Leading from within the web of life
A 6-week in-person course
Wed Sept 11th - Wed Oct 16th 2024
The Way of Kinship:
Re-awakening our Bond with an Intelligent, Living Earth
at St Ethelburga’s Centre
for Reconciliation & Peace
London EC2N 4AG
Enter the Way of Kinship
Our separation from the wider web of life has not only fuelled the destruction of Earth, but has left us living in a two-dimensional experience of reality, devoid of belonging, nourishment and joy. Many of our responses to climate breakdown simply replicate this separation and do nothing to solve the deeper roots of the crisis.
But a different way to understand our place within the world is emerging. It draws on multiple ways of knowing to reveal a new/ancient way of relating to the world around us - that of kinship with all life.
Kincentrism is not a sentimental aspiration, but rather a practical and transformative blueprint. It shows us that, as human beings, we are not the apex of creation, but have (within the modern world paradigm) simply veiled our ability to perceive the infinite sentience and potential of other life forms, who in fact, may have the answers we need. Kincentrism reaches beyond the endlessly repeating delusions of mainstream culture to tackle the crisis at its source - reconciling humanity with our planetary home, igniting hope and pointing the way to the profoundly exciting possibility of collaborating with a Living Earth
What's involved?
-
six in-person evenings sessions: Wed 11th Sept - Wed 16th Oct
-
a peer-led field day on Sunday 20th Oct
-
exciting guest speakers bringing original perspectives and fresh ideas (some in person, mostly online)
-
textured facilitation including a blend of speaker input, experiential exercises, dialogue and discussion, journalling, embodied work, sound and silence
-
optional preparatory reading/listening material for each session
-
access to an innovative new suite of online tools developed by Kincentric Leadership, designed to help you and your community embed the way of kinship in all you do
-
the opportunity to form a continued learning community.
Programme modules and timings
Wed 11th Sept 6.30pm - 9.15pm
Session 1: Belonging, place, and the way of kinship
With guest speaker Anna Kovasna
To come into the Way of Kinship, we need first to come into relationship with each other and with place. We will explore foundational principles of kincentrism as well as dive into our own relationship with ancestral knowing, belonging, land and place. What lies behind the kincentric worldview and what does it look like in action? How can kinship change the way we lead and how we navigate the polycrisis? Why are indigenous and decolonial perspectives on kinship so vital? And how can we know our own belonging to Earth, even in the inner city?
Wed 18th Sept 6.30pm - 9.15pm
Session 2: More than human intelligence
With Lead Facilitator, Justine Huxley
A revolution is happening in the scientific world as ground-breaking research reveals the multifaceted intelligence of animals, plants and even bacteria. Our growing knowledge of the sensory realities of other beings reveals how anthropocentric thinking has profoundly limited our experience and left us living in a much poorer version of reality. How can we tap into the many languages of other beings, and learn to listen and speak across species? Can imagination and embodiment play a part in helping us open to more than human intelligence? What exciting new innovations are emerging which enable us to include the voice and perspectives of other life forms in human decision-making?
Wednesday 25th Sept 6.30pm - 9.15pm
Session 3: Many ways of knowing
With guest speakers Varun Rao and Alisa Ruzavina
A central tenet of this paradigm shift into kinship is to draw on multiple strands of knowledge, including indigenous wisdom, science, observation, embodiment, instinct, artificial intelligence, the arts, spiritual traditions, magic, subtle knowing and different ways of relating to time. How can you blend different ways of knowing in your own path to kinship? How can we honour the rational and observable whilst also opening the door to intuition and subtle knowing? How can art, music and creativity deepen our relationship with the wider web of life? What exciting innovations are emerging in this area?
Wednesday 2nd Oct 6.30pm - 9.15pm
Session 4: Wayfinding from within the web of life
With guest speaker Sicelo Mbatha
As ecological and societal breakdown intensifies, as uncertainty and volatility increase and untruth and disinformation corrupt our collective realities - finding our way is increasingly difficult. Wise discernment is a critical skill we need to evolve to a new level. What can we learn from animals, plants and landscapes about sensing and navigating? Does our own decision-making and way-finding transform if we know ourselves to be embedded in a web of more than human relationships? Can we hone our individual and collective instincts through being in deeper relationship with the wild - and use this skill to serve not just humans but the whole of life?
Wednesday 9th Oct 6.30pm - 9.15pm
Session 5: Grief as a portal to belonging
With guest speaker Marga Laube
As humans living in the dominant global paradigm destroy the biosphere, to be in relationship with Earth and the more than human world, means to encounter infinite suffering. How can we grow the courage and inner strength not to turn away from the suffering of our kin, both human and more than human? Can our grief become a doorway to greater love and connection? Does the more than human world experience grief, rage or other emotions about what is happening? Is grief a private or collective process? What is the relationship between grief and humanity’s primordial covenant or sacred bond with Earth?
