We were delighted to host Nova Campfire, “Connected Consciousness for Planetary Health,” on Wednesday May 24 at 11 am EDT (5 pm CET/3 pm GMT/8 am PDT). An exciting collaboration between the Nova Institute for Health, Planetary Health Alliance, and Garrison Institute, this event answers the growing call for spiritual perspectives and more intentional relationships with ourselves, others, and the natural world in addressing the many grand challenges of the Anthropocene.
Our transdisciplinary panel of speakers wove narrative threads of change, including Indigenous perspectives of connected consciousness and evidence of the personal and collective benefits of promoting inner development over purely materialistic goals, including healthier, happier, prosocial communities with more mutualistic attitudes to nature. We also explored the importance of creativity and connectivity in building social movements that foster deeper alignment of individual and collective purpose.
Enjoy the full event recording below or scroll down to see individual presentations. Keep conversations going in the Nova Campfire group on the Nova Integration Hub.
Program and Panelists
Susan Prescott, Director of the Nova Network, chaired the meeting and introduced the topics. A brief welcome from Brian Berman, President and Founder of the Nova Institute for Health, was followed by an opening mediation from Rick Scott.
Cultivating Mutualistic Worldviews and Prosocial Behaviors for Personal and Planetary Health
Professor Brian Berman, MD, President and Founder of Nova Institute for Health
Cultivating Mutualistic Worldviews and Prosocial Behaviors for Personal and Planetary Health
Susan Prescott, MD, PhD, is Director of the Nova Network, Professor of Pediatrics at University of Western Australia, Director of the ORIGINS project, Editor-in-Chief of Challenges, and a Scholar at the Nova Institute for Health in Baltimore. She is an artist and an author.
“My passion is connecting people and ideas to create new opportunities.”
Remembering Our Inherent Connectedness and Universal Indigeneity to Mother Earth
Rutendo Ngara is an African Indigenous Knowledge Systems practitioner and transdisciplinary researcher, who has traversed clinical engineering, healthcare technology management, socio-economic development, mathematics, leadership, and fashion design, to the interface between science, culture, cosmology, and paradigms of healing.
“I have a passion for weaving art, science, and spirituality towards healing of the Collective and restoration of the Whole.”
Nurturing Inner Development for Sustainability: How Inner Personal Development Contribute to Collective and System Change
Christine Wamsler is Professor of Sustainability Science at Lund University and founder and director of the Contemplative Sustainable Futures Program.
“In the field of sustainability science, we are increasingly understanding that sustainability crises are a reflection of an inner, human crisis. This narrative and understanding manifests in our daily lives, where we are increasingly exhausting and exploiting ourselves, others and the planet. My daily driver and motivation is my hope to contribute to a more caring, healthy, and thus sustainable society.”
Can We Nurture More Altruistic Societies? Promoting Communal Goals with Loving-Kindness Meditation
Una Tellhed is a senior lecturer In the department of Psychology at Lund University in Sweden. She is project leader for the research group Psychological Research on Gender Segregation that investigates social psychological explanations for gender segregation in the labor market. Her recent work has examined how contemplative practices promote prosocial career aspirations in youth.
Strategies for Mindful Movement-Building: Taking Social Innovation to Scale through Connectivity
Sonali Sangeeta Balajee is a founder of Our Bodhi Project, an artist, organizer, facilitator, and emerging health practitioner who works at the intersection of belonging, equity, and deep transformative change. Sonali is a former Senior Fellow at the Othering and Belonging Institute (UC Berkeley). She spent 13 years in the U.S. based government in Portland, Oregon, innovating in the areas of health equity, policy and systems shift towards justice, and community visioning.
Putting Storytelling into Action for People, Places, and Planet: An Example of the Power and Reach of Co-Creating Narratives for Positive Change at COP27
Cecilia Mañosa Nyblon, from the University of Exeter, is Project Lead of One Chance Left and We Still Have a Chance, interdisciplinary, international projects connecting climate science, health, and the arts at COP26, UK 2021 and COP27, Egypt 2022. She’s already engaged in an ambitious initiative for COP28 (UAE 2023) through poetry. Prior to moving to Exeter, she worked as an anthropologist/archaeologist, educator in Uruguay, the United States, and Panama.
Pathways to Planetary Health: Connecting "Islands of Coherence" in the Sea of Chaos
Stephen Posner is Director of Pathways to Planetary Health with the Garrison Institute, a nonprofit that harnesses the power of contemplative wisdom and practice from many traditions to build a more compassionate and resilient world. He has more than 20 years of experience building understanding across sectors. He is a trusted advisor to policymakers and funders, and he’s consulted with global companies in agriculture, mining, and forestry to evaluate how they impact and depend on nature.
The Constellation Project: Weaving New Stories and Emergent Ways of Being for a New Era of Planetary Consciousness
Samuel Myers is the founding Director of the Planetary Health Alliance and a Principal Research Scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He studies the human health impacts of accelerating disruptions to Earth’s natural systems, a field recently dubbed “planetary health.”
Terry Tempest Williams is currently writer-in-residence at the Harvard Divinity School. She is known for her impassioned prose and lyrical writing focusing on how environmental issues are social issues and ultimately, issues of justice. She is the author of more than 20 books in creative nonfiction. Her work has been translated and anthologized worldwide.
