Shilpa Jain: Cycle of hurt, cycle of healing (ep327)
How might we lean into appreciative inquiry in support of a cycle of healing? And what does it mean to view conflicts as potentials for collective breakthroughs?
In this episode, we welcome Shilpa Jain, the Executive Director of YES! and a facilitator, author, and educator on topics including globalization, creative expressions, ecology, democratic living, innovative learning, and unlearning.
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“When I slow down enough to love myself and love others, then everything that I’m creating from that place is fundamentally different.”
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Transcript:
Note: *Our episodes are minimally edited. Please view them as open invitations to dive deeper into each resource and topic explored. This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Shilpa Jain: I had a somewhat traditional upbringing. I come from a family of immigrants from India, grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, went to public school, went to an Ivy League school, had all of the things laid out for me. My father was an engineer and my mother's a doctor, so they had the kind of professional degrees that set me and my brother up for a particular kind of life.
Early on in my education experience, I started questioning the way education was set up. A lot of my friends and I started out together, but we were slowly separated. A lot of talents and gifts were thrown out of the system.
In high school, I didn't understand why we were testing people and why we thought that it was a measure of intelligence. Friends with different strengths were not valued because they weren't recognized in the traditional setting.
As I went to college, that questioning only continued and deepened. When I graduated and moved to work in international development in Washington, I felt that the projects I was working on were very dehumanizing and inconsiderate, honestly, of the diversity of people's realities and the way people wanted to live. It was promoting that there was only one right, good way, which had to be industrial, and it had to be modeled after the US or Europe... Having grown up in the States and seeing how much disconnection, depression, anxiety, and stress were happening for people, I could see that this doesn't really work for a lot of people.
Focusing on money and material things weren't necessarily making people happy, and yet that was what was being promoted through international development and international education development.
There was an experience that kicked it all off for me. I was sent to a rural area of Morocco, where the Bedouin community, the Indigenous people of Morocco, live. The project was to put the children, who had beautiful vibrancy and energy, into these concrete boxes and schools... And I just looked at this and I was like, these children, this community, has spent thousands of years in the desert, and with an ecological background that I felt we need to learn from—not the other way around. We don't need to disconnect them further. We need to learn how they survive, how they're resilient, how they're culturally connected because that's what's coming for us. I felt really sick after that project, and I couldn't fathom how this made any sense.
So I tried for the next several months to find something good, somewhere where people were being respected and where the diversity of ways of living and learning were accepted, and I couldn't find it. That soured me to the field, overall. At first, I thought maybe people just don't know, but over time, I realized people do know and that the system is reinforcing itself, continuing to disconnect others from their land, and their culture, and their language, and so on.
Kamea Chayne: It's kind of mind-boggling how the entire dominant educational system is like a cookie-cutter, molding people into these cogs to serve this greater machine of constant economic growth as the one way to measure and determine societal "progress". I find that it is very dehumanizing and that it devalues so many different facets of who we are as people and who we yearn to be deep inside.
"Alignment" is a word that I've noticed you use quite a bit. And, as you share, your work aims to uncover ways for people to free themselves from dominating, soul-crushing institutions, and to live in greater alignment with their hearts and deepest values, their local communities, and with nature.
In envisioning our path forward, I've spoken with people who believe that our societal problems are because our institutions are not strong enough and because they're losing grip over people—therefore, we must strengthen our current institutions so that we can better address things like hunger, access to clean water, and so forth.
But I'm curious to hear your perspective on how everyday people's deep yearnings and values have become misaligned—when most are directed to serve the agendas of these dominant institutions, as opposed to, maybe, their own communities.
Shilpa Jain: I think you name it right there. It starts at such a young age...
The education that we're receiving is fundamentally not connecting to what's going on inside of us, what's happening in our families, what's happening in our local places. We're usually connecting to esoteric information that's not really relevant.
And think about how many hours a day, day after day, year after year, that young people spend doing that, in traditional education. There are people trying to make transformation happen within the existing system, so I don't want to act as though that's the only thing happening. And yet at the same time, that's been the predominant mode.
