reflective practice – Embody Peacebuilding

On Efficiency, Intentionality, and Care

In recent weeks, I’ve found myself in recurrent conversation and reflection about time, pacing, relationality, and flow. These threads have been weaving in reflexive navigation of collaborations and convenings alongside colleagues, friends, organizations, and processes. In these different spaces of encounter and exchange, I have noticed moments of profound resonance as well as deep dissonance that seem somehow tethered to time:

Moments when time feels like a soft companion, and others where time feels like a burden, a foe, or both.
Moments when process seems to circle and circle, conversations belabored and heavy as collectives strive for clarity yet only feel to deepen into complexity.
Moments when time boundaries have been breached – extending beyond a committed end point, sometimes by a little, sometimes by far more than feels honoring to the people and to the process.
Moments when collaboration flows nearly seamlessly, where time feels to suspend as conversation becomes a container for craft and creation.

Across these experiences, among many others, the center point of polarity presents as time. Yet, time is not itself the issue. Time is relative – our relationship to it shaped significantly by culture and context.

The deeper invitation these experiences may hold is toward an attentiveness to pacing, which I understand to be our relationship to movement with and through time. In conversation with a dear friend about the processes of one community with which I am involved, he gave voice to a couplet to which I’ve been consistently returning: pace of care and pace of purpose.

Pace of care suggests moving in a way that attends to relationship. It holds the spaciousness to give voice and listen deeply to individual and collective needs, to name experiences of challenge, to process through conflictual dynamics, to celebrate and dignify one another.

Pace of purpose suggests moving in a way that attends to vision. It holds the encouragement to move with generative momentum in the process of creation, to be accountable to commitments, to hold the flexibility to follow emergence while remaining anchored in intention.

How do we move both at the pace of care and at the purpose?

Holding these pacings not as distinct tides, but rather mutually constitutive flows that humanize and give dignity to process, the inquiry might be reframed: How do we move at the pace of intention?

Inhabiting this inquiry has opened a curiosity around notions of efficiency. When this word initially emerged in my reflections, I noticed a resistance. I am wary of how pernicious capitalist impulses of productivity and urgency so powerfully shape relationships to time for so many of us. How efficiency is frequently framed in service of minimizing cost and maximizing profit, too often at the expense of people and the more than human world.

Holding this resistance, my curiosity persisted, curling around contesting embodied experiences: The ease and flow when creative and collaborative processes moved efficiently, and the heaviness and burden when such processes moved at a pace that felt neither caring nor purposeful. The contrast of these experiences illuminated the synergy that expresses itself in the presence of alignment. This felt sense of flow was expressed when there was an alignment of values, purpose, and process, and enhanced when these dimensions were clearly named for collective visibility and accountability.

It is of note that this frame of efficiency does not correlate to speed or even a singular pace. There will be times where we move fast, where we move slow, and even when we pause, because that is what is needed and generative in the moment. This approach to efficiency thus has less to do with a calculus of time, and much more to do with the practices that enable us to move individually and collectively at the pace of intention.

Efficiency (n.): A quality of pacing in creative and collaborative endeavors emergent from remaining in integrity with intention, made possible through alignment of values, purpose, and process.

I am noticing, learning from, and seeking to embody various individual and relational practices to nurture the capacity to move with efficiency at the pace of intention. Here is an incomplete and growing list of such practices that I share with humility and curiosity about what your practices may be:

Ensure collective visibility and consent to the intention of a given conversation or process.
Be intentional about the process through which a conversation or collaboration unfolds. For example, ask the questions: How do we want to have this conversation? How do we want to approach this piece of work? What is the sequence of steps or inquiries that best enables us to fulfill our intention?
Cultivate the capacity to notice and name when a process or conversation is deviating from purpose. In this naming, center choice: Is this a deviation from original purpose that feels generative and important, or is it something that can be held for future conversation?
Acknowledge when creative process or conversation feels cumbersome. If there is spaciousness to do so, pause so as not force process. Trust that the time will come where creativity and creation will flow effortlessly. (This practice must be held in relationship with the reality of timelines and delivery dates, which sometimes impel engagement despite unideal conditions.)
Attend to relationships with authenticity and care, always and all ways.

On Care: In Resistance and Refinement

To practice into care is to practice into paradox. Even as this practice embodies a remembrance of our inherent interconnection, so too does it elicit a confrontation with our edges. And in these murky spaces between connection and boundary, I find myself wading in inquiry. The questions are many, however two are feeling particularly sticky for me this week:

How do we navigate encounters with resistance to care we may extend?

How do we grapple with the ways in which our care is imperfect?

These questions feel alive as I reflect on my experiences of both receiving and giving care in contexts that were anything but clear. I am writing this piece not for clarity on answers, but rather to better understand the contours of questions we will inevitably encounter in our relational lives.

As a teenager and into my early twenties, I experienced multiple hospitalizations and endured various forms of intensive treatment for an eating disorder. At different times I experienced a constellation of hospital stays, weekly health clinic visits, intensive outpatient programs, a residential program, and regular sessions with multiple therapists. The intensity varied, however for several years, some level of treatment formed a constant in my life. There were times in which I acknowledged the need for these interventions. I could understand the risk to my health and the risk to my life that my eating disorder created (even if at times I felt ambiguous about the consequences of these risks). There were also times – when the eating disorder was strongest and thus when the level of treatment was highest – that I resisted the care that my parents and health providers were imposing.

In these moments, what I felt was anything but care. What I felt was an attack on my agency. Their perception was that my voice and choices were distorted by the eating disorder. In return, I felt that whatever I would express in terms of my physical or emotional needs was dismissed – at times partially and at times fully.

The severity of this experience varied according to the type of treatment I was receiving. I am deeply grateful to have worked with amazing therapists, a brilliant nutritionist, and to have had (and continue to receive) invaluable compassionate accompaniment from my mother. In contrast, I also experienced treatment protocols whereby I felt completely silenced – perceived and treated as a broken, self-destructive object that needed fixing.

In these extensions of care, which ranged from fierce compassion to dictatorial, there were many times I struggled and resisted. In this resistance, there was a significant difference in how I felt care and pushed through the resistance my eating disorder put forward. This difference was the felt sense of love, compassion, and humanization in how care was extended.

There were moments my resistance was met with harshness and berating. My attempts to express the raging discomfort I felt in my body were discounted. My emotional experience, my agency, my personhood – all disregarded. This led to fights, fractured relationships, sometimes even attempts to run away.

There were moments where my resistance was met with patience and compassion, a recognition of the challenges I was experiencing and a holding firm to what would support my recovery. I felt seen and held, and often the conversations that unfolded from these instances bolstered the relational fabric of care and supported the progress of my recovery. In these moments, I truly felt care, even as I was pushed beyond what felt comfortable. In fact, it was this quality of care that enabled me to do so and thus enabled my recovery.

Part of my recovery journey has entailed a recognition for the ways in which my individual experience of an eating disorder is an expression of family, cultural, and structural dynamics of hurt, harm, and injustice. Carrying this lens, scaling from the individual and relational levels to the systemic, I am brought to a recognition that in the work of justice and liberation, there will be times in which our extension of care will not be perceived or received as such. Our work toward assuring collective wellbeing – which entails a confrontation with powerful and destructive individual and collective patterns, shaping, and systems that prevail in the world we live in – will be met with resistance. There are many ways in which we can meet this resistance in the name of building a more just and dignified world. Without any of these invalidating different strategies, I find myself wondering:

How can we notice when our extensions of care diminish or uplift the humanity of those we are caring for?
What possibilities for transformation unfold if we meet resistance with fierce compassion?
How do we nurture the patience and build the resource to accompany and create the conditions for resistance to transform over the long term?

