The Work That Reconnects is a body of group and personal practices created by the American scholar and activist Joanna Macy, which help people face and feel their pain for the world, recover their sense of belonging to the web of life, and turn despair into empowerment and action. It moves in a spiral of four stages: coming from gratitude, honouring our pain for the world, seeing with new eyes, and going forth. Many of its practices are shamanic in tone, and Therapeutic Shamanism draws on and adapts many of them.
What is the Work That Reconnects? #
A way of working with despair about the state of the world so that it becomes a source of strength instead of paralysis. Joanna Macy began it in the late 1970s as ‘despair and empowerment work’, and with her co-author Molly Young Brown set it out in their practice manual Coming Back to Life. Its central purpose, as they describe it, is to help people experience their connections with one another and with the self-healing powers of the web of life, so that they are enlivened and motivated to play their part in creating a sustainable civilisation.1 The practices are mostly done in groups, and there is now a Work That Reconnects Network offering workshops, courses and free resources.2
Its practices “help us stop avoiding the pain in the world, and instead, to feel it, and then turn despair into empowerment and action.”3 There is more on Macy herself, and on how the Work grew, in What is Joanna Macy’s work, and how does it connect with shamanism?
What ideas is it built on? #
Above all, the idea that our pain for the world is healthy. Macy goes back to the Greek root of ‘apathy’, apatheia, meaning non-suffering, and reads what looks like public apathy as an inability or refusal to feel pain. Our grief, fear and anger on behalf of the wider world are a form of compassion, ‘suffering with’, and pain in any living being is a signal designed to prompt action. So the danger lies “not with our pain for the world, but in our repression of it”, which cuts the feedback that would otherwise move us to respond.4
From this come the Work’s guiding ideas. The world is alive, and is our larger body, not a supply house and sewer. Our true nature is far older and wider than the separate self. Our pain for the world springs from our interconnectedness with all beings, and so do our powers to act on their behalf. And that pain has to be experienced, not merely understood, before it can move, after which reconnection brings clarity and the desire to act.5 Macy’s three stories of our time, and the Great Turning towards a life-sustaining society, are set out in the Joanna Macy answer.
What is the spiral? #
The shape the Work takes, in four stages that are travelled again and again, each time with more depth.6
Coming from gratitude. The Work begins not with the crisis but with thankfulness, which grounds people and gives them somewhere to stand. It also brings the pain to the surface, “because knowing what we treasure triggers the knowing of how threatened it is.”7
Honouring our pain for the world. Here the grief, fear, anger and emptiness are given room. In one of the best-known practices, the Truth Mandala, people sit closely in a circle around four objects: a stone for fear, dry leaves for sorrow, a stick for anger and an empty bowl for emptiness and need, and people step in one at a time to speak, whilst the rest of the group simply listens and says “We hear you.” Hope is not one of the objects, because “The very ground of this mandala is hope.”8
Seeing with new eyes. Here people experience themselves as part of larger living systems, wider than the separate self, and in time as well as space. The deep time practices reconnect people with their ancestors and with future generations, so that we learn again to “act like ancestors.”9 The Work That Reconnects Network now calls this stage seeing with new and ancient eyes.6
Going forth. Here the work turns to action that suits each person’s circumstances, strengths and limits, ideally with others. It offers “no dogma or ideology, no panacea for society’s ills”, and no promise that we will act in time, but a deeper sense of belonging and community to act from.10 Then the spiral comes round to gratitude again.
What is the Council of All Beings? #
One of the best-known practices of the Work, a communal ritual in which people speak on behalf of other life-forms. It arose in Australia in 1985, with Macy, the Australian activist John Seed and their colleagues, and has since spread to many countries, keeping its essential form whilst gathering local variations. The name is used both for the ritual itself and for the wider workshop in which it is held.11 Speaking as another being sits close to the shamanic practice of shapeshiftingShapeshifting. Becoming another being within a journey, fully enough to know it from the inside: one of the two routes to grokking, a transformation practice, and a direct experience of interconnection. Read the full answer, and to listening to and honouring the other Peoples. See What are transformation practices and shapeshifting?
Why is it called shamanic? #
Because of what its practices do, not because Macy was a shaman. She was a Buddhist, yet the Work is “heavily shamanic in its tone, and many of the practices could be described as shamanic practices”, including the Council of All Beings, deep-empathy and shapeshifting practices, and listening to and honouring other life-forms.12 Macy herself counted “the resurgence of shamanic traditions” amongst the many movements, alongside deep ecology, Gaia theory and engaged Buddhism, through which people are coming to know their identity with the Earth and other species.13 Even the Work’s name fits, since from a shamanic perspective a healthy human is an interconnected human. Therapeutic Shamanism recognises a kinship in the Work without claiming Macy for a tradition that was not her own.
How does Therapeutic Shamanism use it? #
As an essential part of the practice, adapted to it. Many of the Work’s ideas and practices are taken into Therapeutic Shamanism and adapted, and it has long been an essential part of Paul Francis’s own practice and of his ability “to be in and cope with this human middle-worldMiddle-world. Ordinary physical reality together with its energetic layers: the realm of individuality, separation and mixed intentions, and the only realm where harm is possible. “If there is a hell, then it is the middle-world.” Read the full answer.”14 Gratitude practice, to which Paul was first introduced through Macy’s work, is the most visible part: keeping a gratitude journal, a gratitude meditation that can be done on a bus or a walk, and expressing heartfelt gratitude to the GuidesGuides. The Lower-World and Upper-World beings a practitioner works with and learns from, of whom the Power Animal is the first and foremost. True Guides are ethical to their core; the shaman’s power comes from the depth of these bonds, not from the shaman. More about this in a journey.15 The despair work and the going forth appear as the teaching that despair must be faced, felt and turned into empowerment and service. See How does animism respond to eco-despair, and why is activism part of the path? and Why is gratitude an animist practice?
Can it be done alone? #
Yes, though it was made for groups. Most of the practices in Coming Back to Life are written for workshops, and the Work That Reconnects Network encourages working with others wherever possible, through workshops and local communities of practice.16 Active Hope, which Macy wrote with Chris Johnstone, supports individual reflection as well as book groups, and Johnstone offers a free online course based on it. Macy’s own website is generous with free videos, articles and exercises.17
