The use of ‘other’ here is deliberate. Being painfully aware of how the concept of the ‘other’ is normalised, creating an ever-present tension with the nonduality of life. Fueled by the algorithmic economy, we are polarised and separated in constantly further shrinking, narrow boundary bubbles. Our bubbles, the concept of ‘the other’, the notion of separation are all human constructs. And they are tearing our beings apart.

Intellectual Wanking

I have to admit, from time to time, I love the cushy comfort of my ‘safe’ bubbles. Where I converse and convey with people whom I don’t have to explain anything to, who understand my pain, who speak the same ‘language’ of regeneration, collapse and decolonisation. Only, at some point, it starts feeling like ‘intellectual’ wanking. It feels good, but it does not really create any movement. And as I do not claim to know the directions or solutions of our times, it’s exactly creating, nurturing and stirring movement I committed myself to.

These safe wanking spaces (pardon my English) definitely serve a purpose. They feel necessary for nurturing our strength and willingness to carry on with the work of unravelling, composting, healing and reconnecting, but it’s not where the real hard work of hospicing modernity is done.

This article is nurtured and shaped by two years of lengthy meandering conversations with Joy Njeri. Together we dance with a whirlwind of on tolerance, belonging and inclusion. In the last Seismic Questions gathering, Joy centred the question “How does our relationship with privilege affect our relationship with inclusion /and/ belonging?” This question, in countless forms, has been very alive in us over the last couple of years. It’s intolerance (or rather an inability for tolerance), the illusion of separation and the tendency to othering, we keep bumping into in our efforts to nurture movement, shift horizons, expand perceptions and enable people (and ourselves) to notice contexts and multitudes of being.

Joy and I keep asking ourselves how to bring beyond the ‘choir’? How can we hold questions such as ‘Who wrote history?’, ‘What if we learn how to speak whale?’, and ‘What are borders?’ in spaces with farmers, politicians, supermarket staff, chefs, racist uncles, snackbar owners, football fans, hairdressers, gardeners, people experiencing homelessness, accountants, distant neighbours and lovely but slightly xenophobic grandmothers?

What are the spaces and places that make you go “oh no, they are all [insert stereotype]”?. What if next time you want to create ‘impact’, you go to one of those spaces? Not to educate or convince, simply to be in a mutual transcontextual learning relationship. You may be surprised by what unfolds!

Curiosity makes the world go round

There is so much curiosity to go around. What if we treated ignorance not as a bad trait but as the bad luck of not truly being invited (yet) into other perspectives, stories, challenges and lives? What if we acknowledged that we can all invite each other?

A simple antidote to polarisation is to get to know each other beyond our keyboards. A simple solution to “getting rid” of strangers is simply introducing yourself. Polarisation and intolerance thrive on the illusion of separation. Once we get to know each other in our humaness, our stories, favourite dishes, the smells of our grandmothers’ houses, the feeling of home, the music that makes our hearts bounce. Once we get to truly meet. Hatred becomes very hard.

Who can I be when I am with you?
Who can you be when you are with me?

Nora Bateson

It does not come as a surprise that once again, shared meals are the antidote. It’s almost impossible to uphold a hostile relationship with someone with whom you are enjoying a mezze or sharing a pizza. Direct contact, meals, and conversations quickly break caricatures and stereotypes. It’s somewhat absurd that, apparently, we (in modernity) had to get this confirmed by academic research.

Tragic Misperception

Polarisation and intolerance are frequently fueled by misperception. When humans are othering, which unfortunately has become one of modernity’s favourite hobbies, they consistently overestimate the amount of out-group hatred and negativity. In the algorithmic economy, the loudest, sharpest and most extreme are often able to grab attention. Influencers and media frequently spew racist, sexist, homophobic language for clickbait effect. These practices influence our perception and lure us into perceiving ideological extremity as the norm, whilst in reality, extremity is rare. When we identify with a group (democrats, vegans, Green Party, metalheads, football fans), we tend to see the ‘other side’ as a stereotypical monolithic group. Simultaneously, in our ‘own’ group, we recognise her variety and complexity. I assume because with proximity we are introduced to complexity. A simple way to splinter the monolith is simply to get to know each other.

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Monoliths & Mosaics

Curious introductions splinter the monolith
From hardened stereotypes to fascinating mosaics
Strangers becoming
Alivening /our/ stories 
Slaying the beast of othering

It’s valuable to recognise that living in modernity constantly puts our nervous system on high alert. Most humans who are infected with the disease of modernity are not truly living in a right relationship; we are not living in alignment with the ‘expectations’ of our nervous system. Not having a regulated nervous system during times of collapse is natural; it’s a healthy response to crisis. That said, it does not make it easier to respond with complexity, tolerance and nuance. Awareness of this tension has helped me to both hold kindness for myself and others when we respond from a place of intolerance and binary logic. Perhaps simply becoming more aware of this tension can help to widen our window of tolerance?

Dancing with Uncertainty

Solutionising a regenerative future through the lens of modernity is a futile effort. We can’t project-manage a life-aligned future into being. Times of collapse always come paired with uncertainty. It’s this uncertainty we will need to accept and tolerate so as not to fall into the trap of once again forcing an artificial reality into existence. The challenge is that in liminal, tricky, uncertain times it’s exactly certainty people are longing for. Especially when they are untethered from rituals, ceremonies and protocols that nurture their sense of belonging.

We found that polarised perception, ideologically warped perceptions of the same reality, was strongest in people with the lowest tolerance for uncertainty in general.

Those who are less tolerant to uncertainty in daily life have more ideologically polarised brain responses than those who are better able to tolerate uncertainty. This suggests that aversion to uncertainty governs how the brain processes political information to form black-and-white interpretations of inflammatory political content,”

- Jeroen van Baar

The Trauma Paradox

The window of tolerance and our current highly polarised world are entangled in a messy dynamic. The chronic stressors of living in a highly polarised climate shrink our windows of tolerance and, with this shrinking, weaken our ability to show up with tolerance, calmness and curiosity. Resulting in a society where we are constantly responding to each other from tiny windows and naturally non-emotionally regulated states of being.

In polarised environments, people may construct a “faux window of tolerance”, a defensive bubble of safety where they only interact with ‘like-minded’ individuals, leading to a false sense of security and increased intolerance for difference. With , we are seeking ways for people to meet each other in, through, outside and among their windows, always with the intention to commit to the hard work of getting back into right relationship.

Questioning Cancel Culture

What if we learned how to draw boundaries without turning them into impermeable walls?

The uncle, neighbour, boss, colleague, friend, you so deeply, fully, all-encompassingly disagree with is not separate from you. Life is not binary. Arguments are not to be “won”. People are not to be changed. We simply co-exist in constant mutual learning relationships, and it’s not our responsibility nor place to dictate how a person has to change, what is right, what is wrong, who is right, who is wrong. The cancelling culture, impermeable walls, hard boundaries, fixed borders, they all imply a binary order that simply is not.

This section is confrontational to write. It’s a minefield to advocate tolerance in a society so deeply steeped in pain. Tolerance does not mean accepting everything that is thrown at you or turning the other cheek. When we in refer to tolerance, we mean the ability to becoming/being in right relationship. And when we advocate for more tolerance, we are asking ourselves and others to do the work to be able to become in right relationship.

