Welcome to Finding Our Way

A quest for personal & planetary well-being.

The burning question that led me to study for a Masters in Sustainability and Behaviour Change at the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) was:

“What can I do to avert the tragedy I see and feel with my every fibre, befalling this beautiful world we are all lucky enough to call home?”

It is this question that echoed in the back of my mind through everything learned over the three extraordinary years I spent at CAT and the course we are offering to you now it is my faltering first response.

have spent the last 15 years of my life working as an acupuncturist in a community clinic in Torbay. I had imagined that I might be moving away from this field following my studies but have now realised that it is probably fundamental to what I have to offer to this moment. The foundation of Chinese Medicine is a concept called the Five Elements. This presents a very different way of looking at the world and our place within it. The Five Elements offers a simple and intuitive framework for understanding not only our personal human difficulties but also how they relate to the problems we see in the world around us.

Something else that has crystallised in my mind over the last few years is that we, as humans, are not only causing misery and suffering to something outside of ourselves. We are all part of the nature we are eroding. The suffering is also very deeply felt in us…

And so arose the genesis of an idea, prompted by the hiatus afforded by the lockdown of 2020 and the unfalteringly supported by my wonderful husband, Daryl, I collaborated with one of the many beautiful souls I have met through CAT, Rosie Trevillion. For our dissertations, we created, ran and tested a course, that begins with evidenced-based ways to resolve our human suffering, helping us build, the resilience, contentment and courage we need to explore how we can each answer the question I started with:

“What can I do to support a peaceful and flourishing world for myself and all the other beings that call this planet home, both now and in the future?”

The global challenges of climate change and ecological breakdown require unprecedented changes to human systems as we know them. Trying to tackle this threat by tinkering at the edges of the status quo has proved woefully ineffective. Increasingly, science suggests we need a fundamental transformation to the way we live. Tragically, despite the urgency of this moment, significant barriers to change exist within social, economic, political and personal power structures, leading to cultural inertia and resistance to change. We know we have a big problem, but we’re really busy and don’t want to give up the good bits, so it’s easier not to look.

We believe there is a better way to look at things. We believe that the way we respond to this challenge could re-ignite a lost sense of worth within our being leading to connection, joy and awe at the majesty of nature. Imagine a world where, like our ancestors, our one true role was to protect one another and our home, as guardians of the planet we are part of.

We know this is hard to believe, and we know why it is hard to believe. It is not what we have been taught to expect and that is reflected in the deep neural pathways within our brains. Just like the social systems of our world, these deeply held beliefs are resistant to change. When we are presented with ideas that seem implausible to us, it makes us feel uncertain and this triggers, “edge emotions,” in our being. The emotion we experience could be anger, fear, sadness or doubt, but whatever it is will be uncomfortable and this pushes us to reject the conflicting information so that we can return to a state of certainty and comfort it provides.

To overcome the human tendency, that keeps us stuck in old unhelpful patterns, our course harnesses both ancient and modern, evidence-based techniques, to help us to cope with uncertainty and the discomfort it can cause; allowing for a re-evaluation of our outdated core beliefs. At the same time, we offer deep immersive experiences in nature and community that help us to feel the new world that is possible. None of us can change the world alone. Come and join us in changing it together.