Holistic Worldview

"To dissolve a paradigm: if we want to change it, we have to get into quantum level, we have to invite insightful creative thinking that challenges assumptions, breaks patterns and rewires our brains." Danah Zohar

This module will give an overview of new concepts emerging in modern science and the implications that this emerging world view may have upon how we live and work with the land and the natural world. It will introduce the major principles and values of the emerging holistic paradigm and explore their practical applications in our lifestyles.

Topics include:
What is a paradigm?
How do paradigms shift?
Comparing and contrasting the mechanistic and holistic approaches
Systems Theory
Gaia Hypothesis
Holographic Paradigm
Morphogenetic Fields and Formative Causation
Chaos Theory
Field Theory

Listening to and Reconnecting with Nature

In this module we will weave together the biocentric perspective of Deep Ecology, the importance of wilderness for the planet and humanity, and the role of people in helping to heal the Earth's degraded ecosystems. Utilising experiential deep ecology exercises, the module will also include nature walks and visits to natural places of power.

Awakening and Transforming Consciousness

This module will explore how consciousness creates reality. We will work with the hypothesis that human consciousness is associated with the formation of reality and the act of observation is a process for collapsing the possible in the actual. We will explore the power and influence of intention and motivation on living systems. We will look at how my awakening is your awakening. This exploration will run throughout the four weeks through daily meditation, sharing and reflective practices.

Personal Health and Planetary Health

Health is derived from wholeness - being whole, sound or well. In this module we will explore the relationship between our individual well-being in direct relation to the well-being of the planet. While good nutritional practice is central to our health, equally essential is our relationship with spirit, our sense of purpose in the world, relationships, and physical activity. Gaia has many gifts, shared constantly and unconditionally. In observing this planet's natural and subtle processes as our ancestors did, we can develop practices for flourishing personal well-being in partnership with the planet.

Socially Engaged Spirituality and Bioregionalism

"Sulak and I share a conviction that if we are to solve human problems, economic and technological development must be accompanied by an inner spiritual growth."
The Dalai Lama

Too often the environmental movement has been thought of as essentially different from the movement for social justice. This split reflects the deep, unconscious division in our minds between the human world and the natural world. This module will explore the principles of a socially engaged spirituality. We will look at how the transformation of society may first begin within the self; how nurturing and cultivating compassion, wisdom, and loving-kindness in our hearts can have an influence on social structures; how by practising mindfulness we awaken ourselves to the present moment and become aware of the suffering that surrounds us; and how by awakening ourselves to suffering, we can be the change we want to see in the world.

Integration

The EDE is being introduced to the world at this time to complement, correspond with, and assist in setting a standard for the United Nations' Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005-2014.

Please complete the Application Form and Enrolment Questionnaire to

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Training fees
For the whole programme
£1595 payable by participants with low income
£1835 payable by participants with medium income
£2125 payable by participants with high income
For one module
£455/£515/£605 according to income

Fees include tuition, accommodation, vegetarian meals and field trips.

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If you cannot afford the full fee, please check out our bursary guidelines. If you can afford to pay more than the full fee for this programme, your donation will be gratefully received and used to help those who cannot afford the whole fee.

Pracha Hutanuwatr, Thai activist and intellectual, is a former Buddhist monk with a socialist background. He has worked under the guidance of Buddhadasa Bhikku, a renowned, Buddhist monk and philosopher who developed the concept of Dhammic Socialism; and Sulak Sivaraksa, an influential, independent thinker. In 1988 Sulak and Pracha founded the International Network of Engaged Buddhists.
Pracha is Director of Wongsanit Ashram and Director of Spirit in Education Movement, an NGO organising Grassroots Leadership Training in South East Asia. He has published several major books in Thai. Recently he and Ramu Mannivan published (in English): Asian Futures: Dialogue for Change, containing intensive interviews with 14 prominent Asian thinkers.

May East is a Brazilian social change activist who has spent the last 30 years working internationally with music, indigenous people, women, antinuclear, environmental and sustainable human settlements movements. Since 1992 she has lived at the Findhorn Foundation ecovillage in Scotland where she is the Ecovillage Education Coordinator, the Director of International Relations between the Foundation, the Global Ecovillage Network and the United Nations. May is a facilitator of the World Wisdom Council of the Club of Budapest and works internationally as an ecovillage consultant and educator. She is currently coordinating the establishment of a UNITAR CIFAL training centre at Findhorn.

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As a graduate of the MSc in Holistic Science at Schumacher College, I have searched widely for a curriculum that is truly holistic in its approach to applying the theoretical insights of the new holistic/ecological worldview to the practical dimensions of the sustainability transition. My own path took me from holistic science to a PhD in Design, because I saw design as the transdisciplinary integrator and facilitator that can bridge the gap between theory and practice. As far as I am aware, the EDE curriculum is currently the best and most comprehensive approach to turning holistic and joined-up thinking about sustainability into action. It really helps people to get a pretty complex whole picture view of the various dimensions of the sustainability transition and, what's more, it offers them effective tools and strategies how they can play an active part in this work of generational importance. I can only highly recommend this course. Dr Daniel C Wahl, Centre for the Study of Natural Design, University of Dundee, Scotland

The EDE programme was much more than a course, it was a life experience when people from all over the world became a community, which is inclusive and nourished by diversity. We built our learning in an inspired and creative way, guided by facilitators and ourselves in a journey of increasing awareness and consciousness. Daniela Ferraz, Department of Environmental Education, Ministry of Environment, Brazil