Lifeworlds

Alexa Firmenich
Lifeworlds

A podcast series that explores how to orient your life around nature. We discover the mindsets, skills and actions that are required to partner wisely with other forms of life and engage in acts of brilliant restoration. Join me on this intimate journey into the eyes and minds of other species; learn how our guests are living in deep relationship with ecologies; be electrified by expanding your field of reality, and let these stories spark your reconnection to nature’s multiverse. By restoring our relationship with nature, and learning what it is to be nature, we begin to restore ourselves. www.lifeworld.earth Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. Practice | Body Compass

    2 OKT. · BONUSINNEHÅLL

    Practice | Body Compass

    This is my take on ancient and intuitive sensory experience that taps into the innate intelligence of the human body, a blend of body compass, Zen Beginner's Mind, a shamanic medicine walk and Goethean science. The practice asks you to find a place in the natural landscape where you could walk undisturbed for some time, and have an encounter with an element of nature. A true act of lifeworld-ing! I guide you through a short introduction and the instructions. Attached on the website page is a link to the full instructions in PDF, and listed here in much briefer bullets below. I recommend listening in full, then using either of the instructions when you choose to do the practice itself. Abbreviated instructions ·     Before entering into the natural landscape, you’ll walk to a threshold place, and stop. ·     Here you will physically draw a threshold that you will walk across. ·     Once you’ve done that, pause, connect with the land, speak your intention, ask for permission. ·     Cross the threshold, and start walking towards where you feel a tug. Be conscious of the way your body can intuitively lead the way. Use the senses. ·     At some point, you may come across a being in the land that catches your attention. It could be a spiders web, a stone, a patch of moss, a dead bough of a tree, a stream, a blade of grass, truly anything. Approach, introduce yourself. ·     Spend a moment in presence with them, in beginners mind. ·     Use Goethe’s Exact Sense Perception instructions –then imagine it transforming. Then release to receive. Let it communicate back to you. ·     Stay here as long as feels right. ·     When it comes to the time to go, thank this natural being and start walking back to your threshold place. ·     When you cross the threshold, thank the land and when you’re ready, step across back into the other world. ·     Gently wipe out the threshold door and take some time upon returning to digest anything that may have arisen for you. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    14 min
  2. 25. The Connected Wild: Earth’s Internet of Animals

    24 SEP.

    25. The Connected Wild: Earth’s Internet of Animals

    Throughout history, many cultures have observed and interpreted animal behavior to predict events and read the landscapes around them. The multispecies lives of our planet weave an astonishing network of information across the face of the globe, a web of knowledge compromised of thousands of creatures communicating with each other, across species, and with their environments. How we listen in on this collective intelligence? Today’s guest Martin Wikelski is director of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space (ICARUS) - a project which has been dubbed as ‘the internet of animals’. Their team has created a global ecological monitoring system, attaching remote sensing chips to thousands of animals in the wild, in effect uncovering and translating, as Martin says, ‘the collective intelligence of life on earth’.  By tuning in to the communication and culture of animals, the project his project reveals the planet's hidden workings with enormous implications for conservation, global finance, and human infrastructure. We explore many of these forward-thinking ideas in this episode, adding another layer to Lifeworlds’ ongoing question: How do we sense the planetary and see through the perspectives of other life? Episode Website Link Show Links: Internet of Animals BookArticle: The Internet of Animals: what it is, what it could beBirdcast: Showcasing the spectacle of bird migrationMovebankWhalesafeGlobal Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)Lifeworlds: BioacousticsLifeworlds: SatellitesInterspecies InternetEarth Species ProjectWill Hawkes: Insect Migration Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes. Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1 tim 4 min
  3. 24. Guardians of the Earth: The Rise of Ecocide Law