Cancel culture sprouted from within the context of modernity, seems to be a reaction to the absence of;

• spaces, time and room for nuance

• the impossibility of self-regulating the nervous system and being emotionally regulated in a society under immense pressure

• close relationships with room for multitudes of being

• rituals, ceremony, protocols for holding tension and conflict (e.g. council, forum)

• Believe in nonduality; instead, cancel culture is grounded in a we-them, offender-victim narrative. Denying we are all suffering from the same disease.

Social media and its fragmentation into echo chambers made us relationally lazy, only willing to connect and vibe with those we already agree with, eventually leading to a collective inability to co-exist with multitudes of being. I am afraid the ‘normalisation’ of cancel culture is fueling an inability to co-exist and perceive other perceptions. Instead of facing the uncomfortable conversations and questioning each other’s beliefs and stories, we hide away in the sheltered (and fragile) comfort and safety of our bubbles.

We are questioning here the tendency to quick, unnuanced cancelling, not the whole notion of cancelling. When, for example, there is consequently no room for evolvement, mutual learning, and/or someone is consciously perpetuating harm, shunning someone from society/community is an ancient and traditional way to contain harm and violence. As with almost anything, cancel culture isn’t a binary nor straightforward dynamic that can be removed from its context and generically judged as either “good” or “bad”.

We seek to strike a balance of emphasising the importance of co-existing in disagreement, conversing, conveying and communing in a fragmented world. The more divided and polarised we are, the less likely we are to respond resiliently to the crises, upheavals and uncertainty.

Simultaneously, millions of people across the world have countless reasons to be angry, to draw a line and opt for cancelling as a means to try and break destructive and harmful systems. Our question is, where do we draw the line?

• What are the conversations that we need to have?

• What are the questions that we need to hold together?

• When is enough enough?

We can not expect people who have to endure perpetuating, intentional harm to endlessly convey, co-exist and converse with those inflicting harm on them. Even when everyone involved is infected and shaped by the disease of modernity, it would be too much to ask people who are harmed to heal both themselves and help heal the harmer. To add complexity, in many ways we are all harmed and harmer, depending on the context and dynamic. None of this is comfortably generically coherent, but therefore it is no less true.

Questions I/We/Us are holding

Take them how they feel useful to you, for example as journal inquiries, artistic prompts or conversation starters

• How can I claim curiosity without having curiosity for the source of hatred?

• How do we mark our boundaries without turning them into impermeable walls?

• Where and how can we meet people who are locked in complete overwhelm and binary logic? Where/how are we locked into binary logic?

• How can I claim tolerance when I have no tolerance for intolerance?

• How may we show up to the unravelling of separative and extractive dynamics with grace?

• What roles do humour and tricksters play in hospicing modernity? How may we create spaces for them?

• What may be the unintentional consequences of ‘normalising’ cancel culture?

And some more: What if strengthening our ability to question and converse without cancelling can help us grow closer, more connected and resilient? What if widening our tolerance window leads to more understanding and kindness? What if building emotional resilience and maturity can help us to step over our ego, voice our thoughts and feelings and avoid the trap of being stuck in the norm whilst the majority silently longs for change? What if holding seismic questions can help us tear down the disconnecting walls of algorithmic echo chambers? What if radical curiosity can cancel the cancel culture and help us recognise and accept the existence of multiple realities/truths/worlds?

Readings & Podcasts

Humor & Tricksters

• Trickster Jumps side - The Emerald (Podcast) “When Trickster is not honoured by keeping a society fed and renewed, he shows up in darker ways”

Tolerance & Polarisation

• J., Cikara, M. Inaccurate group meta-perceptions drive negative out-group attributions in competitive contexts. Nat Hum Behav 4, 279–286 (2020)

• Druckman, J. N., Klar, S., Krupnikov, Y., Levendusky, M., & Ryan, J. B. (2022). (Mis)estimating Affective Polarization. Journal of Politics, 84(2), 1106-1117.

• Through a distorted lens: How perceptions of the “Other side” drive toxic division.

• You, Z. T., & S Lee, S. W. (2024). Explanations of and interventions against affective polarization cannot afford to ignore the power of ingroup norm perception. PNAS Nexus, 3(10), pgae286.

• J.M. van Baar, D.J. Halpern, & O. FeldmanHall, Intolerance of uncertainty modulates brain-to-brain synchrony during politically polarized perception

• Natalie Rachel, The Trauma Paradox

Events & Gatherings

Online: Monthly Seismic Questions Gatherings
Dordrecht: Warm Data Lab - 16 July

Support

A massive thank you to all my (financial) supporters. I won’t put up a paywall and will keep all pieces accessible for everyone. If you value this work and you have the means, consider buying me a coffee or becoming a paid subscriber.

If this article resonated, made you feel, think, question or wonder. Consider sharing it with family, friends and curious strangers.

Collaborations

For collaborations, inquiries and questions, please reach out to contact@minouschillings.com or check out my website for more information.

Shifting Horizons for Regenerative Futures

Shifting Horizons explores stories and questions with the intention of helping unravel modernity and creating space to remember and nurture our innate regenerative capacities.

By Minou Schillings

I am fed up with being struck by the method-wipe-out.

You may recognise it. You have an existential crisis simply by being alive, and you are longing for a sense of control and certainty. For a way to ease the pain and fix it all.

Then comes along a method, an alternative ‘system’, a universal solution.

Huray.

In the first three years of working as a ‘transition facilitator’, I have been excited and disillusioned by a whole bunch of them: design sprints, the sustainable development goals, DAO-based intentional communities, doughnut economics, the circular economy, regenerative agriculture; the list goes on.

Every saving holy grail brought me down a rabbit hole, only to once again bump into extractive dynamics, colonial dynamics, patriarchy, the illusion of separation, linear and reductionistic logic, and human-centred thinking.

Not that there is anything inherently wrong with these attempts to create an alternative world; it’s just that it feels like they are not (truly) noticing the elephant in the room, not considering their ontological underpinnings, not recognising how all-encompassing the dynamics of modernity are.

I have no solution, no method to offer.
There is no clean way around the mess.
There is hard, relational, beautiful, entangled, confrontational, unravelling, and dynamic work to be done.

For a couple of years, I have been more comfortable with the fact that the work can’t be captured in one method, one school of thought, one approach.

Right now, I am playing with the whirlwind of;

• Warm Data

• The pedagogies of Outgrowing modernity

• The theater of the oppressed

• The work that reconnects

• Food, Dance, Music and a whole bunch of poetry..
  

None of them are methods.
All of them create movement, from the humble recognition that it’s not our place to force direction.

If this resonates, I would love to hear from you.

I am open to collaborations and projects with room for the shifting, liminal messiness of the work.

With Love & Curiosity

Minou

The Dancing Grove

Usually I write long-form articles for Substack and shorter reflections for LinkedIn. I originally posted this piece to LinkedIn, and I was heartwarmingly surprised by the reflections, questions and recommendations. I believe in dancing with life and not knowing when something Seismic may emerge. Or what it may look like. So, hereby I want to extend the gifts shared by readers on LinkedIn to all of you here on Substack. Together, I imagine us as a dancing grove; follow your intuition and dance among them.

