Building A Collaborative Era for People and Planet

Building A Collaborative Era for People and Planet

We’re experiencing a revolution in our understandings about how life on planet Earth really works. It’s appearing that collaboration is actually how things are meant to function on Earth, and that’s good news for anyone who cares about healing our planet and human well-being. This is also significant for your sense of hope, your own thriving, and your experience of connection to the people, plants, and animals with whom you co-exist on this lovely planet we call Earth.

What’s exciting right now is that, despite the messiness occurring everywhere on planet Earth, there’s evidence everywhere that we’re outgrowing old mistaken stories of domination and hierarchy. This is a thrilling time to be alive as science and spirituality converge in conversations about how we can renew life on Earth by witnessing and encouraging the collaborations that are fundamental to how Earth’s many systems function. As science has progressed, and as we’ve re-explored our ethical and religious traditions, we’re re-discovering regenerative collaboration as a defining feature of how life on Earth works.

This isn’t the only story, of course…forms of domination and hierarchy continue to exist on Earth. What’s important is that they are rapidly losing support and becoming viewed as inferior ways for human society to function. Note, for example, how warfare still exists but is frowned on, how racism still exists but is constantly challenged, and how our abuse of Earth continues yet is being called-out as problematic across the globe.

We have increasing options now to choose and amplify the story of collaboration, and that’s what I’m offering you today.

 

I’ll start with how the collaborative story is appearing in current science:

Our 20th century stories told us that life on Earth is one big fierce competition. However, more recent  biological research is showing that the story of life on Earth actually may be more a story of collaboration than a story of competition. Apparently we misunderstand Darwin’s theories of evolution when we focus on competition, because Darwin himself was very interested in how organisms collaborate to support one another’s thriving.

We have mounting evidence for understanding life on Earth as a multi-species collaboration that functions in a continual process of regenerative self-renewal. We describe this using scientific terms such as mutualism, symbiosis, and ecosystem services. Mutualistic symbiosis is being discovered among more and more species. For example, we have discovered that bacteria function in communicative communities and also collaborate with other species, such as squid, for the survival of both the bacteria and the squid.

We’re also continuing to theorize that the original evolution of life on Earth may have occurred when bacteria collaborated with one another. We additionally know that plants produce the oxygen breathed by animals (including humans), while animals exhale the carbon dioxide plants need in a moment-by-moment planetary collaboration of respiration. We’re continually discovering how soil microbes’ collaborative relationships with plants enable plant growth, including the production of the food humans eat. Similarly, soil mycorrhizae allow communication and nutrient sharing among trees. Canadian scientist Suzanne Simard is one of the leading researchers in this area, and her and other scientists’ discoveries are astounding as they continue revealing how trees collaborate by sharing information and nutrients, even from one species of tree to a different species of tree. Forests are intricate collaborative systems, it appears, not the competitions we once thought.

Other examples of collaboration are all around us: Pollinating insects and flowering plants co-exist in a mutualistic relationship, and so do seed-producing plants and the animals who ingest and disperse the seeds to allow those plants to reproduce and survive.

We now know that the human digestive system functions only because of the presence of numerous microbes in the gut, and the same is true for herbivorous ruminant mammals and other animals. Without these ‘foreign’ microbes helping your digestion work, you wouldn’t be able to assimilate nutrients from food, so you wouldn’t be able to stay alive. Your very existence depends on the microbes in your digestive system! Collaboration keeps you alive on a second-to-second basis.

Scientists also point out that humans evolved and developed increasingly sophisticated ways of surviving due to mutualistic interactions with animals such as dogs, horses, cattle, chicken, and sheep, and with plants such as wheat, corn, and rice. Without these collaborations with animals and plants, we would still be hunter-gatherers living a much more primitive existence, with far fewer choices available to us. Similarly, the development of civilization involved humans taking on specialized roles, from farmer to wagon maker to public official, healer, or teacher, so that a collective of people could collaboratively accomplish more than only hunting and gathering or farming. The human world as we know it, in all its complexity and its multiplicity of choices, developed out of countless intricate collaborations.

