Manda: Hey people, welcome to Accidental Gods. To the podcast where we believe that another world is still possible and that if we all work together, there is still time to lay the foundations for that future that we would be proud to leave to the generations that come after us. I'm Manda Scott, your host and fellow traveller, in this journey into possibility. And this week we are looking at how the generations that come after us are learning what it is to be human in the world. Rachel Musson was a guest on Accidental Gods way back in 2020, in episode 52, and a lot has shifted in the world since then. It has become more clear than ever that the old systems are no longer fit for purpose. That we can build new things. That as the old breaks apart, green shoots are emerging and we can be part of their growing. We can sow the seeds that let them happen. And so the question we bring this week is what does an education system look like that is fit for purpose in the 21st century? What happens if we put self-care, people care and earth care at the heart of what we do? This is the foundation of Rachel's Triple Wellbeing concept, the book that she's written and the courses that she leads.
Manda: And as you'll hear in everything she does, from leading thought box education to creating the Transforming Leadership course, to writing her genuinely magical children's books, to her podcast with fellow thought boxer Holly Everett called Two Inconvenient Women; Rachel is being the change that we need to see in the world. She is having the courage of her convictions to follow that felt sense of what the web of life wants of her. And at a time where the old is breaking apart, where the centre is no longer holding and the worst are full of passionate intensity, Rachel is a living example of the fact that the best of us can also be full of passionate intensity. And that we can sow the seeds of change that ripen into something close to miraculous transformation. Rachel is a beacon of inspiration and optimism, showing how we can connect to the web of life and build networks of mycelial change in our personal lives, our collective lives and across the whole of the web of life. So here we go with all of that at this time of total change; people of the podcast, please welcome Rachel Musson of Thought Box Education and so much more.
Manda: Rachel, welcome back to the Accidental Gods podcast. How are you and where are you this fascinating spring morning?
Rachel: Thank you manda. You've just reminded me it was 2020 that we that we talked here last. I am happily in Totnes in Devon. A place that I was hoping you'd come and live at some point, and you ran away.
Manda: I did, but it's still on the cards. There's still bits of us. Faith has said that if I find a really good place in Totnes, she would move. So who knows? Because it used to be that I thought other places in the world would be safer and now there's nowhere in the world that's going to be safer, so we might as well go and live with there's gorgeous things. So last time we spoke, episode 52, I had Devon envy and I still have Devon envy. We're going to meet up shortly, so that's a good thing. So in the time since we last spoke, the world has completely changed. The old paradigm is falling apart faster than we ever thought it would. And whereas when you and I were down in Devon, we were busy trying to work out the soft landing, from taking apart the old system. And the old system is now being basically decimated with a chainsaw; There is no soft landing. And yet the ideas that are lying around will be the ones that are picked up, if they can help us all move forward from the chaos of now into a more generative future. And it seems to me that you have some of the ideas lying around for how we can hospice the old system of being, particularly of educating our kids and educating ourselves, and create something fundamentally different. And you're at the leading edge of this. So there are so many things that you're doing. Since we last spoke you've published a number of books and created a course and Thought Box Education is still moving. I think let's start with your story of Triple Wellbeing, because we talked about that a little last time, but it's become much more radically, fiercely, compassionately out there. So tell us about that.
Rachel: Thank you Manda. Yes. I really enjoy looking at my past self with this sort of tender compassion as to where I was and where I've evolved. And I listened back to the recording we had a few years ago and I think I just mentioned this to you this morning; there was a quiet bravery in our work at that point, and there's now a very compassionate fierceness, you've just given me that word, in our work right now. And that has come quite significantly since two years ago now, where we made the decision to turn our organisation inside out. And if you like, we talk a little bit about the secret sauce, the secret recipe that we had underpinning everything that we've been doing at Thought Box for the ten years since it began. Which is focusing on what we call triple well-being, this notion of the interconnectivity with our personal well-being, societal well-being and ecological well-being. And that's always been the fabric of how we work, of what we do, of what we offer. And then we realised a few years ago, why are we not sharing the how? Why are we so busy making things with the recipe, but not actually just giving the recipe?
Rachel: It's not our recipe; this is ancient. This is kind of how life flourishes. And so we literally turned the organisation inside out. We shared open source, the framework, the approach, a huge amount of the resources, and then pivoted our work in the world to no longer be working to create programs for the students, but to work to enable and allow educators right around the world to take this and run with it in their own context. And I don't necessarily know if this is the right framework, but we use the analogy of being a mother tree. And that we are there as a resource, as a connector, as an ecosystem enabler. But we've got magnificent forests now, taking this right out around the world. So I guess the story of Triple Wellbeing has now gone from a whisper to a song to a chorus to a harmony, and it's in its evolution.
Manda: Yes. Beautiful. Because you wrote in your story of triple wellbeing: before we write, we draw. Before we walk, we dance. Before we talk, we sing. And so now you are singing and you have other people singing in chorus with you. So tell me a little bit more, before we get into what this course sounds like and who else has joined you; how did you personally get to the story of Triple Wellbeing? How did it land with you? How did it emerge from you? Because it is obvious: the personal, the collective and the connection to the web of life; but it isn't obvious, it's not yet the paradigmatic story of our time. How did Rachel come to that?
Rachel: I'll give you the short version, because the long version is excessively long. But several moments in my life. I was an English teacher for a large part of my early career within a very mainstream system. Sort of feeling a little bit like a child in a box with a lid on, thinking I want to get out of this. This is hurting rather than helping children. And for various reasons, I found myself in Tanzania, taking a student group on this sort of exploration of mountains and spent some time with some beautiful people in the mountains. And suddenly had this calling: I need to come and live in the mountains in Tanzania. It made no sense, I left everything I knew and London and education and teaching, and just went and lived in Tanzania. And went through a very significant unlearning and remembering process, which on that journey of following a scent on the breeze, I suppose, is what I've been doing since then. It took me to Schumacher College, where you and I met, and since then it's taken me into a deeper sense of authenticity, away from this world of doing, into a space of being. And a recognition, I think. I will put a bit of legitimacy and academia into that. I wrote a book when I was in Tanzania.
Manda: Did you? I didn't know that!