• The Eternal Song

• What Olive Picking Taught Me -

• ACTionism — the art of finding the others and acting together

• The Poisonwood Bible - 1998 novel by Barbara Kingsolver (Shared by )

• Maps and Dreams / Secrets of the Talking Jaguar: Memoirs from the Living Heart of a Mayan Village / Women who Run with the Wolves (Shared by Raghav Rajagopalan)

• Art Of Hosting

• Symmathesy (A term in progress, by Nora Bateson)

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Gatherings

Online: Monthly Seismic Questions Gatherings
Dordrecht: Warm Data Lab - 16 July

Support

A massive thank you to all my (financial) supporters. I won’t put up a paywall and will keep all pieces accessible for everyone. If you value this work and you have the means, consider buying me a coffee or becoming a paid subscriber.

If this article resonated, made you feel, think, question or giggle. Consider sharing it with family, friends and curious strangers.

Collaborations

For collaborations, inquiries and questions, please reach out to contact@minouschillings.com or check out my website for more information.

Shifting Horizons for Regenerative Futures

Shifting Horizons explores stories and questions with the intention of helping unravel modernity and creating space to remember and nurture our innate regenerative capacities.

By Minou Schillings

When floods hit the heart of cities
When heatwaves scorch the birds from the sky
When salty waters soak the olive groves
When the crops wither away in the fields

When the Earth reminds us
what happens 
when we are not living in right relationship

The last thing we need is polarisation 
fueled by the separating rigidity 
of linear certainties, 
quick fixes 
and numbing solutionism

In Right Relationship

Getting back in right relationship with Mother Earth means committing to the hard, confrontational and uncomfortable work of getting back to right relationship with “each other”.

I am feeling a tension in so-called ‘safe (and sometimes even brave) spaces’ where people talk /about/ regenerative transitions, connectedness and living in right relationship in what to me seem increasingly narrow and, paradoxically, separating boundaries.

Over the last few months, I have been present in a multitude of ‘regenerative’ spaces that were described as safe, whilst I didn’t feel there was room for the entangled, messy work our times are calling for. It made me wonder if we are confusing feeling safe and being in right relationship with the messy lifelong work of becoming in right relationship.

When spaces only feel safe if you speak a certain language, do not point at the elephants in the room or do not question the ontologies of the group, they are not safe. They are simply upholding old dynamics cushioned in the language of regeneration, safety, inclusion and connectedness. Grounding gatherings, meditations, land acknowledgements and silence are all tremendously important, and yet, they are not all there is to do; they come with responsibilities.

Getting too comfortable in carefully curated regenerative ‘safe’ spaces comes with the risk of what I, at this point, and it really pains my heart that this has happened, can only call conceptual regenerative bypassing. The dynamics of modernity are highly capable of co-opting, and they have managed to get hold of the language of regeneration. This does not take away from the all-encompassing importance of regeneration. Regeneration is life; it’s life making, healing and renewing life. This is by no means a call to throw regeneration out with the bathwater. That would be absurd; it’s like throwing life out. It’s a call, an invitation, to continue to centre nuance and context. To notice old dynamics surfacing. To be aware of the traps of modernity. To not get lost in linear solutionism, even if it’s called regenerative [x/y/x].

• What if we accept we can’t navigate liminal times with certainty, regulated nervous systems and an ever-present feeling of safety? What if we acknowledge we may confuse comfort with safety, certainty with solutionism and hard work with saviourism?

• What if we go through the pain instead of forever swaying around all that hurts and confronts?

• What if safety means committing to always trying to get back into right relationship, even when things get hard?

• What if tolerance means holding space for anger, grief and sorrow without dictating how they show up?

• What if safety means seeing the ugly, beautiful, morally messed up, confused, incoherent, paradoxical, loveliness of being alive, without numbing, shaping, erasing, tone-policing and/or silencing?

• What if safe spaces are where our nervous system can be, without the pressure of having to show up ‘healed’, ‘calm’ and ‘grounded’?

What does it mean to point at what needs to be said? To not shy away from naming colonial, patriarchal, separative dynamics? To face the harms done and commit to visible mending? To accept that these times require unravelling, noticing, composting, mending and tending? To accept that this is the hard work needing to be carried through to nurture a soil from which regenerative dynamics truly can sprout? Not ideas of utopian futures that sound regenerative but are, in all brutal honesty, repetitions of the same old pattern of extractivism and separation?

Questions Invite

We are drowning in answers 
Suffocated by solutions 
Lullabied into numbness
Grateful for a sense of impact
The true mess left intact 

Polarised by fake borders
Blind to the living world 
All space / Occupied / By Modernity

Answers keep us hostage
Working, Worrying
Grinding, Grovelling
Wishing, Wanting
Paying, Producing
Never enough
Always too busy to be alivened

Questions make way 
They surface the unspoken
Gift the space to movement
Heal pestering wounds

To imagine, restory
To relate, not hate
To thrive, not grind
To  feel not survive zombified
To wonder, not fear

To aliven an unfeeling society
Thrush open your windows of tolerance
Open yourself to the heartbeats 

The opposite of love isn’t hate 
It’s an unwillingness to be curious

Readings & Listenings

• The origin of others, Toni Morrison

• Who Can You Be When You’re With Me? – Nora Bateson on Warm Data

• The Eternal Song “It is an offering to a world enveloped in historical amnesia, numbed to its own heartbeat by the madness of modernity.” (By Science and NonDuality)

Events & Gatherings

Online: Monthly Seismic Questions Gatherings
Dordrecht: Warm Data Lab - 16 July

Support

A massive thank you to all my (financial) supporters. I won’t put up a paywall and will keep all pieces accessible for everyone. If you value this work and you have the means, consider buying me a coffee or becoming a paid subscriber.

If this article resonated, made you feel, think, question or giggle. Consider sharing it with family, friends and curious strangers.

Collaborations

For collaborations, inquiries and questions, please reach out to contact@minouschillings.com or check out my website for more information.

Shifting Horizons for Regenerative Futures

Shifting Horizons explores stories and questions with the intention of helping unravel modernity and creating space to remember and nurture our innate regenerative capacities.

By Minou Schillings

The tragedy of Golden Turtles 

frozen in time 

crushed by the circular arches 

of tormenting Trinity's

The weight compiling centuries 

of uncomposted greed



The fabulous frustration 

of fragmenting fables. 

Holding hostage the turtles, 

and us, 

in faults filled with frantic canary's

A massive thank you to all my (financial) supporters. I’ll never put up a paywall and will keep all pieces accessible for everyone. If you value this work and you have the means, consider buying me a coffee or becoming a paid subscriber.

