"Coming Back to Life", Readings and Practices Joanna Tomkins

Welcome to our last episode, where we look at the possibilities of Going Forth with new learnings and renewed feelings. 

"We have come to see with new eyes our ineluctable place in the web of life, our connections with all beings through space and time and the kind of power that is ours for creating a life-sustaining culture. Now we use this new vision to discern more clearly the distinctive role we each can play in the Great Turning.” (Joanna Macy)

Please prepare a quiet space and make sure you are comfortable. You will need a notebook and pen.

The Work that Reconnects is usually based on collective, and in physical presence, workshops, and we invite you to connect to the page www.workthatreconnects.org to find out if there is one close to you.

Joanna Tomkins has selected some practices and meditations that she can facilitate to you alone (or with your family or friends, would you like to recreate a group setting) but there are many more "hands on" exercises available within a collective workshop.

We also invite you to join as a "Friend of the Work that Reconnects" on the website mentioned above, and to start networking, online or in your region.

This is Gaia Speaking. Thanks for listening.

“Realize that for every ongoing war and religious outrage and environmental devastation and bogus Iraqi attack plan, there are a thousand counter-balancing acts of staggering generosity and humanity and art and beauty happening all over the world, right now, on a breathtaking scale, from flower box to cathedral."

— Mark Morford”

In this episode Joanna Tomkins will read some of the texts and exercises from the book Coming Back to Life that are used as practices during Work That Reconnects retreats, for the "Seeing with New Eyes" stage. They are based on the concept of  Deep Time, which is one of the pillars of Joanna Macy's worldview.

"People of today relate to time in a way that is surely unique in history. The technologies and economic forces unleashed by the Industrial Growth Society radically alter our experience of time, subjecting us to frenetic speeds and severing our felt connection with past and future generations. Deep Time work has arisen for that express purpose: to refresh our spirits and inform our minds by experiencing our present lives within larger contexts of time." (Joanna Macy)

Please prepare a quiet space and make sure you are comfortable. You will need a notebook and pen.

Join us soon for our last episode, where we discuss Going Forth, the next stage in the Spiral.

Please note that The Work that Reconnects is usually based on collective and in physical presence workshops, and we invite you to connect to the page www.workthatreconnects.org to find out if there is one available to you.

This is Gaia Speaking. Thanks for listening.

www.gaiaspeaking.com

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so you must know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy."

— Khalil Gibran”

In this episode Joanna Tomkins will read some of the texts in the book Coming Back to Life that are used as practices during the Work That Reconnects retreats. These practices might allow you to reconnect to some of the pain that you have suppressed regarding the situation of the world at present and your loss of connection to it. It's important that you have listened to the previous episode on Gratitude before you listen to this episode. Honouring our Pain will allow us to move toward the next Stage, Seeing with New Eyes. 

Please prepare a quiet space and make sure you are comfortable. You will need a notebook and pen.

Please note that The Work that Reconnects is usually based on collective, and in physical presence, workshops, and we invite you to connect to the page www.workthatreconnects.org to find out if there is a workshop close to you.

This is Gaia Speaking. Thanks for listening.

www.gaiaspeaking.com

Having read the theory behind the Work that Reconnects from the book Coming Back to Life by Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown, facilitator Joanna Tomkins will guide us through some of the practices extracted from the book Coming Back to Life.

Please prepare a quiet space and make sure you are comfortable. You will need a notebook and pen. 

This episode is about Gratitude, the first stage of the spiral of the WTR, which was introduced in the previous episode.

The Work that Reconnects is usually based on collective, and in physical presence, workshops, and we invite you to connect to the page www.workthatreconnects.org to find out if there is a workshop close to you.

Joanna Tomkins has selected some practices and meditations that she can facilitate to you alone (or with your family or friends, would you like to recreate a group setting) but there are many more "hands on" exercises that are available within a collective workshop.

This is Gaia Speaking. Thanks for listening.

In this episode, Joanna Tomkins reads from the book "Active Hope" by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone to introduce the Spiral of the Work That Reconnects. The rich and broad knowledge of the work has been condensed into this incredibly simple structure upon which all the practices of the Work That Reconnects depend. It goes through the four following stages:

1) Coming from Gratitude

2) Honouring our Pain for the World

3) Seeing with New (or Ancient) Eyes

4) Going Forth

In the following Episodes, 7 to 10, she will introduce a practice for each of these stages.



This is Gaia Speaking, Thanks for Listening!

In this episode Joanna Tomkins, a Work that Reconnects facilitator, reads selected extracts from Chapter 3 of the book "Coming Back to Life" by Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown. 

“THE GREAT TURNING ARISES in response to what we know and feel is happening to our world. It entails both the perception of danger and the means to act. As conscious, embodied beings endowed with multiple senses, we are geared to respond: instantly we leap from the path of an oncoming truck, dash to douse a fire, dive into a pool to save a child. This response-ability has been an essential feature of life throughout human evolution; it allows us to adapt to new challenges and generate new capacities. It enables whole groups and societies to survive, so long as their members have sufficient information and freedom to act. In systems terms, response to danger is a function of feedback — the information circuit that connects perception to action. Appropriate response depends on an unblocked feedback loop."

This episode will navigate through the following structure:

Chapter 2: The Basic Miracle: Our True Nature and Power

part 1: Living Systems Theory

part 2: Ancient Spiritual Teachings

part 3: The Miracle of Mind

part 4: the Nature of our Power