Search
Logo for the Nova Institute

Nova Annual Conference 2024

NEW HORIZONS

Toward an Era of
Global Flourishing

December 5, 2024 | Virtual

Recordings available — watch and share!

The 2024 Nova Annual Conference, “New Horizons: Toward an Era of Global Flourishing,” explored innovative approaches to advance an era of well-being for both people and the planet. Together, we sought to integrate transformative strategies with deeper awareness to promote collective growth and sustainable flourishing across all sectors of society. 

As the source of all life, energy was a central theme. This includes the cellular energy vital for personal flourishing, the sustainable energy systems required for flourishing societies, and the transformative energy of human consciousness necessary for global change.

This event explored crucial topics affecting physical, mental, and emotional well-being and focus on the social, economic, and environmental factors that either support or undermine resilience. We discussed pressing issues such as unhealthy food systems, environmental contaminants, biodiversity loss, loneliness, isolation, and emotional distress. Additionally, we examined social and environmental justice and how inequities and systemic challenges affect well-being, all through a solutions-oriented lens. By tackling these interconnected issues, we aimed to contribute to innovative responses and actionable strategies that foster a more equitable, healthy, and resilient society for all, with deeper connection and care for the natural environments on which we depend.

This was a wonderful opportunity to connect with others and explore ideas together!

Two conference sessions focused on the practical actions we can take today to promote flourishing for current and future generations and encouraged creative, “blue sky” thinking to expand our horizons, explore new potential, and imagine transformative possibilities across all aspects of life.

Each session featured a panel of speakers, with opportunities for all attendees to interact and participate in the discussions.

session recordings

See videos of individual speakers here

Acting Today for a Flourishing Future: Restoring Energy and Vitality
December 5  |  10 am – 12 pm EST

This session explored the critical investments needed across many sectors—health, economics, agriculture, food systems, and the interconnected systems that support healthy physical and social environments—to build thriving global societies. We address the factors that support or undermine energy and vitality in both macrosystems and microenvironments, with a focus on early life environments and their vital role in shaping lifelong health. Emphasizing our responsibility to care for nature and planetary systems, we consider coordinated, cross-sectoral actions to ensure future generations inherit a world where both people and the planet can flourish together.

Beyond the Horizon: Imagining New Possibilities
December 5  |  2 – 4 pm EST

This session invites us to delve more deeply into transformative ideas to enhance well-being and prosperity through regenerative mindsets. We will examine innovative and practical approaches to sustainable energy systems and the new social dynamics necessary for their implementation. Our goal is to transcend traditional boundaries and embrace emerging opportunities, envisioning forward-thinking solutions with deeper consciousness. By nurturing creativity and forging deeper connections, we aim to unlock new potential and inspire future possibilities, unconstrained by existing worldviews.

See videos of individual speakers here

REGISTER
Date

December 5, 2024

two sessions

10 am - 12 pm EST
2 pm - 4 pm EST

Location

Virtual

View Speakers & Recordings

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.