Subscribe now

We are 
Drowning in answers 
Numbed by solutions 
Lullabied into obedience 

Grateful for a sense of impact
The true mess left intact 

Paralized by fake borders
Blind for the living world 
All space
Occupied
Each breath
Suffocated
By Modernity

Rigid answers 
hold us hostage

Knowing,
Deciding,
Fixing,
Taking 
Grinding, 
Producing, 

Rupture ridigness
Questions allow air in 
Release the pressure

Gift us the space 
To imagine, restory, and aliven
To relate not hate
To thrive not grind
To  feel not survive 
To wonder not fear

De-zombified
Feelings wash onto the deprived shores of our being
Eager hearts beating waves into stiffled numbness

Through wide open windows of tolerance 
we invite the world in 
held by questions
the carriages of love

The opposite of love isn’t hate 
It’s an unwillingness to be curious 

Holding Seismic Questions Together

For those willing to be curious, longing to be tolerant, committed to face the discomfort of uncertainty, to hospice and grief without fleeing into certainties and quick fixes. For those in love with being in awe, surprised, confused and blown away.

For those who seek to change their mind, heart and guts, and broaden their perspective day by day, generation by generation. To those, and all others who are not ready yet but want to be. To all of you, we are extending a heartfelt invitation to join Seismic Questions, a collective inquiry initiative to hold and live the questions that can rearrange our being, shift our horizons and alter the way we show up to life.

Seismic Questions

Holding Space for the Questions that can deeply change your worldview and rearrange your being.

By Minou Schillings

Somewhat tangible invitations to collaborate, engage and co-create will follow later this season. For now, when a curiosity, a question, or an idea surfaces, I love to hear from you!

This is a follow-up article. If you wish for more context and an introduction to the topic, you can read the first part here:

Holding the question together

We centred the question “Why are we refusing to be eaten”?” in a Seismic Question gathering in March 2026. Almost to the date, a year after we started our collective journey to bring the book to life. The year was a rope dancing act between frustration and appreciation. Balancing a deeply ingrained desire to produce tangible outcomes with the recognition that the practice of space holding requires, unsurprisingly, space.

When I closed my laptop after the gathering, I felt in my whole body that we made the right choice. Not to push for outcomes, not to push for letters on papers and outlines neatly filled out. To write this book, we needed this year’s meandering experience. Not on paper but in the dynamic joy and discomfort of dancing with questions together; expanding perceptions, embracing uncertainty, nurturing tolerance, and widening our ability to recognise plurality. It all requires and deserves time and practice.

It’s one thing to fully live a specific Seismic Question and expand your ability to evolve and expand the realm of this question. It’s a whole other matter to embody this practice for all the questions that want and need to emerge in decolonial, collapse, reconnecting, re-indigenizing, healing and hospicing work. Including the questions that scare, confront or disarm us. “Why do we refuse to be eaten?” feels like one of those questions. It is a question that does not allow us to go full Ostrich. It is a question that touches us in our spirituality, religion, ego, culture, materiality and discomfort.

Initial responses to the question

Before diving into exploring a question together, I like hearing from people about how it landed in their context. How did they initially understand the question? Insights and learnings emerge when we have different understandings of something. The words, the question, land in different contexts. These transcontextual learning moments never cease to be a beautiful source of insights and shifts. How we understand a question tells us so much about ourselves and our relationships. We could have written a whole book solely on the different initial responses to this question and what these responses might tell us about the stories we live, the language we use and the ontological foundations of our being. This is an incomplete list of initial responses signalling the many contexts in which we can explore our unhealthy dynamic with the metabolic whole.

• Does this have something to do with the Epstein files?
  
  Context: Hyper-perpetuating Patriarchy

• Is this a pro-vegan question? A moral question of why we should eat them if we don’t allow them to eat us?
  
  Context: Industrial big-agri & food cultures.

• Isn’t this a good thing? I thought we transcended cannibalism.
  
  Context: Human separation & exceptionalism. (Initially, only considering that humans can be eaten by other humans signals how deeply the illusion of separation is ingrained.)

• How is this a question? Of course their is no refusal, we actively embrace returning to the soil. “From the Earth we come, and to the Earth we return.” - Context: Religion. In many religions, returning to the soil and to the metabolic whole is of utmost importance. (This makes me wonder if the refusal to be eaten may be a symptom of hyper-individuality and the disease of modernity.)

• Someone’s inner child stepped in and brought the realisation that, as a child, they very often thought about being eaten, and it always felt like a violation. Now they realised how much these thoughts were shaped solely by Western media.
  
  Context: Media. (Made me wonder how transcontextual conversations can help us to unlearn the stories that shape our ontological foundations as children.)

• Refusing to be eaten by the capitalistic system
  
  Context: Activism and Counter-culture

• Refusing our learnings, insights, and ideas to be nutrients for someone or something else, instead, we are holding on to them, and we are becoming unnecessarily heavy and weighted down in the process.
  
  Context: Our Egos

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How this question evolved with me, among me, through me

I have been holding this question in various forms for close to a decade now. It emerged during an innovation Design Sprint for a waste management facility based in the Netherlands seeking novel solutions for their monostreams of waste. No need to say they weren’t managing the collection and disposal of human bodies, but somehow this is where our conversation landed.

Throughout our lives, we dispose of our garbage, domesticate animals, attempt to control land and extract resources and then even after our death, we hold on to our material bodies and continue to extract and claim. Coffins are chemically treated to avoid decomposition. A literal refusal to be eaten by all the little buggers in the soil and return to the circle of life. In addition, the soil is covered with a concrete or marble slab, once again a refusal for life to thrive. Cremation practices require tremendous amounts of energy, and in some countries it’s not even allowed to then set the ashes free in the wind for them to return to the soil. We realised, and this is not a subtle realisation, that we felt as if we, as humans, were also a sort of mono waste stream that needed to be managed and disposed of. Life knows no waste. Waste is a human construct, and by holding on to our materiality and refusing our bodies to return to the cycle of life, we felt we were giving them the ‘waste management treatment’.

In the last ten years, a lot has changed in the burial ‘industry’ (because that is what it is, especially in the Global North, an industry). Eco-burials have become more mainstream. We can now be buried in mycelium coffins or under the seeds of our favourite tree. The more widespread emergence of all these options did calm my worries a bit; I now know that I may return to soil and fulfil the honour of being eaten. Despite these more aligned options, I can still not let go of the question. It stands for something more all-encompassing. By holding on to our bodies, our individual entities, even after our death, we are deepening the illusion of disconnection and separation. If I truly, wholly felt to be a consciousness of life, a changing node in the entanglement of life, a part of the metabolic whole, not alone, not an individual, not a separated being, if I truly, wholly felt this to be true, would I refuse my body to be eaten? To be metabolised? To return to the soil? If I understood myself to be a cyclical part of the whole, would I be so afraid of death that I lived my life in refusal of its presence? If I felt to be among a collective practice of grief, ceremony and wailing, would it still be so hard to let go of the material body?

Our initial response in the Design Sprint was linear and solutionistic. We ended up suggesting, on stage, in a business pitch, that we should recycle human bodies into plastic and energy. This idea was based on existing technology designed to ‘process’ other life forms. Talking about this pitch and writing it down makes me highly uncomfortable. It is hard to imagine that this mechanistic linear solution ever truly appealed to me. But it did. I was so frustrated with humanity and the way we disconnect ourselves from all other beings that I felt we needed an absolute shock to the system. A shocking reminder that forces us back into recognising that we are a part of the metabolic whole. I didn’t consider that by accelerating and mechanising this process, I was denying our material bodies to metabolise and decompose at the speed of life. Quickly after I abandoned this direction, recognising it as intrusive, aggressive, solutionistic and impatient. A pushing of the timeline of decomposition without consent, replacing or attempting to tackle one industrial logic with another.