Then, there isn't this, "who am I really, what am I here for? What is the particular genius or what are the particular gifts that I've been brought to this world for, in this time, in this place? What's there for me, and how does that relate to the other people, the environment here?" And these issues of social justice and environmental care and stewardship are intertwined. Because people don't get many opportunities, for many, many years of their life, to reflect on that, especially when they're in their most curious, open, porous stage of life, that disconnection is created.
If you and folks who are listening haven't watched the film that came out last month called “The Wisdom of Trauma”, I would highly recommend it. It talks about how we actually have a traumatized society from the get-go. Part of it is, of course, the terrible events that happened, but how do we react and relate to them? A lot of those events are often triggered by other people's disconnection, whether that's abuse or harm or some other kind of addiction, and then we get disconnected, and that furthers the trauma in our whole society.
These institutions that have been set up, I originally thought that it was just good people in these institutions, and they would change the institutions. But over time, and over my own processes of learning, I realized all the institutions are set up for the dislocation, and disconnection.
I used to think, "the system's broken, we need to fix it". And then I started to think, "the system's working as it intended".
So we need to let it go, and build new things and different ideas, that are more rooted in our own inner questions, our deep and authentic interactions and relationships with each other, with the Earth... We have all of those models that exist around the world, and in many communities, so we can draw from those. It's not always reinventing the wheel, but rather turning to and drawing inspiration from other people, who are less institutionalized and have access to other information and ways of being.
Kamea Chayne: What you were just talking about speaks to this common saying that has inspired your parallel thinking in terms of collective healing and liberation, this idea that "hurt people, hurt people". How do you tie this individualized explanation to the greater systems of extraction and exploitation that so many are hurt by and bound within today? And also, I wonder, are we not going deep enough into history when we attribute a lot of our global crises today, to something like colonialism? Because what if it leads us to overlook the historical traumas of those who had inflicted harm in those times, and felt a need to dominate others? Not to dismiss accountability, of course, but to trace the roots even more deeply and reverse this pattern of hurt, towards finding collective healing.
Shilpa Jain: I love that phrase, "hurt people, hurt people". I was doing some of my work several years ago, and someone added, "and they create institutions that hurt people". So, "hurt people, hurt people and create systems that hurt people". And, conversely, "healing people are healing people, and create systems that are healing people". What I've realized is, actually, both of these things are operating almost all the time. There's the cycle of hurt and the cycle of healing that's happening. In any moment, I might be the one hurting, or hurt, or healing, or supporting the healing.
And I look at colonization, and I know that in order to colonize, a person has to be separated first from themselves, and from the earth, from their own humanity... How can I dehumanize another person and see them as less than, unless that's already been done, or I've experienced that in some way inside of myself?
I read the book, Ishmael, many years ago, and it talks about how ten thousand plus years ago, we separated from the land, and we thought that we were better than animals, better than the land, that we could control the land. And then as we disconnect from Earth, and as we see ourselves, us humans, as above the web of life, that can give rise to these complex societies, with more hierarchies, that create more separation, and more divisiveness. And that grows over time. Divisiveness begets more divisiveness, and trauma begets more trauma. And because we're human, we have reactions, so we take on that trauma and bring that to somewhere else, and then I traumatize something else, and if I have power in society, I can create systems that enact or further solidify that trauma, so more people experience that trauma.
Oftentimes, it is very tricky, right? Because I'm taught, "oh, this is a good thing". There's a part of my moral goodness that wants to be intact during that whole process. All colonizers had a civilizing agenda, a moral agenda. It wasn't just, "we want to exploit, rule and take". There was also this idea that they were doing something "better" for these people, for this land. There was a story that got woven into that. We can look back and be like, "that doesn't make any sense"—I see how the mind is constantly trying to justify anything that is separating or distancing or dehumanizing or violent. But how do we work with that? For me, that comes down to slowing things down and looking at them more deeply. And that is work we can do collectively too, not just alone.
Kamea Chayne: A theme that I see across your thinking is looking at practices that are causing harm and sort of flipping them on their heads. So, for example, the idea that "hurt people, hurt people", you take that to "healing people are healing people, and creating systems that are healing people". And even deeper, you say "freeing people are freeing people, and creating systems that are freeing people". Similarly, you look at the strategy of divide and conquer, to speak to how we can not cave into separation, competition and atomization of our senses of communities and selves.