One field where collaboration is being increasingly studied and nurtured is agroecology, which is the science of sustainable, organic, and regenerative agriculture. Research around the world repeatedly shows that agroecological approaches produce robust crop yields, little or no environmental damage, and significant levels of ecological regeneration when farmers collaborate with the natural functions of soil, water, native plants, native in-sects, and other aspects of the natural world, rather than trying to control them with chemical applications. I could give dozens of examples from the rich and exciting field of agroecology, but here are two: first, we’re finding that farmers who plant flowers and welcome pollinators onto their farms see less crop damage from pests because on a farm with a variety of insects, the insect populations control one another. Second, research is documenting how farmers who work WITH soil by keeping it covered with nourishing cover crops instead of plowing it excessively not only end up with larger crop yields, but also draw carbon out of the atmosphere and into the soil in a way that has the potential to reverse climate change. See the Rodale Institute’s white papers on their website for details.

To review, we are discovering mounting scientific evidence of collaboration’s role in the natural world. This is notable for anyone interested in the flourishing of life on Earth. If nature is a process of collaborations, then all we need to do is let them flourish. And if the way nature works is more collaborative than competitive, then maybe human culture—we’re animals after all—should aim to create collaboration more than competition.

 

Let’s consider aspects of how the story of collaboration presents in human cultures:

As an historian, I can point out that over the past two centuries, collaboration and equality have become highly valued all over the world. This is why many countries’ governments have shifted from monarchy or totalitarian rule to democracy, imperfect as it still is. This is why we’ve seen global efforts to grant rights to all people no matter their gender or level of ability, why we’ve been working to give animals protections from human abuse, and why we’ve endeavored to abolish slavery and discourage many forms of discrimination and harm. Although the human experience on Earth remains complex and challenging, it’s reasonable to point out that over the past 200-300 years, a growing majority of people agree that everyone should have rights, and that equality is better than hierarchical domination.

Human value systems in our whole known history have often promoted collaboration. Examples range from the Golden Rule (“treat others as you wish to be treated”), which appears in almost all world religions, implying that people can collaboratively ensure good treatment of one another, to world religions’ scriptures that emphasize care for Creation, which the Creator offers to humanity as a life-support system. Many profound examples of a collaborative ethos appear in the ways indigenous spirituality around the world, on every continent, always has advocated for harmonious collaboration between people and the natural world. Similarly, in the modern centuries we have defined democracy as a system of collaborative compromises with shared responsibilities and privileges. Documents of global relevance such as The Earth Charter and the Sustainable Development Goals contain a foundational assumption of collaboration: namely, that humans must work together, and cooperate with Earth’s needs and limits, in order to ensure the flourishing continuation of life on Earth. It makes sense to claim that from the perspective of both our scientific knowledge and human values systems over time, collaboration is a prominent feature of thriving on planet Earth.

During the 20th and 21st centuries, humanity has had to face the damage caused by our efforts to dominate the natural world. During these same centuries we also have faced the damage caused by our efforts to dominate one another. Our ongoing endeavors to re-pair the damage caused by gender discrimination, slavery, and unjust systems that create poverty demonstrate our advancing awareness that domination does not yield long-term success or peace.

I believe we are coming toward a global human consensus that domination, whether of the natural world or other people, has been a failed experiment. That’s not to say everyone agrees on this as of now, but I believe the history of the past three centuries suggests that this is where we are headed together. Countless cultural, political, and legal movements of the 20th and 21st centuries have been focused on how people collaboratively can promote and protect equality, rights, and the flourishing of all individuals and their communities. (When Paul Hawken tried to count these movements and organizations for his book Blessed Unrest, he reached the inspiring conclusion that they are literally uncountable, they’re so great in number.)

In the modern centuries since about 1600, we have been engaged in a continual extension of the human rights articulated by 17th-century Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke. These rights originally were intended primarily for white males but in only about 300 years have rather quickly been extended to include all humans, as well as animals, ecosystems, and plants, among those who possess natural rights. We see this world-wide in rights movements of many kinds, from the spreading of democracy to endeavors to end child labor, abuse of animals and ecosystems, and discrimination based on sex, race, age, or physical status. Currently many are working to designate ecocide as a crime and countries such as Bolivia and New Zealand are modeling how to encode formal legal rights for nature in legal systems. If you pay attention, signs of deep collaboration are everywhere.

If it’s true that the natural world functions more in collaboration than competition, and that the goal of nature’s collaborations is to nurture a continual cycle of regeneration on Earth—regeneration meaning renewal for continuous thriving—then maybe human cultures today also need to make regenerative collaboration their main goal, as it seems to have been in many past cultures.

