with Julie Lowenthal
Time: Fri 10th, 9:30 am – 11:00 am
Labels: Workshops and Activities , Wellness and Community Action
Location: Nourish Tent
‘Empowerment in the face of planetary suffering.’
These workshops are inspired by The Work that Reconnects’ or ‘Coming Back to Life’ as it is now known, initiated by Joanna Macy.
There are so many marvellously empowering and connecting aspects of this work that there could be a danger of doing too much here – however this is completely counterintuitive to the essence of this. Our ‘Industrial Growth Society’ has us hurrying and cramming it all in, all these time saving devices we now have only seem to separate us from our true biological sense of time.
So I will be gently introducing this work over the two workshops. Focusing firstly on connection and beginning to explore how we can use this to support us in noticing our pain for the world and how this in tern empowers us to be in action. We will explore in the simplest of terms how this whole process as a spiral that begins with gratitude.
Secondly focusing on the Seventh Generation inspirational process that allows us to see the Great turning across Deep Time through connected conversation.
Julie Lowenthal
I made a commitment to our earth some 30 plus years ago – I am not sure I knew exactly what I was doing because when I mentioned this to one of my dearest old friends, she laughed heartily and said ‘well that explains a lot’ – life sure has thrown a lot of heavy curve balls my way. However this does mean that I have experienced surmounting an extraordinary range of difficulties myself and it has led me to be immersed in an ongoing personal process. Which, in turn, has given me a deep empathy for others and a solid base in which to hold my clients’ hands through their counselling process.
My path has been one that has included running my own successful businesses, working in education and other public sector roles right through to my now working as a counsellor and in outdoor education. I studied environmental art for a year and that was when I noticed the profound healing power of being in motion in nature. The last 12 years have been spent figuring out how to manifest a path to bringing this nature connection to others whilst also juggling the logistical and emotional challenges of motherhood.
I volunteer as a counsellor in two low cost services in Exeter and am now taking on another year of training for a full degree in integrative counselling with my research focusing on Ecopsychology. My long-term goal is to develop a social enterprise on my land in North Devon incorporating community permaculture growing, rural crafts and mental health support in an environmentally and economically sustainable, socially focused business.