    27 AUG.

    24. Guardians of the Earth: The Rise of Ecocide Law

    Could the destruction of nature become considered as serious a crime as that of genocide? How does the structure of law shape a civilisation’s norms, behaviors and overarching story? Today we’ll be discussing international Ecocide law, a massively growing movement that wants to embed the notion of ‘ecocide’ crime at the highest levels of law - at the International Criminal Court in The Hague - and create a powerful deterrent for the further damage to ecosystems and people globally. Our guest is Pella Thiel, a maverick ecologist, farmer, author and who has co-founded the Swedish hubs of international networks like Transition Sweden, End Ecocide Sweden and is an associate of the Centre for Environment and Development Studies at Uppsala University. Pella was awarded the Swedish Martin Luther King Award in 2023 and the Environmental Hero of the year 2019. We discuss:  Why ecocide law is different & a game changer as compared with other environmental laws How it can help create a new moral baseline, shifting global values and mindsets Where the tensions or synergies might lie between the Rights of Nature and Ecocide law The notion of positive tipping points And how an Embassy of the Baltic Sea might play out as a practice center for ecological community building Episode Website Link Show Links: Stop Ecocide International : Breaking News page End Ecocide Sweden Pella Thiel personal website Nate Hagens interview with Pella ThielLifeworlds Resource Page: Ecocentric Law Lifeworlds Episode on Rights of Nature MA Earth Interview with Jojo Mehta (Director of Stop Ecocide) Positive Tipping Points Embassy of the North Sea The Ecopsychology Initiative Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes. Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd Photo credit: Law Statue  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    56 min
  4. 23. Wild Avatars: Nature in Virtual Reality

    7 AUG.

    23. Wild Avatars: Nature in Virtual Reality

    Have you ever wondered what it would be like to breathe yourself into your own body? To flow with the out-breath of trees into your own fractaling lungs, to dance ribbonlike into an ancient ceiba’s vasculature, to stitch an ecosystem together as a mycelium highways sparkling with energy? In this episode we explore the transformational potential of virtual reality through the work of Marshmallow Laser Feast, an artist collective that has emerged as a leading VR creators in the last decade.  They exhibited internationally from London to New York, Melbourne to Seoul, their work included in major exhibitions at institutions including the Barbican Centre, Saatchi Gallery, Sundance Film Festival, and SXSW. 'In The Eyes Of The Animal' was nominated for the Design of the Year by Design Museum Beazley Awards and won the Wired Innovation Award (2016). Most recently, the team at MLF won the Tribeca Film Festival Storyscapes Award for Innovation in Storytelling and Best VR Film at VR Arles Festival for ‘TreeHugger, Wawona’.  Ersin Han Ersin is the director of MLF and describes to us how they use dazzlingly aesthetic real-time VR experiences to explore the invisible perspectives of nature’s lifeworlds – and how they are constantly pushing the bounds of what technology makes possible in expanding our ecological sensitivities. I enquire into: Who they need to speak to in order to create their masterpieces and translate the umwelts of other species? What other scientists, poets, musicians, make this possible?What is it that virtual reality can create that no other medium can?What is the building block of a multisensory story?What are some of the astounding ways that other beings experience the world that are divergent from the human?How could global education be redesigned based on kinesthetic educative tools like VR? Episode Website Link. Show Links: Marshmallow Laser FeastTED talkVimeo of MLFSoulful connection with trees: DartingtonLifeworlds Episode with Karen BakkerObservations on Being by MLFAI piece from Berggruen InstituteAbandon Normal Devices Festival Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes. Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd Photo credit: MLF exhibition at AMCI in Australia (photo from their website) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1 tim 9 min
  5. 22. Zen Buddhism and the Soul of Lifeworlding

