Joanna Macy workshop 3 April

doing some promo for the fella...

The Work That Reconnects

What’s Possible?

When:        Sunday 3rd April 1-6pm

Where:       Angel, Islington   

What:

A series of interactive activities, meditations, rituals and practical tools inspired and developed by visionary deep ecologist Joanna Macy, encouraging us to express our feelings and find new ways of seeing our place and purpose on this planet.

The Work That Reconnects is a framework that helps people connect to ourselves, each other and the natural world. It offers skills and strategies to nurture the emergence of creative responses and transform our concerns and worries into collaborative action.

For more information visit www.joannamacy.net/

Facilitators

Kevin Frea is a trained and experienced facilitator of the Work that Reconnects. He is an environmental activist, teacher, life coach and vegan with a Masters degree from the Centre for Human Ecology in Glasgow.

Michael Margolin has worked as a garden educator, organic farmer and facilitator of various fields that are helping to create a more sustainable world. He has trained in Vipassana meditation for five years, is an experienced contact improvisation dancer and is currently training in Action Theatre, an improvisational theatre form.

Donations are encouraged!

Reserve your place to receive further details, address and directions:

Michael   michael_j_margolin@riseup.net

Kevin      Kevin@humanecologist.org, 07716246672

Natural Rhythms

thanks to scienceblogs for the pic

There's a conversation thread meandering around at the moment about 'natural rhythms.'

My friends and I seem to be talking about rest, seasonal patterns, the rise and fall of energy.

Last week all I wanted to do was sleep and eat. I wasn't the only one. Did you feel that way?

This week the low ebb of energy persists and I'm juggling good intentions with the lure of coffee and sugar to prop me up. Struggle.

This morning I thought of my friend Alastair who worked for a year as a gardener and facilitator at Embercombe, a stay-in-yurts-and-sit-by-fires-and-find-your-purpose kind of place in Devon. Away from the stuff of modern life, he noticed strong differences in his available energy at different times, although his sleep, diet and activities were consistent. After a while he began to notice cycles in his energy, and a correlation with the cycles of the moon: that his energy would rise as the moon waxed towards fullness, and wane when it waned.

That might sound like something from the wacky bucket but perhaps that feeling is a symptom of the masculine slant in the ideosphere. I bleed each month on the full moon. For women it is obvious that at least one of the natural cycles of our bodies is pitched to the rhythm of the moon.

So I had a google at breakfast and found this from the very helpful teachers at Woodlands Junior School in Kent.

So last week, sleep-and-eat-and-drown-in-coffee in an unsuccessful attempt to prop up waning energy week, the moon was waning to a close.

This week it's beginning to wax so energy should be picking up! I don't see that yet. But I'm starting to feel it writing this :)

So my question now is, if this is one of the natural rhythms we may experience, what do we do with that?

An obvious answer would be to just do less when our energy wanes and do more when it waxes. Which is tricky in practice because professional deadlines and social calendars are not pitched to the lunar cycle and sometimes you just have to push on.

But just maybe they increasingly could be. No-one notices, for example, what time I arrive and leave work; the emphasis is on me meeting my targets not which hours I meet them in, and my irregularity is expected and predictable. So I do have some flexibility to do more when I 'wax' and less when I 'wane.'

Hummm..

I'm going to keep an eye on this one....