told by one’s parent to stay away from ‘bad company’. The parent’s concern for the connections through which his/her child experiences sociality reflects a folk understanding of moral behaviour as something that is furthered and facilitated by particular relations, beyond an individual’s atomistic acts of will: the life-world we inhabit defines us as much as we think we construct it through our actions. In recalling his studies on deviance, Becker equally observes how seemingly ‘radical’ choices and behaviours become acceptable after a step-wise process of building tighter attachments to a particular cultural milieu, so that a biological man does not simply wake up and decide to undergo a sex change, but that decision is one that matures after exposure to literatures, formal and informal mentors, the trappings of life lived ‘as a woman’, and so on.22
In much the same way, Inner Transition seems to rest on this understanding of ethical behaviour as a problem of facilitation, rather than compliance. Through what attachments can people gather the ability to follow and flow with the moving of Transition (not just intellectually, but through embodied resonance and felt connection)? Inner Transition, in revealing the relatedness to that moving of forms of corporeality and discourses that would otherwise risk being overlooked, enhances the possibility for individuals to surround themselves with ‘Transition things’, making the moving of Transition more tangible and inclusive.
‘Inner work’: implicit and explicit
The dynamism involved in the effort to weave ‘outer’ into ‘inner’ Transition and vice versa (so as not to turn incipient difference into an unbridgeable rift) is reflected in the frenzy of different experiments sparked by this ongoing tension.
‘Inner Transition-type’ activities in a Transition initiative have sometimes involved the direct cultivation of ‘inner practices’. This can entail, for instance, sessions or gatherings based on ‘The Work That Reconnects’. This is a set of practices that have been popularised by activist and writer Joanna Macy in a book with Molly Brown.23 In that book, they outline various activities, rituals and exercises to cultivate particular sensitivities and inclinations in a conscious manner and bring these to our relating in the world. In the authors’ own words, the Work That Reconnects aims to address the following aspirations:
• to provide people the opportunity to experience and share with others their innermost responses to the present condition of our world
• to reframe their pain for the world as evidence of their interconnectedness in the web of life, and hence of their power to take part in its healing
• to provide people with concepts – from systems science, deep ecology, or spiritual traditions – which illumine this power, along with exercises which reveal its play in their own lives
• to provide methods by which people can experience their interdependence with, their responsibility to, and the inspiration they can draw from past and future generations, and other life-forms
• to enable people to embrace the Great Turning[24] as a challenge which they are fully capable of meeting in a variety of ways, and as a privilege in which they can take joy
• to enable people to support each other in clarifying their intention, and affirming their commitment to the healing of the world.25
To give a better sense of what a space directed at the explicit cultivation of Work That Reconnects practices ‘feels’ like, a brief anecdote may help. When I arrived in Totnes, the Inner Transition group was meeting around significant seasonal transitions (the solstice and equinox). The one meeting I did attend was held to match the Autumn Equinox, and the passage from summer to autumn. On that occasion, participants sitting in a circle were encouraged to introduce themselves by focusing on their own connection to the changing seasons, and express gratitude for what the summer had brought to them. In my own experience as an academic practicing a moderately sedentary, indoors lifestyle, seasons tend to be marked by the beginning and end of teaching terms, by the adoption of daylight-saving time, and the general sleepiness that sets on as days get shorter and colder, getting in the way of sustained academic work. Other participants, however, offered a number of observations stemming from their own experiences of growing an allotment, describing in detail relationships with plants and animals. Upon hearing these accounts, I was confronted with a novel perspective on what the change of seasons could mean, which therefore offered an opportunity to conceive a different form of relating to the season’s passing. Subsequently, the circle split into pairs, taking turns listening to each other respond to a prompt about what one was harvesting in his/her life at the turn of seasons.
Both of these exercises are described by Joanna Macy. In the first case, the sharing circle is meant to help a ‘coming from gratitude’, establishing a ‘wholesome, generative ground for all that follows’,26 as well as to allow the surfacing of ‘our pain for the world, because knowing what we treasure triggers the knowing of how threatened it is’.27 The second type of exercise, centred on active listening, is described under the heading of ‘despair work’, and aims to ‘uncover our pain for the world, and honour it. We bring to awareness our deep inner responses to the suffering of our fellow beings and the progressive destruction of the natural world, our larger body. These responses include dread, rage, sorrow, and guilt. They are healthy and inevitable – and usually blocked by the pressures of daily life and fear of being overwhelmed by despair. Now, in this first stage of the Work that Reconnects, they are allowed to surface without shame or apology’.28
Facilitating an environment where certain noticings can be articulated in a supportive setting enables the development of a shared language to discuss these, to develop familiarity with them, and ultimately to begin engaging these presences in terms of their implication for action. In a way, this is precisely the task that Joanna Macy envisages for the practices she devised, namely to nurture sensitivities that help to recognise, articulate and respond to issues that may not be able to find expression in the settings and the conversations that people may be accustomed to, outside of the sharing group.
On the other hand, however, this particular setup for ‘Inner Transition-type’ explorations does not necessarily sit well with everyone. Among the criticism I have gathered is the therapy-like focus that seems to arise in the group, when undertaking Work That Reconnects exercises of the sort I have just described. Not everyone, in fact, is a fan of exercises that stress linguistic engagement, which may be reminiscent to him/her of collective psychotherapy.29 At times, this particular focus may equally play a role in restricting the audience to an older demographic, so that younger participants may drift towards different offerings. On another front, the Work That Reconnects is just one type of embodied and ritual practice. There are many others that one can think of, from direct experiential participation in the outdoors to yoga and dance to a maze of healing practices. In this sense, it is also the case that, to participants invested in one or the other of these different forms of practice, Inner Transition meetings that are facilitated using the Work that Reconnects may not feel very engaging, and they may drift instead towards the myriad of other offerings constellating beyond the Inner Transition group. In fact, ‘Inner Transition-type’ practices are cultivated explicitly also outside of Inner Transition groups. So it is the case, for instance, that in Totnes a number of individuals – while active as ‘Inner Transition-type’ people – would not necessarily partake in the group meetings I just described. As I mentioned, these can sometimes be limited by demographics they tend to appeal to (with attendees being older) or by the type of engagement being confined to a discursive, therapy-like atmosphere, or by leaning more towards a particular ritual practice. For this reason, ‘Inner Transition-type’ explorations equally live in a variety of other settings and gatherings that constellate the hinterland of the Inner Transition group, in the related milieu of ‘inner work’. A case in point is the weekly 5Rhythms dancing class in Totnes. 5Rhythms is a style of free form dancing, where participants discover movement and improvisation as they are taken through five different types of rhythm. In 5Rhythms, as I was able to experience, there is no real connection with words, but – as one interviewee mentioned