We already see this occurring, in fact. I already mentioned agroecology. In another example, architects, designers, and builders are exploring how the human built environment—homes, offices, whole towns and cities—can become more a regenerative than a degenerative presence on the planet. This looks like buildings generating their own energy and harmlessly processing their own waste, and sometimes making the soil, water and air around them even cleaner and healthier. Watch for exciting further innovation in the Regenerative Development arena. Nature’s regenerative functions are becoming the model for the human built environment and ways of living.

It is no surprise that our age of industrial progress, which also has been an age of environmental domination and devastation (c. 1850–present), has also been an age of anxiety and depression. Many scholars and sages hypothesize that surely we are naturally attuned to care for our life support system rather than damage it, and we feel great distress when our environment is damaged. Regenerative action, therefore, is as important for renewing human well-being as it is for renewing the natural world.

Let’s remember that the “new stories” offered by environmental advocates as pathways out of our patterns of abuse of the planet include human–nature collaboration as one of their core assumptions. Advocates of adopting a new, collaborative story about humanity’s relationship with Earth include Thomas Berry, Mary Evelyn Tucker and Brian Swimme (using the terms Great Work and Journey of the Universe); Wangari Maathai (who wrote about Replenishing the Earth); Joanna Macy, Chris Johnstone, and David Korten who speak of (The Great Turning); there is also the Transition Movement led by Rob Hopkins and activists around the world). Vandana Shiva writes of Earth Democracy and Marc Bekoff advocates for Rewilding our Hearts, while Gregory Cajete frames all of this as Native Science and Stephan Harding terms it Holistic Science.

It’s valid to claim that humanity is engaged in recognizing and reclaiming the story of collaboration as central to the flourishing of life on Earth, and seeing ourselves, as indigenous people always have, as participants rather than dominators.

In their superb book The Future We Choose, eminent climate negotiators Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac state regarding how to solve the climate crisis, “We are entering the next phase of human evolution…. [and] we need to prioritize collaboration….We can ignite regenerative human cultures that seek to ensure that humanity becomes a life-sustaining influence on all ecosystems and on the planet as a whole.”

To sum up:

Over the past 200 or 300 years, collaboration has come to be increasingly valued among humans. And in the past few decades we have been finding increasing scientific evidence of collaboration in nature.

Regenerative collaboration is applicable just as much to collaboration, justice, and healing within the human community as to collaboration and healing between humanity and the natural world.

The concept of regenerative collaboration arises from indigenous values combined with the scientific, ethical, and religious perspectives that have developed in post-indigenous cultures. This includes the values of indigenous people of color and also the indigenous values of all peoples, of every ethnic and racial origin, because every human being has an indigenous ancestry, however distant. Indigenous cultures worldwide appear to have viewed, and continue to view, the world as a regenerative collaboration. As the Lakota Luther Standing Bear wrote in 1933, “Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky, and water was a real and active principle…The concept of life and its relations…gave [the Lakota] reverence for all life; it made a place for all things in the scheme of existence with equal importance for all.” Potawatomi scholar Kyle Whyte speaks of something similar using the term “systems of responsibilities.”

What this means for you: well, a lot of things, and I’ll identify a few of them.

Know that Regenerative Collaboration is a choice…a field you can enter…a way you can live and contribute. Additionally:

  1. If you’re someone who prefers nurturing life and advocating for collaboration more than competition, you’re not weird, off-base, or a bleeding heart. Science and human history show how vital and often-valued collaboration is. It’s possible it’s going to become our #1 value on planet Earth. More and more people are talking about this and living it, and you can find your like-minded, like-hearted people.
  2. Test out viewing life on Earth as a multi-species collaboration, and see if this gives you a feeling of comfort, calm, security, and companionship. Know that supporting sustainable and regenerative agriculture helps your health and the planet’s; appreciate that eating a lot of fruits and vegetables helps your gut microbes and your own health; feel awe when you realize that trees and plants are collaborating together to thrive AND producing the oxygen and food you need to survive. Get excited about the fact that when you advocate or act for nature’s thriving, you’re literally supporting your own and future generations’ thriving, too. Let yourself feel how supported you are in this grand collaboration of life on Earth.
  3. If you need more hope or satisfaction in your life, you may want to engage in a collaborative regenerative endeavor: a home garden with a friend or family member, a community garden or tree-planting initiative, joining other people who are caring for animals or helping children or the elderly spend time in nature, or any partnership or group activity that helps restore Earth’s and/or human well-being. Social justice endeavors definitely count. Working in permaculture, the Transition Towns movement, or any pro-democracy efforts counts. Arguably we are made to not pursue only our own well-being, though that’s an important task for each of us, but to also support the thriving of the natural systems and other people around us. Doing so can make you feel whole, and help you feel encouraged as you see the meaningful restorative, regenerative endeavors happening all over the world.