Rachel: Yes. It's because it's quietly on the computer. It didn't ever become. I had a plan to do a PhD on sustainability education with Stephen Stirling and Paul Warwick in Plymouth. And I came and met them, I put my proposals in and then I realised, huh, I don't want to do a PhD really. I don't have any money. They don't have any money. It'll take me years and years and really I just want to learn. So I went back to Tanzania and just read a lot of books and wrote and wrote and wrote myself into a different way of being. And that book then evolved into starting Thought Box and the foundations of all of this work. And over the years, there's ten years now of running this organisation, I have just spent ten years really listening in and studying and connecting with different ways of being, the different human stories. Really bringing in indigenous wisdom, nature led learning, listening to the 3.8 billion years of life experience that nature has to offer and think, okay, well, there's an example of a healthy ecosystem flourishing. Let's look, listen and learn from nature's wisdom. But let's bring that into an education space where that language can feel alienating or othering or uncomfortable, but bring it in in a very gentle way that helps us all to just feel it and then remember. And so that's been kind of the beautiful dance I think of this work, of how to help us, how to enable us to wake back up into a knowing that we all have deep in our core.
Manda: Brilliant. So this feels to me this is the work of our time; is to find, to enable everybody, whatever their age, to feel that connection. To feel the rightness of it. In the phraseology that we use inside Accidental Gods, it's to be able to ask of the web of life, what do you want of me? And hear the answers. And act on them in real time. We talk about this a lot, and we in Accidental Gods are trying to educate people, as in enable people, to do this. It seems to me if a critical mass of humanity can get to the point where we are actually listening to the web of life, instead of thinking that we have the answers, then we make it through the pinch point that is coming. And if we don't, then I think we don't. And so just for a moment, I'd like to really delve into that moment when you decided that you needed to go and live in the mountains of Tanzania. Because that seems to me you, before you'd got the academic training, before you'd done all the reading, before you had immersed yourself in the rightness of that, you were actually listening to the web of life. Asking, what do you need of me? And it was saying, I need you to go and live in the mountains of Tanzania.
Manda: And people, perhaps because we live in the shamanic space. I live in the shamanic space. They seem to expect kind of fireworks and dragons and unicorns and, I don't know, a gremlin to stand in front of them and go, you need to do this. And I'm making it facetious, but people are expecting the sort of stuff that you might see in Lord of the Rings. And actually what happens is that deep inner knowing, and sometimes it's not even a deep inner knowing. It's a fractional felt sense that has a particular quality to it that is right. And I would love to explore with you, if you can, how you knew that was right, when there were probably a bunch of other things saying, no, no, you need to stay in London. There's a bunch of friendships and relationships and job things, and it's very safe. And yet there's this tone, this chime in the distance that goes, no, you need to be there. Does that feel sensible? Do you know how to unpick that? Go for it.
Rachel: Oh, I love this question Manda. Yes, I love it because it really just speaks to so much, I think, of what this invitation is, isn't it, into that knowing? And I've just sort of written down the word 'knowing' in inverted commas, because I think for me, there was just a deep sense of knowing that was nothing to do with my mind.
Manda: Thank you.
Rachel: And it was that. So it's a non-negotiable. And the monkey mind will happily chip in with all the reasons why none of this makes any sense. And the societal mind will also chip in with all the reasons why this doesn't make any sense. It wasn't even a question, is the only way I can describe it. It was just a knowing. And I do have a very visceral memory; it wasn't a dragon, and it wasn't a thunderbolt. It was a feeling of connection. So the first time I went out to Tanzania, when I took these students, we were up in the Usambara mountains in this incredibly remote village called Yamba. And I think it was 3 or 4 hour walk from the nearest road to get up to the village. It's incredibly remote. Staying on the top of this vista, that was just extraordinary. And we'd spent a couple of days with the community living up there, and I just remember going out, the students had all gone to bed, and I stood out under the stars feeling this utter, utter sense of connection to life. This this total sense of connection that had come through the community, living in this way that allowed me to see and be in a way that was well beyond anything I'd ever experienced. And it was a homecoming, a complete homecoming. Now I have a vocabulary for this now, you know, ten years later. At the time, I didn't have any of that. I just had a deep knowing. And so that really has been a North Star in a lot of the practical element of this journey, to really tap into indigenous ways of being and nature's wisdom. But also the intuition. And I guess I will say, as a woman, I've always followed my gut. And so I've had that quality that has been quietly kind of enabled in me. But really that invitation in the work we do is to ignite the deeper sense of knowing that we all hold. Or to dust it off, or to elicit ways that that knowing can be sort of sparked in us, through different approaches, different ways into it. So I just keep coming back to that word knowing; and knowing without knowledge.
Manda: Yes. And I wonder, there's quite a lot of sparks on the edges of this kind of work, where people say that once you connect to the web, There is a synchronicity and a flow and things begin to stack up. And part of how you know that the intuition that you followed was not your head mind. One of my very early teachers said, we need to listen to the voice of our heart mind, but the heart mind can be very shy and our head mind will whisper if that's what it thinks it needs to do for you to pay attention to it. And our head mind can mimic our heart mind sometimes, and people can get quite locked in doubt. And yet there seems to me what you had was a certainty. And it can take huge courage. The rest of life, particularly the people who are still in the old paradigm, can be quite vehement in their 'you are making a mistake' statements that can feel quite frightening. And yet, provided we have the courage, there is a sense that the flow of the world eases in the direction that we need to go. Did you experience that?
Rachel: Completely, completely. And every moment of my life ever since.
Manda: Right. There we go. Yes.
Rachel: You know, you said at the beginning before we recorded that you liked the salmon that's floating above my head. I think there's something in this journey back up stream against the dominant tide that has, and I won't pretend, it has required a huge amount of courage. Because I've had to leave behind so many things, and face criticism and objection and friends falling away and family members just not understanding anything about me anymore. And yet that again, it's not been a cognitive choice, it's just been this deep, deep knowing. And I trust that so, so significantly because it's not Rachel. It's not me fabricating the story of my life. It's life allowing me to unfold in it.
Manda: Yes. Thank you. Magic. And this is reminding me so much. Musk tweeted the other day that empathy was a suicidal trait and it was going to destroy humanity.
Rachel: Yeah.
Manda: And with huge compassion for someone; I spoke to someone on their podcast recently and he said 'screaming neon daddy issues'. And I thought, okay, that'll do. That's a useful phrase. So yes, huge empathy for someone who is that broken. And empathy for the parts of ourselves that connect with the web. Because once we connect with the web, the capacity to have compassion for ourselves and each other and the web becomes infinite. And it seems to me that there are ripple effects of that. The more we can have compassion for all parts of ourselves, ourselves and each other, connect to the web of life; then there is an energetic ripple to that. So first of all, to speak to that. But I'm really curious, you said as a woman you followed your intuition. And I spoke to Audrey Tang at the beginning of the year, who spoke to being Post-gender. And it seems to me that particularly some of the young people that I meet, being post-gender seems to becoming a thing. And that they're capable... I wonder, is intuition still a gendered thing in the age groups that you're working with?
