EcoSattva Training

In the backdrop of a pandemic and state actors actively hostile to science, ecological breakdown looms. The potential for overwhelm is real. While we take steps to demand racial justice, protect voting rights, or defend ecosystems, we can also invest in our inner resources. With the support of community, we can turn toward difficulty and transmute it into wisdom. Supported by a diverse and rich set of teachers, we invite you to gather with others online and explore our respective edges, meeting all that arises in us and discovering an authentic way forward.

The EcoSattva Training has been specifically designed to support self-paced and self-scheduled participation, with core video teachings and plentiful resources for contemplation and interacting with fellow participants. It is ideally experienced in a small group, which can be in-person or online; no matter where you are or whether it is safe yet to meet up, you can start or join a group to progress through the course. Then join the monthly live sessions to connect with the global community of registered EcoSattvas in training, no matter where each is in the course.

Course format

• Introduction
• Overview of the Course
• Who is this for?
• Who Will Be Featured?
• How can I participate?
• What’s the Schedule and Session Format?
• Registration Fees
• I’m Interested. What do I do Next?
• I still have questions
• Gratitude
• How Can I Help?

Together at an Edge: The EcoSattva Training

The ecological breakdown unfolds all around us, and many of its compounding effects cannot be stopped, much less reversed. As here-and-now evidence of the dawning climate crisis mounts, the grief, anxiety and depression we may experience constitutes a psychological “eco-crisis tax” on everyday life. We don’t know what is to come, but we are living at a pivotal time, an edge.

The latest version of the EcoSattva Training is designed to meet participants in this unprecedented challenge with new insights from both the Dharma as well as the growing field of climate psychology. We will journey together to soothe and ultimately unbind our bodies, hearts and minds so that they can actively and creatively love this life. Deeply rooted and thoroughly engaged, we can express the most authentically helpful response to ecological crisis that is available to us.

Overview of the Course

The course will begin at the level of experience, a good place to start given our pervasive stress. Climate psychologists are demonstrating that these crises are traumatizing, with the attendant adaptations to trauma showing up in both our individual and collective defenses. We will spend time in this course understanding that dynamic and then bring in specific Dharma and trauma-informed practices that can soothe our eco-stressed bodies, hearts and minds.

Having cultivated an inner landscape of kindness and calm, both ancient Dharma as well as modern climate psychology can support us in challenging the views and patterns that only contribute to suffering, individually and collectively. We will explore the intersections between ecological harm with other forms of objectification and exploitation, especially in regards to race, revealing their common roots and common remedies. In the final part of the course, we will explore diverse forms of response, from the surprisingly important changes we can make in our everyday lives, to the necessary refusals to cooperate with systems of domination, and everything in between.

Though the edges may be different, we’ll be together at an edge.

• Session One: Gathering and Setting a Course
• Special Session: Mind and Resilience
• Session Two: Cultivating Conditions for Transformation
• Session Three: Compassionate Reflection
• Session Four: Intersections in Racism, Colonialism, Patriarchy and Ecological Crises
• Session Five: Making a Home in Uncertainty
• Session Six: Creating and Discovering The Way
• Session Seven: Expressing Our Awakening Agency
• Session Eight: Going Forth

Who is this for?

This course is for you if:

• you are intrigued by the possibility of finding well-being amid what can seem like an impossible situation;
• you are interested in a response to climate crises that is deeply rooted and meaningful;
• you want to build confidence that you can make a difference.

To understand the full context of the training, some interest in or experience with Buddhism will be helpful. But we encourage participants of any (or no) spiritual background to join.

Read more, read about registration fees and register for this course here.