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2023 Annual Report

FLOURISHING

People, Places & Planet

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COMMUNITY, CONNECTION, INSPIRATION

A Digital Forum to Connect, Share, and Explore

In late 2022, after months of building, planning, and testing, the Nova Institute launched the custom-made Nova Integration Hub offering a dynamic, virtual space for people from diverse fields to gather, share, and collaborate. With social media sites becoming increasingly negative, we wanted to create a place for belonging that lifts up solutions and fosters a sense of community.  Within a year, this free, web-based forum had attracted more than 300 members from six continents. Collaborators on the Hub have formed more than 34 groups and started more than 500 discussions around topics such as consciousness, nature, mentorship, AI, children’s health, art, and much more. Users share ideas, opportunities, research, and creative works in this growing, one-of-a-kind “online cafe.”

“We created the Hub because we heard time and again of the need to break down silos and create a welcoming, dynamic, and supportive forum,” said Nova Founder and President Professor Brian Berman, MD. “We are thrilled to see how people are using the space to meet each other, exchange diverse ideas, and generate collaborations that might not have otherwise happened.” 

In 2023, Nova tapped eight Invited Faculty members to share their expertise and interdisciplinary knowledge on the Nova Integration Hub, fully participate in Nova engagements, draw in collaborators, and help “connect the dots” across disparate themes and challenges. This diverse group supports each other’s interests and injects new energy to conversations on the Hub. 

A Global Network with a Focus on Flourishing

The Nova Network is a transdisciplinary global community providing evidence, inspiration, and advocacy for the health and flourishing of all people, places, and planet.

The growth of the Nova Network can feel like a natural gravitational force, drawing participants toward a common core. This force took shape over years as the Nova Institute built relationships with like-minded individuals and communities focused on all aspects of well-being and resilience. 

Today, the Nova Network includes more than 2,000 participants from around the globe, all interested in transforming the health of individuals, communities, and the planet through deeper understanding of the interdependence of all systems. Every member of the Nova Network — including researchers, creatives, community organizers, educators, clinicians, and policymakers, of all ages — seeks to underscore and advocate for the connections among personal, environmental, economic, and spiritual health. 

What draws this community together?

In 2023, three virtual Nova Campfires brought together interdisciplinary groups of people interested in addressing pressing global challenges, including developing connections between spirituality, health, and connected consciousness; exploring the future of food and the personal and planetary health threat of ultra-processed food; and cultivating regenerative and responsible economies. 

We were delighted to host two of these campfires through partnerships with the Garrison Institute and the Planetary Health Alliance, widening the scope of our collective reach. We were also heartened to see many real-time collaborations take shape during these events that led to publications and other partnerships around the Campfire themes.

“In this age, where we need coherence, we need these resonant narratives for change to connect with other like-minded groups. They're coming from different perspectives, maybe, but we're talking or looking in the same direction, which can lead to a healthier, more flourishing future.”

— Susan Prescott, MD, PhD, Nova Scholar and Director of the Nova Network

The 2023 Nova Annual Conference, “Seeds of Change: Inspiring a Better Future,” featured four sessions over two days with more than 70 interdisciplinary speakers exploring health in the broadest sense, with a strong emphasis on solutions, positive narratives, and healthy relationships as a path toward collaborative change. Participants from more than 30 countries on nearly every continent contributed to this vibrant gathering. This event underscored the interconnections between the well-being of individuals, communities, and the environments on which we depend.

The Nova Interview series, hosted by Nova Fellow Alan Logan, offers unique, in-depth explorations of critical issues with seminal thought leaders. These conversations with scientists, scholars, healthcare professionals, and visionaries are published in the open-access journal Challenges, further extending their reach. 

The 2022-2023 Nova Interviews Included:

Alan Logan, ND
Nova Fellow

Dr. Helene Langevin, Director of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health at the National Institutes of Health

Dr. Christopher Lowry, a pioneering neuroscientist exploring how microbes affect human cognition and behavior

Dr. Nalini Nadkarni, a leading biologist whose tapestry thinking connects ecological lessons from rainforest treetops to pragmatic public policy recommendations

Dr. Stephen J. Schoenthaler, an early nutritional criminology pioneer at the intersection of nutrition and criminal justice

Healing is facilitated through safety, persistence, and trust.