Rachel: Yeah, I've never thought about it. When I said it as a woman, I wasn't necessarily bringing gender into the conversation.
Manda: Okay.
Rachel: I think it's interesting. Within the educational paradigm, the word 'soft' is used (and I'm putting that in floaty inverted commas) to capture any quality that can't be measured in a spreadsheet.
Manda: That's a lot. Wow. Okay.
Rachel: Yeah. That is the majority of life, is it not manda? So when you're thinking about eliciting qualities of a human that are well beyond the visible or the quantifiable, or the ones that have an outcome based capturing, I would say that the gender question is an irrelevant question. It's the capturing question. And I spent a glorious week with with Iain Mcgilchrist, he was my introduction to Schumacher College, really diving into the notion of the master and his emissary. And how evolutionarily, in our cultural narratives, we are sort of suppressing and oppressing and belittling the qualities of our deep, holistic, intuitive, spiritual connection to the web of life. So I won't hold back when I say that there is no, or very little, space and place and time for that within our current mainstream educational paradigm. And so working with children and working with adults, it's not so much a case of who is eliciting it, it's where it's got permission to be felt. And and if I may, just coming back to the quote that you gave back to me at the beginning of before we walk, we dance, before we talk, we sing and before we write, we draw.
Rachel: When we look at children, this innate quality that children have to be living fully in the world, with all of those senses known and unknown, fully activated. And I've written before about the butterfly to caterpillar effect of the education system. That it takes these butterflies of wonder, who are soaking up the nectar of life with this total emergence in presence; you know, watch any any child on a walk; that walk doesn't go very far because their wide eyed wonder with life. And what happens in our mainstream education system is we take that butterfly and we ask it to sit down and be quiet and be still and cocoon itself into a linear narrative that almost is the antithesis of evolution. And then that butterfly becomes a caterpillar, and that caterpillar isn't on the journey of linearity of life. And yes, that's a long winded answer to say, I don't know.
Manda: No, but it's a beautiful answer. Thank you, thank you. And it takes us really neatly into the concept of dismantling the existing education system. Because you're right, you've got a beautiful diagram of ego with this person at the top and the whole of the web of life below. And then eco, where the person is part of it. And you say (in standard education): 'We are being encouraged to doubt our own sense of worth. We are being encouraged to fear or alienate other people. We are being encouraged to exploit the natural world. These stories of separation tend to offer an individualistic, rational, abstracted and disconnected way of seeing and being in the world.' Which is exactly what you just described. And in other places, I've been listening a lot to Tim Logan. People talk about the fact that our existing education system was essentially designed to churn out factory workers. We will teach you that when a bell rings, you get up and you move around and you do something. That you work through the day without any question. And through the evening; we send you home with homework so that you don't even have free time before you go to bed.
Manda: And we create testing systems that are basically designed to minimise your capacity for creativity. And even with the best will in the world, any testing system creates teachers who are teaching to the test. It doesn't actually create any capacity for flexibility or creativity or any of the wonder of humanity. And I love your description of Butterfly to caterpillar, because that's the inverse of what we use as the emergence metaphor; of the caterpillar into the pupa and the imaginal islands all clumping together, and eventually it emerges into something that would be wholly unpredictable if you didn't know that caterpillars turned into butterflies. So talk to us about how we could craft an educational system that is quite different. And if you want to use the the whole of your transforming leadership concept and the hawk and the tree and the salmon and the wolf as part of that structure, that's great. Otherwise, we'll talk about that separately, because I think it's utterly beautiful. Everything you make is so beautiful. So let's go with dismantling the education system, why we need to and what it might look like when we've done that.
Rachel: Mhm. Oh, gosh. Manda. Where to go? You know the subtone, if you like, of all the work we're doing in education is to rehumanise education. And to Rehumanise doesn't mean to put the human at the top of the ego sort of pyramid, it means to remember what it means to be human in the web of life. And I just like that phrase you said about the wonder of humanity; that is the innateness that we're born into this world with. You know, obviously with all of the compassion and empathy for generational trauma and what we're born into. But when we have a culture that simply enables and allows the natural vivacity and vitality of life to flourish, we don't need a structure to tell that being what to do. We need boundaries to help it bounce within, and we need elders to help it form. And yet we are going to be perpetually sort of straitjacketed in any of our human evolution, if we stay within the bounds of a structured education system that as so many are saying, was designed for a factory force in a world that doesn't exist anymore. And that neither meets us in our fullest capacity, nor supports or enables us to meet the world as it is around us. So the business as usual story of education does not, cannot and will not ever work. And and we talk a lot at Thoughtbox about the symptoms of a world in crisis and digging to the roots. And when we really look at the symptoms, they are coming at us from every single angle. And school is just a microcosm of the wider world. And yet when we dig down to the root, this meta crisis, of a crisis of disconnection, I think what is so energising in the work that we're doing with all of the educators around the world, is that, and I'm going to name my joy in this.
Rachel: I've got quite a child like brain. And I don't say that to belittle myself. I think I have got a capacity to make very complicated things simple rather than simplistic, and we look a lot at what it means to actually address the meta crisis. And if there's an underpinning crisis of disconnection, then every act of connection we take and make is healing ourselves back into wholeness. And so when we're looking at the the role of an individual classroom teacher, who can stand there and think, well, I can't do anything to change the structural narrative of the educational paradigm; but I can change the relationships in my classroom. Then we've got culture change happening, from that very, very beginning. And there is the work that we're now doing. And we're working with educators right across the spectrum, from individual classroom teachers to folks working in ministries, with the same premise of let's just build healthy relationships with ourselves, with each other, and with the more than human world. And that simply comes through care. Simply comes through care. And I will name it in the evolution of my own sort of practice, and I always look forward to seeing where I'll be in a few years time to look back on this iteration of Rachel. I used to have this firm belief that if we share this information or this practice, the outcome will be that. Bish bash bosh: save the world.
Manda: Yeah, that's not how it works.
Rachel: And damn it, it doesn't work.
Manda: The nature of complex systems is that it can't. But that's good, because it also means people with chainsaws who think they've got a linear progression also isn't going to work.
Rachel: Also doesn't work. And I think what's been the most exciting part of our work, and I will talk about Hawks and Trees and Wolves and Salmon very briefly, is actually demystifying systems dynamics and bringing that right into the heart of our work. And so we have very explicit training on what is a system. And that's through our Transforming Leadership course. And then we have very implicit underlying framings to enable and allow this learning to happen, through how we show up as individuals in our organisation, through how our organisation works and through the resources and courses that we offer. And I think one of the one of the most profound things for myself with systems dynamics was just simplifying it to the point where I understood it. And we use the analogy of a nostril.