Can you expand more on this, especially given that a lot of people are having to work against these divisive forces within a culture of individualism, that even without any external pressures, might lead to a narrowing purview of the self?
Shilpa Jain: I think it all starts with that acknowledgment of the "I". And it sounds funny, but it's not about promoting individualism, it's recognizing that there is a being there. There's so much work to generalize, and abstract, and make people not seen. To actually take the time to just start to see myself, and see other people, is a fundamentally massive shift.
We're statistics, numbers, just points on a percentage chart, but the real questions we need to ask are: who are we? Who am I? What's going on? Asking these means we have to be slowing down.
So all this is directly counter to the culture of individualism, which is about separation: "I matter, but nothing else matters".
We need to be taking time to see each other, and see our earth around us, the people who live here, the people who are around us, and to go deeper into that. For example, one of the tools is a methodology called appreciative inquiry. It's a way to look for what is alive, what is working, what is thriving.
Through my inquiry and curiosity, I can build what's growing, what's working, what's really healing, what's nurturing, what's connective.
It's contrary to critical analysis, where I'm looking for what's not working, and noticing this problem, that problem—which is not a bad thing, I don't want to dismiss it, but when I'm doing that, I find myself more disconnected and more disempowered. And it's harder to get to the point of wanting to help.
I noticed that that was a lot of my college education—focusing on what doesn't work. And it was also so present in social justice work and activism. I was like, "oh, it's so easy to break everything down, to find the flaws and problems", yet it doesn't help me. It doesn't help me create, generate. Instead, I want to be looking for thriving relationships, where I feel most alive, who I can feel most connected with, who inspires me, what are groups that are doing things that are connective, or restorative?
What I've learned over time is that we have to make space for even hurt and pain. People want to have that acknowledged. When we acknowledge it, it can flow out of us, instead of being stuck. We're just constantly defining ourselves against what didn't work, against our own pain, against the thing that was wrong, instead of looking towards what we want to grow, and engaging with that creative energy.
Kamea Chayne: I really resonate with your call to appreciative inquiry, because I look to a lot of these counterculture movements, for example, with degrowth economics, which has been proposed as a systemic change that we need, to address this underlying capitalistic system of endless economic growth... For me, that still centers on what you don't want, and what's not working. It devalues a lot of who you are, a lot of forms of care, and certainly all elements of our earth as well...
I wonder what it would mean to recenter growth on the things that would bring enrichment and fulfillment to our lives. If we were to center a regrowth of intimacy, of relationships, of community, of vitality, meaning, purpose and etc.? A reorientation towards what we want to build, which is what I've been really called to reorient myself towards.
And I know that you have a multicultural background that is a mix of Eastern and Western cultures, which I can relate to as well... I'm curious, what has stood out to you as the differences between cultures of collectivism that are more dominant in the East, and ones of individualism that are more dominant in the West, in terms of how they foster personal transformations, community building, and even different approaches to activism?
Shilpa Jain: I've gotten to be in a lot of different cultural experiences. And what I realized is that sometimes, the work needs to be to take some more time to see each of us, it needs to be inner work, because individuals are often obscured by the collective. On the other side, sometimes we really need to do more work to heal the collective, because people have spent a lot of time thinking about themselves, but not so much the relationships, how we're bound together, what reciprocity looks like... In all cases, I would say conflict is still something that people all over the world struggle with. Inner conflict, the conflict within ourselves, with our inner critics, that tell us we're not good enough, we can't do this; and interpersonal conflict, the conflict with others... And people also struggle with the idea of systemic transformation... How we reconnect to Earth in meaningful ways, and channel that wisdom into what we're doing, how to really connect to each other with our diverse cultures.
I feel incredibly blessed to have grown up, lived in, experienced and worked in other cultures. I gained many benefits from that, because I can see that there are uniquenesses in every single place, in every single human, yet there are common threads that weave through all of our hearts and our beings. When we can have the "both, and" in all of that, it feels really generative. And it is healing, because it's not making a decision like, "okay, this culture has to be this way".