 

Collaboration is amply visible on Earth, and that simple fact calls for our focused attention right now. It’s a key to turning life on Earth from foundering to flourishing.

When we accept that life on Earth requires collaboration and currently is in need of regeneration, then we can participate in the collaborative process deliberately and caringly, choosing our human activities within frameworks of regenerative collaboration.

It’s up to us which story we choose, and which story we live inside.

Using Plant Essences to Support Your Wellness & Contribution

Using Plant Essences to Support Your Wellness & Contribution

In the new episode on the Humans & Earth podcast, I tell four stories about my experiences with plant essences, how they are helpful, and how they often come into our lives serendipitously. I also offer suggestions about how you can benefit from plant essences and how to obtain them. Read below or listen on the podcast.

What are plant essences? They are liquid remedies that have been made to hold the energetic essence or frequency of a tree or flower. They are thus different from herbal remedies, which contain actual plant parts, and essential oils, which contain the fragrant oils of plants. Flower and tree essences are a form of energy medicine that can be ingested or used topically, and they are very safe, both for people and animals, as well as for plants, because they contain no actual plant parts. You can thus make essences from plants that are not edible for humans or animals, and often you can make them without even harvesting the plants and ending their lives. Unlike with essential oils (which I also use and love), plant essences can be produced with little to no plant material, leading some people to see them as a more ethical use of plants.

I’m going to focus here on spiritual and energetic experiences with plant essences, but I’ll note that if you want to delve into the science of energy medicine and frequency, Dr. Shamini Jain’s Consciousness and Healing Initiative publishes reports, and you also might look at the work of Dr. David Feinstein and Dr. Lissa Rankin. There are quite a few other researchers assembling discussions of energy medicine—what it is, why it works, and even the physics of it. But today I’m focusing on stories about some of my recent experiences to show you how you might want to receive support from plant essences.

I’ll offer you the shortest story first: recently I saw a body worker who is also a flower essence practitioner. She suggested for me a rather obvious essence I’ve never taken for an extended period of time, and I was so grateful for her insight. The essence, indeed, has soothed and upheld me as I’ve gone to another level this summer of moving beyond some past trauma. The essence is the Bach Rescue Remedy mixture, and while you can use it for acute stress, you also can take it over a longer time for nervous system support.

I had a more complex experience with a plant essence earlier this year. While I interviewed plant communication experts and Tree Whisperers Dr. Jim Conroy and Basia Alexander this past January, during a meditation they offered to the audience, a very large Sycamore tree in my neighborhood came visibly into my awareness. She later also appeared in Dr. Jim’s consciousness, asking him to confirm for me that I was really hearing from her and that she wanted to teach me. I spent parts of the winter, spring, and early summer sitting with her and listening to her, taking her essence, and recognizing that what she represents and is teaching me is perfectly matched for my current life stage. I’ve felt amazement that she reached out to me and offered me her teachings and energetic support. She is a grand being with whom I’m honored to be in relationship. I don’t feel ready to share much of what she has shown me, but part of it relates to the central channel of energy in the human body that has been discussed for millennia in the Ayurvedic and Traditional Chinese medicine traditions. She has been showing me a next step in cultivating the central channel and recognizing it as the stream of energy that connects our bodies, minds, and souls both to Earth and to the heavenly realms. When I take her essence, I’m connected to these teachings and the tremendous strength and wisdom she has held for at least one or two centuries.

