Remembering Participation
Ecopsychology, Rites of Passage, Embodiment & Ecological Belonging
Lately, many of my conversations, essays, and podcast dialogues have been circling around one central question:
What happens to human beings — and to our systems — when we lose deep participation with life itself?
Through my podcast series Roots of Enlivenment, I’ve been speaking with ecologists, systems thinkers, mindfulness pioneers, therapists, and regenerative voices exploring embodiment, nervous systems, ecology, imagination, ritual, and cultural transition.
One of the newest conversations in the series is with Roger Duncan — systemic psychotherapist, ecopsychology educator, wilderness guide, Waldorf teacher, and author of Nature in Mind.
What moved me deeply in Roger’s presence is the rare way he bridges psychology, imagination, ecology, human development, and spiritual inquiry without separating them into categories. His work carries a quiet understanding that healing cannot be reduced to the isolated individual, because the human psyche itself is shaped in relationship with nature, community, thresholds, ritual, and the living world.
Our conversation moved through themes that feel profoundly relevant for our time:
The loss of rites of passage,
The fragmentation of modern consciousness,
Imagination as a mode of perception,
Ecological belonging,
and the question of what it truly means to become human during times of transition.
Roger brought a grounded and deeply humane perspective into the dialogue — one that honors complexity without losing tenderness, imagination, or reverence for life.
The conversation also connects closely with themes from my recent essay Beyond Survival and my recent books Wild & Wunderbar and Alchemy of Soul — exploring nervous systems, embodiment, relational intelligence, thresholds, and the recovery of participatory ways of being.
If these questions resonate with you, I’d love to invite you into this growing field of conversations through Roots of Enlivenment and my writing on Parallax and Substack.
(https://www.parallax-media.com/roots-of-enlivenment)
(https://cordulafrei.substack.com/p/beyond-survival)
And a small reminder:
Next Saturday I’ll host an open online gathering and sharing circle around deep ecology, embodiment, rewilding, and nervous systems in times of transition.
If you feel called, you’re warmly welcome to join in.
(https://www.parallax-media.com/courses/deep-ecology-the-meaning-of-rewildering-your-soul)
This gathering is free for parallax members but please do register so we can send out a Zoom Link. For new readers a small donation in form of purchasing a evening ticket is apriciated.
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