Manda: You do. Yes. Tell us about that. I was about to ask you more. Go for it. Yes.
Rachel: We've got this very silly game. But actually what I'm really excited about, we've just run this this Transforming Leadership course as an online course and we've been running it in different iterations for the last few years, in place with different organisations. And a lot of it is very embodied. And I was saying to my lovely colleague Holly, how are we going to do this systems game online? But we did it and it was magnificent. So that's excited me.
Manda: Yes.
Rachel: And it's very simply, let's just break down three systems. So we take the respiratory system and everybody is given a sticker normally. So you might be left lung or you might be right nostril or you might be diaphragm. And then we gather in our team. So we tend to normally have team respiratory, team tree, and then we have a third team. It might be team school, it might be team solar system, whatever it is. Then each being, each part of that system gets to share with their team what they do as a job, what's their role. So left lung, what is your job and what what role do you have in the wider team? So that we can actually shine a little light on the parts of that system and celebrate their utter importance to the whole. And then we play games where we break apart. So we tend to give the nostril a really, really bad dose of flu, and then we talk about how is that going to impact mouth and lung and trachea. And we start to see when we have that system that's in chaos or it's ill, how that very soon impacts each part of the system but also impacts the functionality of the whole system.
Rachel: And then we zoom out and we think about, well, what's the link between the respiratory system and the tree system? And if that tree is chopped down or has a bark eating beetle or pesticides in the roots, how will that impact the nostril? And we start to demystify the interconnectivity of systems, so that we can then see, actually as a change agent, if I tend to either a part of one of the systems in my own life that's unhealthy, or, most beautifully, the space between the parts, that relational space, then I can enable a different flow in that system, which can actually put regenerative practice back at the heart. And the last thing I'll say on this in this instance is the language of both simplicity and welcome has always been really important in this work. So that this is not something that you can only do if you've got a PhD in systems thinking; this is something that all of us can remember because it's innate. It's not ours to give back to you, it's all of ours to remember.
Manda: And how is this going down? So you've done this in person, and now you've done it for the first time online, and will be doing it again. So anybody listening can come along?
Rachel: Yes.
Manda: Do you feel that it becomes a remembering? Do people remember? And do they go out into the world and help other people remember? Because this is how we create change. This is how tipping points are reached.
Rachel: I think one of the things I will say and I am humble, not through embarrassment, but just because that's how I've been brought up. But I will just big up a little bit of what I think we do do well in our organisation, is we practice relationality constantly. And I think the bit that is meeting people is yes, the learning, but it's actually the felt experience of being together, learning together. And so this leadership course, you know, we just ran it recently. It's a four week course four Thursdays from 4:00 to 6:00. And we had 22 total strangers. And so we didn't have very long together. But the feedback at the end was they're going to really miss each other. They just loved so much meeting in these breakout rooms and just holding that space to be fully and simply human together, allows us I think to both practice what we're preaching and practice this knowing. So that when we take it back out into the world, we're not just telling, we're living it. And I think that's the bit that I'm just getting more and more excited by. And it's been a very strong part of my own letting go of, as a woman in this work, to stop telling Rachel.
Manda: Just be.
Rachel: Just be. You know, that beautiful 'be the change' recognition by Mahatma Gandhi that I used to, in my former years, think it was a lovely bumper sticker on a car. And now I'm like, oh, I think that's like the purest meaning of life.
Manda: Right. Right. Yes. Because in these days, it would just be a meme floating past on Facebook. But actually being it is a whole different space.
Rachel: Yes. And I've got a blog that's bubbling in my brain that I haven't sat down to write yet. That's just called 'I'm a human, being'.
Manda: Oh, fantastic. Oh, please write that.
Rachel: Because I think, again, it's the being of this, isn't it, that is the remembering space.
Manda: And being in service to and in connection with the web of life, so that we are being a conscious node in a web, is a whole different thing than being the isolated individual that we are brought up thinking we are. It seems to me I'm spending a lot of my life at the moment thinking, how do we make the transition from a trauma culture that goes back 10 to 12,000 years, to being an initiation culture, and you are being the answer to this question. You are being it. Thank you, first of all, really, genuinely. And I really want to come on your next course because anything that I could learn would be useful. Because it's this the beingness and the sharing of the beingness, such that it becomes who we are and what we are. And all of the old narratives of separation don't need to be countered, they just cease to be relevant. They become a story that we once knew. In the way I look back on parts of my younger self, and it's like watching a movie of somebody I once knew. It's hard to remember I was that person. And so we become and then we're asking the web of life and then all the questions of, oh my goodness, we don't know what to do. And all the narratives of where we're going become irrelevant. Jamie Bristow said recently we need epistemic humility, of we don't really know where we're going. And that becomes obvious once we're part of that thriving system. I can see you thinking of things. Say what you were about to say, because I have questions.
Rachel: No, no, no, I'm just loving that phrase, epistemic humility as well. Thank you Jamie. There's something in the collective narrative as well, isn't there. That when we're looking at paradigm shifts and you speak and work so beautifully in this space, of shifting towards, you know, Joanna Macy's the story of the Great Turning. So that what is the dominant narrative is the return to this way of being. And I think what's exciting me and I can really see this and it's very, very sort of recent, is more and more educators (because obviously that's our field) recognising that what is happening right now does not work, does not make them feel well, never mind the children in their care. And having the courage to do things differently and speak up for it. And I wrote in my notes just then, 'permission to feel', which is something that has been taken away from a lot of our places and spaces that we work and that we connect into. And one of the things that has been at the heart of this work since I started it, and probably why it's taken a while to get there, has been this is a movement, a shift of the tide, back into this human way of being, this humane way of being. And it doesn't take that much to actually shift the tide. I can't think of what the percentage is of how many people need to be practising a certain thing before things shift, but...
Manda: It's quite small.
Rachel: It's very small.
Manda: As long as you're within the existing system. I think if you're trying to change the system, it's bigger. But yes.
Rachel: But we use that really funny. I'm sure you've seen this very funny three minute, mad guy dancing on a hillside.
Manda: Dancing in a field! Yes, yes! I will find it.
Rachel: We use this a lot as just a beautiful example of actually, if you are just true to what you're doing, and you just keep doing that dance or singing that song with a deep authenticity of knowing, then very soon people will follow. Then very soon more people will follow, then very soon more and more and more. And then there's a tipping point and then the story changes.
Manda: Yes.