I now hold a gentler and slower stance, and I am curious how my relationship with death and my material self will continue to evolve. The question remains. I am still deeply worried about the all-encompassing illusion of disconnection. Our refusal to take part in the metabolic whole shows up in so many forms. We broke the nutrient cycle of poopies, bodies, ideas, grief, energy and stories. The stronger the illusion of separation becomes, the more we try to box, hold on and capture. We pour so much energy into holding systems, things and bodies in place that we don’t realise we are refusing ourselves to fulfil the fundamentals of a living being. To live, to flow, to eat, to be eaten, to die, to dance, to sprout, to mourn, to be among, among the metabolic whole.

I started to explore the full range of burial traditions and talked, over the last decade, to people from many different identity backgrounds about their refusal or willingness to return to soil. The question of grief emerged as a recurring pattern. In cultures that hold strong collective grief practices and traditions of ceremony, there is way more willingness, and often it’s a matter of honour, to return to the soil. It’s in the absence of shared grief practices and ceremony that people hold on to the material body. This notion of grief extends to letting go of the material body. Cultures that have forgotten or decentred rituals, rites of passage and ceremony seemingly have weakened their ability to let go, to live cyclically and in deep relationship with other beings. Living in a deep relationship always means nurturing flow; one can’t be in a relationship and hold everything to themselves.

• We can’t be in deep relationship whilst refusing to be part of the metabolic whole.

• We can’t be in deep relationship with the food we eat and the soil it comes from if we don’t feed the soil in return.

• We can’t be in deep relationship with our ancestors if we hold on to the material body, refusing them to return to the whole.

• We can’t be in deep relationship with the rivers if we hold water hostage in dams.

• We can’t be in deep relationship with each other if we individually hoard resources, energy and ideas.

My partner’s six-year-old niece is a beautifully inquisitive being with an infinite stream of questions. Somehow, our conversations keep returning to religion and spirituality. It was a pivotal moment for me when she asked me why I didn’t want to be cremated or buried in a coffin. I realised that the only way I could really explain it was that I would find it an absolute honour to be eaten by all the life in the soil, and to return to the earth as food for the next cycles of living beings. I realised that I fully share the belief that returning to the soil from which we came is a tremendous honour. And I don’t want any chemically treated coffin or cremation to get in the way of that honour. To be alive means to feed life, to be part of the metabolic whole. I already feel that we separate and disconnect ourselves from the metabolic whole in so many ways throughout our lives that I can’t stand the thought of dying in a separate and extractive manner.

What does being eaten mean in a changing world?

We try to hold on to so much. We use our energy to keep broken systems in place, so the pieces won’t fall out. Our efforts are poured into ‘fixing’ the cracks through which life seeps in. We hoard, gather and store to get a sense of security. Oblivious that no security can ever exist in a system that tries to defy the laws of nature. Life must cycle, life must flow, life must metabolise, life feeds life. We are not individual beings. We are one big planetary buffet, and nobody sits untouchable at the throne.

The world is changing. The ways we show up in life are changing and have been doing so for a long time. As the illusion of separation deepens, we drift further and further away from living in alignment with life on Earth, living as healthy beings part of the metabolic whole. Being eaten has come to mean something far larger than what happens to our decaying bodies. Being eaten, the refusal to play our parts in the metabolic whole, it reaches into how we live, what we release, what we hold on to, what we allow to be composted, what we hold hostage, and what we are willing to metabolise?

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At one point during the call, we landed on a shift in perception that shook me to my core. I didn’t know and still don’t know how to respond to it. I considered our disconnection from the metabolic whole mainly as a refusal problem. Meaning that if we work on our refusal, we can return to the soil, we can feed life, as long as we just want it. Then it was pointed out that with climate change, extreme weather events and wars, people are increasingly ending up in unwelcoming soil, arid lands, flooded lands, and the rubble of buildings crumbled by war. Feeding the soil with our bodies isn’t just a matter of willingness; it has become a privilege for those who live in areas that still cradle healthy soils. For me, this has added a whole new layer of responsibility to care for the land. We need to care for the land so the land can welcome future generations in her eco-system and fulfil one of the fundamental roles of all beings on earth, to feed the soil. I am deeply grateful for this shift in perspective. During the session, I didn’t know how to respond to this realisation, or for now, how to compost the whirlwind of feelings that have come with this perspective shift, and that was okay. Coming together to hold Seismic Questions also means holding space for each other’s overwhelm, confusion and silence.

Inquiry Exercise

Whilst reading this meandering article, what happened in you? How did your body feel? What came to life? Or perhaps became numbed? Where did you feel the question? Did it stir something in you?

I want to invite you to map the lines and circles of your life. This is a sense-making exercise that doesn’t require perfection or completeness. It is not an attempt to be precise or accurate; just let it flow and see where the invitation brings you. When engaging our hands in a sense-making inquiry, we can’t anticipate what will happen.

The invitation is to visualise parts of your life with circles and lines. This list may help you get going; feel free to add anything that comes up.

• Food / Sustenance

• Water

• Mental / Creative / Artistic Flows

• Energy

• Your Body

• Love

• Ideas

• Inspiration

What did you notice whilst drawing your map? How do you feel about seeing the metabolic dynamic of your life mapped out on paper? Did any realisations or questions emerge?

What if you slowly started bending some of the lines into circles? How can you show up to life in a way that you are both

metabolising and being metabolised?

Both taking and giving energy? Both eating and feeding?

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One Day

I want to close this article with a poem that emerged in the space holding. It’s a poem that deepened a realisation in me that I am still struggling to accept. The realisation that I have to return to where the soil mirrors my biome and take my responsibility to care for and honour the land that I was born from. As long as I keep travelling far and wide, I am refusing a responsibility, I am refusing to be part of the metabolic whole of the land that sprouted me. Many cultures and people across the world have lost this opportunity, and as long as we do not take care of the land of our ancestors, many more will continue to do so.

One Day

It will break my heart to leave home



One Day

I will stop longing for adventures

wandering far and wide



One Day

I will be better at returning home

then leaving her



One Day

My love

for the land

will overshadow

my frustration

with the country



Yesterday

I was in love with the world

In pain with the Netherlands



Today

I deepen my love

For the forests of Utrecht

The hills of Limburg



Tomorrow

I remember

the long lost cultures

living in harmony

among the Rivers of the North Sea



This Life

I dedicate to rooting in place



Once I am ready

I return home

Fully

To love and heal the land

where the soil

mirrors my biome

where my being

nurtures life

In a world this messy and confusing, there is a self-protecting need to be confronted less, not more, with harm, hurt and complicity. Among the constant devastating stream of news and headlines, the unseen harm, the insidious, the normalised, is exactly what we need to pay close attention to. The stories we hold, the language we use, the ontological fundamentals of our beings, the myths we pass on across generations, the beliefs we hold, the identity we protect, the rights we claim, they all form the ground from which the harm and the headlines that end up numbing us all sprout.

