Realising Ecological Rhythms: Breath, Tides and COVID-19
This is an invitation to read my MA Dissertation in Ecological Design Thinking from Schumacher College. It offers insights for the challenging contexts we are all immersed in, both of the pandemic, ecological crisis & shifting understandings of the human relationship with nature.
The abstract is below and you are more than welcome to download the full book here
ABSTRACT
Natures design is carried by millions of ecological rhythms. Although rhythms are invisible humans and other-than-humans sense them through the seasons, behaviours, movements, patterns, elements, sounds, lights, colours, and forms. Scaling the macro to the micro three rhythms are explored in this dissertation; breath, tides and COVID-19. I investigate the main research question: How does ecological rhythm describe our vital interrelationship? through various methods; first-person action research, drawing and films, interviews, webinars and literature reviews.
Juxtaposing natures design against human-centred design exposes the human construct of mechanical time for efficiency and our digital culture of 24/7 virtual attention. Human society has lost many connections to natural rhythms, yet we are all still embedded in a vital dynamic interrelationship of life on Earth. As we undervalue the invisible and overvalue the intellect, designs by humans so often obstruct or obscure natural rhythms. Yet ecological designers must celebrate natural rhythms and work with them to help shift perception and create cultural designs that are respectful and regenerative.
Immerse into the inner, outer and cosmic rhythms of breath, tides and COVID-19, and, as if by synchronicity a clear set of themes depict a journey. In the beginning, breath gives life and then can lull us to our essence and heal us. Next, the tides turn stirring our imagination by evoking the liminal. Finally, a global pandemic tests us, revealing our fragile interconnection with all beings and offers us transformational opportunities. A significant realisation of this work is the paradox that rhythm offers us both purpose and purposelessness.
The role of the ecological designer stewards this paradox: our purpose in regenerating Earth, and, in shifting consciousness to embrace purposelessness. Yet beyond these ecological rhythms, there is something else, one unified rhythm carrying all sentient beings through the cycles of life and death, the mystery of creation and all its unknowable secret designs.
Rhythm paints the skies
Rhythm inhales the exhales
Rhythm pulls and pushes tides
A rhythmic life spirals.
John O’Donohue, 2005:
When the mind is festering with trouble or the heart torn,
we can find healing among the silence of mountains or fields, or
listen to the simple, steadying rhythm of waves.
The slowness and stillness gradually takes us over.
Our breathing deepens and our hearts calm and our hungers
relent. When serenity is restored, new perspectives open to us and
difficulty can begin to seem like an invitation to new growth.
This invitation to friendship with nature does of course entail a
willingness to be alone out there. Yet this aloneness is anything
but lonely. Solitude gradually clarifies the heart until a true
tranquility is reached.
The irony is that at the heart of that aloneness you feel intimately
connected with the world. Indeed, the beauty of nature is often
the wisest balm for it gently relieves and releases the caged mind.
