Healing ourselves with the Bach Flower Remedies

These blog entries are all about paradigm shifts – new ways of thinking and experiencing the world – that we can add to our repertory of radical interventions for the personal and global future. Having looked at tools of social transformation I want to return to the new attitude that fosters the life of a cultural/spiritual activist: the place from where s/he directs his/her attention towards the world, the cultivation of his/her inner life.

From accumulated experience over 15 years I want to introduce the Bach Flower remedies, basically an extension of homeopathic art, producing remedies that act on our emotions and attitudes. The premise of the way the flowers work is that we become first ill in our soul (the way we think, the emotions we let take hold of our soul), then in the expression of lessened vitality, and finally in our body proper at the stage of illness. So why not take care of our core beliefs, attitudes and emotions before they reach the organic stage? For some basics about how the flower remedies work see the Wikipedia entry.

Restorative Justice: New Approaches in Brazil

Today, most of the deaths of Brazilian adolescents are caused by gang-related murders.

To counteract gangs’ advanced organization police repression looks more and more like guerrilla. However, the government is realizing that a strictly adversarial approach is not going to advance a resolution.

Dominic Barter and Restorative Circles

In the mid-1990s, Dominic Barter began working with favela residents, including drug gang members, to help them strengthen nonviolent options for working with young people. “I saw violence as a monologue,” said Barter, referring to both gang activity and its repression, “I wanted to create a dialogue.”

Rio de Janeiro: drug wars and cultural renewal

As I get ready to write this blog, Rio de Janeiro makes the news on more than one account. The city has snatched olympic status from Chicago, Madrid and Tokyo for the 2016 games; in addition it will host key games of the Soccer World Cup in 2014. But Rio is also known as one of the most violent cities on earth. Week-end before last violence erupted between two rival drug gangs has left 21 dead, and downed a police helicopter. In this spiraling violence the government at least partly realizes that all purely punitive interventions only serve to feed a growing spiral of violence.

Spiritual Activism, Past and Present: Some Threads

I have been inspired in reading the issue of Weavings called Standing in the Tragic Gap of March/April of 2009, focusing on dealing with the pain of long-standing, unresolved issues. In the story of John Woolman, told in the issue, and in present day stories I find examples of modern-day spiritual, sacred or cultural activists, as they are variously called in different circles that speak to a new way to promote social change.

Can Money Be Handled Democratically?

Stock Market: more of the same

Since 2007 only slightly above 1% of all money issued is used for world trade. The rest is for the most used for speculative pursuits. To give an idea of the trends: at the end of the ‘70s 10% of money was used for world trade. That percentage was close to 50% thirty years earlier. For those of us who harbor illusions or hopes that the stock market can mend its ways and reform itself the Wall Street Journal article Finance Reform Falters as Shock of ’08 Fades (Sept 9) can serve as a reality check.

Nonviolent Communication and Effective Social Change

Nonviolent Communication – elaborated by Marshall Rosenberg – is a language and consciousness tool for enhancing communication and satisfaction of needs of parties in disagreement/conflict. At the social level it is a powerful tool for facilitating a change of consciousness and creating momentum for social breakthroughs.

The Dance between Honesty (self-expression) and Empathy

This is what NVC looks like in practice. The discussion moves back and forth between full honesty and focused empathy.

NVC helps us move from habitual expression of self, (colloquially defined  as “jackal”) to honest/empathic expression of  self (colloquially   defined“giraffe”). Jackal can be understood as the unfiltered, raw inner talk perpetually going on in our minds. The jackal is seen as an inherent necessity, not as something wrong or evil.

Social activism / Social Art

Delving into Theory U has allowed me to realize what common threads are present in all attempts to conduct social change from a higher perspective than political platforms (legitimate though they may be). What Theory U, World Café, Future Search, Appreciative Inquiry methodologies have in common is the ability to create spaces for larger choices than what is possible through intellect alone. They engage the whole human being, and the whole community system at deeper and deeper levels. Through the wisdom and safety of a tested structure we can reach breakthroughs where something new comes into play from somewhere unknown. Short of these epiphanies no real social change is possible in the long run, nor sustainable.

Theory U: Presencing the future, co-creating a new reality

“…all of us around the world participate in two different social types of connection, two different bodies of the social field. One of them is governed by the mechanics of antiemergence and destruction. The other is governed by the dynamics of emergence and collective creativity; it’s the emerging new social body that is about to be born.”                                           Otto Scharmer

In September of 2008 I took the global Presencing Classroom, three-month weekly online class with Otto Scharmer. Since then I have taken with great interest to his books and practices. Here is a concise guide into Theory U for the layman.

Future Search: from complexity and uncertainty to qualitative breakthroughs

Future Search is a technology for creating the space for organizational and community breakthroughs around complex issues involving a multitude of stakeholders. It is a highly sophisticated and structured format, involving all significant stakeholders around a given issue.

The technology has three wide categories of use:

-        helping stakeholders to create a shared future vision for organization or community

-        help stakeholders to discover shared intentions and take responsibility for their own plans

-        help stakeholders implement an already present vision

World Cafe: fostering change through learning, connection and fun

“I believe…the call of our times [is] the call to actively engage across the imagined boundaries that so often separate us in order to address the challenges facing our families, our organizations, our local communities, our national societies, and our global village.”

Juanita Brown, co-founder of the World Café movement

I have been twice part of a World Café gathering and a few other times part of some other variation of it. I found these extremely valuable experiences for gathering people around sensitive topics that generate interest and possible controversy, and for promoting connection and concerted action. World Café renders learning and decision-making highly enjoyable!

The key idea is to move from conversations that keep us in the past into dialogue around ideas that matter and that can propel us into the future we want to create. The format generally consists of 3 rounds of 20′ to 30’ each, followed by dialogue among the whole group, presentations and action steps. The number and length of the rounds depends on the focus and intent.