Rachel: What I love about this work is that we just follow the intuition of where the organisation is going, and we have incredible directors who just let us do that, let us run an organisation Emergently and Regeneratively. And we recognised last year that I think we've got a movement brewing of folks who are embedding triple wellbeing into their lives and learning contexts, and let's just ignite that. So we've now we've just run the first fellowship. We've got 27 educators from right across the world, very, very different diverse cultures, contexts, learning spaces. And each of them have just got triple wellbeing at the heart. We run a monthly session going deep into what is Triple Wellbeing in these different spaces, and then they're just putting it into practice. But the reason I mentioned this in this very long winded narrative, is that they're allowing (and I'm going to put us in this); as a community of practice we're giving ourselves the courage and the collective permission to push upstream and to know that we are not alone. And that this is a movement and that we're not starting from scratch, and that this is innate and that people have been living in this way for millennia, and that there are people actively working in this space right across the world. So it's that collective courage. And I think what's feeding now, this regenerative process, is that that courage is growing and growing and growing and growing, because more and more people are tapping into the courage. And so it's just this bountiful space now. The fellowship has just finished and we realise, well, clearly it hasn't finished because it's just started. So now we're like, let's have a fellows network that then is the end, the longevity of this work. So there's something in that movement building. We're all working from the shared ancient knowing of caring for self, caring for others, and caring for more than human world is our is our, root and our North star. And what that looks like in practice is completely contextual, because of where we're at. But we're together.
Manda: Yeah. Brilliant. Gosh, there's so many ways we could go just from there. And I'm watching the salmon over your shoulder and the hawk feather behind your head and thinking, I do want to get back to those. But we are in a moment where the old paradigms are actually being exploded apart. And so this is a moment where change is possible. The old paradigm still exists, certainly in the UK and probably most of the Western world, where the school system is still trying to turn out factory workers, still working for the exam. If that exploded, or if we got to a point where any head teacher could go, you know what? I just don't want to do that anymore. It's pointless. All of our kids, all of our young people know, that we are training them for a world that does not exist and we're not prepared to feed them that anymore. If they came to you and said, Rachel, we've been in your fellowship, we know: caring for self, other, connecting to the more than human world, these are the foundations of where we're at. What would a school look and feel like, do you think?
Rachel: Well, Manda, I can actually point you in the direction of them.
Manda: I thought you might. Yes, it already exists.
Rachel: This is the joy. This exists already. I'll just name three educators that we're working with right now. There's Tina Farr, who is head teacher, and her deputy head, Claire Whyles who are very much a team who run St Ebbes School, a small state primary school in the heart of Oxford. Who have just said, you know what? We're putting love, care, kindness, compassion, play and creativity at the heart of our school. We're just doing it. They are just beautiful examples of work in practice, transforming the mainstream from within. We've got a wonderful school in Kilifi in Kenya called Kivukoni School, who have self care, people care and earth care as a foundational culture. It's very much a community school, with parents actively involved. It's a really beautiful example of inside out; a lot of learning on the outside, you know, in the wild spaces happening within. I don't even know where to stop, because I could just keep talking to you now, actually I have loads of examples. So Park School, which is literally about a mile from where my hand is, I'm pointing at it, which is up on the Dartington Estate in Totnes. Again they have self care, people care and earth care as the foundational practice of what the school is. They've just had their ISI inspection, which is the independent school schools structural system inspection and come out really, really good, with the inspector saying what you're doing doesn't fit in the box, what should I put? And then saying maybe we need to rewrite the form, maybe it's the form that's the problem.
Manda: Yes! Did that work?
Rachel: Well, apparently he went away in tears. Not sad tears. So what is energising me is this compassionate rebellion. And I will just name, because it's incredibly live, as in it was 20 minutes before I came on the call. Something that is the biggest inconvenience in this story that I think is actually going to be the beautiful enabler of more courage to go upstream. So the English education system has just been going through a curriculum and assessment review which was commissioned by the new Labour government, and it started in around September, October time. And this was basically a review to overhaul the entire national curriculum. And they spoke with over 7000 educators, practitioners, folks right across the sector. And there were many roadshows. I went to the first one and my colleague Holly went to the last one. And in those roadshows, we met teacher after teacher saying, you know what, please don't just twiddle the curriculum. Please don't just take away a few bits and bobs here and there. This is broken. And a huge part of the narrative was to actually bring in the climate and nature crisis. A huge part of the narrative was to bring in holistic wellbeing. But a huge part was to actually help children to learn to live well and in relationship with the world that they're in. The reason I'm mentioning it right now is that there was just a report out in The Times this morning, to say that the report is coming, and I think it's coming tomorrow, which basically has the headline 'Not a mad reinvention'.
Manda: We're going to just tweak the edges of the existing curriculum.
Rachel: We're going to tweak it. We're going to tweak it. And I just have a flashback. So the first road show I went to, at the very end Becky Francis, who's spearheading this review, she was there and they had questions from the floor. I think there were about 200 teachers. And you know when you're at school and you put your hand up so straight and so high that it makes you rise off the desk?
Manda: Yes. Me me me me me. Yes.
Rachel: I was so determined Manda to have a question, that I got my question. I was the first one she asked, I think, because she could see the determination in me. And I said, look, you know, Becky, full compassion to what you're coming into here. And full compassion that the structure system of our politics means that you can only think in five years. And yet everybody in this room is saying, we need a revolution in this, not an evolution. Are you open to that? And she said no.
Manda: Well, at least it's honest.
Rachel: And I thought, that's okay because this is honest and it's road show number one. And I think they were doing 10 or 12 around the country.
Manda: Okay. And by the end of the process, maybe you will be.
Rachel: Yes. And so my colleague Holly went to the last one and asked the same question. And 'no'. And I say this in a little voice. And I say it in a little voice, because the parameters of what this could ever do, we're not able to do anything more than tweak. And yet, the bit that I'm excited by, the bit that my gut is just so energised by...
Manda: It's going to happen whether you like it or not.
Rachel: Is that you cannot quiet down those voices of educators who are saying this does not work, so it's going to happen whether you like it or not. And actually, I think coming back with a review that says, oh, we're just going to put a bit more of maths in and I've just read the summary is it's Knowledge at the very heart. Knowledge with a capital N, meaning the head and the exams. I think if that comes back as the antidote to all of the deep systemic crisis that we're facing.
Manda: There will actually be a revolution.
Rachel: There will be a revolution. So part of me, it's like the darkness before the dawn moment. And I see this in a lot of our political landscapes. The ugly is is up on the surface and spilling over. And when the solution cannot be found in the structural system that we're in, we go a different way.