During the first six months of the COVID pandemic, I moved to Paris to accompany my grandmother through the French confinements. A remarkably strong woman, up to that point she was living in her apartment alone. However, as a 99-year-old, who turned 100 one month into the pandemic, it was clear she needed additional support through the strict confinements that characterized the early COVID response in France.

In my mid-twenties at the time, I had no previous experience as a live in carer for someone in old age. But more than a carer, I was a grand-daughter who wanted to do her best to ensure the safety and wellbeing of her grandmother, to take care of her as best I could.

My grandmother was often in significant discomfort and pain. In an effort to ease her discomfort and to attend well to her needs, I took over many of the (by then diminished) tasks she would have previously done. Much of this was to do with meals. I would prepare her food, set the table, serve her, cleat the table, and do the dishes – all tasks she would have done before.

I thought this was helpful until one day she reflected something to the effect of, “Before you came, I knew where things were in the kitchen, and now I don’t remember. I used to be able to do certain things, and I can’t anymore.”

With all my good intentions to do as much as I could to care for my beloved grandmother, I ultimately diminished her agency. There are times I question the extent of the repercussions of this, how this might have contributed in certain ways to her decline. For when we cease to practice certain actions, we lose our capacity to do them. And for such an elderly person, this loss is permanent.

I wish I would have known better. Rather than do so many things for her, I wish I would have accompanied her with greater attention to providing assistance while creating conditions for her to continue moving and doing as she would have before. There were times we did this well. For example, we would prepare vegetables together to be cooked, or I would set pots and pans in place for her to be able to cook simple things without needing to lift and move objects that were heavy for her. There were many other times I defaulted to doing too much, motivated simultaneously by a desire to care fully for someone I love as well as a strong inherited tendency toward control.

It has been over two years since my grandmother passed away. I remain ever grateful for the many wonderful moments we shared during the time we lived together in the final years of her life – playing Scrabble, listening to her stories, sharing songs we loved, going for outings along the Seine (once the confinement restrictions eased). I also often experience doubt and regret for the ways in which my care was imperfect.

From this experience, I am trying learn and grow my care practice – not to strive for a perfect care, but to care in more helpful ways. Again, I wonder…

How can we extend care in a way that uplifts the agency and dignity of those for whom we are caring? For our care not to be of a quality of doing for, but of accompaniment?
How can we presence the patterns and shaping that contribute to the ways in which we care, some of which may be motivated by love and others that may be motivated by fear and control?
How can we approach and embody care with transparent reciprocity – to clarify needs of individuals and in relationship, and to revisit these needs for if and when they evolve?

Placing these two stories alongside one another, I am struck by the parallels. In the same way I received care through control in my mid-teens, years later, I replicated this pattern. This is a simplifying observation, as there were many counter-examples both to the care I received from my parents and to the care I extended to my grandmother. Regardless, the parallel is striking, and invites a deeper reflection into how the ways we practice care in the present are shaped by our previous experiences both giving and receiving care.

If we seek to co-create cultures of care in our relationships, our communities, or organizations, and ultimately our world, must be willing to grapple with the complexities and paradoxes that shape how we experience care individually and across scales of relationship. My wish and my hope is that this grappling can be done with curiosity and compassion; in service of deeper understanding of self, others, and the systems we inhabit; and in the company of caring community to accompany our growth and healing.

The inquiries and reflections in this piece are elicited by and drawn from my participation in the RISE for Relational Facilitators training from the Courage of Care Coalition. I extend deep thanks to Brooke D. Lavelle and Maha El-Sheikh for crafting and holding this beautiful space, and to my fellow training participants for their reflections and contributions to co-creating the experience.

On Relationships, Care, and Accompaniment

I’ve been in a space of noticing, noticing again, and noticing more. This noticing centers around a persistent dynamic that seems to be expressed in social change or social purpose-oriented organizations. The specific social change spheres I am moving in currently are those of peacebuilding, conflict transformation, and social healing and so these reflections will focus from my perspectives and experiences in these spaces.

What I am noticing is that many of these organizations that are oriented externally toward building peace and transforming conflict are themselves enmeshed in conflict. This used to create confusion in me. It felt incongruent. How come our efforts for peace are so embroiled in the dynamics that are the anthesis of that which we are pursuing?

Now I inhabit a different perspective. Nestled within this challenge is an opportunity: How can we pursue our missions of peace and justice in a way that is congruent with this very vision? This orients us toward process – to reckon honestly with how our processes of organizing replicate the dynamics we are seeking to transform, and to inquire into how we can organize in a way that embodies the change we are seeking to create.

This inquiry has guided me into the fractal of relationship. Relationships are the vehicle through which social healing and change unfold. They the terrain in which we can practice the embodiment of change. From my perspective and orientation to this work (a space of continuous learning, unlearning, and reflection), this invites a practice of relationship that is grounded in sincerity, authenticity, care, and love.

I am currently navigating unfolding encounters into the relational landscape of philanthropy. One expression of these encounters is that of the relationship between donors and partners. Drawing forth the threads of reflection shared above, I have found myself wondering about the role and responsibility of funders when partner organizations experience conflict or fracture. Far from answers or clarity, this has led me into an array of questions:

What is the quality of relationship between a donor and partner that enables a partner to share honestly about the challenges their organization is experiencing without fear of negative consequence?
What are the organizational and relational structures in place that enable conflict to be met with care?
How can opportunities be crafted or created to enter into conversational spaces that are conducive to honest, open sharing?
How can we expand notions of the resourcing funders provide beyond finances to more holistic forms of accompaniment?
Where is there room for mutual transparency – where funders and partners can share transparently challenges they have navigated or are navigating?
How can donor-partner relationships embody a quality of relationship across differentials of power and positionality that is reflective of the constellation of relationships we might seek to co-create in a world characterized by justice, dignity, and care?

In the relational landscape these questions ask into, I sit on the periphery and somehow maybe also in the middle. I am not of a funding organization, nor a partner organization, yet I am connected to both. I am listening, curious, unsure yet utterly convinced that our relationships across all scales of change are both the soil and the seeds from which transformation grows. In each encounter along our journeys of co-accompaniment, we are granted the opportunity and perhaps even imbued with the responsibility to till the soil, to tend the seeds that hold within them the change we seek. In my personal practice, drawing on the words of Grace Lee Boggs, this entails cultivating a “limitless capacity to love, serve, and create for and with each other.”

This cultivation is slow, circular, always ever incomplete. Perhaps because ‘completeness’ or ‘success’ is not the point. Rather, it is to be in the process. To be committed to try, try differently, and try again.

Practice is in the Return

There is a growing tide in the social change ecosystem that recognizes the role of self and collective care as necessary not only to support the sustainability of activists and social movements, but also to be in integrity with the vision and mission of the work. Such an approach to activism has been described in different ways in different contexts. A powerful current of this approach is that of healing justice. Cara Page and the Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective describe healing justice in the following way: “Healing justice…identifies how we can holistically respond to and intervene on generational trauma and violence, and to bring collective practices that can impact and transform the consequences of oppression on our bodies, hearts and minds.”¹ The cultivation of practices that support the transformation of trauma and violence and nurture healing at individual and collective levels is a crucial pathway toward sustaining activists and movements seeking peace and justice.

