Nature's Playbook
How might we invite nature into our everyday conversations?
It’s not a common practice to bring the wisdom of the living world into our conversations. Yet it was commonplace for our ancestors.
I’m curious about how we might address that imbalance, and I’m running some conversational experiments designed to help us think with nature, rather than just about nature.
The question I’m really exploring is: what kind of conversations could help us come back into harmony with the patterns and processes that have guided life on earth for billions of years?
What will we do together?
In these online conversational experiments we’ll invite nature to be a partner and guide in our conversations.
These sessions are about stepping into the messy unknown. They won’t be ordered and tidy. That’s OK because we’ll need playfulness, and permission to explore to make imaginative leaps without the pressure of having to get it ‘right’.
In one session we might explore the way elephants relate to each other and their environment, and see how that inspires different ways of working in teams, or passing on leadership across generations.
Another week we might look at the challenges we are facing in our lives and work, and then see how they appear through the perspective of a fox, a meadow, Mother Nature, or a crab’s different claws.
As well as these kinds of creative and embodied approaches, we’ll also make space for sharing personal stories, silence, deeper listening, and dialogue that doesn’t shy away from our grief for what’s happening to life on earth.
Conversations with nature
The philosopher Edgar Morin said that separation from ourselves, each other and the living world is at the root of the polycrisis in economies, biodiversity loss, climate breakdown, culture, and more.
So if we’ve collectively we’ve fallen out of the conversation with life – how do we bring it back?
How can we bring closeness to nature back into our everyday conversations in teams, families, communities and organisations?
How might living systems become a guide and partner in those conversations?
And might they lead us towards a greater sense of belonging – rather than separation?
I want to explore these questions through playful conversational experiments – so we don’t hold back because we aren’t experts in biology or complexity, or frankly because we have no idea how to do this.
To give you some sense of what these experiments could look like, here are some initial ideas:
Everyday Biomimicry – I’ve been using biomimicry (the conscious emulation of life’s genius) for years, and I want to open it up with more creative and embodied approaches for tapping into cycles, reciprocity, feedback loops, edges, and emergence.
Annual review with Mother Nature – what would it be like to explore the year you’ve just had with Gaia? What feelings would arise and how might they be met? Would the topics be your integrity, direction and growth – or something else?
Nonhuman perspectives – I’m deeply inspired by Ruth Catlow’s approaches to interspecies dialogue, and Joanna Macy’s ‘Council of All Beings’. I want to explore ways of entering into creative dialogue taking the perspective of animals, plants, rivers, mountains, and the elements to see what we can learn about who we are, who we could become, and how we relate to the world.
Playback theatre – As an improvisational theatre luvvie and nerd, I’ve found a Playback Theatre ensemble who can do an online performance – allowing us to share personal stories of connection, grief and loss – and to see them played back in the creative mirror of drama.
Nature connection – I wonder if we can hold a Teams/Zoom call where every person is in a different wood, or stationed on the edges of the same meadow while taking part in an unhurried conversation or story circle? How would this affect the conversation?
Booking & details
Who is it for?
These online conversational experiments are for anyone who is interested to see how story, imagination and play may be able to help make nature a normal partner in our conversations – and whether that offers a way to navigate complexity.
The more diverse the group the better, so you might be a cook, a cleaner, a chief exec, a crab, a creative, or a conservationist.
OK, so you’re probably not a crab.
What will you get from it?
I hope you’ll leave feeling refreshed and renewed (regenerated, even?) and that you’ll get new ways of looking at problems, opportunities and decisions in your work (and life) that might flow back into your everyday conversations.
How this helps
You’ll be helping me develop some conversational methods before I offer them to teams and groups in my work facilitating social and environmental change.
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Conversational Experiment #1
Annual Review with Mother Nature
What it would be like to have an annual review with Mother Nature? or perhaps a board meeting? It raises some questions…
• What would she ask?
• How would she ask it?
• Would she say anything at all?
• Would it feel nurturing… or confronting?
• Is Mother Nature an idea or something more?
• How would you feel afterwards?
• What might change?
We’ll explore this idea in an unhurried way— exploring the idea together, figuring out a few small experiments, and then giving them a go to see what happens.
I’m aware that the language of ‘us’, ‘nature’ and ‘Mother Nature’ evokes strong feelings. Maybe that’s a fruitful place to start a conversation.
The session lasts 75 minutes and is designed for up to six people. It’s free, but please treat it like a paid event. If you can no longer attend, just let me know so someone else can take your place.
It’s running on:
– Thursday 6 August – 6pm BST (75 mins) Book here
– Wednesday 19 August – 5pm BST (75 mins) Book here
If this appeals, I’d love to explore it with you.
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"We must learn to think as nature does."
A playful approach
There are many ways of connecting and reconnecting with the living world – this is just one of them.
The intention here is to play at the edge of our culture to live our way into new answers. It feels edgy to invite nature into our conversations – and to participate fro different perspectives – so here’s Joanna Macy making the case for playfulness:
“Perhaps play is more important than ever. Play can free us from taking ourselves too seriously – excessive seriousness is blinding.
“Play can blow up taking yourself, your views, your dignity, and your power too seriously. If we’re familiar with our grief, and trust our grief, then we don’t need to walk around in sackcloth and ashes and sobbing.
“Grief is natural, and so is laughter, and we can trust our own nature. We can trust life.”