In the summer I experienced the luxurious medicine of the Pink Mimosa tree. I felt guided to buy this essence from my teacher Ameya Cohen’s line this spring. It offers energies of abundance and joy. Serendipitously a local friend texted me a photo of the flowers and said she wondered what they are. I recognized them immediately and told my friend she was delighting in Pink Mimosa, and I shared with her that I’d been taking the essence and could make her a bottle if she brought me some flowers. She did, and I did…and the essence is riotously potent. Then I started seeing Pink Mimosa trees everywhere, and marveling at the fact that, tree-aware as I am, I had never really noticed them in prior years, though they grow quite abundantly in my area and produce a cloud of highly visible bright pink blossoms every June and July. (It’s true, they are considered invasive in North America. From a scientific ecological standpoint they may be problematic. From the standpoint of the energy they have to share, I have to wonder if it’s a good and purposeful thing that they are spreading in places where they aren’t native. I feel the invasive plants question needs to be examined both scientifically and energetically, and that there are aspects of invasive plants that we don’t yet understand.) Pink Mimosa offers a frequency many of us are especially ready to benefit from now.

A fourth notable experience with plant essences unfolded for me about a year ago. Within one week of starting to take the essences of sunflowers and Echinacea in August 2021, I finally felt clarity about changing my name in my business, going from using a pseudonym to my real name. The experience of power and certainty in my solar plexus as I took the essences was astonishing. I also took 1 drop of Maui Orchid essence twice over three days. It’s an essence, also from Ameya Cohen’s line, that helps us see the truth we already know. It was abundantly clear that the flower essences were impacting my sense of self and vocation, and I appreciated their assistance as I worked through something that had felt confusing and challenging to me.

What should you do if you want to use flower and tree essences? Your best options are probably to get a book on plant essences or see a practitioner. I like Delta Gardens’ founder David Dalton’s book, Stars of the Meadow, and the Flower Essence Society’s Flower Essence Repertory. Many other books exist, too, so see what calls to you. A book will help you identify the essence(s) you need and how to handle dosing, though that is simple as you basically take 2-5 drops 2-4 times per day.

If you want to purchase one or more essences to try, two lines of essences I like are Delta Gardens and the Flower Essence Society; I also am very fond of Green Hope Farm’s and Ameya Cohen’s line of essences, though I’m not sure if Ameya’s are going to continue to be available. The Bach essences are very nice and are the most famous flower essence line, but I have more of an affinity with the other lines I mentioned. I also make my own essences, which you can easily learn to do—just learn the proper procedure with flowers that are not edible.

We’re designed to live here in collaboration with plants, animals, and all of nature, so to me it makes perfect sense that plants are eager to help us by offering us the food, herbal remedies, essential oils, and energetic essences they uniquely produce. As long as you respect and thank the plants and make sure you’re doing something in your life to support plants’ well-being, I feel it’s fine to receive what they offer for your sustenance, growth, and contribution.

If you would like my support in allowing plant essences to uphold your contributions to flourishing for people and planet, you can find my services here on the Coaching page. Plant essence practitioners specialize in everything from women’s or children’s health to physical healing or supporting animals. I love to focus my sessions on offering clients essences that support their clarity about how they want to contribute to renewal for Earth and the human-Earth relationship. It will be my pleasure to guide you in benefiting from plant essences.

Thanks for reading. Now go find a plant to connect with through being present to it, engaging in conversation (for tips on this, listen to previous episodes of the podcast), providing it with physical care, or taking its essence!

Why Regulating Your Nervous System Lets You Transform Our World

Why Regulating Your Nervous System Lets You Transform Our World

Do you feel internally safe and calm enough to create the transformation you desire to contribute to the world?

A crucial but hidden aspect of whether we can create healing change for ourselves and Earth is whether we have the internal safety and stability to do so.

Thus, current conversations about trauma and nervous system regulation are vitally relevant to our ability to renew the natural world.

If you see yourself as a change-maker, if you have experienced trauma, if you wonder why conflict resolution in our world seems stuck, or if you feel stuck in your own process of desired self-development, please listen to my current interview on the podcast with Dr. Cathleen King.

This interview is very important to me personally because Dr. Cat has been a pivotal mentor in my process of recovery from trauma and chronic illness. Her own recovery story and her message are potently relevant for anyone who seeks to be a healing presence to themselves and our world. 

Dr. Cathleen King is an expert on trauma recovery, inner healing, and how consciousness shifts create personal and collective transformation. She has the rare combination of in-depth doctoral-level education and training, over 20 years coaching others in the health field, and having gone through her own heroine’s journey of spending two decades of her life navigating debilitating illness. She speaks to transformation based on deep personal experience. In her youth she lived with poverty, family addiction and illiteracy, homelessness, and violence. In young adulthood serious illnesses kept her bed-bound for years. Learn more about her on the podcast page.