It’s exactly this vicious, insidious circle that holds us hostage. The complicity and the harm hurt us; we can’t deal with the hurt, we want to fix it, and we want to fix it fast. We push for solutions and answers without facing the insidious dynamics that nurture the harm. Without facing these dynamics, we will forever perpetuate harm. Creating and sustaining hurt from a well-intended willingness to fix.

After all our attempts and efforts to fix, we are too tired and numbed to do the work that truly matters. To decolonise, question, unravel and hospice. For this work, we must strengthen our attunement and discernment to these underlying insidious dynamics. The question we are holding, among others, with the collective is “How may we engage in this work with gentleness to others and ourselves?”

Seismic Questions

Holding Space for the Questions that can deeply change your worldview and rearrange your being.

By Minou Schillings

Becoming the permanent killjoy is not helpful. Nobody holds that kind of person around for very long, and we do need to be around and among each other to do this work. Constantly picking apart language left and right isn’t useful either; it makes it very hard to have conversations, and we risk placing (academic) language on a pedestal and diminishing other ways of knowing and being. Simultaneously, we must be aware and careful with language as it can shape our ways. When left unchanged, it may hold us hostage in objectifying, colonising, othering, framing and separating. Inviting awareness to the weight and implications of words can be either tremendously impactful or an immediate conversation stopper. Depending on how and when we extend the invitation, we can tickle annoyance or curiosity.

The world, especially the internet, is so full of solidified opinions, rhetorical questions, hurt and unprocessed trauma, making it extremely hard to tread lightly. Trapped in a forever double bind. Never able to choose a word, direction or approach that ruffles no feathers. To one, tolerance is everything, the solution to a fragmented world. To another, tolerance is a threat, it’s complicity and denial of harm. To one using the terms BIPOC (Black Indigenous People of Colour) and SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa) are appropriate terms in an attempt to decolonise mind and language. To others, they are harmful artificial clusters forcing a tremendous diversity of people into a lazy abbreviation. For one, circular economy, regenerative business and doughnut economics models are life-saving constructs. To others, they are linear, solutionisitic lullabies and potential perpetrators of the colonial/imperial system. As long as we keep up dualism, we will always be wrong.

Always Wrong

A 21st-century human
Far removed from the times
of simply roaming the animal kingdom

Out of tune with the beating heart of life
I am always confused
always lost
always worried

A lingering feeling of wrongness
Happiness with an edge of darkness

Resting in a bath of ToDo’s
Tired of the whirlwind of harm

Overwhelmed by complicity
Frustrated beyond my being
Constantly fixing
Always falling short

Finding no peace
in a restless world

Even my joy
is washed over by guilt

I am feeding
a forever-hungry system
feasting on my being
consuming all
leaving the soil depleted

I am longing to be fully present
enjoying a nap in the golden sun

I am longing to be human
among humans
who still understood
themselves to be animals
without all the ridiculousness
that emerged
after we invented..
Ownership

The Guilt of not Doing & Fixing

Do you ever enjoy a nap without feeling guilty? How absurd is a culture where it’s a widespread phenomenon to feel guilty about naps, rest and doing nothing? About blissfully chatting away with our neighbours, swinging in a rocking chair or staring at the trees in the garden?

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Of all things I need to unlearn, I find the productivity mindset one of the hardest to shed. It is no wonder I am always tired. What I deem important is not considered productive or “impactful.” I stopped attempting to fix things and fight for artificial solutions, recognising them as futile attempts of scared humans to control life. Most solutions invented from within modernity are informed by ways of knowing too broken to sprout anything truly aligned with life on earth. I truly understand why people want to push for impact and create solutions. The efforts give a sense of control that might ease our tiredness. I truly understand, but I no longer can ignore the unintended harm, limitations and often ridiculousness of the projects and ideas we centre as impact and solutions.

I continue to write, question, converse and (un)learn whilst worrying I am not doing enough to bring relief to a broken society. Attempting to fix anything beyond my bioregion, beyond my community, quickly gives a smell of saviourism, which, with all my best intentions, will perpetuate the systems that are crumbling the world. Born in the Netherlands, a hyper-industrial country with a colonial history (and present), I see it as my responsibility to unlearn, unravel and hospice. For this work, I have to accept living with a life-long tension between undoing and doing, between unravelling and producing. This is a tension I have to recognise and deal with. It can not be that I continue to do & fix solely because doing and fixing “feels right” and gives me peace of mind. After decades, centuries of doing, controlling, pushing and fixing, it’s time we stop, unravel, hospice and question. Instead of pushing for solutions, all we can do is create the conditions for emergence.

To become a person, a culture, a society that can do without doing harm, we have to do the work of becoming. For future generations to have the opportunity to be, we have to become.

One Day
I will stop longing for adventures
wandering far and wide

One Day
I will be better at returning home
then leaving her

One Day
My love
for the land
will overshadow
my frustration
with the country

Yesterday
I was in love with the world
In pain with the Netherlands

Today
I deepen my love
For the forests of Utrecht
The hills of Limburg

Tomorrow
I remember
the long lost cultures
living in harmony
among the Rivers of the North Sea

This Life
I dedicate to rooting in place

Once I am ready
I return home
Fully
To love and heal the land
where the soil
mirrors my biome

Poem inspired by a conversation with Ghalia Naseer.
Photo by Rob Eradus.

Drops of memories

coming together

in infinite cycles

licking stones

nurturing roots

falling from skies

huddled in floating clouds



Round and round

up and down

rivers in the sky

carrying the faint flavours 

of all Beings



Soil, Trees, Shiitaki

Humans, Cuttlefish, Lichen

Clouds, Rivers, Oceans

Being of Beings



Traveling waters

carrying ancient wisdom

dancing drops

making and unmaking 

always home

always life 

always flowing



Rivers

never homesick

only suffocated

by the pain 

of missing us



The loving vibrations 

of our voices 

and our songs

remembering

we are all water

all water is us

when we sing to the rivers

we sing to life

I wrote this poem as a response to the question “Do rivers get homesick?” shared in the book ‘Imagine, Embracing Chaos and possibility in a planetary emergency’.

Restory/Resurface/Recover/Reclaim/Remember
the time, space, air, 
to tell my stories 

Not to convey wisdom/ 
make a point/
impress your ego/
stroke my pride/

change your mind/
shape your tree/
guide your ways/

Simply to share
and stumble
in our humaness

The forgotten alivenness between 
you-and-me
me-and-you

Only in togetherness we exist
My skin isn't a concrete wall 
Your heart is not of iron chambers 

The air we breathe is not boxed 
divided into oxygen for me
and oxygen for you

We share a pulse
That's how I long to show up to you

With the story of separation dropped to the floor
like a disgarded armor at the edge of a battle field 

Stuck in a rut
Concrete worlds
Linear careers 
Measurable actions
Stifling expectations 
All is SMART
Little is felt

What about...
What about where logic stops
And the best of the rest starts?

What about the unimaginable force of the unrealistic? 
What about the expansive, multigenerational and ungraspable? 
What about all that is too beautiful to measure?