Manda: We're going to have to just go, okay, you know what? It's so completely not working we need to do something.
Rachel: Yeah. And maybe that's naive, blind, optimism, but I also don't think it is. So partly my heart broke when I read this report this morning and partly it soared.
Manda: Because when things break apart, you know, it's becoming a bit of a cliche now, but the cracks are where the light gets in.
Rachel: Absolutely.
Manda: And from a broken heart as much as a broken system. And the existing government. We're back to my contention that the system is not broken, it's doing exactly what it was designed to do.
Rachel: Yes, what it's designed.
Manda: And if they were capable of thinking differently, they would never have got into power. And so what we can see, and I think this is what's becoming increasingly evident, is they they are not capable of creating the difference that the moment needs.
Rachel: Yeah.
Manda: So we need a whole new system. And we can be creating that whole new system. If there are schools that are capable, as you said, of creating a curriculum where the inspector goes home in tears. And let's just rewrite the form because the form is not ready. Then that becomes the focus of the new emergent property and process. And I'm wondering, you said somewhere way back that you had people within your systems who were who were in the system, who were in government, civil servants, perhaps, or policymakers? And I'm wondering, do they just go home and leave their jobs? Or are they in the system going, guys, this needs to tweak.
Rachel: Yeah. I mean, for a little while, one of the outcomes of a lot of our training was teachers quitting. I was like, oh gosh, Holly, we're going to get a bad reputation for that. But at the same time we work with very, very diverse folks, who some are simply not resourced enough, and that's not a criticism that's a consciousness of the context, to have that capacity to keep pushing upstream in the system that they're in. So they have to leave because they can no longer align their values with a world that doesn't meet them. But some, like some of those schools I referenced earlier, have an ecosystem of support around them which enables that courage. And some of the folks who are working on policy level have just these sort of backbones of steel and hearts of gold, that have that courage and tenacity to keep going because there's such a firm knowing. And I think what we're just loving with this triple wellbeing as the foundation work, is it's so simple because it's it's 'lifing' to use a bit of Nora Bateson.
Manda: Right. And it's really hard to argue against it.
Rachel: It's so hard.
Manda: I mean, I can't imagine even someone going 'no, we just need to tweak the edges' can't go, no, that's wrong. They can't say that's not appropriate.
Rachel: I think that's it. It's like, how can this harm? How can this harm? And every practitioner we meet feels immediately the generative benefits of of acts of care. Small acts of care and kindness for ourselves, for each other and for the planet.
Manda: Yes. Yeah, exactly.
Rachel: What's wrong with that? And so I think what we're really trying to do now is shine the light on the stories of those who are enabling a holistic culture of flourishing in their work, so that others then get the courage to think, I could do that too. And that is the enabling space, isn't it? When we start to see that we're not alone, that this is a web, evolving with and around us, and that we're feeling the effects. Over the years of doing this work, I've drawn on so many different practices, but we did a podcast, Holly and myself, a couple of weeks ago, and we were talking about...
Manda: You have your own podcast. We should talk about that.
Rachel: We accidentally fell into that one. But we were talking about the inconvenience of wellbeing, and I was bringing up Bhutan, with the Gross National Happiness Index. And so much of the narrative in our current paradigms, whether that's political education, health systems, is we need to measure everything. We need to measure it, pop it in a spreadsheet and see the impact metrics. But when you look at something like GNH in Bhutan, well, yes, you can measure well-being, it's just through stories. It's just in a very different measurement.
Manda: It's a different way of measuring.
Rachel: Yes. And just one more thing, because it's still alive in my mouth, which means it needs to come out and I can't let it down. I do have this deep compassion for us all being stuck in systems that don't allow us to do any different. And so when we think about our political landscape, there's a deep compassion I hold for for anyone in that. Because you can only do what you can do in the limits of what you're allowed to do. And I think that you've named that a couple of times on this; the systems are working wonderfully, but we can't expect the system to generate something different to what the system will enable. And so going into that political landscape with anything other than an outcome that is short term and small; of course we can't. Because to transform the entire education system through politics, we also have to transform society and the mindset of how we live and learn together. And we can't do that briefly under a small budget in department number 17, because...
Manda: No. Although I read the Law and Policy blog, which is amazing this morning. And his blog this morning said, okay, now the US is in a constitutional crisis because as of last night, not only did the US government ignore a court order that was supposed to restrain them from doing something, they tweeted themselves laughing about having done so. Leaving aside the inanity of what's happening over there, because I find it really hard to find compassion for that, we are now at a point where government, our government in the Western world, formerly one of the leading governments that wanted people to maintain the rule of law, is laughing about breaking the rule of law. The rule of law is probably just gone as a constitutional norm as of yesterday. If that is the case, if the government breaks the rule of law and tries to maintain the rule of law within its own country, that is the definition of fascism. Well, it's one of the definitions of fascism. What happens if that happens over here? And what happens if every head teacher in the country goes 'the system is broken. We're not doing this anymore. And look we have a better option that looks like this'.
Rachel: Yeah.
Manda: I don't know but we might be about to find out.
Rachel: And I think coming back to what we talk about and what you bring in so constantly through your work, is pointing to the alternative. I think that those stories are now becoming more and more visible. So we haven't just got an abyss to fall into. I love the two loops model of systems change when you can look at those different leverage points of hospicing and midwifing and transitioning. But there is sometimes that chasm feeling that we get, especially when we look at our mainstream media, which says crisis crisis crisis crisis crisis crisis.
Manda: Yes. Quite. Yes.
Rachel: And then there's a vacuum. Whereas I feel like the energy now is coming through the storytelling, it's coming through the recognition that actually if we just look, and this maybe brings in the hawk.
Manda: Yes. Good.
Rachel: If we just stop, look, and zoom out a little and look out at our landscape with slightly wider eyes, we can see what else is out there. And we can see that we don't need to stay in this same stuck story and that we have the capacity to shift the story, because we're all just living out stories. And actually, we don't need to stay beholden to the one that we are given.
Manda: Yes, yes, I have an increasing internal metaphorical model that our culture locks us in a kind of a concrete box. And we need motivation, agency, direction and empowerment. We need to know that actually, there's a world out there and some people are having parties out there. We need to see that there's a door. We need to have the agency that says, I have keys, or I have the runes that unlock the magical door. And we need to know that we have the empowerment. We're not chained to the floor actually, we can use those runes, we can open the door, we can move out, and here we go. And there's a world out here and the box just ceases to be a problem. We can paint it from the outside. We can grow flowers in it. We can turn it into an aquarium, except we don't want to because we don't want to trap the fish. We can do wonderful things, but we just need to understand. And I think increasingly people are understanding that possibility. Part of what's happening as the chainsaw is taking apart the old system is people going, okay, so the system wasn't really working, here's a much better system. Because the salmon is still there and there's still a Hawk behind you. I have two things I want to go up. Let's do that first and if we get to the other thing, I'm not even going to name it yet. Tell us about the journey of the hawk, the tree, the salmon, the wolf, because it's so beautiful. And I want Be more Hawk to be part of the title of this podcast, so we have to do it. So go with it.
