Introducing The Work That Reconnects

Here is how Joanna Macy, who first developed this approach, introduces it on her website.

The Work That Reconnects is a pioneering form of group work that began in the 1970s. It demonstrates our interconnectedness in the web of life and our authority to take action on its behalf. It has helped many thousands around the globe find insight, solidarity, and courage to act, despite rapidly worsening conditions. Based on systems theory, spiritual teachings, and deep ecology, its methods are described in Coming Back to Life, the book I wrote with Molly Young Brown.
The central purpose of the Work that Reconnects is to help people uncover and experience their innate connections with each other and with the systemic, self-healing powers in the web of life, so that they may be enlivened and motivated to play their part in creating a sustainable civilization. In order to do this, we pursue these contributing goals:

• to provide people the opportunity to experience and share with others their innermost responses to the present condition of our world
• to reframe their pain for the world as evidence of their interconnectedness in the web of life, and hence of their power to take part in its healing
• to provide people with concepts--from systems science, deep ecology, or spiritual traditions--which illumine this power, along with exercises which reveal its play in their own lives
• to provide methods by which people can experience their interdependence with, their responsibility
• to, and the inspiration they can draw from past and future generations, and other life-forms
• to enable people to embrace the Great Turning as a challenge which they are fully capable of meeting in a variety of ways, and as a privilege in which they can take joy
• to bring people into mutual support and collaboration in working for the world.