…

Alive & Learning Podcast Global Stories: Local Action: Episode 6

This podcast offers a glimpse into my other life as a facilitator and consultant focused on multi-stakeholder collaborations and network practice. You'll also get a sense of the incredible people I work with.

In the final episode of season 1, Carri, Nzwaki and I lift up common threads arising across the conversations in this series, especially how our relationships allow us to navigate during times of uncertainty and change. Together, we highlight the importance of activating our collective imagination and advocate for storytelling to shift mindsets and connect global ideas to local action.

We speak to how joyful approaches to change, undertaken with humility and trust, can become contagious interactions that scale out into movements that ultimately reshape larger systems. Finally, we wrap up the series with gratitude for the relationships that have brought these stories to life and made the podcast possible.

Pattern Literacy: Group Supervision

January 29th, 1:00-3:00pm PST
January 30th, 8:00-10:00 am AEDT

This is a group supervision session, that is based on a process-oriented approach to working others. Each session will run for a total of two hours, with five slots to present topics of individual development, client, or organizational cases. Each case will be a doorway to exploring frameworks to deepen our awareness, see beneath the surface, and gather useful insights for our clients and ourselves. Learn more here

I step outside and am met with a wall of thick air. It is hot and humid and smells of rain and wet asphalt. This stands out in visceral contrast to the cool, consistent breeze of the air conditioning  I've been immersed in for the past 12 hours. 

I've just arrived in Florida for the first time in 12 years to visit my mom and extended family. Even though I've been away from this heat for over a decade, something about it still feels familiar. 

Within seconds, I return to an inner space I haven't inhabited in a while. My shoulders drop, and a calm, expansive atmosphere permeates through the haze of jet lag that's accumulated within me. 

I roll my suitcase to the edge of the sidewalk, step off the curb, and get in the car with my mom. We drive off into the night. Along the highway, we pass by countless shopping plazas and street lights. The landscape is lush and manicured. As I take in the city around me, I notice a sense of being out of place. 

Even as I experience a sense of familiarity, so many things about Florida's culture are far from my identity, and yet a part of me knows I am meant to be here. 

As the days go by, and I take in my surroundings, I notice different parts of me responding to my context. We are always in conversation with our environment. Even if we don't say a word, we are still registering the information we receive from the outside world and responding accordingly. 

These exchanges layer upon each other to shape our sense of identity and how we relate to the world. Places and people can play a pivotal role in shaping our sense of self and our lived space, our implicit way of living with others, and our horizon of possibility. Our experiences with others and our environment can expand or constrict this horizon. 

My relationships with my family have largely informed my experience of Florida. From ages 1 to 3, my parents and I lived in Florida. We split our time living with my mom's family and visiting the ashram with my father's guru, Swami Hariharinanda. These were two very different cultures that existed only a few hours from each other. 

In my extended family, I often felt completely different. Even though there was a strong foundation of love, I still found my way of being, orientation, and preferences to fall far outside the norms in which my family operated. At the ashram, I felt absolute freedom to explore and be myself. 

These experiences resulted in heightened awareness of othering.  They created a valence in my horizon of possibility. To this day I often feel on the edge of a group, questioning if I truly belong. 

Returning to Florida, I found myself revisiting those places within me I experienced as a child, places I thought I'd left but continued to live on with me. I wonder if, like a knot, when I pulled away, the tangle only got tighter. Returning here could feel like going 'back.'  However, I also noticed the slack, that there is more space between me and the experiences of feeling like an outsider. 

Sometimes, we need to go back to see how far we've travelled. 

Sometimes, we need to return to the space of tension to untangle the knots we carry within us. 

I returned to Canada feeling more connected to the places that have shaped me. Days later, Patrick proposed, and I said yes! 

After stepping 'back' to where I've come from, we are stepping into a new future together. Although this is a new direction, it also felt entirely aligned with our trajectory and my life path, longing, and dreams for the future. 

In many ways, returning to where I've come from prepared me to step into the places awaiting me. I am left thinking of switchbacks, how making our way up the mountains of life involves zig-zagging back in order to go forward. 

What I’m Reading

The Strong Poetry of Place by Tricia M. Kress and Robert Lake

On the plane ride home from Florida I read an article called The Strong Poetry of Place. The two authors draw upon their lived experience, to reflect on the role plays in shaping our sense of identity and belonging. They consider how being removed from a place makes us susceptible to the pulls of capitalism and makes us feel we need to 'have' a place rather than being connected to how we are always held in place. 

To counter the experiences of displacement that can arise from forced migration, whether due to war, economic factors, or the decision to follow a 'better life,' they suggest engaging in re-placing, a process of revisiting places that have formed us. We can visit these places by going to them physically or traveling to them in our imagination. You can access the article here

What I’m Watching

Nora Bateson and Vanessa Andreotti in conversation at UVIC

In this video Vanessa and Nora discuss many things including why we get stuck, and unexpected directions to explore if we want to truly get unstuck. They speak about how we can shift our perception to experience more of the nuance of the living world, and how wisdom arises in the spaces between one thing and another.

Vanessa offers the perspective that we each have a ‘bus within us ‘that carries all of our relatives and more, instead of just being singular in our identity she encourages us to experiment with the possibility of holding many perspectives at once and the implications this can have for how we relate to others. Nora speaks about warm data, and the idea that information is alive. Both Vanessa and Nora exude warmth and wisdom, and the care between them in this conversation is palpable. You can watch the video here

Rock of Dreams: Album launch

Yesterday I had the privilege of joining the album launch for two friends and mentors, Fergus Anderson and Charlotte von Büllow. Charlotte, is also my PhD supervisor. Fergus and Charlotte are artists, academics and some of the most incredible humans I know. 

Four years ago, Fergus was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. This event shifted their lives as a couple radically. In response, they embarked on a healing journey, which included art and music-making, ritual and research into therapeutic ways of engaging with this diagnosis. I highly recommend their music and watching the recording of the album launch

Alive & Learning Podcast: Episodes 1-3

For the past several months I’ve been co hosting a podcast alongside Carri Munn and Nzwaki Adonisi. We bring you stories from practitioners around the world using collaborative approaches to take action on global challenges. Listen as we explore ways of cultivating networks and engaging with a systemic lens to deliberately imagine new futures.

This podcast is for collaborators, visionaries, and change makers. For people who believe we’re in this together, and practitioners who understand that shaping change is relational work. You can learn more and listen here