Too complex to map
Too alive to dictate
Too creative to capture
Too loved to limit

What about all the other worlds? 
Stifled by the weight of modernity 

Thriving beyond the imagination
of our numbed hearts
and concrete minds

The Role of Heart Openers

We can’t predict, dictate, or force the future into existence, but we can open our hearts and create the space and breath for other worlds to emerge.

Heart openers long to do exactly that, open our hearts, colour our worlds, crack our concrete minds, unnumb our dreams, aliven our being. They invite us to alter the way we show up to ourselves, each other, the challenges we face, the communities we live in and the work we do.

In the Netherlands, where I lived for the majority of my life, modernity isn’t taken lightly. It’s embraced fully, almost religiously, optimised, intensified and respected like an all-encompassing truth. Everything in the Netherlands: land, rivers, the sea, healthcare, education, soil, relations, food and culture either feeds the beast of Modernity or, when refusing to be edible, is seriously threatened by it. In this context, shaped by the logic of “BV Nederland a.k.a Cooperation Netherlands”, the role of the Heart Opener is squashed to bits. Rationalism triumphs. Reductionism rules. Spirituality is spat out, and the arts are barely respected as a side-show. Our former Prime Minister frequently requested everyone to just “doe maar normaal”, “just be normal”. Normal, normative, boxed, shaped, useful parts of the Dutch Cooperation.

Navigating this context, I long, deeply, for swarms of Heart Openers to embrace their role and get to work, filled with spirit, patience, love, and a willingness to be perceived as weird or naive. It’s exactly the weird, naive and ridiculous we need.

When space-holding in the Netherlands, especially in business or formal educational contexts, I still feel tension when I step into the role of heart opener. A tension born from the extreme stretch between what I feel is vital for the pre-emergence of regenerative futures and the work, which in the sustainability-as-usual world is considered urgent and unquestionable.

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The Heart Openers Calling

The work of Heart Openers isn’t linear; they don’t head-on tackle urgent matters or solve immediate problems, and therefore, sometimes, they are considered a waste of time by those driven by impact metrics and burdened by the weight of an ungrieved existential crisis. Modernity applauds productivity and effectiveness and places a suffocating sense of guilt on nothingness, leisure, sleep, staring into the distance and playing with our toes. We are constantly taught to override our senses and needs, leading to a spiral of disconnection. No wonder many of us are too exhausted to be fully present, to hold space for grief, to protect wildlife, to respect the rivers, to rewild the land, to care for our neighbours, to deconstruct oppressive systems, to make a stance against imperialism, to live with the seasons. We are too busy with racing to be there for all that matters.

We need practices, ceremonies, rituals, experiences and ways of gathering to unravel this busyness. We need to invite our full presence and restore our ability to hold the weight and responsbility of interbeing alive. And this is the work that heart openers are being called to.

What is the focus of Heart Openers?

In the role of Heart openers, we take on the weight of opening hearts, guts, hands, bones and minds to the expansive, connected, visceral and alive. We rewild gatherings, rituals and conversations. We invite dance, music and art. We stir feelings, expectations and stories. We weave relations of place and being. We aliven the concrete, colour the grey and melt rigorous hierarchies into fluid webs of relations.

Heart Openers aliven our inner world and connect us to the outer world; they offer the practices and spaces that support our collective becoming into alive and present interbeings. Beings that feel the pulse of life, and with that feeling of aliveness, dawns a great responsibility.

What qualities do Heart Openers hold?

• Ability to unnumb, unzombi, aliven

• Understanding and kindness for the hearts that are buckling under the weight of modernity

• Nourishing heart, hands, and mind, interbeing with stories, experiences, dance and music which go beyond the intellectual and superficial

• Full presence, even when others can’t (fully) respond to this presence yet

• Emotional maturity, a willingness to dance with the process without becoming angry, frozen or impatient

• Ontological Openness, all stories, ways of being and knowing are welcome.

• Multi-generational Patience

• Willingness to experiment with the reviving, birth and rewilding of rituals, ceremony and grounding practices

• Courage to accept being seen as weird, idealistic or naive.

What are we missing? Anything quality you would add?

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What do the practices of Heart Openers look like?

They gently and carefully dismantle the barriers that hold our hearts and bodies hostage. Heart opening is a recurring role that we can embody both for ourselves and for others. Practices of heart openers might look like:

• Opening a workshop with a song

• Grounding a conference in place by acknowledging and opening up to the rhythms and beings of the land

• Inviting communities to rediscover their relationship with the land through all their senses

  • Sing at the river, scream at the land, watch the grass grow, taste the soil, feel the fire, lean into the wind, aliven your being, deepen your presence, feel the responsibility of existing reciprocally.

• Weaving seasonal rituals into work/gatherings/workshops and grasping every opportunity to ground people in place and the rhythms of the seasons.

• Deepening ancestral connectedness by inviting people to bring their ancestors and centre their presence in their own way (through a symbol, poem, dish, song, anything that connects beyond the intellectual and tangible)

• Aliven relationships with the land through the writing of love letters.

• Colouring conversations and gatherings with poetry and art. Make space for the visceral.

Heart Openers are local or bioregional, not universal

Heart Openers come to life in many different forms, depending on place and context. They are highly context, culture and bioregionally dependent.

One of the principles uniting the peasant movement, La Via Campesina, is called the mistica*, which I understand to be a form of Heart Opener.

In every La Via Campesina gathering, we begin the day with what we call a mistica. It’s a spiritual, 10 minute “performance” relating to the commonalities of all the persons who are present. The mistica very often begins with music or poetry, and it focuses on a specific issue that we want to highlight. - Paul Nicholson, la via campesian

Each region has its own form of expressing its spirituality in a mistica. They are both a ritual and a pedagogical practice.

How would you imagine a mistica would look in your local or bioregional context?

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* Note: I recognise that I am not a peasant and can’t fully grasp the weight of the movement practices, including the principle of the mistica.

Asking You

I would truly love to hear from you to explore the art of space holding collectively.

• Do you recognise yourself in this role?

• What methods, approaches, and styles are you naturally more drawn to? How do you nurture yourself when fulfilling this role?

• Do you feel a vital aspect or insight is missing in this high-level exploration of the Heart Opener?

• What metaphors, qualities and practices surface when you are reflecting on the role of Heart Opener?

Leave a comment

Next in the Roles of Space Holding Series

In the next article, we will explore the role of Dream Nurturers. If this article resonated or moved you, and you are curious to read about the other Space Holding roles, consider becoming a subscriber.

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I will not die an unquestioned life

shaped by shoulds and musts.

Limited by the boundaries of isms,

drowned in assumptions

fueled by hollow expectations.

Blinded by artificial desires,

forced into the tight boxes

of control-loving institutes

obsessed with titles, metrics, and certainty

unable to wander into the unimaginable,

forever trapped in the ant’s death spiral.

Deceivingly comforted by the familiarity

of the slowly dying status quo.

This poem is inspired by Dawna Markova’s poem: “I will not Die an Unlived Life”. It is written as part of my work for the collective book called Seismic Questions, about holding space for questions that can rearrange our being, change our worldviews and alter the way we show up to life.

If the poem resonates with you, consider following the publication. Here, we will share invitations to co-create, calls for support and eventually the opportunity to preorder your copy.

