The healing power of living systems

When we partner with the innate ability of living systems to heal, regeneration happens all by itself

Jun 10, 2024

Today, we are sharing the first full episode in series 2 of The Pocket Dojo podcast. I am in conversation with Katherine Long, a well-known practitioner in regenerative leadership and organisational development. Katherine and I do similar work, if with a slightly different focus, and have been good friends for some years now.

We talk about Katherine’s fascinating journey from her childhood in Northern Japan, where she was free to roam around in nature and how it has shaped the person she is today, to teaching English as a Foreign Language around the world and her emergent curiosity in cross-cultural communication. This new interest led her into coaching, where she was also instrumental in setting up programs for developing other practitioners and organisations to develop standards for practice.

Through her day job, Katherine began also to explore how living systems and complexity theory could support leaders and teams - where our work and interests meet - to develop intuition and the need for a holistic approach to change. She talks with me about principles and the relationality of healing as a core property of living systems, which takes place whether we are aware of it and allow it or not. We discuss why these characteristics are key to effective regeneration, which also allows for the composting and hospicing of what is no longer useful as part of the natural cycle of life. And how this is essential if we really want to regenerate the earth.

We talk too about regenerative agriculture as a field (no pun intended!) of practice where principles of healing are at work and we can find examples of regeneration that are easy to relate to, also in our teams and organisations.

'Even the most depleted soils and rivers, and even our own bodies and communities, given the right conditions, have the capacity to heal and reliably so.'

Where we differ - and this is rich ground for further conversation and exploration - on the potential and impact of technology on regenerative practice, especially when it can help us to continuously learn and adapt.

In essence, healing is not a destination, something or somewhere we need to reach. Instead it’s a continual journey of integration and evolution, happening quietly in the background all by itself. When we become conscious of some of these properties both within us and in the spaces between us, we can also become much more intentional about how we show up, organise and interact, especially if we want to create conditions for all life to flourish, not just our own.

Katherine’s wise words remind us that profound healing and change is always possible to all of us and point the way towards an approach for scaling regenerative practice in our families, communities and organisations.

Chapters:

00:00 Introduction

03:30 Intuition and living systems

13:32 A healing-centered approach to change

20:52 An exploration of regenerative agriculture as an example of healing and flourishing

29:25 Living Simply and AI

35:21 An aspiration for the world

Thanks for reading and watching!