Wednesday 16th Oct 6.30pm - 9.30pm
Session 6: Breathing into a kincentric future
With guest speakers Phoebe Tickell and Wangũi wa Kamonji
(Please note this session will end at 9.30pm rather than 9.15pm)
The path of kinship with all life ultimately holds the seeds of a new civilisation - born from both ancient and completely new - a decolonial civilisation formed in collaboration with more than human intelligences and rooted in our primordial covenant with Earth. In this final session, we will use unfettered imagination and a touch of ceremony to catch a hint of what we cannot currently see or know - what might be if humanity survives what is coming to begin again. Together we will ask: How would a kincentric future look? Can we summon the wisdom of our ancestors and our inheritors to awaken a new vision? Is there a hidden blueprint sleeping in our DNA and in the Earth?
Sunday 20th Oct 12 noon - 4pm
Kinship community field day
A day to relax in kinship with each other and the more than human world, exploring where kincentrism is happening in practice and celebrating the learning and the relationships built over the last six weeks. The location and focus will be decided by the group and the day will be peer-led.
Continued learning
Participants will have the option to continue journeying together on the path of kinship, receiving reading lists, online tools and teaching materials that can support a peer-led community of practice.
"All human life and being is inextricably entangled with and suffused by everything else. This broad commonwealth includes every inhabitant of the biosphere, the animals, plants, fungi, bacteria and viruses. It includes the rivers, seas, winds, stones and clouds that support, shake and shadow us. These animate forces, these companions on the great adventure of time and becoming, have much to teach us and have already taught us a great deal. We are who we are because of them, and we cannot live without them." - James Bridle
Contributors & Facilitators
NB: All meetings are in person in London . Some guest teachers join in person and some by zoom, but all participants are in person.
Sicelo Mbatha
Guest speaker (online)
Sicelo Mbatha, or Black Lion, is a wilderness guide, founder of Umkhiwane Sacred Pathways. Born into the Zulu tradition, Sicelo has dedicated his life to fostering deep connections between humans and nature, guiding people on healing paths through some of the most spectacular wild areas in South Africa, including the Imfolozi Wilderness, the Simangaliso Wetland and the towering Drakensberg mountains.. As a young man, his hopes of studying nature conservation at university were dashed by lack of funds. Instead Sicelo did voluntary work in the reserve for three years, before being taken on as a trainee guide by the Wilderness Leadership School, and worked as a trails officer in the reserve for several years, before leaving to pursue his dream to set up Umkhiwane Sacred Pathways. Since then, Sicelo has worked with people all over the world, and travelled extensively in Germany, UK and Austria giving seminars on the wisdom of nature. Sicelo invites connection with landscape, nature, and soul and shares generously the indigenous wisdom of his people. Sicelo’s book, Black Lion: Alive in the Wilderness was published in 2021.
Alisa Ruzavina
Guest teacher (in person)
Alisa Ruzavina is a community & ecology-tending interdisciplinary artist, designer and facilitator. Her curiosity lies in creating conversations and collective experiences in the public realm that playfully explore alternative forms of knowledge, opening possibilities for sustainable place-based ways of relating, making and being that bring us closer in communion with the Earth and one another. The aim of Alisa’s work is to share the power of ecological joy, kinship and wonder, with focus on intercultural and interspecies exchanges and rituals that nurture a sense of belonging within diverse communities. Alisa’s socially-engaged practice spans across textiles, public art, sculpture, costume, ritual, immersive and celebratory experiences, feasting, community and participatory art. Alisa holds a BA in Fashion Design with Print and MA Material Futures, both from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, where she is currently an Associate Lecturer at The Design School. Alisa is a ranger for London National Park City and is also a graduate of the Kincentric Leadership programme and part of its global Community of Practice. She lives, works, and wanders on the banks of London’s river Lea marshlands, who are her greatest teachers.
Marga Laube
Guest teacher (online)
Marga Laube is a counsellor, author, educator, griefworker and cultural evolutionary assisting a global client base in navigating our collective evolution. As an astrologer, she translates the language of the earth and the planets, offering stories for healing, and is the author of, "Agents of Evolution," published Aug. 2021, New Degree Press. She describes herself as a lifelong apprentice to the Earth, interpreting emerging stories as told by the physical world. Marga has been immersed in the ancient system of yoga since 1992, a student of Adyashanti since 2001, apprenticed to vedic astrology teacher, James Kelleher, for four years in the early 2000's, and holds both Jyotish Visharada and Jyotish Kovid certifications with the Council of Vedic Astrology. She is also a graduate of the Kincentric Leadership programme and part of its global Community of Practice. In service of community, Marga accompanies beings across that final transformation of death, and she collaborates in poetic, elegiac rituals of belonging and remembrance, celebrating disappearing life forms as they take their leave from the Earth.
She lives in Miami with her partner and their two beloved pets.
