AM23-PP12: The weave of many languages

The weave of many languages

Presenters: Franca Fubini, Leslie Brissett and the staff of ECW online 2023

Abtract

Inspired by the experience of nine previous editions (seven onland and two online) members of the staff of the GRC Energy Creative Collaboration and Wellbeing (ECW), reflect on the implications of the work and its relevance to the AM themes.

Members of staff worked together for one year developing collaboration and preparing to host the conference, held online in January 2023. Roles and organization have arisen from the commitment to event and people, rather than from pre-assigned task. Creative collaboration, which is in many ways one form of spiritual practice, has been the model for the temporary organization.

Energy, Creative Collaboration and Wellbeing is a group relations conference where the weave of languages available, expressive of being and of human sensitivity and interrelatedness, are open for exploration.

ECW conferences have evolved a design incorporating events of traditional Group Relations along with a somatic understanding of the body in movement (movement as being), sound and an awareness of the environment within which life unfolds, an ecological approach inviting sensuous participation.

The unifying principle of the conferences is that both the mind and the body inform the dynamics of the here and now. The body is the mind in fact.

ECW proposes that in the awareness of the body and its needs one becomes available to connect to the earth, its resources, and the underlying interdependence of the whole.

ECW online views the online environment as one which can welcome the same participation.

The task of ECW is to offer participants the opportunity to explore how awareness of resources, energy and creative collaboration can introduce wellbeing in the organizations to which they belong.

The challenge of the work is to extend the field of attention to the unconscious as it manifests itself by observing the languages of bodies in space, of energy fields, of nature, of context and patterns that connect the parts.

Interdependence and relatedness, essential for any kind of systemic thinking, are explored during the events. Learning is facilitated by accessing individual and group energy and through awareness of the relationships that develop. ECW relates to social context/culture and to nature and the human place within nature. What is nature telling us, what are we telling nature, and can the dialogue of human and non-human nature bring blossoming for both? The ongoing learning process developed in the course of 13 years invites to explore different emerging fields.

• the separation of mind and body/matter in the Western culture as one of the seeds supporting the dominating relationship over the Indigenous Knowledge System; inert body, inert nature, inert race, inert matter as a free passport to treat matter as though it has no sensitivity, no inherent intelligence and can be at disposal for exploitation.
• the loss of soul and the difficulty of bringing the spiritual dimension in organizations and in life in general where wellbeing seems to be a more acceptable concept than spirituality.
• the theoretical underpinning of our findings, in particular the dialectic between separation, connection and circularity.

In present times of climate change, pandemic, wars and deep global crisis these fundamental relationships call for our attention; they are a focus for the conferences and the paper presentation.