Mindfulness and Sustainability at the Crossroads: Towards Mindfulness Curricula for Human and Planetary Wellbeing and Transformation

3d (edited) • Resources

Over a decade ago I took the 8week course created by Jon Kabat-Zin on Mindfulness Based Stess Reduction and it has been a game changer.

Here is a fabulous new article written by Christine Wamsler and her colleagues making clear linkages to the importance of cultivating a healthy inner world to be in true connection with each other, our communities and to nature.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

“Understanding the roots of today’s polycrisis points to

the cultural narratives underlying modern societies. Scholars and practitioners increasingly identify a dominant social paradigm of separation or alienation as a key driver of today’s interconnected crises (Eisenstein 2013; Göpel 2016; Wamsler and Bristow 2022). This paradigm assumes that human thinking minds are distinct from feelings and bodIES, that people are separate from one another, that some are superior to others, and that humanity is separate and superior

to the natural world (Scott et al. 2021).

In modern societies, many people are increasingly unconscious of their emotions, bodily sensations, and deeper values, influenced by factors such as trauma, denial, digital distractions, and pervasive

busyness. As a result, individual behavior is often driven by fear- or incentive-based motivations rather than by social, affiliative, or caring ones. Modern societies dominated by consumption, power, and achievement increasingly marginAlize values of care, connection, and affiliation. To make matters worse, these disconnections—from self, others, and

nature—mutually reinforce each other, and disconnection from our environment mirrors and reinforces disconnection

from ourselves (Hawken 2021; Wamsler and Bristow 2022).

For instance, diminished body awareness impairs empathy, weakens social identity, and undermines a sense of meaning and belonging (Bristow et al. 2022; Scott et al. 2021).

Today’s polycrisis is therefore also described as a crisis of perception or meaning, intrinsically linked to what has been……”https://rdcu.be/eRJFj

0 comments