For individuals, organizations, and communities engaged in social change, a question thus arises as to how are such practices cultivated and sustained. In contexts filled with urgent and competing demands, and risks to personal and collective safety, accessing and prioritizing care practices is often perceived to be a distraction from the ‘real work.’ It is only through attending to our own care, healing, and wellbeing, however, that we can be sustainable and in integrity with our work toward the building of just and dignified futures.

To support the development and consistency of care practices, I wonder if it could be supportive to intentionally consider specific elements of practice. Beginning in January of this year, I began a journey through which I have been learning about the nature of practice in new ways. These learnings and reflections are by no means intended as a definitive claim about practice, rather they are insights that have emerged through my embodied experience and about which I am curious in how they can be applied to other realms of practice.

Over the course of last year, I followed my friend Julie’s journey from vertical to vertical, from standing on her feet to standing on her hands. The journey unfolded through 365 days of daily practice, slowly building the strength and developing the balance to hold a free-standing handstand. I was curious and inspired. It was a joy when the coach and guide, Damien Norris, extended an open invitation to participate in this journey by making the instructional videos available on YouTube.²

January of this year marked the beginning of my handstand journey. It also marked the beginning of what has proved to be fairly challenging year, one filled with seasons of grief, displacement, and isolation. Most of the year, I was able to easefully integrate the training into my daily routine. Some days and weeks, however, I have not been able to train due to travel, sickness, or other circumstances. In both the regularity and inconsistency of my training, I’ve become deeply curious about the nature of practice.

Practice holds inherent a repetitive quality, requiring a regularity of participation. In the case of the handstand journey, the invitation is extended into daily practice. Each day, there are particular movements to train, beginning with hollow body holds and slow progressing over time. And yet, the days and weeks in which I was unable to do the training, the practice did not disappear. The practice has been as much in my active participation in the training as it has been in my choice to return to it, be that each day or after a week away. The essence of practice has been not only in the training, but in the choice of return.

Fairly far along into the handstand journey, I am confronting a new obstacle in my practice. Having recently dislocated my elbow, I am unable to bear weight on my left arm. For the first couple of weeks after the injury, I drifted from the daily consistency of my practice, disappointed and unsure when I would be able to return. Eager to continue in the journey, but uncertain of how to do so in these new circumstances, I reached out to Damien, who graciously offered a variety of suggestions to adapt my training.

Returning to consistent training has felt amazing. Whereas my body feels challenged by some of the new movements, the felt sense of return to the practice, which has become a source of sustenance and stability through this year, has been one of comfort and a deep settling in my core. Although I continued to move and train in the days and weeks since the injury, I would not have been able to return to the specificity of handstand training so soon were it not for external accompaniment and support. The guidance and encouragement were essential in a circumstance where I was in doubt about my ability to remain active in the practice.

While I remain far from the ability to hold a free-standing handstand, as I find my way there, I am learning deeply about the nature and components of practice. At this moment, I am present to three key components that facilitate and comprise practice, namely, the physical act of training, the choice of consistent return, and accompaniment along the way. As I continue in this handstand journey, I am curious of what more I will learn.

Enacting and sustaining generative change, whether at the individual or collective level, requires shifting habits of being from those that perpetuate harm or dis-ease, to those that support healing and wellbeing. Such change involves the integration of new practices into our lives. This is much easier said than done. Emergent from an understanding of the nature and components practice – behavior, accountability, and accompaniment – we might invite ourselves into a set of inquiries that help to identify not only the activities and processes that can support us, but also the conditions and mechanisms of accountability necessary to make these practices sustainable. These inquiries may sound like:

For individuals

What are activities or experiences that support my wellbeing and bring me joy?
What conditions need to be in place for me to consistently and regularly participate in one or more of these activities?
Who can support me in to remain consistent in my practice?

For organizations

What rituals, policies, and processes can support the wellbeing of employees individually and the organization as a whole?
What conditions need to be in place to ensure these practices are regularly and consistently upheld?
Who within or outside the organization can support consistency of practice?

For communities

What activities, traditions, and rituals can support the wellbeing of our community?
What conditions need to be in place for these practices to be regularly accessed?
Who in our community can support consistency of practice?

As we seek to adopt new practices to nurture care and support transformation, perhaps any clarity emergent from such inquiries could support us, illuminating what will enable greater accountability to ourselves and each other as we strive to embody and bring forward greater peace in ourselves and justice in the world.

accountability

consistency’s key

practice is in the return

each day, try again

¹ To learn more about the work of the Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective, you can check out their website, http://kindredsouthernhjcollective.org/.

² If you’d like to start your own journey to handstand, you can find Damien’s guidance through all 365 days available here.

On Peacebuilding and Sandcastles

As a practice, I find curiosity about language to be very helpful, opening new pathways of understanding and orienting to what might often be unseen or unheard in the words we use. Sometimes this practice takes form through an exploration of etymologies, tracing the roots of words, the journey these collections of letters and syllables have taken through time. Sometimes this practice takes form through an exploration of metaphor, a consideration of the imagery that words evoke. I am fascinated by the possibilities that language holds to reinforce dominant narratives and paradigms, and conversely to reimagine and redefine wor[l]ds.

Through my engagement in peacebuilding, I have increasingly found myself caught up by the very term that defines the field. In many ways it is helpful, emphasizing the action of construction – building relationships across all levels and in all sectors of society that facilitate greater peace in both the absence of direct violence (negative peace) and the presence of attitudes, institutions, and structures that uphold and sustain a just and peaceful society (positive peace).

And yet in the dominant metaphors that arise in relationship to the term ‘building,’ I take pause. I have heard peacebuilding imagined as ‘building the house of peace.’ Perhaps it is a limitation of my imagination, or my cultural influences that impose a linear and regulated process of such a construction. There are aspects of this process that are immensely relevant and arguably necessary for peacebuilding, including: attentiveness to preparation, establishing a strong foundation, developing proper scaffolding, including ‘weather proofing’ elements to support the sustainability of the structure, and balancing the distribution of energy patterns.¹

At the same time, in my exposure to construction (at least from my cultural context), there are also aspects that are present in the field of peacebuilding that are less helpful, potentially detrimental. For example, the imposition of unrealistic timelines that may or may not account for delays in the accessibility or availability of certain resources or changes in context that create such delays, the expectation that the final structure will perfectly match the blueprint, the time bound nature and externalization of the task of construction.

Acknowledging both the possibilities and limitations of this metaphor, I became curious of how different imagery could offer new layers of understanding and orientations to practice.² In particular, what is offered if peacebuilding is imagined akin to building a sandcastle?

Shores, Tides, and Time

While sandcastles can be built anywhere both sand and water are accessible, they are often built at the edge of a body of water. They are situated in the in-between space, the liminal place of encounter between land and water. In this space, waves lap the shore, tides ebb and flow, water saturates the sand. It is a place where binaries are obsolete – there is no static or concrete delineation of where the land ends and the water begins.

Where peacebuilding takes form, while social, political, and cultural divisions may characterize the dominant landscape (just as from afar one might say, there is the land and there is the water), the historical and lived realities are infinitely ambiguous and complex. And in fact, it is through the embrace of this ambiguity, the transcendence of binaries, that peacebuilding is possible.

