Thriving Children Everywhere: What can ‘Re-childing’ teach us about weaving

With Nadia Sandi, 15 Feb 2024

Image created by Weaving Lab

Summary

This session looked at the “Thriving Children Everywhere” (TCE) initiative to:

• explore what role can our ‘child self’ play in reaching our highest potential as weavers, and how ‘re-childing’ can manifest in our weaving, holding the seeds for our highest aspirations as a process for systemic educational and planetary transformation, and

• learn more about TCE’s essence and regenerative frameworks.

To ground the space and the collective to embody the energy of their individual and collective infinite inner gifts of love, intuition, curiosity, imagination, creativity, and trust, the community was invited to engage in a “sculpting” exercise, which involved selecting some of the objects that were around them, and creating a sculpture using intuitive heart-knowing rather than logical overthinking. Then, breakout groups discussed what the emergent structures represented for them.

For the second ritual, a “children’s fire” meditation and follow up plenary sharing was used to anchor personal purpose, gifts, resources, imagination and cocreation across ancestral and future generations.

Lastly, the participants were invited to learn about the regenerative frameworks that have further inspired and shaped the coevolution of TCE after Theory U’s presencing the concept that wanted to be born.

Key Learning Points

• Intuitive object selection, when the hand is an extension of the heart, surfaces vital subconscious insights then what the rigid logic might obscure.
• Modern educational systems function as extractive, mechanistic architectures that actively unchild youth and lead to ‘amputated’ adults.
• Regenerative design respects the reality that every system is nested within larger cosmic scales.
• Homecoming, remembering our full human self and our humanity / reintegration (a return to the source) requires individuals to pause result-driven checkboxes and heal themselves first, being mindful that healing happens with others, in communion and community.
• Connecting to an intergenerational process expands an individual’s holistic capacity for compassionate love.

Key Action Points

• Gather five or six household items to make an intuitive physical sculpting sequence.
• Sense into roles and authentically nurture relationships rather than tracking rigid, static deliverables.
• Conduct a multi-generational “children’s fire” meditation to deeply connect to the child, adult, and ancestral identities, gifts, heritage, responsibilities for and cocreation with/ for present and future generations.
• Use journaling prompts to connect and uncover individual emergent expressions, surprises, manifestations, invitations as a reflection from the collective experience.

Image created from transcript in Wordclouds.com

References

Frameworks: ULAB 2X Awareness-Based Systems Change (Otto Scharmer) The Three Phenomena framework.

Literary: Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Live the Questions” poetry Rumi’s philosophies Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Ritual Disciplines: The Indigenous Children’s Fire circle practice Trauma-informed systemic versions of the self Theory U practices Indigenous practices

Geographic Ecosystem Contexts: Regional initiatives spanning Morocco, South Africa, Uganda, Vietnam, North America, Malaysia, India, and the Amazon.

Knowledge Base Categories: 1) Regeneration & Universal Wellbeing 2) Decolonialisation, Equity & Inclusion