Seeds of Connection: Honoring Joanna Macy, John Seed & 50 Years of Deep Ecology
One of the great influencers in thinking and practices of eco-spirituality, regenerative thinking, eco-somatics, and the work of Deep Ecology is Joanna Macy. She is currently at the end of her life - even as we write this, she has been in a very liminal state. Thousands of people around the world, including some of us here at Rē, have been holding her in the light as she seems to be leaving this world for whatever comes next.
It happened that one of Rē's main partners, Sequoia Samanvaya, did a podcast with one of Joanna Macy's primary thought partners, rainforest activist and Deep Ecologist John Seed, and one of the young people whom he is supporting in this work. This week, we are highlighting the work of both John Seed and Joanna Macy and the foundational work of deep ecology, which has influenced so many people around the world, and which continues to provide language for ways of thinking about the inherent connection between people and place.
PODCAST
Deep Ecology, Ceremony, and the Web of Life
A conversation with John Seed and Niamh Murray
We also pulled together a small overview of Deep Ecology - especially for those of you who are less familiar with it - and a bunch of resources on these themes for you to explore more deeply.
Deep Ecology: 50 Years of Reconnecting to Our Larger Self
John Seed, Joanna Macy, the Work That Reconnects, and the Regenerative Movement
Picture this: It's 1979. A young Australian activist named John Seed is standing in a rainforest near his home in New South Wales, watching bulldozers clear ancient trees. In that moment, something profound shifts in his consciousness—an awakening of sorts. Later, he described the shift of thinking that he was protecting the rainforest to, instead, that "I am part of the rainforest protecting myself. I am that part of the rainforest recently emerged into thinking."
Meanwhile, across the Pacific, 50-year-old Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy was developing what she initially called "Despair and Empowerment Work" to help activists cope with the overwhelming reality of nuclear threat and environmental destruction.
Seven years later, in 1986, these two remarkable thinker-practitioners would meet in a way that perfectly embodied the serendipity of ecological thinking. Macy was in Australia facilitating one of her "Despair and Empowerment" workshops when John Seed, already deep in his rainforest activism, decided to attend. As Seed describes it: "That was the next big turning point in my life, where I realised that this was what was needed in order to create the community therapies that (philosopher and deep ecologist) Arne Naess had been calling for."
It was a powerful meeting for both of them. "Joanna was just as influenced by running into deep ecology as I had been," Seed recalls. Within a week of that first workshop, they were walking together through the very rainforests that Seed had helped to protect. They started co-creating different somatic practices.
"Then and there, the Council of All Beings emerged as the first of the experiential, deep ecology workshops," Seed remembers. By the following weekend, they were facilitating their first Council together in Sydney, launching a collaboration that would span nearly four decades across the world.
Since then, Joanna Macy has authored thirteen books, many with other people. Their first collaborative book, "Thinking Like a Mountain: Toward a Council of All Beings" (co-authored with Arne Naess and Pat Fleming in 1988) has been translated into at least ten languages. John Seed's deep ecology workshops have reached every continent, from his 30-lecture tour of India sponsored by the Australian Government to workshops in Japan, Ecuador, Slovakia, and beyond.
Particularly impressive, the Work That Reconnects has become its own community, with practitioners offering workshops around the world that do not depend upon the movement's founders. There is also a Deep Time journal, arising from Joanna's thinking around Deep Time.
The Great Turning
One of the key elements of Joanna's teachings (which has inspired thousands) is that of the Great Turning. "The Great Turning is a shift from the Industrial Growth Society to a life-sustaining civilization. The Great Turning is a name for the essential adventure of our time: the shift from the Industrial Growth Society to a life-sustaining civilization."