The water’s edge is characterized by a constant ebb and flow of waves and tides, which move in cycles. Waves crash and retreat much faster, in the course of seconds, whereas tides rise and fall over the course of a lunar day. In some moments, waves crash with immense power and in other moments waves lap gently against the shore. In this context, the placement of a sandcastle is vital as these cycles pose differing levels of risk for its destruction.

This movement and risk parallel the rhythms of cycles of violence as they threaten efforts to build peace. In acute, hot conflict, sometimes direct violence rages and other times there is a semblance of pause, though the risk remains ever-present. On a longer timeline, conflicts ebb and flow generationally, in constant transformation over time. Thus, efforts to craft peace are constantly confronted with the presence and possibility of violence. In this context, an important question that emerges is: How do we cultivate and practice discernment in the planning and strategy of peacebuilding that holds in awareness the rhythms and predictabilities of cycles of violence?

Bridging Grains

Building sandcastles is possible as a result of surface tension – the force of attraction between water molecules. In the mix of sand and water, water molecules forms liquid ‘bridges’ between the grains of sand.³ These liquid bridges enable the structure to take form. It is important to have the right balance of water and sand, otherwise the structure will not hold. This balance may need to be actively supported, adding more water as the sand dries out. Further, to maximize the strength of the liquid bridges that hold the structure each grain must be coated with water.⁴ Within these dynamics, there are a number of key insights for peacebuilding practice.

The role of bridging and the centrality of relationship are immensely important aspects of peacebuilding. Durable change happens slowly, over time, and through the cultivation of relationships that traverse social, political, economic, and religious divides. Structural and societal transformation cannot take place without the existence of bridges embodied in people and processes at the granular level.

In a shift from the theory of ripeness in processes of change – the idea that change unfolds only when the circumstances or conflict has matured sufficiently – John Paul Lederach has suggested a theory of rightness. When the right people come together at the right place at the right time, new possibilities can emerge. This is encapsulated through Lederach’s metaphor of the critical yeast. Adding to the role of a critical mass in bringing about large-scale social change, Lederach notes that it is not only in the quantity of people involved, but “rather in creating the quality of the platform that makes exponential growth strong and possible, and then in finding ways to sustain that platform.”⁵ Transformation is thus facilitated through bringing together the right balance of elements (people, context, timing, etc.), and sustaining those elements over time.

Lastly, for peacebuilding efforts to be relevant and sustainable, they must be as participatory and accessible as possible. While reaching each person in society may not be realistic, the effectiveness and strength of change efforts is bolstered when more people in society feel they have voice and agency relative to their own lives and the future of their community.

Containers, Relationships, and Systems

Sandcastles are built by virtue of containers. Pails, hands, shovels, or shells are filled with wet sand. The sand, bound by liquid bridges, takes the shape of the container it fills. Then the sand is deposited onto the growing structure. It is through the fitting and scaffolding of these differently or perhaps similarly molded constellations of sand together that the sandcastle is formed. To ensure there is not excess water mixed with the sand, it is helpful for the containers to be permeable, with holes at the bottom to let excess water drain out. If approached strategically, the drained water can serve to dampen the next patch of sand that will be shaped.

In Lederach and Lederach’s exploration of sonic metaphors for reconciliation and social healing, they consider the metaphor of a container in particular reference to that of a Tibetan singing bowl. They suggest “social healing and reconciliation emerge in and around the container that holds collective processes, inclusive of but significantly more than the individual’s particular journey.”⁶ From a systemic perspective, it is helpful to consider peacebuilding and social change as it emerges from a constellation of containers. For example, there may be collective processes focusing on humanitarian response, another on access to education, another on legal advocacy, and another on trauma healing, just to name a few. Peace and justice are best created and pursued through the harmonizing of these approaches so that they can be mutually supportive.

In this orientation toward mutual support, it is important to acknowledge the unique contributions a given approach to social change offers and at the same to notice and nurture the ways in which these approaches are connected. This relationship may be one of sequentiality, whereby certain conditions must be obtained for other efforts to be undertaken. This relationship may also be one of simultaneity, whereby different efforts toward change are supported alongside one another. Remembering and attending to these dynamics of relationship is critical to systemic change, inviting a strategic approach to how given efforts can prepare conditions for future change and how concurrent processes are themselves permeable, each impacting the other.

Temporality and Sustainability

While sandcastles may often be associated with temporality – washed away by the waves and the wind – this dissolution primarily occurs because they cease to be tended. Without the addition of water to reinforce the bridges between grains of sand, these bridges may dry and disappear. When wind blows or a large wave comes, without a consistent presence to attend to and repair the impact, the damage risks compromising the entire structure. Sometimes the forces are too strong and the sandcastle in its existing form is destroyed. However, all of the elements remain to build anew, integrating the experience and learnings from the previous iteration to construct a stronger and more sustainable structure.

Peacebuilding endeavors occur in volatile and unpredictable contexts whereby threats to process are ever-present. The momentum of multiple currents of violence is powerful and strong, posing risk to the durability of such efforts. While funding and programmatic cycles are often short term with a focus on immediate impact, it is important to consider the long-term sustainability of peace. How are peacebuilding efforts sustained? By who? And how are those who are active in sustaining the peace themselves supported for this life long and generational practice?

At times, peacebuilding efforts may crumble, however that does not make the efforts futile. To begin again, despite the difficulty and despite the risks, is an embodiment of active hope, a commitment to the conviction that a different way of being together is possible. With each new beginning, different possibilities may be opened as learnings from previous experience are integrated and the craft of building peace is refined.

Dig Deep, Not Wide

There are multiple ways in which to prepare sand and water to build a sandcastle. It is possible to move back and forth, into and out of the water to collect water to dampen the sand. It is also possible to dig a self-replenishing water hole. The key in this approach is to dig deep to reach the water laden sand below. With the intention and motion of digging deep, inevitable the hole will widen.

Focusing here on both the preparation and sustenance of practice and the practitioner, there are two key considerations that arise from this image of valuing depth over breadth. Firstly, for practice, how is peacebuilding approached in such a way that the envisioned change is deep enough to be self-sustaining, rather than fleeting and surface level? Further, how are the place-based resources to create and sustain transformation accessed and uplifted, rather than relying on external sources? Secondly, for practitioners, how are we, as people involved in peacebuilding, supported to dig into our own depths to access our own sources of nourishment and replenishment?

Pause in the Messiness

Building sandcastles is messy. Immersed in the elements, it is inevitable that one becomes covered in wet sand and is hit by a wave or more in the process. Sometimes it is necessary to pause, brush or rinse oneself off as the discomfort of the sand may impact not only the process of building the sandcastle, but also the experience of it.

For peacebuilding practitioners, both people working in their home context and people engaged internationally, the context and nature of the field cannot but adhere and begin to impact at the level of practice and individual wellbeing. This may manifest as direct or vicarious experiences of trauma, burnout, or compassion fatigue, as just a few of many possible experiences of dis-ease common amongst practitioners. To the extent possible, it is important to integrate opportunities for pause, reflection, and respite – to take distance from the intensity of the work so as to be able to return and continue with greater clarity and resourcing.

Embrace Slow Work

Building sandcastles requires a slow approach. It may take time to come to the right balance of water and sand to best support the integrity of the bonds between the grains and thus the strength of the structure. Once containers are filled with damp sand, they must be placed and lifted away with care. Moving too quickly the molded sand risks collapsing. A slow and steady hand is important to accompany the cohesion and stability of the sandy arrangement.