Rachel: Oh, yes. I love that you're as excited about it as I am and my colleague Holly is. This has been so generative in just the design and the principles and the practice. But in brief, yes, we have now a leadership course that's online. The next one is 4th of June, the next start date. And module one: Be more Hawk is really an invitation to do that, to be more hawk to rise up and look at that larger context, that larger global context, as well as our kind of personal context. To pause, because that hawk does not just fly, it pauses. And we use a lot of time analogies in particular, the one that's often attributed to Bayo Akumolafe a lot, of 'these times are urgent. Let us slow down' and have that product of awareness. And then we use a targeted action on the ground, because that hawk doesn't just flounder, grabbing shrews and mice and voles anywhere, it has very clear action. But that's come from pause and intention.
Manda: That shrew!
Rachel: Yes, that particular shrew. So be more hawk is the first one. And then we really look at systems in that, and seeing a system. We then go into 'be more tree' and we look at what is.
Manda: Mother Tree.
Rachel: Yes. What is happening under the ground? What is the relationship between the parts of our system? And how can we tend to those relationships to then enable healthier parts, rather than just poke the part and tell the part to perk up? So we do a lot on systems dynamics, system relationships, and tending to the relationships in our own lives. Then we go into 'be more salmon', which is both looking at the evolution of a salmon; how as that salmon evolves it goes through these different stages in its life, much like a human, you know, going from baby to toddler to child to teenager to young adult to adult to elder. And then at one point in that salmon's life, something kicks in to its DNA and it takes it not just back upstream, but back to the place where it was spawned. Back home. Because it knows that that is the place it had the most chance of flourishing. And so there's something in us that is that innate, that's how the conversation started, isn't it? That innate knowing. That when we start journeying upstream, we're following something that is so deeply intuitive? And so that's the third module. And then the final module 'be more Wolf', is we use the beautiful example of when wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park and how that brought back into balance an ecosystem that had been significantly out of balance since the wolves were removed. And so we look in that notion at the principles of regeneration, the principles of points of intervention to radically disrupt a system by bringing it back into healthy balance. We look at natural system balancing. And then we look at the notion of what it means to have that quality by being. So in all of these, you know, when I was doing a lot of the marketing, I was getting obsessed at one point with the idea that it's not 'be more wolf', it's 'be more, wolf'. Does that make any sense?
Speaker3: Yes. It's like a human, being.
Rachel: Yes. So it's all about taking the presence of that other being into your own being. And I think what people are loving about this is using those four guides, you know, we call them guest lecturers, as markers. And actually folks are like, yeah, I did a bit of salmoning this morning. One of the head teachers I absolutely love that came onto this course, I will say naively, he didn't quite know what he was getting himself into, but a friend of a friend recommended us and he just trusted it.
Manda: Inner knowing.
Rachel: Inner knowing. But perhaps coming from quite a mainstream business as usual head teacher ship, he dropped me a message the other day and he said Rachel you would be so proud, because I had a governor's meeting to look at our financial accounts, and I decided, no, we just need to hawk instead. So I put that on the top of the agenda: 'be more hawk'. And I was like, oh, I love that you've done that. I loved that.
Manda: And the ripples, the ripples!
Rachel: And the ripples. So I think this is giving vocabulary and simple framings to some of this deep transformational work, that's not alienating. What we're finding so far it's not alienating because we can we can understand enough about those beings without needing to go into the depth of research of them to bring them into our own lives. And I will just do a shout out to a kind of colleague in this work, Tom Walmsley, who wanted to come to the course and couldn't. And then just left me a voice note one day with a video to say, outside your house, I've just dropped a little bag. And inside that bag is some tail feathers of a hawk, this beautiful piece of an old ancient tree that fell in the forest, a salmon from Canada made of bark, and the bit that disturbs me a little bit; part of a pelt of a wolf from this rehabilitation centre with wolves. When they die, they use their pelts for good.
Manda: All right. So ethically sourced Wolf.
Rachel: Happily, healthily, ethically sourced wolf. There is a bit of wolf by my toe, Manda, which is very energising.
Manda: Can you show us a bit of wolf? For those on the YouTube. Those of you only on audio, there is now a little bit of wolf that's probably about six to eight inches long, 3 or 4in wide. It looks gorgeous.
Rachel: And you know what excites me? It's actually to put my knife in. It's a knife coat. And I have a perfect knife when I go camping that will now fit in the wolf.
Manda: Oh, that's so gorgeous.
Rachel: So actually, it's been beautiful. So these beings are now surrounding me every day.
Manda: And I would say, in terms of those of us who work, you know, you work with the more than human world. It matters. It matters both that they are there and that they are there in a way that is energetically aligned with who they are.
Rachel: Absolutely. Yes.
Manda: It's really interesting because in Any Human Power, there's a salmon. And the salmon arose in that iteration, we did eight drafts of that book, and it was draft seven. And it just arose and it just needed to be there. And I had never worked with a salmon shamanically particularly. I come from Glasgow and the salmon is on Glasgow's crest and there's all sorts of stuff, but it's all mired up in Christian stuff that I don't like. And then since the winter solstice, I have been working not exclusively but extensively, every single night with the salmon. It's so interesting. And then I got your stuff and it's like, oh, and here we are. Really really concrete. And because there's something certainly in the way it presents to me, is I am older than the Gods.
Rachel: Mhm. Mhm.
Manda: And you need to understand that. And it's really interesting. Gosh we could end there because it feels really clean. But I would like to ask one last question. I listen to Zak Stein on various podcasts, educational philosopher, scaring the heck out of me really about the fact that within a relatively short space of time, kids will be learning, could be learning, from AI that will be sufficiently well trained to assess what any given child needs to teach them in a way that they cannot not learn. That then they're whole socialisation will be by a screen, and their capacity to engage with other human beings will be much less. And this is how you end up with people who think that empathy is a suicidal trait. And I wonder, listening to Zak a year ago, he was saying this is going to be here in six months and clearly it's a year on and we're not there. And I wonder where you see, with all of our epistemic humility it might be we can't see this; but I have a number of questions, first of all, is he right? But the one that's really engaging me is, having read Vanessa Andreotti's work, Burnout with Humans and her capacity to engage with AI as an emergent property of the moment. Because the indigenous elders in her lineage said this is an emergent property, you've got to stop treating it like the enemy. And she treated it as if it were an agent with which she could engage in good faith and it responded in the way that it did. To what extent is that an emergent property of an educational system that we would understand, to have triple wellbeing at its heart? This may be a whole new podcast.