Macy defines it as "a perceptual behavioral paradigm shift or revolution that focuses on the emergence of a life sustaining planetary culture and economy." Drawing from Buddhist tradition, wherein: "a perceptual behavioral paradigm shift or revolution that focuses on the emergence of a life sustaining planetary culture and economy." "When the Buddha taught or set forth a worldview, that was called a 'turning', he was turning the Wheel of the Dharma, the dharmachakra." During a 'Great Turning' Visionaries panel discussion, Kosmos Journal, she explains that "When the Buddha taught or set forth a worldview, that was called a 'turning', he was turning the Wheel of the Dharma, the dharmachakra."
The Three Dimensions
Macy describes the Great Turning as "having three dimensions, a dimension of holding actions that is slowing the destruction, building a new society in every respect, and a deep inner revolution as well as a shift in consciousness."
Holding Actions: "It's getting out there in the streets and saying a Holy No to the destructive and unjust practices that are taking place on the planet right now." These include "blockades, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other forms of refusal...Work of this kind buys time."
Creating New Structures: "Holding Actions aim to hold back and slow down the damage being caused by the political economy of the Industrial Growth Society."
Shift in Consciousness: "We're waking up to our true identity to who we really are...wake up that identity that we are part of Earth. We are being Earth, and choosing to come home to that identity as Earth is what we long for."
This is connected to what she calls the "Holy No:" "It's getting out there in the streets and saying a Holy No to the destructive and unjust practices that are taking place on the planet right now" and "blockades, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other forms of refusal...Work of this kind buys time." - Beams and Struts article "Joanna Macy On the Three Pillars of The Great Turning"
The Deeper Vision
"What's wonderful here is that at this point, these two great rivers that have been separated for so long – science and spirituality – are flowing together to teach us...that we are our Earth becoming conscious of itself, our true selves."
As she often reminds us: "If the world is to be healed through human efforts, I am convinced it will be by ordinary people, people whose love for this life is even greater than their fear."
The Philosophies Behind the Movement
So what made Deep Ecology so special? As John Seed defines it: "The fundamental insight of deep ecology is that underlying all of the symptoms of environmental problems, there is the illusion of separation between human beings and the natural world."
This was a significant departure from what Arne Naess, who coined the term "deep ecology", called "shallow ecology"—the mainstream environmentalism of the 1970s and 80s that focused on cleaning up pollution and managing resources but never questioned the deeper assumptions of human supremacy. Shallow ecology, as Naess criticized it, maintained "the health and affluence of people in the developed countries" as its central objective, treating nature as something "out there" to be managed for human benefit. This type of environmentalism, he argued, is concerned with finding technological solutions to the issues of our time — mainly for the benefit of the “health and affluence of people in the developed countries.” The fight against pollution, for recycling, or improved energy efficiency are examples of that: All certainly make an impact, but to Næss, a much more fundamental shift in our conceptualization of our role on Earth is what’s necessary.
Deep ecology offered a different perspective. As Seed explains: "Deep ecology reminds us that the living world is not a pyramid with humans on top, but a web. We, humans, are but one strand in that web and as we destroy this web, we destroy the foundations for all complex life including our own."
What made Seed and Macy's collaboration particularly important was their recognition that an intellectual understanding of this work wasn't enough. "According to Naess, this illusion of anthropocentrism is so deeply embedded in our psyche and in our culture, that we won't be able to think our way out of the mess and new philosophy won't be enough to save us," Seed explains. "He said that ecological ideas are not enough. We need ecological identity, ecological self."
This insight led them to create practical ways to embody this expanded sense of self through what they called "community therapies." These somatic practices work through the body, breath, movement, and felt experience. The Council of All Beings, for instance, involves participants going into nature, receiving a connection from the non-human world, creating masks of another species and embodying the voices of other species in a 'council' —a practice that engages the whole nervous system, not just the mind. Participants report physical sensations of expansion, moments where the boundaries between self and other-than-human dissolve, and a visceral understanding of interdependence that goes far beyond conceptual knowledge.
Since then, the importance of embodied/somatic and experiential therapies, exercises, workshops, participatory theater, and other forms has reached a wide range of disciplines and sectors. Their work most likely influenced these larger trends.