Though the volatile conflict environments in which peacebuilding unfolds are often highly dynamic and characterized but numerous urgent competing demands, the work of social transformation unfolds slowly, over decades and generations. As Bayo Akomolafe has said, “the time is very urgent – we must slow down.”⁷ There are moments in which responding to the urgency of a conflict situation is necessary. At the same time, it is important not to succumb to the pull of urgency, which can so easily engulf people and processes, causing great harm through, for example, burn out and unwise decisionmaking. Choosing to slow down, to move with intention, to prioritize relationship is countercultural, the choice itself an act of resistance to the dominant culture of urgency and productivity. This choice is an embodiment of care, for self and for others, and therein an embodiment of a way of being supportive of a more peaceful and just world.

Play

The process of building a sandcastle is inherently playful and creative. Often an activity children and adults delight in when at the beach, it can also be experienced as a honed craft and artform. Sandcastles invite and encourage play and imagination, creativity and expression.⁸

Play and imagination are highly underappreciated experiences and facets of peacebuilding. As a relatively new field that in some ways is still trying to establish itself on a global scale, peacebuilding has prioritized procedures over playfulness, data over delight. This is not to say that process, evaluation, and technicalities are not important. Rather, it is to acknowledge that play, creativity, and imagination are critical components and pathways to worldbuilding.

It is said that a challenge will not be surmounted through the same mindset that created it. Violence, conflict, and injustice are incredibly serious challenges, which we cannot serious our way out of. From the perspective of trauma, in experiences of acute trauma at the individual level, the capacity to access play and imagination are compromised. Creating opportunities for trauma impacted individuals to explore, regain, or perhaps experience authentic, unthreatened play for the first time is an important part of the healing journey.

There is much to be gained by not only integrating, but centering more opportunities for play and imagination in our peacebuilding efforts. The possibilities this holds for healing and transformation, from the individual to the collective, are immense.

Concluding Thoughts

There is no perfect metaphor, each analogy only offering some different ways of illustrating and understanding a given experience or thing. Guided by a curiosity around the imagery in the question: what peacebuilding is building?, the metaphor of a sandcastle suggests and centers different elements of process and practice than tend to dominate the field, which I find quite helpful. I hope this curiosity and exploration may be helpful, if not in the insights it brings forward, then in the approach, perhaps inspiring new imagery and thus possibilities in our work toward a world that is more peaceful, just, and dignified for all.

References

¹ Lederach, John Paul. “Beyond Violence: Building Sustainable Peace.” Belfast, Northern Ireland: Northern Ireland Community Relations Council, 1994.

² The inspiration for such an exploration is from Angie and John Paul Lederach, who together wrote an entire book exploring sonic metaphors in relationship with peacebuilding, reconciliation, and healing. Lederach, John Paul, and Angela Jill Lederach. When Blood and Bones Cry Out: Journeys Through the Soundscape of Healing and Reconciliation. Santa Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 2010. https://www.uqp.com.au/books/when-blood-and-bones-cry-out-journeys-through-the-soundscape-of-healing-and-reconciliation.

³ Lucinda Wierenga, “How to Build the Perfect Sandcastle,” The Guardian (Guardian News and Media, July 31, 2009), https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/aug/01/how-to-build-perfect-sandcastle.

⁴ Lara, “The Science behind: Sandcastle Building,” KiwiCo, August 27, 2019, https://www.kiwico.com/blog/the-science-behind/the-science-behind-sandcastle-building.

⁵ John Paul Lederach. The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 93.

⁶ John Paul Lederach and Angie Lederach, When Blood and Bones Cry Out: Journeys Through the Soundscape of Healing and Reconciliation (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 103.

⁷ Báyò Akómoláfé, “The Times Are Urgent: Let’s Slow down,” Báyò Akómoláfé, https://www.bayoakomolafe.net/post/the-times-are-urgent-lets-slow-down.

⁸ In this reflection, I acknowledge and give gratitude to Paul Hutchinson, who has encouraged and nurtured an imaginative and creative approach to social change. As one example, he guided a session exploring peace as an island, rife with metaphors and an incitement to imagining new ways of being and doing, with particular grounding in the context of the island of Ireland.

Fern, my teacher

In the short number of years I have experienced life, I have been very fortunate to learn from and alongside brilliant teachers. Ranging across the nexus of movement and embodiment, yoga and Buddhism, peace and justice, trauma and healing, the wisdom and guidance these teachers have offered has been formative in what and how I think, and how I seek to move through this world.

With some teachers, these learnings have been indirect, reading, listening, and watching from afar. I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to study with some teachers directly in person. In a few cherished relationships, I’ve had the opportunity to call some teachers colleagues and friends.

Many of these teachers are human. Many are not.

Through my haiku practice, I am learning to notice the wisdom of plants and stones, of water and wind, of sky and stars.

I walk a lot. Mostly in natural environments (if I can help it).

As my legs settle into a rhythm, footsteps echoing through my body, my gaze wanders across the landscape. Such different paces inhabit these moments – the swift step of my feet, the legato lingering of my gaze, the unhurried unfolding of the seasons. Amidst this movement, if I am quiet and curious enough in heart and in mind, I find I can hear haikus hidden around me.¹ In listening to the plants and stones, water and wind, sky and stars, teachings shaped in sets of seventeen syllables inhabit my mind.

One of the most consistent sources of these teachings are ferns.

My fascination and adoration of ferns began when I first read adrienne maree brown’s book Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. brown orients toward social movement practice through biomimicry, drawing lessons from ferns, ants, mycelium, and dandelions, among others, to guide sustainable change toward more just and equitable worlds.

Ferns grow as fractals, repeated patterns that are “self-similar across different scales.”² Applying a fractal perspective to the realm of human relationships, this suggests that what we enact at the micro scales (intra- and interpersonally) is mirrored at the macro scales (culturally and societally), and vice versa. This can be seen through the pervasiveness of violence and injustice that are perpetuated on the macro level through, for example, legislation and cultural narratives, as well as on the micro level interpersonally through verbal and physical aggression and intrapersonally through internalized oppression.

A fractal perspective also offers opportunity to effect change. As brown offers, “what we practice at the small scale sets the pattern for the whole system.” Thus, in making intentional shifts on a small scale to live in a way that is aligned with and nurturing of a world that is more peaceful and more just, we can co-create new patterning for the whole system to reflect this transformation.

This learning resonated profoundly within me, somewhere soul deep. Humbled, inspired, and nourished by this possibility, I began to turn toward ferns with greater intention and attention. Ferns, and particularly bracken ferns, have become a source of joy, solace, and endless learning. Thus, on my walks, when ferns are in a season of emergence and unfolding, I am particularly attentive to what wisdom they might offer, always with such generosity.

gift of noticing
ferns grow in unfurling hearts
reminder of love

sunlight dappled paths
trace through trees’ growing embrace
nourishment soul deep

spiraling tendrils
unfold as fractal beings
reflecting wholeness

ferns unfolding joy
scaffolding for web makers
to weave a new home

notice this earth breath
of spring’s tender emergence
beauty grown delight

practice noticing
the spaces around the space
where new forms emerge

wounds break us open
so we may recognize our
interdependence

the shards we carry
catch reflections of shared pain
refracting wholeness

unfurling through stuckness
asks for patience with process,
faith in knowing heart

joy contains sorrow
subtle seeds of connection
from which big love grows

¹ With gratitude to John Paul Lederach who has been an immense influence in my haiku practice and from whom I learned this orientation to practicing haiku.

