Climate Anxiety to Action Pop-up

Context

At the root of the climate crisis is trauma we carry in our relationship to the planet, each other, and ourselves. This trauma, unprocessed and often ignored, limits our ability to transform the oppressive systems that birth that trauma. Many religions and Indigenous communities teach that we are inherently connected to all beings. Thus, as Grace Lee Boggs put it, “Transform yourself to transform the world.”

Approach

In this pop-up workshop, we created a container for personal healing and empower ourselves and each other to create transformative and resilient ways of being. We used movement, breathing-meditation, and written reflection to clear the internal chaos of fear and anxiety in our minds and come into our bodies. Calling our attention to the feeling of breath moving through our body, and the sensations we feel as we move—this is embodied awareness that we use to cultivate deeper self-awareness, build connection to and trust in our intuition, and our interconnectedness to the world. We then created prototypes of a resilient futures that we invited participants to test and iterate on as a community of practice seeking to transform ourselves and transform the world.