Project Team
Jules Weston, David Key, Dr Margaret Kerr & Robert McKenna

Natural Change Video Presentation

This video of Dave Key talking about the Natural Change Project was made at an open evening at Schumacher College in March 2011.

Click here to watch the video.

Tracing a path

The experience of working in Glen Prosen is still strongly here. Often, it comes back unexpectedly in fragments – the sound of the river, the smell of wood smoke, the feeling of a conversation, the curve of the hill above the Glen… sometimes it’s hard to remember the sequence of what happened. It can feel linear, like a journey – or timeless, like a wide open field of experience. Perhaps these two ways of remembering work together. Tracing a path through the week seems to bring more understanding of how our work progressed, and to open out wider to the whole experience.

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We arrive in the Glen on Sunday. That evening, we gather together in the tipi to share stories of the ‘city-solo’ – stories of ninety minutes spent alone, sitting still in a city centre location, with no phone, no money, iPod or book. There are experiences of insight, sadness, joy, frustration, love, surprise.

On Monday morning, we start exploring the best and worst case scenarios for our community in the face of ecological challenge. Visualising utopia and dystopia – first as a waking dream, then making images on paper. From this, we listen deeply to each other’s responses… to what we hope for and what we fear – focusing and clarifying an intent before heading out for an afternoon solo. In the evening, everyone returns and tells each other the stories of their time out alone in the land.

Tuesday morning, we set off up the hill together. The wind is wild and cold. We find places along the way to stop and tell what we have learned from researching stories of social change. Nestled among grey rocks, high above the Glen – the French Resistance, the American Civil Rights movement… Gathered around a wind blasted tree – the Suffragettes… Sheltering above the bealach – Stonewall, The French Revolution… Back in the tipi, sitting around the fire – the priests who gave their lives standing against oppression in Central America… and the misappropriation of psychology to fuel post-war consumerism.

As night falls, we prepare for an early start the next day – a dawn till noon solo.

Wednesday morning – starting out in silence, ice blue sky, sunrise sparking on fresh snow. Returning to share stories again, a familiar practice – weaving together, subtle, beautiful, strong – narratives of transformation.

The next morning, along the banks of the river, we set out to explore how change happens. Making shapes in the land from moss, earth, rushes, wood, words. Then, quietly, and with a sense of wonder, visit each other’s places along the river, to see what we have created… what we have found.

We head back to the lodge to write up the morning’s experience. Grateful for the river, and what has been made there.

Late in the afternoon, we work to create a collective model of social change – drawing together impressions from the river bank, feelings, images, research, theory and intuition. The result is a huge wall chart, full of colour, movement and dynamism.

The evening is spent discussing the next steps for the project.

The Return

Some day, if you are lucky,
you’ll return from a thunderous journey
trailing snake scales, wing fragments
and the musk of Earth and moon.

Eyes will examine you for signs
of damage, or change
and you, too, will wonder
if your skin shows traces of fur, or leaves,
if thrushes have built a nest
of your hair, if Andromeda
burns in your eyes.

Do not be surprised by prickly questions
from those who barely inhabit
their own fleeting lives, who barely taste
their own possibility, who barely dream.

If your hands are empty, treasureless,
if your toes have not grown claws,
if your obedient voice has not
become a wild cry, a howl,
you will reassure them.

We warned you,
they might declare, there is nothing else,
no point, no meaning, no mystery at all,
just this frantic waiting to die.

And yet, they tremble, mute,
afraid you’ve returned without sweet
elixir for unspeakable thirst, without
a fluent dance or holy language to teach them,
without a compass
bearing to a forgotten border where
no one crosses without weeping
for the terrible beauty of galaxies and granite and bone.

They tremble,
hoping your lips hold a secret,
that the song your body now sings
will redeem them,
yet they fear your secret is dangerous, shattering,
and once it flies from your astonished
mouth, they – like you – must disintegrate
before unfolding tremulous wings.