² Quotes are sourced from brown, adrienne maree (2017). Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. Chico, California: AK Press.

Generous Presence

For all the conversations I’ve engaged with exploring differing facets of love, and the snippets of thought I’ve put on to paper, rarely have I dedicated the time and space to delve more deeply into love through the written word. There are many contributing factors to this, some practical and others that invite more reflection. To the extent that the essence of love, in the fact of its existence, is something that exceeds any constellation of words that might attempt to capture it, perhaps I find myself hesitant to try to put words to the experience or expression of love I seek to live into. To the extent that change is the only constant, and any given orientation toward love unfolds and shifts over time, perhaps I find myself hesitant to capture the essence of a moment that is fleeting. In all these hesitations, I reflect on the teachers in my life that have offered guidance in the ways in which I understand and orient toward love. I reflect on the poets, artists, and wise persons whose works capture the ineffable and the vastness of a single moment. I reflect, too, on my own experience of love as a spiritual essence and guide, emergent most strongly through the co-cultivation of relationship with others. Honoring all of these elements, and moving into a space of compassionate inquiry within myself, I dedicate myself to practice, to exploring into the unfolding of love, what it is to love, to be loved, and to be love.

In speaking into the ways in which I orient toward love, I notice myself drawing upon ways in which others have defined this most powerful essence of life. Recently in conversation with a dear friend, I felt into my body as he expressed his own experience of love and most specifically in the moments where he was clear in his intention to not define what love is, but rather reflect on its presence in his life. I so deeply appreciated this way in which he spoke into this. It resonated profoundly and elicited this very reflection, to explore more deeply not how I might align with a given definition of love, and instead to explore the way I experience its emergence within me and beyond me.

My love for love unfolded in the recognition of its revolutionary, radical, and subversive power, which emerged through my yoga practice. I can remember the specific moment where this all coalesced, where the realization power of love for justice came most fully into my consciousness. This moment arose several years after my practice began, but my path in yoga has always been one of the heart.

I first arrived at my yoga practice because of my heart, my physical heart. It was hurting, neglected and abused. I deprived myself of nourishment to the point that my heart suffered, as my body began to pull nutrients from my muscles and organs to survive. In recovery, I began practicing yoga as a way to move my body without overburdening my heart. Unknowingly, from the very beginning I have had a heart-centered practice. Since that time, I have come to understand, more so, I have felt my way to the understanding that yoga is all about the heart. Not the physical heart necessarily, but that which the heart holds and represents – love. My practice now is one of heart, of love, of agape – the unlimited kind of love that sees no exception, a love of and for all from the smallest individual to the largest community. It is a soul connection love, one that honors every being as deeply connected and as inherently and equally valuable just as they are. It is a love of radical healing and wholeness.

In a conversation about love with one of my beloved teachers, she shared with me these words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.” These words shook my body, reverberating through every cell. The expression of my spiritual practice through yoga found alignment with my engagement in personal and social transformation.

The guiding questions in the field of peace and justice are simple, for all the immense complexity they hold. How do we live peacefully? How do we move toward and enact justice? How do we heal? How do we remember our wholeness, as individuals, communities, and with the world? How do we create a world in which the truth of everyone’s belonging is realized? For each of these questions, love offers an answer. Love in action is the commitment to and realization of fierce belonging. Love is the remembrance of our wholeness, individually and collectively. Love is the essence that permeates spaces of perceived separation and fragmentation, the force of healing in its truest sense of becoming whole. As Dr. Cornel West says, “justice is what love looks like in public.” Love is the guiding intention that allows for the navigation of relationship in a compassionate and transformative way.

With love as a compass and a destination, this does not deny accountability and critical engagement in the way in which we are present and the way in which we support others to be present in the work of justice and liberation. Rather, it supports a more full and compassionate commitment to the realization of justice, as it is an act of love to support oneself and others in acting, speaking, and being in a way that upholds the dignity of all beings. This is a practice of radical presence, of awareness of ourselves situated across time and space, situated a vast and ever changing array of relationships. It is in this way that we find, generous presence is love embodied.

New Beginnings

“Perhaps the art of harvesting the secret riches of our lives is best achieved when we place profound trust in the act of beginning. Risk might be our greatest ally. To live a truly creative life, we always need to cast a critical look at where we presently are, attempting always to discern where we have become stagnant and where new beginning might be ripening. There can be no growth if we do not remain open and vulnerable to what is new and different. I have never seen anyone take a risk for growth that was not rewarded a thousand times over.”

~ John O’Donohue

This weekend is my second to last weekend in San Diego before leaving for Northern Ireland to live for a year as an intern with the Corrymeela Community, Northern Ireland’s oldest center for peace and reconciliation. The past few weeks, I’ve been enjoying nourishing time with friends, opportunities to connect and say goodbye for now. In addition to seeing people before leaving, I am also wanting to visit significant places. Humans are place-based creatures, though modern society all too often draws us away from this remembrance. Thus, in this liminal period of transition, I have made it a practice to be more intentional about the ways I inhabit the spaces and places in which I find myself.

A significant place for me here, though not one I have too often frequented while living in San Diego, is Mount Laguna. It is a majestic and magnificent place, with trails that meander through meadows and groves of pine trees, and skirt mountainsides overlooking the Anza-Borrego desert. I felt very drawn to visit Mount Laguna before my departure in less than two weeks’ time, with the desire to hike a specific trail that has been on my mind for months.

Setting off on the trail, I breathed deep, enjoying the warm mountain air. I paused frequently to appreciate the beauty of the environment around me, wanting to be as present as possible on this last opportunity I will have to walk the trail for some time. I also found myself curious about the thoughts passing through my mind: songs new and old, elements of a yoga sequence I’ll be sharing this week, and reflections on significant conversations that have taken place over the past several days – an interesting array to watch unfold.

A thread of conversation that has been especially strong, necessarily so, has been that of love. More specifically, reflecting on and living into revolutionary love, a transcendent force that permeates all beings and all things, by which we are all connected and is the only constant amidst the everchanging nature of our lived reality. In this time of transition, I’ve been resting into reflection on what is temporary and what is constant, perceived or actual. Cherishing significant relationships that have been co-created and co-cultivated in the past months and years, I’m curious as to what elements of relationship will remain and what elements of relationship will transform. Knowing that change is inevitable, I center myself into the gratitude for what has been and an openness to what will be. In this process, connecting intentionally with the essence of love provides a deep nourishment as well as guiding force to propel me further in service of peace, justice, healing, and transformation.

Continuing along, I passed through familiar and unfamiliar portions of the trail until eventually I found myself on the east side of the mountain, taking moments in movement and stillness with my gaze stretching across the vast expanse of Anza-Borrego. Stopping at outlooks on the trail, I breathed in the landscape, feeling myself a part of the vastness that unfolded before me. As I traversed this portion of the trail, a part of the Pacific Crest Trail no less, a new thought came to inhabit my mind. I reflected on John O’Donohue’s passage written above, in relationship with how strong my desire was to walk this trail at this time. It struck me how the place of the trail so perfectly captured the current space of my life. I am preparing to move across the world, to live, learn, work in the beautiful community of practice that is Corrymeela. It is a new beginning, filled with unknowns. At this moment in my life, I am moving along an edge with my gaze cast eastward, eager to experience all that which will come. I am simultaneously immensely grateful for the grounding I feel in the nourishing relationships in which I share in San Diego.

