The Work That Reconnects: Collective Practices for Facing a World in Crisis
“The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe.”
― Joanna Macy
Are you carrying grief, rage, anxiety and numbness about the climate crisis and state of the world? Join us during the first Barcelona Climate Week for this workshop that will offer a structured space to feel and move through your embodied emotional experience with other values-aligned people.
Developed by eco-activist Joanna Macy, The Work That Reconnects is a set of experiential collective practices rooted in Active Hope: the understanding that we can't guarantee a positive outcome, but we can still choose to show up and act. Rather than falling into passive optimism or fatalistic doomism, it's a grounded, embodied way of facing collapse, injustice, and uncertainty without turning away or giving up.
Over three hours, we'll move together through four movements of a spiral:
Gratitude: Grounding ourselves in what's still here, still beautiful, still worth protecting.
Honoring Our Pain: Making space for grief, rage, and heartbreak about what's happening to our communities and our world. Not to dwell there, but to move through the numbing that keeps us stuck.
Seeing with New & Ancient Eyes: Traveling across past, present, and future to reconnect with ancestral wisdom and imagine what's still possible, even amid crisis.
Going Forth: Clarifying what's yours to do, and preparing to carry it forward with the support of community.
This work is for activists, organizers, changemakers and anyone feeling the weight of the "great unraveling" — climate collapse, political violence, systemic injustice — who wants a way to metabolize that weight into sustainable, connected action rather than burnout or despair.
No prior experience needed. Come ready to be present in your body, in community, and in the questions that matter most right now.
The workshop instructions will be in English but we can create Spanish-speaking spaces for partnered and small group sharing exercises (as well as any other additional languages participants would like to share in, we just need a minimum of 3 persons / language).
Facilitated by Parker Bowling, LCSW
Parker is a climate-aware psychotherapist and facilitator who works at the intersection of mental health, engaged spirituality and climate justice. He specializes in supporting the mental health and well-being of people and organizations working in intersectional movements for change. You can read more about his work at parkerbowling.com.
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