Geneen Marie Haugen

Full Catastrophe Change

For over 20 years Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn has been working with sufferers of pain, anxiety and stress using ‘mindfulness’ meditation at the University of Massachusetts Medical Centre.  He defines mindfulness elegantly as, ‘paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgementally.’

I was reading his classic text ‘Full Catastrophe Living’ when I discovered something that I felt resonated strongly with the approach we use in facilitating the Natural Change Project.

‘We are putting [patients] in a paradoxical situation. They have come to the clinic hopeful of having something positive happen, yet they are instructed to practice without trying to get anywhere. Instead, we encourage them to try to be fully where they already are, with acceptance. In addition, we suggest they suspend judgement for the eight weeks they are in the [mindfulness] course and decide only at the end whether it was worthwhile.’

‘Why do we take this approach? Creating this paradoxical situation invites people to explore non-striving and self-acceptance as ways of being. It gives them permission to start from scratch, to tap a new way of seeing and feeling without holding up standards of success and failure based on a habitual and limited way of seeing their problems and their expectations about what they should be feeling. We practice the meditation in this way because the effort to try to “get somewhere” is so often the wrong kind of effort for catalysing change or growth or healing, coming as it usually does from a rejection of present-moment reality without having a full awareness and understanding of that reality’. (p.90)

Silence

Seeds, berries and nuts fall to the ground. They bed into the forest floor. Birds carry them off in the four directions. Energy is stored inside plants. The earth enters a time of waiting. Involution. Deep silence.

The deep silence… a potential space.

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The mother was not people, nor was she nothing

nor something

she was the spirit of what was to come…

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For the Maori, this is Te Korekore,

‘the infinite realm of the formless and undifferentiated. It is the realm not so much of ‘non-being’ but rather of ‘potential being’. It is the realm of primal and latent energy from which the stuff of the universe proceeds and from which all things evolve.’

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For Plato, it is the chora.

‘neither sensible nor intelligible, neither inside nor outside. It is… the matrix, nurse, and mother of all space.’

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Our culture has become afraid of this fertile void. We fill spaces with things… silences with words. Understandably, we want to know what’s going to happen… if it’s going to be OK.

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But space can be full with potential.

The film maker Wim Wenders has written of the problem of knowing in advance about how a film may turn out, of how this can get in the way, and of the importance of letting things emerge.

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And silence can be full with healing.

The psychoanalyst, Edward Emery, writes of how healing comes from the ‘aliveness’ in the analyst’s silence and speaking from ‘a silent love that also respects the patient’s silence.’

From this silence, something that has never been seen or touched before can come into life.

Transitional practices

The psychodynamic theory, a transitional object is a physical object that connects us to someone we love, when we are separated from them. The psychoanalyst, D.W. Winnicott, first used the term when he wrote about how very young children cope with separation from their mothers.

But transitional objects are not only used by children – they’re a natural part of how we all stay connected while apart, and ease the pain of loss. I wear a ring given to me by someone I love; I carry a stone in my pocket from a place that I love. When someone I loved died, I carried something that belonged to him.

Transitional objects are not always solid objects. They can be shapes, images, colours, textures, sounds, smells…


Often we find transitional objects intuitively, and without thinking about it. Sometimes, we have to do something more intentional to connect. A transitional practice. It can be something very simple…

I’ve been indoors a lot over the last couple of weeks. Yesterday, I stood looking out the window at the clouds, the trees, the muddy earth, the fallen leaves. A blackbird was revelling in a puddle. I realised I was feeling sad, sluggish, and desperate to get outside.

And then I had all these thoughts like ‘It’ll be cold’, ‘I haven’t got time’, ‘I should go and fill in that accreditation form’… and, more subtly, under the surface, ‘It’ll remind me how much I miss all this…’ It was almost a physical struggle.

I opened the door and went out. Straight away, the smell of the air, the sound of the birds, the sensation of the cold on my skin connected me back to what I had been missing – a wider feeling of my self – as part of the rest of nature. The sadness lifted, and my mind cleared.