What I thought would be a visit to a place I love came to be so much more. Feeling the threads of reflection from the week weave together, I was held not only in mountain landscape, but also in the continuing support of deeply loving and caring relationship. In the silence and spaciousness of the mountain, I was able to experience grounding in this moment of transition simultaneously from the inside out and from the outside in.

On Gratitude and Centering Relationship

In the fall of 2018, my dear friend Julie invited me to join a 30-day gratitude practice, connecting with four other women to everyday share three things for which we are grateful in a group text. I greatly enjoyed the practice, as it offered an opportunity to reflect more intentionally on the interactions and activities of my day. Over just a short time, I noticed myself resting more frequently into gratitude and being present to all that I have to be grateful for. Of the five other women sharing their daily gratitudes, I only knew Julie. The others live around the country. While not knowing these women in person, it was lovely to connect in shared practice, to learn about who they are and what they value through what they chose for their three daily gratitudes.

The thirty days passed, and Julie invited us to continue for another 45 days, which I happily did. Then came the new year and a I received a message Julie sent to our group, offering the invitation to join in 365 days of gratitude. Never before had I consciously committed to a yearlong daily practice, but having already established a rhythm of practice in the preceding months, it was an easeful yes to embark upon this journey.

Writing this, we are nearing the 180 day mark of gratitudes. The initial insights and shifts that unfolded from the first thirty days have sustained. The ways in which I orient toward the goings on of my life have shifted substantially, as I rest more fully into gratitude each day. Gratitude has become a space almost to which I default, resting into the gifts of the moment, even when those gifts are situated in times or spaces of anxiety, challenge, and overwhelm. There is another gift this daily gratitude practice has offered, however, one for which I am deeply grateful and on which I have come to reflect very frequently.

In reflecting each evening on the happenings of the day and choosing three things I am grateful for, I began to notice patterns in my gratitude notes. Consistently, one if not all three of my gratitudes is centered on relationship. It is that conversation I had with someone, a friend’s presence in my life, the support someone has provided in a moment of need, or the opportunity to support someone when they are in need. This has led me to reflect upon that which I value most in my life, and that which is most nourishing, namely centering relationship. I now carry a different quality of awareness with regard to the ways in which I share in and inhabit relationships in my life. With a deeper and more conscious appreciation for the sustaining force these relationships carry, I have also been provided with a directionality in terms of what I can move toward when I am feeling disconnected, anxious, and otherwise unwell. Knowing what nourishes me, I find myself being more intentional about cultivating and being deeply present to existing and emerging relationships. Sometimes it is just a momentary crossing of paths, a smile in the hallway. Other times, it is an hours long conversation that traverses vast landscapes of thought and reflection. Each of these embodiments of relationship carries such value, offering the opportunity of engaged presence, of seeing and being seen, of listening and being heard, of sensing and being sensed.

Continuing to navigate this year of gratitude, I have received a gift I did not anticipate, but has been so deeply transformative. I know now what nourishes me. Further, I know what nourishes me is the people with whom I am in relationship. Every evening, I receive the gift of resting into gratitude to and for the people in my life who challenge me, who support me, and who sustain me.

May we all know that for which we are grateful, and may we all have the opportunity to cultivate its presence in our daily practice.

Embodying the Moral Imagination :: Chapter 1

Laura Webber, M.A.

Below is an excerpt from my master’s capstone project, “Embodying the Moral Imagination: A Theoretical and Pedagogical Framework Exploring the Value of Practices of Embodiment in the Education of Peace Practitioners.”

Peacebuilding, at its essence, is about relationship. The practice of peace is to support generative relationships that allow for individual and collective thriving, and to support in the transformation of relationships that inhibit this experience. A conflictual relationship is one characterized by dissonance, whereas a peaceful relationship is one of harmony. Harmony does not necessitate sameness. In fact, it only arises through the resonance of varying frequencies. While certainly harmony and dissonance are sonic experiences, so too are they felt in and through the body. As the body is that which mediates our experience of the world, it is that through which we experience violence, conflict, and peace (Acarón, 2016). To the extent that peacebuilding necessitates a facility in navigating various landscapes of conflict, presence to these landscapes and the movement of the body through them is of great value. To this end, attending to the symphony of sensations and experiences that emanate from within and impact the body offers a way to attune the vehicle of the body to and through the navigation of conflict landscapes (see Figure 1 for an illustration of conflict landscapes).

Despite this value of embodied presence, little attention is paid to nurturing embodied self-awareness[1] and exploring the possibilities of practices of embodiment in peace education. With regard to the relationship between practices of embodiment and peacebuilding, there is precedent of this integration in both theory and practice (Acarón Rios, 2016; Acarón, 2018; Alexander & LeBaron, 2013; Beausoleil & LeBaron, 2013; Deer, 2000; Eddy, 2002; Eddy, 2016; Jeffrey, 2017; LeBaron, MacLeod, & Acland, 2013). Even so, the literature pertaining to practices of embodiment in peacebuilding is, as yet, fairly limited and far from mainstream. More extensive literatures exist with regard to the role of emotion in decision making and conflict resolution, the value of creative and arts-based approaches to peacebuilding, the potency of embodied practices for healing, and embodied pedagogies in education. Through an interdisciplinary approach, drawing from the existent literature, I seek to address the following question: How do practices of embodiment inform and deepen our understanding of established disciplines of peacebuilding and enhance the capacity of peace practitioners to navigate conflict landscapes?

Prior to mapping out how I will explore this question, it is necessary to provide clarification about its constituent elements by offering working definitions for the terms employed.

Embodiment is a nuanced concept. While there exist many definitions, the definition employed here is drawn from Thomas Csordas, who offers that embodiment is “attending ‘with’ and attending ‘to’ the body” (1993, 138), therein evoking the multidimensionality of embodiment wherein, the internal experience of sensations and emotions in the body is not separate from the dynamics that exist beyond the boundary of the skin. We perceive the world through the body, and cultivating attention and awareness to the body as our vehicle of perception serves to broaden and deepen that which we can perceive, within ourselves and in relationship with the world around us. Yet, as Csordas observes, “although our bodies are always present, we do not always attend to and with them” (1993, 139). In seeking avenues to deepen the attention we pay with and to the body, specifically with the intention to support peace practitioners in navigating geographies of conflict, I suggest three transecting landscapes of consideration: the intrapersonal (one’s relationship with oneself), the interpersonal (one’s relationship with other people), and the external (one’s relationship with the space one inhabits).[2]

The term “practices of embodiment” refers to practices that are guided with attention with and to the body. To this end, such practices are not about the form, but rather the quality and direction of attention they invite.[3] In other words, these practices are contingent upon the ‘how’ rather than the ‘what.’ For example, breathing can be a practice of embodiment if, when breathing, you draw attention to the texture of the air in your throat, the shape change of your body as the air fills your lungs, or the way in which a slow and steady exhalation can soothe and ground you.

For the purposes of this exploration, the disciplines and practices of peacebuilding that will be engaged are those articulated by John Paul Lederach in his book The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Peacebuilding (2005). This text emerges from Lederach’s decades of experience in the field supporting the work of peacebuilding. He explores the question of how we might transcend cycles of violence that grip the human community, even while remaining embedded within them. The capacity to transcend violence, he offers, lies in the generation, mobilization, and building of the moral imagination (2005, 5). The four disciplines of the moral imagination are:

“the capacity to imagine ourselves in a web of relationships that includes our enemies; the ability to sustain a paradoxical curiosity that embraces complexity without reliance on dualistic polarity; the fundamental belief in and pursuit of the creative act; and the acceptance of the inherent risk of stepping into the mystery of the unknown that lies beyond the far too familiar landscape of violence” (2005, 5).

