Goodbye hope, time for Experiments in Regenerative Living

After making a declaration that no-one asked me to make that I would be writing on the subject of hope for 100 days, I have changed tac and am sailing in an ever-so-slightly different direction (I haven’t given up on hope though — got more of it than ever).

I have decided to write a newsletter, every two weeks reflecting on my exploration of an aspect of the regenerative living movement. What is regenerative living? I’m not entirely sure, and that’s part of why I plan to explore it. My sense from the periphery is that there is a movement emerging of people interested in living in a way that helps improve the conditions of the systems that support life on this planet. Ranging from our financial systems, to our healthcare systems, social systems, transport systems. You might ask, isn’t that what humanity is always trying to do? Well yes to an extent, but many of us agree that the fossil fuel, lightening speed lifestyle we’ve got used to living is now doing more harm than good and jeopardising the chances that the future will be brighter than the past.

I’m posting the first newsletter here but please consider subscribing to the free newsletter at: willythomas.substack.com/welcome

Setting the scene

Since September I have been taking part in the Zinc Academy. It’s a 9-month journey for people interested in learning about the latest innovations and thinking within the field of mental health. It’s helping me find my spot on the mental health map to set my spade-a-digging and see how I might contribute to unearthing something beautiful.

I have been drawn to bridge off the work of Johann Hari. A journalist who got in loads of trouble in the 00’s for copying other people’s work but has come back into favour writing two well received, and in my opinion highly insightful, books. One on addiction, the other on depression.

I was given a bump of confidence to use some of Johann’s thinking to steer my own when both Norman Lamb, the Minister of state for Care and Support (2012–2015) and current chairman of the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, and Tim Kendall NHS England’s current National Clinical Director of Mental Health, casually referenced Johann’s work when talking with the Zinc Academy.

In Lost Connections Johann highlights 9 common sources of depression…

1. Disconnection from work that gives meaning and purpose
2. Disconnection from other people
3. Disconnection from meaningful values
4. Disconnection caused by childhood trauma
5. Disconnection from respect
6. Disconnection from the natural world
7. Disconnection from a secure and hopeful future
8. The role of genetics in depression
9. And the roles of biology and neurology in depression.

Emerging from this long, challenging, winter lockdown I imagine it’s easy for all of us to resonate with points from that list, and how they relate to aspects of what’s made the last few months quite difficult for most of us.

I can see how every point on that list affects my life and love the idea of using it is a model to shape how I can improve my wellbeing, but the one that compels me the most to explore it further is my sense of disconnection from a secure and hopeful future, along with other people’s shared sense of this problem.

Now this newsletter isn’t meant to be too heavy, but I also want to be honest and upfront about why I’m doing this and what I’m doing about it.

The unpredictability of the long-term future has always felt a little scary to me. All this climate change, biodiversity loss and artificial intelligence bollocks doesn’t seem to be going away and it’s making even the mid-term future feel a little scary too. And now over the last year with COVID-19, even our sense of safety in our immediate future has been really jostled.

This has lead me to the regenerative movement. People who acknowledge the extent to which we’re pushing the life-cradling boundaries of this planet and are setting out to do something about it. The regenerative movement is about all the types of reconnection Johann Hari lists, as well as being about much more. And as I explore and experiment with regenerative practices I thought it’d be great to share a little and see what new conversations and experiences it leads me to having with the awesome people I know are reading along and maybe some of you readers who I’m yet to meet 😊.

Time in nature as a tonic

When you think of tonic, they’ll be those of you thinking of a nice crisp G&T, and they’ll be those of you thinking about the unholiest thing monks do with their spare time which is concoct the dangerous potion that is Buckfast tonic wine (Hi Felix😉). Buckfast is in fact brewed just a couple of miles away from where me and Kathryn live in Totnes, and it obviously brings in some good money because Buckfast Abbey is bloomin’ splendid.

But I’m not talking about the wine am I? Here I’m using tonic to mean a healing remedy.

There’s a growing body of scientific evidence linking exposure to nature with improvements in people’s mental health. What do I mean by nature? Nature can ean a million different things but for me the word tends to evoke scenes of rivers, trees, mountains, birds, bugs and bees. A little more wildness and a little less human control than the places we tend to spend most of our time — cities, shops, towns, roads and offices.

Some of the studies suggest even the tiniest encounter with nature can help, whether that’s listening to the sounds of nature over headphones which can increase the activation of your parasympathetic nervous system — helping you rest and digest, a few more trees and greenery in your neighbourhood reducing the incidence of cancer, or having a view of nature out your hospital window helping your recovery post-surgery.