From Despair to Active Hope
One of the core concepts of the Work that Reconnects is a spiral journey through four stages: Coming from Gratitude, Honoring our Pain for the World, Seeing with New/Ancient Eyes, and Going Forth. This isn't feel-good environmentalism—it's a practice of expanding the individual sense of self to include the more-than-human world, and meeting the Pain of the World with clear-sightedness. Joanna was deeply informed by Buddhist practices and the Sarvodya movement in Sri Lanka (where she was living with her husband Francis Macy for a period of time).
The crucial role of grief sets this work apart from other environmental approaches. As Macy explains, "The critical passage or hinge of the workshop happens when, instead of privatizing, repressing and pathologizing our pain for the world (be it fear, grief, outrage or despair), we honor it." This recognition that our ecological grief is actually a sign of our deep connection to the living world has influenced an entire generation of thinkers and practitioners.
The Work That Reconnects is fundamentally somatic—it works through the body's wisdom rather than trying to think our way into ecological consciousness. Practices like the "Breathing Through" meditation invite participants to literally breathe in the pain of the world and breathe out relief, using the respiratory system as a bridge between personal and planetary healing. The "Despair Ritual" creates space for participants to physically express their grief through movement, sound, and tears—allowing the body to discharge the overwhelm that keeps us numb and disconnected. All of these practices can be found on their website and in her books.
Francis Weller, one of today's leading grief workers, draws directly from this lineage, teaching that "Grief has never been private; it has always been communal. Subconsciously, we are awaiting the presence of others, before we can feel safe enough to drop to our knees on the holy ground of sorrow." The understanding that grief is both necessary and sacred has become central to contemporary approaches to climate psychology and ecological healing.
The animist foundations of their work also deserve recognition. While not always explicitly named as such, the Council of All Beings and other Deep Ecology practices are fundamentally animist—they recognize that the more-than-human world is alive, sentient, and deserving of respect. This aligns and has informed contemporary thinkers like Josh Schrei, host of The Emerald podcast, who argues that "the imaginative, poetic, animate heart of human experience — elucidated by so many cultures over so many thousands of years — is missing in modern discourse and is urgently needed at a time when humanity is facing unprecedented problems."
As John Seed repeatedly realized through decades of rainforest activism, "you can't save the planet one forest at a time—what we need is a profound change in consciousness." He came to understand that traditional environmental campaigning, while necessary, wasn't addressing the deeper psychological roots of our ecological crisis: our illusion of separation from nature.
The experiential deep ecology processes they developed serve as "community therapies," synchronous with ceremonies and rituals used by all indigenous societies to honor "all our relations" and allow us to experience a profound felt sense of connection to the living Earth.
Connection to the Regenerative Movement
The Deep Ecology movement that Macy and Seed led shares some core strands with today's regenerative movement, though the connections aren't always explicitly stated. Both Macy's work and regenerative thinking draws heavily from dynamic systems thinking, studies of ecology, and learning from indigenous wisdom.
As water and agriculture policy analyst Arohi Sharma notes, "The regenerative agriculture movement is the dawning realization among more people that an Indigenous approach to agriculture can help restore ecologies, fight climate change, rebuild relationships, spark economic development, and bring joy."
Regenerative agriculture recognizes that "all ecosystems function through four interconnected processes"—a systems thinking approach that directly mirrors the holistic worldview that Deep Ecology practices cultivate. When farmers shift from industrial agricultural 'input and output' orientated mindsets and instead learn to "think like a mountain" (borrowing Aldo Leopold's phrase), they're applying a similar expanded ecological consciousness that participants experience in a Council of All Beings.