In the writing of this framework, I strive to embody the elements of these disciplines. Accordingly, this framework is predicated upon an understanding of the web of relationships we carry within ourselves (the interconnection of body, mind, and spirit) and the web of relationships we inhabit that connects all people and all things. Through both an exploration of practices of embodiment as they support peace practitioners and the elaboration of a pedagogical framework in which such practices can be engaged, I consider ways we may practice paradoxical curiosity to transcend restrictive dualism of mind/body, self/other, and beyond. With an acknowledgment of the relative absence of embodied practice in graduate level peace education, this framework itself is a creative act, encouraging a new way of imagining peace education. In this light, I acknowledge there may be some risk in offering the possibility a different paradigm that invites us to explore alternative domains of learning, integrating body and mind.

In the theoretical framework laid out in the following chapters, I will explore the value of practices of embodiment for peace practitioners as they support a navigation of these three interrelated landscapes mentioned above: intrapersonal, interpersonal, and external. For each of these landscapes, practices of embodiment support peace practitioners by respectively deepening and broadening internal awareness, enhancing relational skills, and illuminating social and structural dynamics. Thus, my thesis holds that practices of embodiment support peace practitioners by nurturing deep presence, enhancing self-awareness, and cultivating intentionality relative to oneself, others, and the spaces we inhabit.

Beginning with an exploration of the intrapersonal landscape, such practices support peace practitioners not only in the intensity of a conflictual moment, but also promote resilience and longevity. Practices of embodiment increase interoceptive capacity, a connection to the felt sense in the ability to feel what is arising internally for an individual as well as the ability to perceive what is arising for others. Such attunement and perception strengthen our intuitive sense, which enables peace practitioners to pick up on subtleties in a conflict dynamic that may hold the seeds for the conflict’s transformation. Practices of embodiment enhance our capacity for self-regulation, an essential skill in the navigation of the complex domains of conflict, violence, and injustice (Eddy, 2016). Practices of embodiment can also support healing and the processing of emotion. For peace practitioners who may be drawn to this work resultant from past experiences of trauma and who are likely to encounter potentially traumatic experiences during the course of our careers, engaging in practices that can support such healing is invaluable. Similarly, practices of embodiment can support the longevity and sustainability of peace practitioners, as such practices can increase resiliency through enhancing skills of self-regulation and providing avenues through which to process intense emotion.

From the intrapersonal landscape, we move outward to the interpersonal landscape – from relationship with oneself to relationship with others. Three primary areas of consideration in this landscape are processes of attunement and co-regulation, the cultivation of kinesthetic empathy, and presence to non-verbal communication. The ability to connect authentically and presently with others is in many ways contingent upon our level of presence to ourselves. As cultivating trusting and transformative relationships is central for peace practitioners to be effective in our work, presence to our internal landscapes in relationship to others is vital. The ability to attune and connect with empathy and compassion with others is valuable not only for peace practitioners in the relationships we cultivate, but is imperative for communities affected by violence and conflict. Thus, not only are practices of embodiment that support the navigation of the interpersonal landscape beneficial for practitioners, they can also be adapted and shared as a means of building connection and relationship between individuals and groups in the peacebuilding process.

The third landscape of consideration pertains to the external landscape we inhabit. Spatial awareness is of great value of peace practitioners, in the way in which we create and co-create spaces, as well as the space we hold within ourselves. Practices of embodiment can support an exploration of the way the body inhabits physical, social, political, and historical spaces. Integrating practices of critical self-reflection, attention to the body offers an avenue to consider our own positionality, the identities we hold that are expressed through our bodies. With regard to ethical considerations for peacebuilders, and attention to the way in which we are perceived by others relative to dynamics of power, privilege, and oppression, is crucial. This elicits further sensitivity toward structural violence, the impact of oppression on the body, and the histories carried by the body, which draws on research around epigenetics and the transgenerational transmission of trauma. Further, we are brought to reflect upon the way in which spaces shape us and the way in which we shape the spaces we are in, a dynamic and everchanging process (Acarón, 2016).

Practices of embodiment, drawing attention to and with the body, thus offer myriad benefits for peace practitioners. With regard to the ways in which such practices can enhance and deepen understandings of established disciplines of peacebuilding, we turn toward various pedagogical literatures, and most specifically approaches of experiential education. As shared by Rae Johnson:

“Scholars in experiential learning (Boud, 1985; Kolb, 1984) assert that we learn about the world and ourselves in an interactive, ongoing action/reflection cycle. As we encounter new information and experiences, these interactions with the world change our view of ourselves and our relationships to others. From an experiential perspective, learning is a complex, holistic activity that is deeply informed by who learners are, what they already know and believe, and how their life experiences have influenced and affected them” (Johnson, 2014, 82).

In a future curriculum, I will offer means through which to explore disciplines of peacebuilding as set forth by John Paul Lederach in a deeply experiential way. More precisely, the disciplines of peacebuilding will be explored through practices of embodiment, as a means to bring theory into form and truly ‘Embody the Moral Imagination.’

Through the theoretical framework provided in the succeeding three chapters, I address multiple ways in which practices of embodiment can enhance the capacity of peace practitioners to navigate geographies of conflict. Moving from the intrapersonal to the external landscapes, I seek to illuminate the connections between the micro and the macro, and the ways in which attention and awareness in each landscape provide the foundation from which greater nuance and discernment can unfold. The penultimate chapter details a pedagogical approach that allows for the cultivation of these capacity enhancing practices simultaneous to a study of theory in peacebuilding. Through the map this exploration offers, we find the value of practices of embodiment lies in the ways they offer opportunities to deepen our awareness – of self, of other, of society – and harness such nuanced awareness to support a movement toward healing and peace.

[1] Alan Fogel defines embodied self-awareness as “perceiving our movements in relation to other people and our surroundings, registering the textures and depths of the senses, and exploring the intricacies of our emotions in relation to others and the world” (2009, 10).

[2] This triadic framework elicits the three interrelated branches of peace Toran Hansen puts forth in the article “Holistic Peace.” These branches are: “‘peace within’ (inner peace), ‘peace between’ (relational peace), and ‘peace among’ (structural/environmental peace)” (2016, 212).

[3] This interpretation of practices of embodiment aligns with Christine Caldwell’s notion of bodyfulness, which she differentiates from embodiment: “I would define embodiment as awareness of and attentive participation with the body’s states and actions. Bodyfulness begins when the embodied self is held in a conscious, contemplative environment, coupled with a non-judgmental engagement with bodily processes, an acceptance and appreciation of one’s bodily nature, and an ethical and aesthetic orientation towards taking right actions so that a lessening of suffering and an increase in human potential may emerge” (2014, 81).

References

Acarón, T. (2016). Shape-in(g) Space: Body, Boundaries, and Violence. Space and Culture, 19(2), 139-149. doi:10.1177/1206331215623208

Acarón, T. (2018). Movement decision-making in violence prevention and peace practices. Journal of Peace Education, 15(2), 191-215. doi:10.1080/17400201.2018.1463913

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