In our conversation, Dr. Cat and I discuss how nervous system safety is starting to receive much more attention in the health and spirituality arenas, but is a grievously missing piece in our environmental and social justice endeavors. If we seek to create healing for people and planet, we as individuals need to learn to regulate our nervous systems so we can achieve true conflict resolution. It is from the serene space of nervous system safety that we design creative solutions that bring regeneration to people and planet.

Dr. Cat explains that if you experience difficulty stepping into your calling, desired work, or goals, you likely have a dysregulated nervous system. She shares ways to orient your nervous system toward stability and optimal functioning.

When you are practicing nervous system recovery and regulation, you can surpass the us vs. them dichotomies that often break human society apart, and you can raise yourself above victim consciousness. Then you are in the powerful space of creative transformation, whether you aim to transform yourself and your life, your local community, or human life on Earth.

For humans and Earth,

Chara

Chara Armon, Ph.D.

 

 

 

 

I’m making a liberating choice & sharing it with you

I’m making a liberating choice & sharing it with you

Most of you on this mailing list found my work in 2014 and 2015 when I created the Healing Earth, Healing Self Telesummit. From 2016 onward I dealt with a series of health and household challenges that required me to step away from this work; they were terrifying but transformational and eventually I will share about them. Last August when I re-opened my online offerings as The School for Humans and Earth, I told you that I had chosen to do so using the name Helen Claire Harmon to differentiate my work with the School for Humans and Earth from my job in higher education.

What I have noticed in the past year is that I haven’t come to feel fully like “Helen.” It is a family name, so very special to me. And my given name, Chara, carries the awkwardness of being very frequently mis-pronounced. But the bigger issue is that I see that this effort to hide my spiritually oriented work for Earth from my conventional life as a college professor ultimately isn’t feeling like the best choice. In fact my contributions in both areas are similar and aligned. As both “Helen” and “Chara” I have the same values, priorities, and commitments, and some of the same colleagues.

At risk of encountering awkwardness with colleagues and students in higher ed who are not open to the spiritual foundations of my work in The School for Humans and Earth, I have decided to side with authenticity and wholeness and do all of my work as Chara Armon, my legal, life-long name. In case you’re wondering, my first name is pronounced similarly to ‘Charlotte,’ with an ‘sh’ sound. (‘Chara’ is a star in the constellation Canes venaticii and is the Greek word for ‘joy,’ though it is pronounced differently in Greek than the pronunciation my parents chose.)

As I make this choice and shift my website and social media accounts over the next couple of weeks, I feel naked, vulnerable, scared, but also more free and empowered than I have ever felt. I’ve never before given myself this much permission to be who I really am. As a spiritually and holistically inclined person who has worked in the ‘conventional’ world, I have always felt divided, closeted, and frightened of being ‘found out.’ But we are in a time when everyone needs to live their truth. People’s inner authenticity is a precious key to repairing life on planet Earth. And many thought leaders with both ‘conventional’ and ‘alternative’ authority have paved the way, from Martha Beck and Marc Bekoff to Lissa Rankin, Robin Wall Kimmerer, David Nicol, and many of the speakers featured on the Humans and Earth podcast, including Stephan Harding, Anita Sanchez, Bill Plotkin, and Cara Gubbins. What is quite amazing now is that many ‘conventional’ approaches are validating ‘alternative’ approaches: for example, we have medical studies confirming the value of acupuncture and scholarly articles discussing humans’ ability to directly communicate with animals. We’re in a time of bringing the divided conversations back together.

So, I’m giving myself full permission to both have an Ivy League Ph.D. and be a published scholar and excellent college professor, AND communicate with plants and other beings, facilitate transformation with flower essences, and serve as a thought leader for the process of co-creating regeneration for all life on Earth.

What is coming from The School for Humans and Earth are more e-courses and podcast episodes, the possibilities of some interesting exposure in news media this fall and winter, and an exciting online conference in early 2022 on how to co-create the healed, regenerated world we want to live in.

If you are in alignment with these offerings, I hope you’ll stay, watch The School unfold, and participate where you feel called. Please consider sharing The School’s work with friends, family, and colleagues. If the School’s offerings are not in sync with your perspectives and needs, now is a good time to unsubscribe from our mailing list.

