Resources: glossary terms

Glossary term: Mindfulness

Being present in the moment, bringing awareness to your thoughts and feelings without engaging them. Think of it like hitting pause, being able to look kindly at your thoughts and impulses rather than being carried along by them.

Glossary term: Collective transformation

when a group of people, like a community, a movement, or even a generation, decides to make a big change together. This change isn’t just about what they do; it’s also about how they think, how they relate to each other, and how they see the world. 

Glossary term: Polycrisis

When multiple crises (like climate change, economic instability, and social injustice) happen at the same time, making each one harder to deal with. It’s like juggling too many things at once.

Glossary term: Inner Work

Taking time to reflect on your emotions, thoughts, and values to build your inner strength. It’s like working out for your mind and soul.

Glossary term: Resilience

Your ability to bounce back from tough situations. It’s like being a rubber band that stretches but doesn’t break.

Glossary term: Pedagogies

The methods and practices used in teaching. It’s essentially the “how” of education – how teachers help students learn and how students engage with what they’re being taught.

Glossary term: Cultivating presence

Being fully aware and engaged in the current moment, both mentally and emotionally. It’s like tuning in completely to what’s happening right now, rather than being distracted by thoughts about the past or worries about the future.

Glossary term: Ubuntu

An African philosophy that means “I am because we are.” It’s about recognizing that we are all connected and that we thrive when we support each other.

Glossary term: Intersectionality

Understanding that different types of inequality (like racism, sexism, and environmental injustice) are connected and can’t be separated. It’s like seeing the whole puzzle instead of just one piece.

Glossary term: Co-Creation

Working together with others to create something new. It’s about teamwork, where everyone’s ideas are valued.

Glossary term: Radical Hospitality

Creating a welcoming and inclusive space where everyone feels valued and respected. It’s like opening your home and heart to others.

We honour Báyò Akómoláfé’ for this practice of co-creating a sense of belonging for all.

Glossary term: The Pluriverse

A concept that recognizes and celebrates the existence of multiple ways of being, knowing, and living in the world. It’s the idea that there isn’t just one single way to understand or experience life; instead, there are many different perspectives, cultures, and systems of knowledge that coexist and are equally valid.

Glossary term: Ontology

The study of being and existence, focusing on understanding what things are and how they exist. It asks questions like “What is reality?” and “What entities exist in the world?”

Glossary term: Epistemology

The study of knowledge, concerned with how we know what we know. It explores the nature of knowledge, its limits, and how we acquire it.

Glossary term: ecological belonging

Belonging is a practice that defies Othering. As living beings, we have an innate desire to belong. A felt sense of belonging awakens certain hormones that generate feelings of joy, togetherness, camaraderie, interconnectedness, power-with, and more. Ecological belonging reweaves what the spiritual teacher Thich Nhat Hanh called our interbeing with all of life. It emphasises our relationships with and reliance on all the known elements of the universe. We rely on space to support our bodies, on air to breath, on fire or the sun to warm us and photosynthesise plants and food sources, on water for survival, and on the earth as home and the ground that provides gravity and yields food sources. Indigenous wisdom never separates us from ecologies and ecosystems with which our lives are intertwined. Through the silencing and suppression of these knowledge and wisdom traditions, and the imposition of systems that separated the mind from the body, many of us lost our infusion with the elements and our understandings of the mycelial network. Ecological belonging changes dominant views of humans as the most powerful, intelligent species at the centre of the universe, and restores respect for the tremendous regenerative power of the cosmos. In many traditions, we are part of nature, each living creature following the same cycle of life with dignity, respect and gratitude for every aspect of nature that gives us life.

Ecological belonging maps our back to the deep-seated connections we share as part of nature.

Glossary term: embodied justice

Justice, fairness and liberation are linked to practices of freedom that engage our agency and capacities to change perspectives and worlds. Due to structural and systemic injustices such as violations of human rights, discriminations against identity- groups based on race, class, gender, sexuality, age, faith etc. we may never experience social justice. However, embodied justice steps outside the frames of oppression to shape societies and worlds according to our own notions of freedom. Is it possible to embody a sense of liberation? What are the conditions that support this? Can I help create more of these conditions? Embodied justice or embodied freedom is a felt sense of liberation. It de-centres systems of discrimination, and centres instead communal values and practices of freedom. Such practices may start in defiance of the status quo, but they usually evolve to give expression to values, beliefs, traditions, rituals, and cultures that function and thrive regardless of dominant narratives and norms.

Think political freedoms, LGBT rights, and queer expressions of freedom.

Glossary term: power-within

In many parts of the world, power-over is exercised through dominant narratives, social norms and brute force. This form of power is based on Othering people who ‘diQer’ from a particular established norm. Power-with and power-within are practices of communal power and personal power. Power-with emphasises ‘the whole is greater than the sum of the parts’ principle in recognising that when communities rally around issues, they are often more successful at creating change. Again, consider all the rights that have been won across the world. The process of recognising the many types of power present within communities, including social, cultural, relational, network capital, is called power-mapping.

Power-within refers to the gifts, talents, skills, innate knowledges and insights that we all possess. Living into these gifts helps us activate agency. However, power-within is not meant to encourage ‘hyperindividualism’. It amplifies the unmasking of power that is often repressed and veiled through systems of oppression. When we touch ‘innate intelligence’ we recognise that it is nurtured in community, that we are not isolated individuals, that we rely on one another to shine. Think: ‘no person is an island’.

Glossary term: worldmaking

Worldmaking reminds us that there are many possible worlds aside from the dominant worldview that overshadows other views. There are multiple worlds and many different experiences of ‘the world’. Worlds are constructed and co-created. We all participate in either reinforcing dominant views or generating new worlds through shared visions. Power-with and power-within are tied to notions of agency and capacities to change systems and structures that seem insurmountable. Stepping into unknown spaces, what some may call unchartered mind/heart territory, is intrinsic to making worlds that have not yet been brought into being. In life, we are, according to some, constantly becoming. We are never done but always evolving, discovering, curious, alive, and co- creating. In the same way, worlds are constantly becoming, bringing different perspectives, values and principles into view. Our works and programs involve worldmaking. They bring with them uncertainty precisely because we are acting in ways not yet known. Worldmaking entails bravery and courage and relies on shared values and visions. For example, worldmaking can involve healing which addresses ancestral, political, and multiple traumas. It offers pathways to shaping freedom.