  • Persistence: “People did not simply progress through this sequence and experience healing. The healing journey was a recursive, back and forth process. They found helpers, used the skills/resources that those helpers provided, found other helpers that provided more resources and used those skills and resources. As this process continued, people experienced a gradual amelioration of their suffering. Although many despaired at times, all demonstrated the quality of persistence—they refused to give up.”
  • Safety & Trust: “To connect to helpers, it was essential for people to feel safe in those relationships and able to trust that the person would be a helper and not a barrier to healing. Persons whose wounds included a violation of trust were especially careful about testing the safety of new relationships.”

Resources support us as we heal. They include reframing, responsibility, and positivity. “Making connections enabled participants to acquire and refine resources and skills that were essential in their healing journey. People also brought their own personal strengths to the journey.”

  • Reframing: “A particularly important skill was the ability to reframe—that is to look at suffering through a different lens.” This does NOT mean minimizing trauma or pain, but rather it often means the opposite: understanding what happened was wrong, unfair, or uncontrollable and that we are not to blame for it.
  • Responsibility: While we don’t have control over what happened to us, we are the only ones who can help ourselves heal. “A third essential resource that people acquired or refined was the ability to take an appropriate amount of responsibility for their healing journeys. They participated actively in the process of healing. Once again, some participants already had developed this skill, and some acquired or refined it from their helpers.”
  • Positivity: “Another resource that people acquired or refined during their healing journey was choose to be positive—that is to have some optimism about their situation.” People have varying predispositions to positivity. In the study, positivity was important in helping people heal. This doesn’t mean a toxic positivity, but rather simply finding some good in life and feeling hopeful about our situations.

“Connection to others was an essential part of all the healing journeys.” Humans are social creatures, and even the most introverted of us need close relationships. Friends and family add meaning and value to life and help support us, in good times and bad. 

When we experience relational trauma, relationships can feel scary, but reestablishing safety and trust in relationships is where the healing happens. (To be clear, we do not mean reestablishing safety and trust with abusers, but rather finding other healing relationships.) 

“When safety and trust had been established, people were able to connect with helpers. The nature of the behaviours of helpers that fostered healing ranged from small acts of kindness to unconditional love.”

  • “Moving from being wounded, through suffering to healing, is possible. It is facilitated by developing safe, trusting relationships and by positive reframing that moves through the weight of responsibility to the ability to respond.”
  • “Relationships with health professionals were among these but were not necessarily any more important to the healing journey than other kinds of helpers, which included family members, friends, spirituality and their God, pets, support groups, administrators, case workers and supervisors.”

Healing probably means different things to different people, but one definition that emerged from the study is: “The re-establishment of a sense of integrity and wholeness.” 

Healing was an emergent property that resulted from each individuals’ complex healing journey, a result of bridged connections between resources and relationships. “…they gradually found relief from suffering and began to exhibit emergent characteristics: a sense of hope, self-acceptance, and a desire to help others—the immediate precursors to healing.”

 In varying degrees, “they were able to transcend their suffering and in some sense to flourish.” 

  • Helping Others: We find meaning in helping others. “Understanding that suffering gives the strength and experience to help others in similar situations.”
  • Hope: We begin to have hope that we will not always feel this bad. A Crohn’s patient said, “I think gradually I realized that I was going to feel better. I did have days when I actually didn’t vomit, when I did feel better. And I think gradually I came to believe that maybe I could have a normal life again.”
  • Self-Acceptance: We see our inherent value and understand that we are not to blame for our suffering. A participant living with HIV said, “I’m really proud of myself. I think that now I still want to live. I don’t want to die, and I really love myself a lot. I have a lot of comfort in myself.”

Suffering is the ongoing pain from wounding. 

There is some debate about whether people always experience suffering on the path to healing.

Wounding happens when we experience physical or emotional harm. It can stem from chronic illness or by physical or psychological trauma for which we do not have the tools to cope, or a combination of those factors. 

“The degree and quality of suffering experienced by each individual is framed by contextual factors that include personal characteristics, timing of their initial or ongoing wounding in the developmental life cycle and prior and current relationships.”

Characteristics: How predisposed someone may be to wounding/how many tools and resources someone may have to deal with trauma/illness.

Lifestages: Developmental timing plays an important role in the impact of trauma — young children often do not have the same resources as older adults.

Relationships: Relationships can provide solace and support for those suffering, while lack of healthy relationships can prolong suffering.