What Now? is a two-day workshop, adapted from our 8-week programme of the same name.

Price: The workshop is offered at £145 (GBP). However, scholarship/discounted spaces are always an option, so please email me to enquire.

Facilitators: Gwyneth Jones (me) and Shayontoni Ghosh
Register: Sign up here or email me

About the workshop:

After realising just how bad things are in terms of the climate crisis, you might find yourself anxious, terrified, wondering what on earth you’re going to do. Or you feel despondent, hopeless, wondering why you should even bother getting out of bed. You might be furious, brimming with anger, wanting to shake people and scream “wake up!!”. Or you’re numb, strangely calm, but unsure of how you’re going to figure out your life in light of the knowledge that society as we know it might be on the verge of collapse.

 This two-day intensive is a deep dive into realignment, resilience, and radical love for those left wondering “what now??” as they stare into an unknown future.

What Now? follows the spiral of Joanna Macy’s Work that Reconnects, a powerful body of work that helps activists and concerned citizens alike to move through the overwhelming barrage of emotions they feel around the global predicament and to reawaken their inner resilience, wisdom, and sense of interconnection with all of life. Over two days, you will join a group of like-minded souls who are wondering how to navigate the complexities and uncertainties of being a human in the 21st century.

During this workshop, we will:

* Take a realistic look at where we are, the problems we’re facing, the root causes and what we can honestly expect from the next few years and what kind of deep, systemic changes are really required if we are to change our relationship with the planet to one of collaboration, not extraction;

*Learn powerful coping mechanisms to deal with overwhelming emotions, including ways to increase our emotional resilience and intelligence and to stretch our “windows of tolerance”;

*Uncover, explore and honour the feelings we normally try to push aside, and discover the power of tapping into your sacred anger and of group grief rituals;

*Step beyond our human-centric view of the world and explore nature’s intelligence and regenerative powers, considering what is possible if we help nature to heal herself;

*Explore why “apocalypse” is not the final story and look into projects that are taking place all over the world towards regeneration and deep adaptation (while learning to separate the effective from the greenwashing);

*Discover the strong, resilient and wise spirit inside you through powerful, imaginative exercises that connect you to your intuition, as well as to our ancestors, future generations, and the non-human world;

*Look at the skills, resources and connections we will need in order to survive the coming decades and to contribute meaningfully towards creating “the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible”;

*Reconnect to our sacred mission and look at how to realign our paths forward to fit with what we now know.

About Us:

We - Shayontoni (India) and Gwyneth (Wales) - have been offering Work that Reconnects spaces in the online world for the last 18 months, where we help people reconnect with themselves, the human world, and all of life (the earth, nature, the universe).

We are inspired by Deep Ecology, Ecopsychology, emotional intelligence work, Charles Eisenstein, earth-based spirituality and indigenous wisdom, nature connection, environmental justice, the Work that Reconnects, decolonisation work, as well as the more ‘pragmatic’ areas of regenerative agriculture, mycology, soil science, deep adaptation, and community resilience (e.g. the work of the Post-Carbon Institute) – and many other things. Collectively, we bring experience in healing circles, sharing spaces, drama therapy, emotional intelligence, coaching, and a lifetime of Indian and Celtic wisdom.

What we offer you during this workshop is, of course, only a slice of what we have been learning personally on our journeys over the past few years, which we have tried to condense into a comprehensive starting point. After joining us, we will recommend many things from others that we admire, and we encourage you to keep searching if this does not feel right. Also, we cannot claim that after just 2 days you will have ‘cured’ your climate anxiety. Eco-anxiety exists for a reason; it tells us that our home is in danger. It alerts us to a very real and present threat – to try to make it go away so that we can continue on with Business as Usual would be a disservice to ourselves and to all life on earth.

“It is no measure of health to be adjusted to a profoundly sick society” – Jiddu Krishnamurti.

But while we can’t offer you salvation from your pain, we can offer you community, collaboration, support, powerful tools, and we can help you process your feelings so that you can figure out what  you’re going to do next. Many people try to leap straight from learning about the climate crisis into action, without making space for their grief and rage, without thinking through what they are going to do, allowing their hijacked brain, in its fight-flight-freeze mode, to run the show. The result of this is activist burnout, poorly planned initiatives that do more harm than good, and an unhealthy projection of our inner pain onto whatever cause we are focusing on.

Although we are running out of time, we must also do things carefully, wisely, and with our full attention. This world full of rushed, sloppy, multitasking, glorifying-busyness, half-baked ideas and lazy thinking is partly what got us into this mess to begin with.

As Bayo Akomolafe says: “The Times are Urgent : Let’s Slow down”. By giving ourselves time to be with our feelings and thoughts we can make sure we are responding to the climate crisis from a place of groundedness and wisdom, rather than from a place of panic.

Do you feel called to join us? Register here or email me!
Would you prefer to join us for 8 weeks, meeting every Wednesday evening? Click here

Read more about the Work that Reconnects

Read my blog post Crying With Strangers : The Power of Expressing Emotions in a Group

Read my blog post Feeling Overwhelmed by What’s Happening in the World? Here’s Why You’re Not Broken or Weak

Read my article at SheSapiens: Eco-anxiety: How to emotionally process climate collapse