All life is process. Pattern is the tracks of life’s evolutionary process. The rings of a tree bole tell the story of its life. The meanders of a river tell a tale of the rise and fall of mountains, and sometimes the intervention of humans. The patterns of life share wisdom about how we may design for life. Branching is life’s way of maximising the space for vital exchange and relationship and maintaining diversity. Networked patterns both hold the tension of extremes and create self-organising resilience.

To be able to see the future unfold in our minds, we need to understand the patterns and processes that are unique to our places so that we may continue the unfolding process in the appropriate context of place.

We also need to become trackers of our own thinking, sensing, doing, meaning to hold the courage for transformation.

To have the determination, courage, compassion, adaptability to play a role in collectively shaping the future, it’s vital we are able to manage our state at any time. Enter the gift of imperturbability.

Imperturbability does not mean we are immune, senseless, unfeeling to the unfolding drama around us. It means we have been able to craft an environment, and build a determination to dance with the uncertainty of an emergent new era unrocked by its unpredictability and any rapid change of circumstances.  It means cultivating an invulnerability to the energy drains of ego, fear, competition, separation, fragmentation and our individual needs – whilst still recognising that our individual needs are important.

The ability to manage our state and zero back to purpose – no  matter the provocation or pain – is the gift of imperturbability.

The story of separation has been playing out in human culture for thousands of years.  Categorising and labelling are processes we use to make sense of the world around us. Yet that process also fragments and reduces all that we can be – as individuals and society – when we recognise and foster the nature of interbeing.

How do we actively and consistently signpost this story whenever it pops up in front of us, with compassion, kindness and resoluteness? What qualities in us do we need to foster to be an effective ally for wholeness? Courage? Love?

We go beyond the story of separation into the story of healing. We look at the reconciling processes we need to nurture right dialogue. How do we become trauma-informed? How do we become active practitioners of decolonialism?

Life seeks balance and harmony. In biology, equilibrium is reached when the internal and external factors are regulated resulting in stability and balance within a biological system. Equilibrium is important as it helps maintain optimal functioning ad conditions for biological processes. This allows organisms to function effectively and adapt particularly when dealing with ever-changing environmental conditions. 

Today we are seeing an ever increasing flow of polarisation in human systems. Whether in politics where countries are swinging from left-orientation to right-orientation with increasing frequency, or in general culture where the drive for certainty in an uncertain world is pushing people into every more rigid positions. Polarisation is a handbreak on our potential to move forward to a regenerative future.

Our traditional approaches of compromise and conflict resolution offer only temporary patches on the deep fractures in our society. We need approaches that reach down to the root causes of our separation, and heal them through finding new future-focused perspectives.

We call this Harmonizing Synthesis.

Life may be evolutionary and ever-changing but paradoxically it is also rhythmic and circular and flow. It evolves in a cycle of emergence, divergence and convergence where the new horizon is emerging, the process of divergence keeps it vibrant, ever-changing and whole, and convergence enables new processes of life to stabilise.

Many of us live a 24-hour, always on lifestyle. How should we adapt and realign to the rhythms of life?  How do we find the courage (and employee culture) for it to be acceptable to be in re-charge and not always in a state of high performance?  How do we let go of our attachment to permanence, sameness and stability when in our current insecurity and uncertainty, the yearning for them is even greater?

From a coin found in the soil placed in context, an archaeologist can tell us much about how ancient peoples lived. A geologist looks at the patterns of soil and rock formation and images the rise of fall of mountains and the clashing of tectonic plates to understand how landscape forms. The best urban planners, architects and eve landscape gardeners can see the future unfold in their minds eye.

At the same time they must all be adaptive and responsive to the context of the present, ready to alter course when systems take unexpected turns and shifts.

To design in place towards an uncertain and ever-changing future, is the skill we call Multiplicity.

Nodes in systems are the critical points in which the interchange of relationships and nutrients happen.  Nodes are the vital intersections in which, if we intervene with discernment, we can create a systemic shift in ecology, economy or culture.

Learning to identify nodes, and the ways in which we can act on them with discernment and integrity, significantly increases our changes of creating transformative change.

We will look at several place-based institutions and emergent projects who are using nodal acupuncture to shape ecological and social justice, cultural regeneration and food systems change.

We call this being a Systems_See-er & a Nodal Acupuncturist.

In our quick, sharp, staccato, problem-solving culture, we are often encouraged to act rapidly without a deep enough undertanding of the complexity we are working with.  The challenges we face are interconnected and inter-related and often have a source far from the symptoms that present themselves.  Whether that is the current explosion of mental ill-health, family breakdown, polluted oceans or depleted soils.

To act effectively we must become pragmatic and patient seekers of upstream thinking and design to enable our interventions to activate the potential for change.

We call this Upstream Thinking.

Opportunity in our current culture carried the overtones of individualism, getting-ahead, and extractive behaviour where the one benefits at the expense of the whole. Living systems are always responding to the opportunity of the context in which they exist on a daily basis.

How do we learn to be discerning opportunists? To see the moment in time when and where a system or a culture is ripe for intervention? Particularly for those of us working to hospice the dominant culture to help birth a regenerative future, being able to take advantage of the right moment, policy, happening, is critical.  Think Greta Thunberg.

We call this being an Opportunity Acupuncturist.

Many of us have experienced the power of unexpected shocks to open a window for change. A surprise diagnosis of serious illness. The loss of a critical capability. The unexpected loss of a loved one. The global pandemic.

Ancient wisdom and contemporary neuroscience suggests that successive shock is necessary for transformative change. But how do we learn to intentionally apply shock well, and kindly?

The word ‘just’ is one of the many pernicious in our vocabilaries. We do not ‘just’ live on a random blue planet. We live on the incredible, superlative, marvellous, incomprehensible unfolding of life in all its glory, majesty and mystery.  Our busy lives keep us from awe and wonder. It is not just for children.

We call the practice of using these powerful interventions as transformative practice, being shamans of shock and awe.