In a classic Family Constellation, stuck, unproductive patterns are investigated as entanglements with past, often ancestral, trauma. In the typical constellation that I facilitate, for example, there's a movement through time that begins in the present, moves back into the past, and with the healing movement, returns to the present with a new orientation towards the… Continue reading Entangled with the Future?
"The idea is to pay attention to the living world as if it were a spider’s web: when you touch one part, the whole web responds."- Robin Wall Kimmerer, Interviewed by The Sun Magazine While many of us understand intellectually that we are, of course, part of an interconnected web, the dominant approach to teaching… Continue reading The Third Key: Systems Thinking
As a former biology teacher, I understand that life is an "interconnected web." Why, I taught my students about the food chain and the water cycle and the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Of course, I understood even at the time that these were simplistic and incomplete models. What I didn't recognize was that I was… Continue reading The promise – and problem – of systems thinking.
Conventional thinking is analytical. It focuses on characterizing, categorizing and differentiating individuals and groups. Image @bortwein https://www.flickr.com/photos/bortwein/5859773147/ It is an efficient way to got a lot of information about many things, and it is the mainstay of western education. Analytical thinking is at its best when accompanied by direct experience. We integrate the knowledge we gain into our… Continue reading Is our educational system teaching us to objectify the world?
Expanded Knowing 