Portals

In front of concrete walls

Windows posing as mirrors

Mirrors impersonating windows

Echos returning

Obvious statements multiplying 

Uncomfortable truths vanishing

Squandered 

By the weight of nuance 

Suffocated

By the fear of shattering identities

Under the pressure of opinions

Confused as egos



The desire for certainty

For approval and self-indulgence

Nurtured by the echo 

Sounding on and on



Seemingly 

Living a one-opinion reality

In a polarised world

Stepping out of my reality

Conversing with others

Accompanied by the fear

Of using the wrong word

Of being cancelled

Not up to speed

Not critical enough

Foolish

Unworthy 

Without engagement

Shot back into my

Echo chamber

Where once again

We will learn

Nothing 

From one another 



Where are the people

I disagree with

Who welcome me

In their spaces



Where are the friends

Who cherish clashing views

Within polar realities



How do I kindly

Hold an opposing opinion

Stretching 

The window of tolerance

Into a wide open space



For us

To be in 

Differently

Worthy

Lovingly

Disagreeing

Learning

Together

A falcon, a sturdy salmon, and their friend, the river, are on a lifelong adventure. Together, they travel upstream along the meandering river, who is slowly changing her course over rocks and time with the ever-changing seasons ahead of her. Flow finders are like falcons, flying high over the river, staring into the distance to grasp what’s happening in the vast landscape. A dam that needs to be demolished? Polluted waters that need cleaning or big buzzing storms that require anticipation? The falcon circles between the surface of the Earth, where he meets his friends and the vastness of the clouds, from where he can be the eyes and ears for the river and the salmon. Flow Finders are in a constant dynamic of anticipation, creating conditions for emergence and tuning in with the present moment.

Transitions away from modernity and towards the emergence of regenerative futures are messy, uncharted terrain, non-linear and without predetermined outcomes. Flow finders stimulate movement and create energy before this messy process slips into stuckness or stagnation. They recognise the various phases of transition and healing journeys and tune into what is necessary to stimulate flow. They take responsibility for planning and anticipating how to keep momentum.

In the role of Flow Finder, you recognise that after facing uncomfortable truths about the deeply ingrained, widespread coloniality of our lives, people will need heartfelt emotional support; somebody should be present who can fulfil this role of deep listener and healer. This someone can be you as Flow Finder shifting into another role. Or the role can be fulfilled by someone else if you realise you don’t hold the capacity, energy or headspace to fulfil this role in this context. Instead of being overwhelmed in the moment and leaving the people you are holding space for in an unsettled place, you can feel ahead to consider what might be necessary.

Flow finders guide transitions without suffocating them with pre-determined outcomes and expectations. They support transitions to the next phase, recognise when there is a need for inspiration, silence, healing, motivation, expansion, practical learning or dreaming. They are the tuning forks of transitions.

What is the focus of flow finders?

Ensuring transitions don’t stagnate and keep flowing by shifting between presencing, foresight and anticipating what is necessary to sustain momentum.

What qualities do flow finders hold?

• Foresight

• Anticipation

• Enabling

• Non-directive Support

• Attunement

• Deep empathy

What are we missing? Anything quality you would add?

What do the practices of Flow Finders look like?

The practice of Flow Finders is balancing sensing and foresight with responding to the presence. Whilst simultaneously creating the conditions for emergence, sensing when practical action is needed to enhance autonomy or when to initiate a dreaming practice to nurture hope. Flow Finders constantly tune in to context and consider which of the roles should step into the space that is held (collectively). In work and education settings, where, unfortunately, context blindness is widespread, this is a vital role.

What tools/approaches might flow finders use?

• Foresight tools such as scenario envisioning

• Empathic scenario planning

• Ecosystems mapping

• Dragon Dreaming

• Theory U

• Three-horizon framework

• Donella Meadow’s Leverage Points

Fluidity of Roles & Tools

The tools utilised in various space-holding roles often overlap with one or several other roles. Expansive methods such as Dragon Dreaming and Theory U are likely to be relevant in almost all roles. Other, more focused tools, such as scenario planning and eco-systems mapping, can be useful for multiple roles, but are primarily initiated in the role of flow finder. Some of these tools are used collectively, and others are useful for the facilitator/spaceholder to help them guide the transition and hold the space.

I utilise foresight tools within workshops to envision various scenarios and explore which conditions need nurturing for these futures to emerge. I also use elements of foresight for pattern recognition and to continuously adjust and attune my facilitation approach. When creating a facilitation script for a gathering, I will consider the context, the people, their relations and try to anticipate what topics/questions/frictions/emotions will emerge and what will be a natural next step or exercise. Of course, whilst remaining flexible and holding space for the unexpected.

Asking you

We would truly love to hear from you and explore the art of space holding collectively!

• Do you recognise yourself in this role?

• What methods, approaches, and styles are you naturally more drawn to? How do you nurture yourself when fulfilling this role?

• Do you feel a vital aspect or insight is missing in this high-level exploration of the Flow Finder?

• What metaphors, qualities and practices surface when you are reflecting on the role of Flow Finders?

Leave a comment

Next in the Roles of Space Holding Series

In the next article, we will explore the role of Heart Openers, or, to use a term from the agro-ecology movement, Mystica.

And now, not louder, but with my own voice, I started writing poetry myself. It is absurd how much scarier it is than writing from within the cushy comfort of prose. But prose no longer covered the pathways I am exploring. Modernity seems to hold us hostage in reactions, reason, reductionism and solutionism. And the louder the cry for measurable, immediate solutions, the more I feel drawn to forms of expression that undercut logic.

“Poetry asks us to look beyond words.
Asks us to seek the kind of blur where clarity
is held in combining ideas.”

Nora Bateson,
Combining

Untethered

Untethered
from location
from land
with people 
who belong
to the beings
the rivers
the rhythms
and the seasons 
of place 

Untethered from a place
cared for by people who belong
to each other
shared breaths
to the rhythm
of the river
to the humus
our damp mossy friend

Instead
I feel at home in types of smells
categories of places
imagined landscapes 
and feelings
forests feel like home 
mountains open their arms 
their icy lakes embrace me

I feel at home in myself
in my family 
And then?
A wall 
An untethered nothingness

Without community 
all that remains
a lost sense of belonging 

My home has no home 
tethered backwards 
Topsy Turvy
a family without community

Hugs without arms
holding on to warmth 
Trees without branches
lost to photosynthesis
Rivers without stones
shaping her current 

Forever grateful 
to belong and love
forever confused 
to live without 
community

Accompanied by the persistent shadows
of modernity’s communities 
The gym
The bookclub
The neighbourhood watch
The hug community 

You can now hug for a price 
Communities Commodified Hugging
Communities Commodified Belonging

Commodification 
Commodified
Communities

Communification 
Commodified 
Communities

A word so powerful
and yet
We hollowed it
cut the relations
discarded the weight
launched a membership
charged a price 
called it community

Further filling
our emptiness
Now from within
a false sense of belonging

Hesitation

Somehow, I felt no hesitation in sending prose into your inboxes, but now with poetry, there is a heavy resistance. I feel like I shouldn’t bother you with pieces that hold no clear insight, recommendation or learning.

If this is no more than a fear, and you would love to receive poems in your inbox, please let me know.