As Lara Bryant, a regenerative scientist and (former) deputy director of water and agriculture at NRDC explains, "When we speak with farmers and ranchers focused on regenerative agriculture, they tell us that their notion of ‘success’ goes beyond yield and farm size. It includes things like joy and happiness, the number of families they feed, watching how the land regenerates and flourishes, the money saved from not purchasing chemical inputs, the debt avoided by repurposing old equipment, and the relationships built with community members.” …when we took animals out of cropping systems (a practice that started with poultry in the 1950s and expanded to beef and pork in the ’60s) and separated them into confined facilities and feedlots, we introduced a host of ethical and ecological problems, including the rise in antibiotic-resistant bacteria and harmful algal blooms. But fostering relationships between animals and the land can help cycle nutrients, increase water retention (from the organic matter left behind by animal manure), and curb weed and pest problems without the use of chemicals. While the techniques for caring for the soil vary with the context of each farm, generally, regenerative growers limit mechanical soil disturbance. Instead, they feed and preserve the biological structures that bacteria, fungi, and other soil microbes build underground—which provide above-ground benefits in return…. " [https://www.nrdc.org/stories/regenerative-agriculture-101]
Some critiques
Let's be honest—Deep Ecology hasn't been without its challenges and critiques. Feminist ecologists criticized it for not addressing gender inequities in environmental destruction, while social ecologists like Murray Bookchin argued it focused too much on humans as the problem rather than examining class and power structures. Scholars like Ramachandra Guha and Joan Martinez-Alier pointed out Eurocentric biases and questioned whether the movement appropriates Eastern traditions while denying agency to non-Western peoples. Often, there has been a lack of substantial decolonial analysis and how power works in complex systems.
Many practitioners are aware of this, and have been working to find various ways of decolonizing these practices while still maintaining the core insights and the somatic and communal emphasis. See, for example, this article on "Intersectionalism of the Work that Reconnects."
Seeds for Our Future
What makes Seed and Macy's legacy so relevant to the regenerative movement is their understanding that transformation happens through practice, not just philosophy. As regenerative farmers are discovering, "many practitioners begin their practice with the aim of growing healthy food for their families and communities" but find themselves part of something larger—a movement toward healing our relationship with the Earth.
A Living Methodology for Our Time
The methodological innovations of Deep Ecology and the Work That Reconnects offer significant insights for contemporary regenerative practitioners, particularly those working with participatory approaches. The spiral structure of Coming from Gratitude, Honoring our Pain for the World, Seeing with New/Ancient Eyes, and Going Forth mirrors the iterative cycles found in participatory action research (PAR)—both recognizing that sustainable change emerges through collective reflection, embodied experience, and collaborative action.
Both PAR and the Work That Reconnects treat participants as co-creators of knowledge rather than passive recipients of expert wisdom. The Council of All Beings, for instance, doesn't deliver information about ecological crisis but creates conditions for participants to access their own deep knowing about their relationship with the living world. This shifts the "location of power" away from external authorities toward the collective wisdom of the group. This shift is a core principle that resonates strongly with participatory research methodologies.
For organizations integrating PAR into regenerative programming, the somatic and ritual elements of Deep Ecology offer important additions to traditional research frameworks. PAR can support democratizing intellectual inquiry; Deep Ecology practices recognize that our disconnection from nature lives in the body and nervous system, requiring approaches that engage the whole embodied person, not just the thinking mind.
At 85, John Seed continues facilitating workshops, recently emerging from a six-year battle with cancer with renewed energy, and is consistantly focusing on bringing younger generations to co-facilitate the work with him. Joanna Macy, now in her mid-90s, continues to inspire new generations through her teachings on "The Great Turning"—her term for the transition from industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization; she is now towards the end of her life.
Their work reminds us that whether we're practicing regenerative agriculture, permaculture, participatory research, or any form of Earth-centered living, we're participating in something much larger than technique or method. We're rewilding our consciousness, remembering that we are not separate from nature but nature becoming conscious of herself.
As Macy often says, "We belong to this world." In that simple statement lies both the challenge and the hope of our time—not just to farm regeneratively or research participatively, but to remember ourselves home.
Want to experience the Work That Reconnects for yourself? John Seed continues offering workshops globally, and The Work That Reconnects Network provides resources and training worldwide. For those interested in exploring the intersection of consciousness and regenerative practices, both teachers emphasize that the real learning happens not in books but in direct relationship with the living world around us.
