Regenerating myself

A summer to-be list

Dear enchantable ones,

On the first day beyond teaching and grading for the academic year, I had a very enlivening early call with friend-colleagues about a collaborative project on regenerative pedagogies. At the end of the call, we decided for our next meeting we would share how we practice this in our own lives and teaching.

After the call, I was riding my bike to the grocery store, the first moment of spaciousness in months, and I found myself asking the question:

How do I regenerate myself?

(Riding my bike is part of the answer).

Earlier in the morning, getting my mind-heart ready for the call, I was looking up definitions of regeneration. One that struck me from the Merriam-Webster dictionary describes regeneration as:

renewal or restoration of a body, bodily part, or biological system (such as a forest) after injury or as a normal process¹.

I ended the academic year feeling injured, crumpling over the finish line. My energetic equation felt way out of balance, depleted and drained, and I exerted more than I received or had the chance to replenish. It is not a sustainable equation, and the summer months, especially the next few weeks leading up to the International Institute on Peace Education (IIPE), ask for a deep regeneration, for quietly, slowly dwelling.

They call for restoration. They call for regeneration.

The view

My main summer creative projects (besides Enchantable) are writing a chapter on my presentation for an Earth Charter publication on pedagogies of interbeing for a regenerative peace education, and planning a ritual-workshop for IIPE on the same theme. All of this has me thinking about how I regenerate myself.

What am I going to do (and not do) for the sake of my own regeneration? What are the conditions that allow regeneration to take place?

Some things that come to mind:

Rest, as much as possible. I am wearing sweatpants. I am moving slowly. I am resisting the urge to fill every space. I am making more time for meditation and yoga breaks throughout the day, practicing deep relaxation.

Space. Staring out the window. Not filling every waking moment of the day. Create as many pockets of unfilled time as possible. I have a gorgeous view from my bedroom and balcony (see above). Gaze at the view as much as possible.

Protect my time. This means saying no, and blocking out dedicated time for things like reading and writing. In other words:

Boundaries.

Nourish. Do things that fill my cup and give me energy and sustenance on energetic, physical, and spiritual levels. Spend time with people who I delight in. Take myself out for coffee. Read things that inspire me. Listen to music. Make music. Consume and move in ways that nourish and regenerate.

Follow my own delight, enchantment, and pleasure.

What am I going to not do?

Fill every waking moment.
Let other people waste my time or drain my energy.
Rush.
Fall into the trap of other peoples’ panic and urgency.

How about you, dear reader? What do you do - and not do - to regenerate? What are the conditions that support your regenerative capacities?

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Last year I had a summer to-do list. It was actually more like a beautiful dream map (click the article to see the map):

Songwriting, Scholarship, and Summer Dreams

It was my first summer at UPEACE, and I could see that this was the time of year to get things done, and that the time would evaporate if I wasn’t mindful, and I wanted to be intentional with my use of time. And I was. I was very productive.

This summer, I have a to-be list.
To be restful.
To be slow.
To be joyful.

To dwell in ease, joy, and delight.
To lighten. To put down burdens.
To listen
to my body, heart, intuition, nature, spirit.
To protect
my time, space, energy.

To be a sloth generating a microbiome in its fur through its stillness.
To be the rainforest floor, damp and thick with rotting mangoes and leaves, decomposing to nourish the soil.
To be a vat of liquid fermenting.
To regenerate.

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Connecting this to my scholarship, profession, and vocation, I know that tending to my own being is absolutely vital and necessary for the peace education work I do in the world, how I want to be in the world, and how I want to live. To rest and regenerate is essential to this. Nature teaches us this. We need each other to rest.

For a more peaceful world to be possible, we need to learn different ways of being together. This is possible in formal education settings, and it is also hard. Relationships based in care are possible everywhere, but they are challenging when the systems and structures are not built to support this, and are actually based in extractive, transactional, hierarchial relationships - hence burnout, exhaustion, and depletion. Returning to the definition of regeneration, these systems cause injury. When extraction and exploitation are the norm, going against this requires a certain effort towards protection and opposition, an energetic exertion.

Ways of being are the soil we need for new possibilities to take root.
They are the small ways we practice being together, the little daily rituals that support our relationships, moving away from injury and harm, and towards healing and regeneration.

How we are together, the culture we create together, are the most important pedagogical practices, the most important part of our learning. This is the heart of regenerative pedagogies and peace education to me- not just regenerative for the outer world, but regenerative for ourselves and each other, in this moment, right here.

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Undoubtedly, to regenerate is to also re-enchant. And to re-enchant is to regenerate.

Amidst the busyness, overwhelm and stress, enchantment can fall away. We can forget why we love a place. The same sunset view can be laden with heaviness instead of joy.

An aguacero has just passed, the kind of rainstorm that drenches everything. The rain has stopped but the trees still heavy with water, and I am noticing the sound of the dripping.

This year nearly undid me. Nearly. Losing my grandmother during the last week of classes almost did it, was the last thing I could bear. But. It was the last thing I had to bear. The torrent stopped. And I find myself on the other side of that storm, trees dripping, with the space and possibility of regenerating.

Oat capucinno joy

I am reading Katherine May’s Enchantment, which was published around the time I launched Enchantable, and while I yearned to read it then, I wanted to try to get out as much of my own thinking as I could before I took in what anyone else had written (that, and I couldn’t get a copy in Costa Rica). She wrote it on the other side of the first pandemic lockdowns, and she writes about being undone, a feeling I remember in my bones.

As I delighted in the book and my oat milk cappuccino and chocolate almond croissant, this line in particular struck me:

“Perhaps I shouldn’t fear this present-day burnout after all. It shows me only that I’m ready to be made again” (p. 129).

I wouldn’t describe what I experienced at the end of the year as burnout. It was something altogether different. Similar, yes. But not quite. A slightly different palette. It was a barrage, an onslaught. But now I am on the other side of it, and I’m ready to be made again.
I’m ready to regenerate,
one small slice of enchantment and delight
and rest and joy
one book and one oat cappuccino
at a time.
I am ready to see what exists on the other side of the of the aguacero
what the rain has cleared for new possibilities.

Regeneration isn’t done alone. It requires the right conditions- the right amount of water, air, light, stillness and/or movement. We can only regenerate so much our own. Some regeneration has to be done in community, with others.

In conversation.
In shared laughter.
With shared burdens, lighter loads.
In shared joy and delight.
We can’t, in fact, regenerate on our own.

Join me? :)

In the spirit of our collective regeneration,

Steph

1. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/regeneration