Gestalten

Central to the design and facilitation of the Natural Change Project is the concept of ‘Gestalt Ontology’. The term was first used by the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess.

The German term gestalt refers to a concept where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and ontology means ‘way of experiencing’. So gestalt ontology, then, is a way of experiencing which acknowledges that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Gestalten are common in our language, for example the word forest describes the gestalt of a large group of trees. Even though a forest is simply a large group of trees, an experience of a whole forest is greater than the sum of its tree parts. The really important thing about gestalt ontology though, is that the individual tree is also experienced as greater as a result of being part of the whole. For example, a tree experienced in an ancient forest is different from a tree experienced in a shopping centre. Materially, the tree is basically the same, but the experience of the tree is radically different because it is part of a different whole – a forest or a shopping centre.

Wild places are amongst the most complex and rich gestalts on earth and so our experiences of them tend to be complex and rich too. A whole wild place is much greater than the sum of the rocks, trees, creatures, sunlight, rain and wind that contribute to it. According to gestalt ontology, as a person exploring a wild place, we also experience ourselves as different because we find ourselves part of the whole wild gestalt.

This experience of Being in a wild place, we believe, holds the potential for transformation because it gives us a direct experience of ourselves as part of nature. If we experience ourselves as part of nature, it follows that caring for nature is essential if we want to care for ourselves. This type of caring tends to emerge spontaneously, without the need to feel responsible for nature or any kind of moral framework.

Going out and coming in weaves the centre

Pattern and Structure

The first workshop is over and we thought some of you might like to know what we did out there in the wilds.

The group arrived on Monday late afternoon and most of the rest of the day was for settling in. In the evening after dinner, we met around the fire in the tipi on Long Beach and had a chat about what we’d got planned for the week. We were careful to remind everyone about the upcoming solo day, and to have a think about what they wanted from their day. We also invited everyone to come to this first workshop as themselves, rather than as representatives of their organisation.

On Tuesday we spent the morning exploring the local area before making up groups of three to do a co-counselling activity. The focus was on the quality of listening in co-counselling, rather than on the content of the discussion – which remained confidential to the participants.The theme of this activity was ‘human needs’ and after the small group work we gathered together to look at some theories from Abraham Maslow and Manfred Max-Neef. In the afternoon we went on a slow-walk. This led into an outdoor meditation, using the five senses to become aware of our surroundings – and was followed by an hour spent quietly alone. The evening was dedicated to preparing for the solo which was planned for Wednesday.

The solo day really started when everyone went to bed the night before. From this moment on we kept silent. On Wednesday morning we met in the tipi and everyone headed out for the day just before dawn, crossing the threshold of the tipi door to mark the start of the day. In the evening at    dusk, everyone returned in the their own time. After sitting by the fire in the tipi, or just checking in to show they were home, it was time to go back    to the Old Byre, get cleaned up and eat. All in silence.

On Thursday morning we met in the tipi before breakfast and broke the silence, before having breakfast together. Everyone was asked to hold their story until the formal story-telling session later in the day. An hour of reflection time was given before the story-telling started, to allow everyone to gather their thoughts and decide what they wanted to say to the group. The story-telling process was highly structured and designed to create an easy space to speak honestly and to encourage deep listening. Everyone told their story and had a chance to reflect what they had heard – without judgement, problem solving or interpretation. The process took all day with regular breaks and another fabulous soup from Rob for lunch.

On Friday we met in the tipi for ‘circle time’ where everyone had chance to say how they were feeling and to bring any issues to the group. After this we packed and headed out into the heart of Knoydart for the day. Along the way we explored issues that had arisen for each person during the story-telling day. This led into an activity in pairs designed by psychotherapist Sarah Conn, from the University of Harvard Medical School, where the wild place we were in became a mirror for our feelings and experiences. This helped us focus down on specific issues and insights that emerged during the solo day. On the walk home we stopped to explore some of the themes that had emerged during the week and to talk about the potential trauma of going back to the everyday world of our usual daily lives.

Everyone was up early on Saturday for the boat back to Mallaig and the journey home.