Varun Rao
Guest speaker (online)
Varun is a sound engineer, music producer and a sound based wellness educator and lives in India. His work has been in the field of sonic art, digital sound installations and music instrument research and development. As a music improvisation facilitator, his explorations involve deep listening with the drone of the ocean, the buzz of the forest, the echoes of the canyon, the rustling of the trees, the calls of different fauna and flora, the temple centric sounds from the surrounding villages. Varun is engaged with Grapefruit music, and community health related foundation in Matli (Uttarakhand) which explores the possibility of co-creating an integral approach to wellbeing through an immersion into nature, community and wellness oriented musical interventions and practices. He is developing a music education pedagogy along with Baithak Foundation in Pune, and is actively engaged with Svaram, a grass root instrument research facility in Auroville. These projects demand a deep dive and exploration into ecological musical perspectives and paradigms around sound. Varun is also a part of the Kincentric Leadership global Community of Practice.
Wangũi wa Kamonji
Guest teacher (online)
Wangũi is a regeneration practitioner researching and translating indigenous Afrikan knowledges into experiential processes, art and honey to provide rooted embodied tools for us to decolonise and reindigenise. Informed by research using academic and indigenous methods; storytelling in written and oral forms; traditional Afrikan dance and movement practice; ancestral connection, processwork, and nervous system relation, Wangũi tends the organism fromtheroots, an unlearning ecoversity supporting individuals’ and communities’ transitions from coloniality to the pluriverse thru transformational training, coaching and practice accompaniment. This work is motivated by the twin challenge of healing the colonial traumas of past and present, and (re)creating ways for us to live regeneratively with ourselves, Earth and ancestors again i.e., for us to decolonise and reindigenise, and responds to an ancestral invitation to rethink and reimagine everything from indigenous Afrikan ontologies. Wangũi is a 2024 Postgrowth Institute Fellow and regional weaver in the Afrikan Ecoversities network. She was part of the inaugural FRIDA Climate and Environmental Justice Fellowship researching and writing on the intersections of gender and climate justice in East Afrika, and her work is published on Open Global Rights, Decolonial Passage, Africa is a Country, Transition Network among others. She has an MSc in African Studies with Environment where her dissertation titled African theory for African environments: an ontologically informed articulation of regenerative African presents and futures explored defining regeneration from indigenous Afrikan lifeways. Her BA is in Environmental Studies/Urban Studies. Born and based in Ongata Rongai, East Afrika you might find Wangũi reading, laughing, drinking tea or dancing (maybe all at once).
Phoebe Tickell
Guest teacher (in person)
Phoebe Tickell is a biologist, imagination activist and founder of Moral Imaginations – an organisation driving a cultural mindset shift in society. They are doing this by building kinship with humans and non-humans, past, present and future through the medium of imagination – embodied play, practice and visioning. By fostering connection to nature, future generations and ancestors through leadership and governance practices, Moral Imaginations is helping drive a larger paradigm shift in organisations, institutions and government, to place life back at the heart of society. Moral Imaginations has now worked with over 50 organisations and trained 1000 people in their methodology which brings the voice of nature and future generations into decision making, for example through the Interspecies Council and Future Generations Lab. Most recently, they have worked with IKEA and Camden Council to train co-workers and council officers in the skills of moral imagination and this cultural mindset shift. Phoebe works across multiple societal contexts and has advised government, the education, technology and food and farming sectors, and holds a first-class degree from Cambridge University. She is a Scientific Advisor to the Inner Development Goals, and an Edmund Hillary Fellow.
Justine Huxley
Lead Facilitator (in person)
Justine is the Co-Founder Kincentric Leadership. The project holds a vision for a future in which everyone knows we are part of a living intelligent Earth. Kincentric Leadership convenes a global community of practice stretching from Hawaii to Japan and includes people from many fields who are co-researchers into the question: what will leadership look like, if we act from within the wider web of life? Justine was part of the team at St Ethelburga's Centre for over 18 years, and is also a Trustee for the Kalliopeia Foundation. She has a PhD in psychology and her first job involved working with camels, horses, pigs and a very characterful goat on a small Danish island. Author of 'Generation Y, Spirituality & Social Change', she is publishing a second book later this year on facilitating interspecies community. Justine belongs to a Sufi tradition which over the last two decades, has embedded its teachings within a framework of spiritual and ecological renewal. She has led meditation and dreamwork groups for many years. Justine has a particular interest in how human beings can learn to wayfind through the polycrisis, uncovering a deeper relationship with instinct and making decisions in relationship with the wider web of life.
"At the heart of that ancient primordial relationship that existed, there was love. Not the Hallmark variety of love, not even the human variety of love,
but a much vaster, more ancient, and simpler form of love.A covenant of love between the human and the living Earth."
Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee (Founder of Emergence Magazine)
Financials
The programme costs are as follows:
Standard price £285
Low income price £225
There are also a limited number of bursary places at a reduced cost.
There is also one further reduced cost place in exchange for help setting up and clearing away (about an hour of work).
If you're interested in the bursary or volunteer places please complete the expression of interest form and also email justine@kincentricleadership.org
"Our task must be to free ourselves... by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty."
Albert Einstein