New things – Nuevos caminos

This year I participated in a training Erasmus+ in Ängsbacka called Harmony. Facilitated by Alba Fernández, Baldesca Moner, Melania Forte and Anita Correia it took place in Ängsbacka, Sweden, what used to be my home for some time.

As a background and in their own words:
“Nowadays we do, act and consume in a way that our environment and our nervous systems can’t handle. We live in a society that devalues and depletes its own and the planet’s resources.
We have engaged in behaviors based on disconnection of oneselves, materialism, a sense of separateness and very competitive individualism. These behaviors make us lose our true compass in life causing suffering within and harming the environment we live in.
This project aims for a shift towards harmony at a personal, community and global level. We believe a shift in awareness is elementary to transition towards a regenerative and sustainable future at those 3 levels. A shift to bring us back to a sense of interconnectedness with all life, being able to value our inner and outer resources which in turn promotes cooperation, care and respect. Also to bring tools through facilitation dynamics and the arts of embodiment, to identify the resources at our disposal, explain how we connect with them and what ideas or proposals we put forward to create sustainable and regenerative ways.”

The first Phase of the project arrived with the Spring. 30 amazing people from different countries of europe meet in an ecovillage, to exchange, develop and acquire healthy foundations and tools for awareness, self sustainability and personal well-being. We learned tools to create healthy, community-based, cooperative, and inclusive working groups and relationships. We acquired resources for increased resilience as youth workers, taking care of oneself in order to take care of others. We practiced and learned new dynamics, tools and resources on how to teach and facilitate through movement, voice and nature connection. And finally we increase environmental awareness and regenerative practices with less informed collectives.

Photos from Kertu, have a look in all of them   https://kertuffel.pic-time.com/-harmony2580/gallery

In the second Phase, in Summer I implemented a designed activity that I called “VOICE THE NATURE”, with the intention to connect people to themself and the forest and to collect information from Nature and voice it. What I wrote in the flyer was “Shinrin Yoku is the experience I want to co-create, a forest bath. I invite you to take a guided walk and share what you have experienced. The result of all this will be the raw material to give voice to Nature. An opportunity to rest in silence, get to know each other and reharmonize.”

The event was taken in Argoumbat https://www.argoumbat.org/ an amazing ecovillage in the south of france that hosted my new group for a week. I was inspired by the big (grandfather) trees that I found there so I took them as an inspiration to change a little bit of my local action Phase and put them in the center. It was a nice experience and from my point of view people left the place with smiley faces and sharing the gratitude. Lots of inner reflections related to their lives and nature were designed and shared. I’d remembered how was being leading a circle

Finally the Autumn arrived and it was time to come back to Sweden and share with the group our project. I was amazed by my new friends, how they express themself personally and professionally implementing what they had designed. And I shared what I had done, and I received validating feedback and I remembered that Nature has a lot of things to tell us if we listen to it.

This training program is co-funded by the European Commission program Erasmus+