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Realizing Regenerative Leadership: Why connecting with nature is essential on this transformative learning journey
By Ruth Förster
Do you remember spending entire days outdoors in nature as a child? I used to forget time, sitting underneath a huge willow-tree, lying in the tall grass and watching the clouds go by, adorning myself with garlands of flowers, building small structures out of branches – calling nature my home. I felt happy, was creative and inspired. For me, these were the experiences of being fully present in the moment, in bodily connection with my environment, with the resources available to me. I recall these experiences vividly.
These childhood qualities of being present, feeling connected with ourselves, others and nature1 are what we need to reclaim and (re-)cultivate as individuals and collectives to face two existential and interrelated crises: our crossing of planetary boundaries2, and our loss of connectedness to ourselves, others, and nature.
We need to pause. Reconnect. Rejoice. Reroute. Realise and assume regenerative leadership.
For many of us, this requires transformative learning (Förster et al. 2019, Mezirow 2012). Transformative learning allows us to question and change our often implicit, relatively stable and most guarded assumptions, beliefs, values or so-called meaning perspectives. These glasses - so to say - profoundly influence our feeling, thinking, acting - our sensemaking and whole being in the world. They give us orientation, and at the same time, may also partly cause the crises we experience.
Transformative learning is not a comfortable and joyful process which we seek naturally. It is often initiated by experiences of incoherence, disorientation, or even crisis, and can cause stress. On the one hand, our orientation is destabilised when former meaning perspectives are called into question, we find they no longer function, and new ones have yet to be established. On the other hand, our overstepping of planetary boundaries and the climate crisis itself are threatening for most of us and can trigger severe stress (Singer-Brodowski et al. 2022). When we are stressed, our nervous system activates our automated and rapid defence patterns, impeding our creativity and critical thinking resources.3 If we want to make a difference we need to have access to the full plethora of our resources such as creativity, and different ways of knowing. For this to succeed, however, we need to feel “safe enough”4, and not remain permanently in defence mode (Singer-Brodowski et al. 2022). An essential resource for “feeling safe enough” is for us humans to feel connected to others, that is, to be part of a community. Furthermore, connecting with nature while embarking on a transformative learning journey is essential to developing and cultivating regenerative leadership in different ways:
Pausing and connecting through our senses
Immersing ourselves into nature enables us to slow down and calm down. Pausing. Listening to the rhythm of the wind, following the rhythm of the sun opens up space to connect to our own rhythms, such as our breathing. Once we touch and smell the bark of a tree, we enter into contact with nature. All of this can help our nervous system to slow down automated defence patterns (e.g. Antonelli et al. 2022, Haluza et al. 2014). It can help us to open up to the situation as it is, and to access resources such as creativity, compassion and love. At the same time we use our senses consciously, helping us to connect with ourselves, providing feelings of being grounded, safe enough and present.
Experiencing ourselves as part of something greater
Nature is the place where humans co-evolved with other beings over thousands of years – being interrelated and interdependent. It has been our learning grounds where we have faced dangers and challenges, all the while adapting to survive. In the words of Depth Ecologist David Abram5: (...) “we are utterly immersed in, and dependant upon, the world that we mistakenly try to study, manipulate, and manage from outside”. And we connect via our senses (Abram, 2010). This is hands-on, experiential systems theory and allows us to be part of a greater system, interdependent, not alone and taking care of each other.6
Resonance and Synchronicities: our encounter with nature
Nature is a potent space for resonance for what is. This means, when we are in nature our own meaning perspective and questions are mirrored back to us. John Muir, one of the initiators of US National Parks put it like this7: ”I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.“
Nature as space for resonance shows us more clearly what is at stake. We may experience synchronicities8 – for example, encounters with animals or plants, which reflect our state of being, our questions. This paves the way for new insights and ways of sensemaking.
Learning Edge: Challenging our meaning perspectives
Retreating in nature has been practised by humans for thousands of years as part of intentionally accessing different and new ways of knowing. When we retreat into nature without our everyday distractions and equipped only with the essentials, our meaning perspectives can be challenged. Being out there, present in the moment, we leave our comfort zone and meet our learning edge. To return and be able to share our experiences and encounters with others in community provides us with new insights9.
Regenerative leadership is an approach to leadership, which is nourished by a deep connection to self, others and nature and serves the well-being of the entire ecosystem including our organisation, team and ourselves. Connecting to nature, and experiencing ourselves being a part of nature, is essential if we are to reroute our thinking and actions and realise leadership for the future - regenerative leadership.
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Photo credit: Nathan Anderson | Unsplash