Rachel: I was up in the Highlands of Scotland two years ago and I listened to two podcasts on AI. One was yours, one was with Benjamin Freud's podcast. So Coconut Thinking podcast and Accidental Gods podcast and it was two perspectives on AI. And I left both feeling hugely activated because on the one hand, there's this generative, runaway, cascading AI versus AI, versus you know, who's going to annihilate each other first. And on the other hand, the one that Benjamin Freud and Coconut Thinking was looking at was in education. And he was saying, really, there's the capacity that every child could have an individual teacher, just as you said, totally designed to meet every single learning need of that child. But that would then free up the teachers to be doing the relationship work of being human with the children. And so the AI friend would give the knowledge based learning and the teacher, the human would give the relational based learning. So I feel there is huge capacity there, to actually allow us to go back into being human together, as much as possible. But also I'll bring one of the biggest sort of invitations into this work in my own life, which I referenced earlier, was this course I did with Iain Mcgilchrist about ten years ago now, and it was called Finding Meaning in a machine led world. And really helping to deeply understand this pull of seeing technology as a crutch rather than a tool. And so I think with any of the AI as it comes in, if we can have it as a friend, an aid, a support and enabler, it can be hugely generative. It's the minute we give itself a life, a life and a soul that it becomes, you know, the master. And so I'm a fiercely optimistic woman who believes in the goodness of life and I believe in the heart of humanity. And so the only answer I can ever give you is that all will be well.
Manda: And all shall be well.
Rachel: All shall be well, and all manner of things will be well.
Manda: Thank you. That feels like a very good place to end. Unless there was something else you wanted to tell us. So your next course starts on the 4th of June.
Rachel: The next course starts on the 4th of June.
Manda: Oh, we haven't talked about your children's books. I'm sorry. We are definitely not stopping yet because we need to, because they are so beautiful.
Rachel: We'll just do a one minute story about them because we've just recently published these, we haven't actually done any marketing yet.
Manda: They're gorgeous.
Rachel: They are. I just fall in love with them. I wrote these years ago and they were embedded in our curriculum, but we've realised actually we work so much with these.
Manda: Hold it up so we can see it for the YouTube people. Here we go. Otters best cake. It's gorgeous. These books are so beautiful.
Rachel: Otter's Best Cake and other self care stories. Then we've got Fox's Dancing Journey and people Care stories. And we've got Vole's Big Flood and earth care stories. And each collection is six stories using animals and insects that we find in the forest, to just journey with children into some of these wider...
Manda: Show the screen for people on YouTube. Guys, this is almost worth going to the YouTube for. It's beautiful.
Rachel: I just fall in love with them. We've got a wonderful designer, Alex, who's worked on these.
Manda: And so we will put a link in the show notes to where people could buy these.
Rachel: Yes, yes. So again, we're still working on... At the minute they're hard copies, but we're also going to probably do digital downloads as well. We just need to get our acts together because.
Manda: Most of your work digitally is free, which is just so glorious. It's open source, but hard copies we'd actually have to pay for. Bits of tree.
Rachel: These ones we use a really wonderful ethical printer in Exeter, who everything is so consciously sourced that it costs us an absolute fortune to print them. So if we give these away free, I have to, you know, go and live in a tent.
Manda: You would be bankrupt.
Rachel: But you know who says that's not a good thing? But yes, at the minute we're selling these and we will be finding ways to allow them to be more accessible as we evolve. But thank you for referencing those because they do make me very happy.
Manda: They are beautiful. What kind of age group are you expecting to offer them to?
Rachel: Well, I mean younger years, but really the parents can read them to children at any age. And then the font is quite large, so that children who are early readers themselves can be reading them. Deliberately designed so that a whole story on each page is on the picture. So you don't need to be able to read to to read them. And then within primary schools, they're using them from ages four to about age nine in there. Because each story also comes with a curriculum. So inside the book is a QR code and there's a whole discussion based program. So yes, thank you, Manda, for mentioning those. They're a source of joy.
Manda: Ah they're beautiful. We absolutely had to. Fantastic. Right. So on that, all shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. Thank you so much, Rachel Musson, for coming on to the Accidental Gods podcast.
Rachel: Oh, Manda, it's been a joy and a treat. Thank you for having me.
Manda: And there we go. That's it for another week. Rachel, thank you so much for all that you are and do. It's such an inspiration talking to you, knowing that you're there in the world, knowing that you get it, knowing that you are connected to the web of life, and that you are bringing the wisdom that it offers to so many other people in ways that they can understand, so that they too, can open the doors out of the concrete box that we have built for ourselves - to be fair, that was handed down to us across the generations - into a world of amazing connectivity, coherence, courage, compassion, curiosity, all of the seeds that carry us forward. So those of you listening, I thoroughly encourage you to go to Rachel's website, download her book on Triple Wellbeing. It's free, it's open source and it's beautiful. Join the online course on Transformational Leadership that starts on June 4th. And buy the books for children. They are so beautiful. Genuinely. If you weren't watching this on YouTube, they are just gorgeous and I will have found a working link and put it in the show notes by the time you get this. So buy them. Give them to any of the children that are anywhere in your spheres of influence. If you don't have kids or grandkids, you must have neighbours' children or colleagues' children or local schools.
Manda: These are the ripples that need to be out in the world now. The ideas that are lying around are the ones that are picked up in moments of crisis, and this is a moment of crisis. So let's make sure that the ideas that can be picked up are the good ones that help us to understand self care, people care, Earth care as the heart of all that we do. So there you go.
Manda: That's it for this week. Huge thanks to Caro C for some very rapid production and for the music at the head and foot. Thanks to Lou Mayor for likewise very rapid YouTube turnaround, to Anne Thomas for similarly rapid transcripts, to Faith Tilleray for all of the tech, for managing all of the tech of the gatherings that we do, which is mind bendingly complicated. I don't quite understand why, but it really is. Thank you, Faith, for sorting all that out behind the scenes. And as ever, an enormous thanks to you for listening. If you know of anybody else who wants to understand how we bring the principles of triple wellbeing of self-care, people care and earth care into everything that we do, into how we are in the world, then please do send them this link. And that's it for now. See you next week. Thank you and goodbye.