Emotional Grounding in Times of Eco-Anxiety & Ecological Grief
You Care Deeply. But What Happens When Caring Starts to Exhaust You?
Maybe climate news leaves you tense, overwhelmed, or helpless.
Maybe your work keeps you close to environmental change, and you feel the pressure to keep responding even when your body is telling you that you are depleted.
Or maybe you care deeply about what is happening and still find yourself wondering:
How do I stay engaged without becoming overwhelmed, numb, or feeling responsible for everything?
Eco-anxiety and ecological grief can show up as fear, urgency, anger, exhaustion, helplessness, disconnection, or difficulty knowing what meaningful action looks like anymore.
This interactive virtual workshop offers space to work with these experiences differently—not by asking you to care less, but by strengthening your capacity to remain emotionally grounded and connected to what matters.
An Embodied Approach to Climate Distress
Drawing from ecopsychology, somatic awareness, Andean relational philosophy, and Lorena Saavedra Smith’s Re-Planting Process, we will explore how climate distress is experienced not only through our thoughts and emotions, but through the body.
Through guided embodied practices and reflection, you will learn to notice patterns of activation, urgency, fatigue, or numbness and listen more closely to the wisdom of the body as a source of information about your capacity, limits, and choices.
From there, we widen the lens beyond the individual.
What changes when we understand ourselves as being in relationship with community, place, and the living world rather than carrying the climate crisis alone?
We will explore reciprocity, shared responsibility, and right relationship as alternatives to urgency and over-responsibility—and consider how they can support a more sustainable way of participating in climate action.
This is not about eliminating eco-anxiety or convincing yourself that everything is fine.
It is about developing greater emotional autonomy and learning how to remain present to a changing world without abandoning yourself in the process.
You’ll Leave With
A clearer understanding of how eco-anxiety and ecological grief may be showing up emotionally and physically.
An embodied grounding practice you can return to when climate distress feels overwhelming.
Greater awareness of your own capacity, limits, and choices.
A way to distinguish meaningful responsibility from urgency and over-responsibility.
A deeper understanding of reciprocity and your relationship with the living world.
One realistic, values-aligned way to stay engaged that you can actually sustain.
Is This for Me?
This experience may be especially relevant if you:
care deeply about climate and environmental issues but sometimes feel overwhelmed by them;
work in climate, conservation, sustainability, advocacy, education, policy, or community work;
support others through wellness, mindfulness, somatic, therapeutic, or educational work;
experience grief, anger, exhaustion, helplessness, or urgency related to ecological change;
want to remain engaged without making burnout the price of caring.
No previous experience with somatic practices, ecopsychology, or Andean philosophy is needed.
Your Facilitator
Lorena Saavedra Smith is an ecopsychologist, integrative therapist, speaker, and author of Awaken Your Roots. Her work brings ecopsychology, contemporary psychological research, somatic awareness, and Andean relational philosophy into dialogue to explore how people relate to themselves, one another, and the living world.
For more than two decades, she has facilitated embodied and nature-based learning experiences with individuals, organizations, educators, and communities. Her work has included programs and presentations with Nature Forward, the Kennedy Center, the California Institute of Integral Studies, Insight Meditation Community of Washington, universities, nonprofits, and professional conferences.
Her work invites people beyond individualistic approaches to well-being and toward greater self-trust, reciprocity, relationship, and sustainable participation.
A Note About the Workshop
This is an educational and experiential workshop and is not psychotherapy or a substitute for individualized mental-health care.
Scholarships are available. If cost would prevent you from participating, please reach out.
By registering for this event, you agree to share your registration information with the organizers of San Diego Climate Week and our event platform partner, Climatebase. Your information will not be shared with third parties.