    4 JUNI

    22. Zen Buddhism and the Soul of Lifeworlding

    Today’s episode brings us into the heart and philosophy of Zen Buddhism, as practiced by the Plum Village monastic community that was founded in 1982 by the Vietnamese peace activist, monk, poet, and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. Today it has grown into Europe’s largest Buddhist monastery, with over 200 resident monks and nuns, and known as one of the most actively engaged Buddhist communities offering insight on the modern world, and on the climate and ecological crises. We’ve spoken on the show about fragmented consciousness, a mind that sees parts and not the whole. Meditation and other Buddhist practices are one of the core ways of how we can heal minds and views. And so we will hear from two Plum Village monks: Sister True Dedication and Brother Spirit. Before entering the monastery, Sister True Dedication studied History & Political Thought at Cambridge University and worked as a journalist for BBC News. In the early years of her monastic training, she assisted Thich Nhat Hanh in their engaged Buddhist actions for human rights, religious freedom, applied ethics, and ecology. Brother Spirit began his monastic training in Plum Village in 2008, and before ordaining he studied mathematics at Cambridge and worked professionally as a composer, and as such has since composed many of the community’s beloved chants. They both helped to found the international Wake Up Movement, a community of young meditators finding new ways to combine mindfulness and engaged Buddhism. We talk about: the fragmentation of consciousnesshow to hold the perspective of non duality and interbeing within unlikely contexts, and how doing so grants us agency and transformationdehumanization, de animation, and what Buddhism teaches about our relationship to other life and other intelligencesthe Mayahana Diamond Sutra (the world’s earliest printed text) and its invitation for us to reconsider four key notions of existancehow to find and make peace with one’s activismthe seeds of wisdom that lie dormant in 4000-year-old magnolia treeshow to hold the suffering of the world and call upon our ancestors for supportspiritual bypassing, instrumentalising, and get out of jail free cardsEpisode Website Link Show Links: Plum VillageAbout Thich Nhat HanhZen and the Art of Saving the PlanetThay's Poetry / Please Call Me by My True Names (song & poem)Lifeworlds Meditation on Food inspired by Plum VillageMahamudra: Dr Dan BrownHope in the Dark: Rebecca SolnitGlobal OptimismLook out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes. Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd  Photo credit: Plum Village website Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1 tim 26 min
  6. 21. The Science of Plant Intelligence & Neurobiology - with Paco Calvo

    2 APR.

    21. The Science of Plant Intelligence & Neurobiology - with Paco Calvo

    Are plants conscious? Do they experience forms of cognition and intelligence that go beyond patterned and hard-wired evolutionary behaviors? Do intelligence and consciousness really require a brain and central nervous system? Or should we consider intelligence on Earth to be less brain-bound, perhaps not even residing in the individual self, but rather in an enmeshment within an ecosystem? A swarm intelligence, a networked mind, distributed, adaptive, like a murmuration of starlings in the setting sun. And how would we even begin to start answering these questions empirically? Today it is my explicit intention to change the way that you think about the kingdom of plants and the intelligence that resides within it. This is a controversial topic with scientists on all sides of the spectrum vehemently advocating for or against concepts. It was Darwin who first introduced to the Western world the concept of the "root brain" hypothesis, where the tips of plant roots act in some ways like a brain, a distributed intelligence network. They challenge our very notions of an individual. Plants exhibit qualities that are adaptive, flexible, and goal directed – all hallmarks of an intelligence that goes beyond hard wired impulsive responses. They make decisions, perform predictive modeling, share nutrients and recognize kin. Electrical and chemical signalling systems have been identified in plants very similar to those found in the nervous systems of animals, including neurotransmitters like dopamine and melatonin. Our guest today is Paco Calvo, a professor at the University of Murcia in Spain, where he leads the Minimal Intelligence Lab focusing on the study of minimal cognition in plants. He combines insights from biology, philosophy, and cognitive science to explore plant behavior, decision-making, and problem-solving, challenging conventional perspectives of his field. Paco has said that ‘to ‘know thyself’, one has to think well beyond oneself, or even one’s species. We are only one small part of a kaleidoscopic variety of ways of being alive. Episode Website Link Show Links: MINT labPlanta Sapiens bookTime Lapse Video of vines and plantsMichael Pollan NYTInternational Laboratory of Plant NeurobiologyENG - intelligent-trees - The DocumentaryMonica Gagliano**TED talk** Stefano Mancuso The roots of plant intelligenceScientific American - "Do Plants Think?Look out for meditations, poems, readings, and other snippets of inspiration in between episodes. Music: Electric Ethnicity by Igor Dvorkin, Duncan Pittock & Ellie Kidd Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    1 tim 8 min

Om

A podcast series that explores how to orient your life around nature. We discover the mindsets, skills and actions that are required to partner wisely with other forms of life and engage in acts of brilliant restoration. Join me on this intimate journey into the eyes and minds of other species; learn how our guests are living in deep relationship with ecologies; be electrified by expanding your field of reality, and let these stories spark your reconnection to nature’s multiverse. By restoring our relationship with nature, and learning what it is to be nature, we begin to restore ourselves. www.lifeworld.earth Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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