But I’m interested in a bigger dose of nature. A day outside, or a weekend or a whole week. I’ve been contributing to a project looking to bring together a group of people with symptoms of depression and having them spend a day each week, for 6 weeks, outside in a woodland and on Dartmoor surrounded by nature. The leader of the course Stefan, is a psychotherapist trained in Shinrin Yoku, a Japanese practice which in the UK we call forest bathing or forest therapy (Shinrin Yoku has it’s own growing research base). The course was due to begin yesterday but sadly covid has once again got in the way and we’ve had to delay.

What each person will get from the experience of forest bathing will differ, but in the time I spent preparing for the course with a few afternoons in the woods, I found that it was never long before I was a little more present to my surroundings. It’s a lovely time of year to be outside, with the wild flowers and wild garlic sprouting through, the birds waxing lyrical and the sun once again declaring its omnipotence.

I’ve been reflecting on how one of the ways the forest bathing seems to evoke a change in participants is by setting up a safe space for us to allow our curiosity to take over, in other words, for us to play. By safe space, I mean one where you won’t be judged for how you are feeling, for your opinions or how you behave. I found myself in the woods, within minutes of giving myself the permission to do whatever I wanted, picking up logs and seeing how far I could throw them, slapping different trees to see what sound they made, drawing on a tree with some ashy bonfire remains and waving at a cow that was looking at me funny. Sure I had the voice in my head whispering in my ear that this was silly and I should really be getting on and heading home. That voice which seems dominant in my adult life, ‘isn’t there something more important you should be doing?’ In that moment the neglected child in me was able to say, ‘oh, pipe down old man, I’m gonna see what’s inside this den someone’s left’.

I’ve been trying to spend a little time in nature every day over the last two weeks. I’ve been getting back into a practice called sit spotting, introduced to me in November on the Regenerative Economics course at Schumacher College. Sit spotting involves finding a spot in your garden or any nearby green space, taking a seat and committing to spending a little time their every day. The keenos might do half an hour, but I’ve just been doing a couple of minutes.

There’s a comfort in slowing down to take in the world around us. I must admit my main source of lockdown guilt comes from leaning really heavily into using the internet as a distraction for how dull and lonely an experience it’s been. Whole days pinging between Twitter, The Guardian, Instagram and checking cryptocurrency prices. Some days the thing that has got me out of bed is just to grab my phone, then I get straight back in. But sitting outside on my favourite bench looking over the River Dart has been the tonic I need to this feeling of overwhelm and cosmic persecution. Sat on that bench for a few minutes, the buzz in my head turns down from an 8 to a 3. Sat for a few more minutes and a somewhat relaxed smile returns to my face.

But I wrote above how my focus was on connecting to a hopeful future, yet here I am writing about connecting to nature. So why have I instantly gone off-brief with my first newsletter. Well, because to me it’s all connected. My belief is that for us to resonate with a hopeful, regenerative future we have some important work to do appreciating our place within nature. At some point in the human story we decided to separate ourselves from nature as a sort of psychological experiment to see what we could achieve and create by carving out a little more space for our imaginations to shape the world. But how much longer can we keep ourselves separate?

Just like teenagers feel the urge to step out from their families so that they can explore their own identity beyond the confines of their family system, humans chose to separate themselves from nature for a similar reason. But with the right space and time away from their family, as they move into adulthood, people often find that they actually share more in common with their families than they first realised, that their families still mean a great deal to them and that having a relationship with their family adds value and meaning to their lives. In a similar fashion I see it as time for humans to blossom into a collective adulthood where we return to the beautiful context of nature that birthed and nurtured us into this world. Accepting that we are fundamentally part of nature can help us respect Earth’s ecosystems rather than where we have ended up, which is exploiting many of nature’s systems to the extent that they are now fragile and withered and desperately in need of regeneration.

Invitations…

• Join me some morning in May at 4am to walk to Dartington and listen to the dawn chorus (I know this sounds horrendous, but people say it’s amazing)?
• Go find some wild garlic to pick and knock up some stinky pesto?
• When you go for a walk this week leave your phone at home?
• Pick a spot in your garden or nearest green space to sit for 2 minutes every day for a week?
• Reach out to me if you’d like to contribute to the newsletter? This is an open invite that I’ll be reminding people of as each newsletter is released.

Zinc shoutout

I want to use each newsletter as a chance to highlight the project of a fellow Zinc Academy pioneer.

This week I’m highlighting Empathy Week. Empathy Week is the brainchild of Ed Kirwan (a nearly namesake of my good friend Ed Curwen). It is an annual education program attended by teachers and students from all around the world that uses film to inspire, engage and empower young people into empathetic action — gaining the skills to leave school as the empathy generation.

Right, that’s me done. My best friend in Totnes (he’s not aware of this fact), the ice cream man, has just opened up again so I’m gonna go and get a vegan pistachio ice-cream and go for a stroll, yeah boi!