References and Resources
Core Works by John Seed and Joanna Macy
Seed, John, Joanna Macy, Pat Fleming, and Arne Naess. Thinking Like a Mountain: Toward a Council of All Beings. New Society Publishers, 1988. (Translated into 12+ languages; PDF available free at rainforestinfo.org.au)
Macy, Joanna. World as Lover, World as Self (30th Anniversary Edition). Parallax Press, 2021.
Macy, Joanna and Chris Johnstone. Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in without Going Crazy. New World Library, 2012.
Macy, Joanna and Molly Brown. Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects. New Society Publishers, 2014.
John Seed's Organizations and Projects
Rainforest Information Centre - John's primary organization since 1979
Deep Ecology Australia - Resources, workshop schedules, and philosophical foundations
John Seed's Personal Site - Current projects, writings, and workshop calendar
Understanding Grief and Animism in Ecological Work
The Emerald Podcast by Josh Schrei: Explores the "mythos of Grief, Tears and Renewal" and the animate heart of human experience (available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts)
Weller, Francis. The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief. North Atlantic Books, 2015.
Buhner, Stephen Harrod. Earth Grief: The Journey Into and Through Ecological Loss. Raven Press, 2022.
The Work That Reconnects Network: workthatreconnects.org - Global community and training resources
Contemporary Voices in Regenerative and Ecological Consciousness
"Cultivating Earth from soil to soul: Regenerative farming meets deep ecology" - Centre for Climate Safety's "The Sustainable Hour" podcast episode #508, featuring Celia Leverton (Regenerative Agriculture Network Tasmania) and John Seed
"Deep Ecology with John Seed" - Our Permaculture Life podcast - Direct exploration of connections between permaculture and deep ecology (July 2023)
The Mythic Body course series by Josh Schrei: Year-long immersion into myth, storytelling, ritual, and nature-based practice
Skye Cielita Flor's Deep Earth Dreaming: deepearthdreaming.world - Integration of Deep Ecology with plant medicine and grief work
Francis Weller's grief work: Apprenticeship to Sorrow and Soul Convivium programs (Note: Weller draws directly from Macy's "Honoring our Pain for the World" framework, extending grief work into ecological healing)
Key Podcasts and Interviews
Deep Ecology with John Seed - Our Permaculture Life podcast (July 2023)
Experiential Deep Ecology: A Conversation With John Seed and Skye Cielita Flor - Embodiment Matters podcast
The Emerald: The mythos of Grief, Tears and Renewal - Josh Schrei
Moving from Apathy to Action: How Facing Grief Can Help Us Navigate a World in Crisis - The Great Simplification podcast with Nate Hagens, John Seed, and Skye Cielita Flor
Recent High-Profile Interviews of Joanna Macy(2020-2024):
"We Are the Great Turning" - A major 10-part podcast series from 2024 with Sounds True
Sounds True podcast with Tami Simon (2020) - "We Belong: Hope, Choice, and Our Relationship with the Earth"
Tricycle Talks with James Shaheen (2020) - "The Work of Our Time"
The One You Feed podcast (2022) - "The Work That Reconnects"
Plum Village podcast (2021) - "Grief and Joy on a Planet in Crisis"
Classic Talks:
Her foundational "The Great Turning" - Classic talk from 2007
On Being interview with Krista Tippett from 2019
Academic and Historical Context
Naess, Arne. "The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement: A Summary." Inquiry 16, no. 1 (1973): 95-100.
Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac. Oxford University Press, 1949.
Deep Times: A Journal of the Work That Reconnects - journal.workthatreconnects.org
For the Rē community interested in deeper exploration: The intersection of Deep Ecology and regenerative practices offers rich territory for both personal transformation and systemic change. As John Seed often notes, "I am the rainforest defending myself" - when we truly embody this expanded identity, regenerative practices become not just techniques but expressions of our larger ecological self caring for itself.