My commitment to you is to bring my whole self to advocating for beliefs and actions that can regenerate our world. My commitment to myself is to no longer closet any of my aspects, but instead to offer my work for Humans and Earth with full transparency, trust in my mission, and a knowing of the great validity of working at this time on behalf of regenerating people and planet for the well-being of all life on Earth.

 

For Humans and Earth,

Chara Armon

To celebrate my choice to live in authentic transparency, I am putting my mentoring services on sale for 33% off the regular price for anyone who schedules in the next two weeks. Simply use the code HUMANSANDEARTH12 when you schedule an appointment here: www.humansandearth.com/mentoring

Are you motivated by eco-anxiety or eco-inspiration?

Are you motivated by eco-anxiety or eco-inspiration?

 

Do you worry that we’re facing disaster on planet Earth?

 

If you’re fearful about the future of humans and Earth, I’m offering you an alternate view.

 

Worry keeps us stuck. You can’t create, help or heal when you’re frozen in upset. Feeling concerned is valid, but staying in distress is disempowering.

We need to shift from Eco-anxiety into the empowered state of Eco-inspiration.

For half of the price of my regular mentoring sessions, you can learn 5 Steps to Move from Eco-Anxiety to Eco-Inspiration. Our 1-1 conversation will help you feel calm, purposeful, and inspired instead of scared about what’s happening on planet Earth. The consult comes with a pdf guide and e-book. You can sign up here.

I’m offering 15 consults at half of my regular price to help you shift from Eco-anxiety to Eco-inspiration. I believe you can move beyond your fears about the state of the world and into inspired contribution, whether your focus is at home, in your community, or on a larger scale.

Worrying about disasters keeps us in the energy that created them. A better way is to light up your heart and mind with the love for life on Earth that underlies your worry. Your loving inspiration allows you to then make an impactful contribution to regenerative solutions.

I’m here to support you in learning the 5 Steps to Move from Eco-anxiety to Eco-inspiration. Please join me and let’s start a Revolution of Eco-inspiration.

 

 

On the podcast this week is a beautiful interview with my flower essence teacher, Ameya Cohen of Woman Rising Mystery School and Gaia’s Essences. Hear Ameya’s insightful comments on the times we’re in and how plant medicine assists:

  • “Our return and connection to the Earth has to happen in order to create any kind of world that’s sustainable or thriving or serves the all and many.”
  • How flower essences work and why they support your true nature. “They are a gentle, beautiful way to work with the Earth and yourself. Every flower and every tree has specific wisdom that may relate to exactly what you are wanting to heal or expand into.”
Why Connecting to Nature Spirits is Important Now

Why Connecting to Nature Spirits is Important Now

 

Does it vulnerable, edgy, or strange to you to talk about nature spirits, or is it a welcome conversation?

Most of us don’t live in communities where there’s much–or any!–conversation about beings such as nature spirits. But to restore this planet’s health, along with human health, we need to return to collaboration with the beings who understand Earth better than we do.

It’s also joyful and revealing to communicate with the beings of nature–they are light, beautiful, and wise.

In the new episode of the Humans & Earth podcast, I talk about my recent conversations with nature spirits, why they became a forbidden topic due to the split between science and spirituality created by the Scientific Revolution, why it’s possible to embrace both spirituality and science, and how cultures around the world have acknowledged nature spirits.

 

Most importantly, I share:

  • What the nature spirits’ role is on planet Earth
  • 3 ways you can connect with and learn from them
  • And what I feel is the future of the human-nature spirit relationship.

 

A new monthly discussion group

I’m opening a new monthly discussion group on the first Sunday of each month at 5:00 Eastern.

It’s a place to discuss your explorations of your new, or upleveled, contributions to regeneration for people and planet. Anything you are trying at the personal, home or community level is a welcome topic.

It’s also a setting for questions and sharing about your forays into talking with and listening to beings such as nature spirits. You are welcome to bring any topic or question related to the human-nature relationship and ways we can restore this relationship, our planet, and ourselves.

To receive the Zoom link for our meeting at 5:00 Eastern on August 1, send $12 via PayPal to hch@humansandearth.com

I will facilitate discussion and Q&A.

 

The beings of nature are waiting to assist us with re-forming how we live on this planet. You can learn to engage with them, for your own good and the good of life on planet Earth. Please listen to and share this new episode to help us all move forward together.

 

For humans and Earth,

Chara Armon