And going back to our previous thread, at first I was very critical of everything, then I got to appreciative inquiry, and I came across this framework, Joanna Macy's Four R's: the different approaches to social change. So "reform", working with and within the system, "resist", working to stop harmful actions that the system is doing—both of which are still interacting with the existing system. And then there's "recreate", forming other approaches, building other ways and things that are more in alignment with our values, and "reimagine", bringing in the realm of like vision: artists, shamans, healers and academics, and others who are trying to help us see different possibilities. When I came across this, I realized I had seen all of these approaches fight with each other, when really they're missing the point, that all of those different approaches have value, and they're bringing something in this time, but also that they all have a limit. Part of the unlearning is that we need to know that there's no one way, but that these are all connected and can be woven together.
How do we be open to the idea that we can support each other, and see the web instead of seeing all of this in silos?
Kamea Chayne: What you said was so relatable, because I definitely have noticed within the activism space, where people's approaches to activism are different, there's a tendency for different factions to take people who are focused on a different approach down, to say that you should do what I'm doing, because this is superior. And of course, there are always discussions to be had in terms of how we can better strategize, so we can drive change more effectively...
But I love the idea of, as you've so eloquently said, "every conflict is a chance to have a break down or break through, every moment I can be building a wall or a bridge". And what this leads me to think about is how we do often have internal conflicts as personal beings, but at the end of the day, we know that conflict is guiding us towards the best decisions that we might be able to make, given a set of circumstances.
And so, what would it mean for us as communities and collectives to take on this greater, more collective consciousness, so that when I have a conflict with another person, I'm not going in with the intention of wanting to win, and convince this person to think exactly as I do, but rather let go of my ego and acknowledge that there is a there's a bigger collective consciousness that I am a part of, and that we together make up.
Shilpa Jain: What I think what it takes is, first, the awareness that that's a possibility, because I learned growing up that conflict is bad, conflict is a problem.
It's taken me time to realize conflict is actually neutral, it's the meeting point of differences.
I have a perspective, you have a perspective. So how do I want to approach that difference? That's the question.
I can approach the difference by digging my heels in and being like "this is the way, you have to like this, or if you don't, you're stupid, or nothing, or meaningless". Many times, these differences occur because I see things from my perspective, values, upbringing, without recognizing that it comes from that. But another way I can approach the difference is by meeting that conflict with vulnerability, with a desire to learn, being curious about why, their background, their reasons for behaving and thinking that way, and trying to understand their experience, perspective...
And what often happens is that that curiosity and then that vulnerably sharing, that's a game-changer. We can't be the same person after hearing another's story, after tapping into that collective consciousness, going beyond opinion into stories, experiences, and feelings. This transforms the conflict, and makes it an opportunity for a breakthrough. Whether that's my inner conflict, or my conflict with someone else, or with the system. I can tap into my curiosity and vulnerability, and let go of the judgment, to hear and understand the story within other people or other contexts.
The thing that trips us up often, though, is that getting into the winning or the convincing, before the vulnerability.
And sometimes that creates more divisiveness. So the rift gets bigger, because our mirror neurons fire, our amygdala kicks in, we've got a fight-or-flight situation. We begin to take these moments of difference as moments of survival. Right now it may be a level of tea and coffee, but I might end up treating it as the same as if I were facing a life-threatening situation. So what we need to do is slow things down. How much time do we get to be slow? To breathe, to notice our bodies, to connect with our bodies and our food, our water, what's going in and out of our bodies? How do we notice our stress? What is causing stress in our lives? Can we shift those structures? Can we shift those models so that we create more spaciousness? Because conflict is always coming, and it's inevitable, so how do I learn how to do it differently? It's hard work. I'm working a different muscle, that doesn't get worked unless I work on it. We can do this collectively, and create structures to support each other to do that.
Kamea Chayne: Yeah. So just as, for example, biodiversity within an ecosystem is synergistic, when these different beings and elements come together, it sounds like conflicts are synergistic as well, in the other direction. And slowing down is definitely important to create space and room to go deeper, to lean into our different ways of knowing.
And a core principle that guides your work, which I believe speaks to this as well, is love and spirit. And you say: "They are not just tools for personal wellness – they enable individuals, organizations, and even movements to be guided by a deeper wisdom, and to welcome the presence of the miraculous". Especially in the climate and environmental activism space that is dominated by the logic of science and rational thinking, it can be a challenge for people to lean into our different ways of knowing, and to honor, rather than dismiss, the spiritual and the miraculous. So I'm curious to hear how this has become a central focus for you and how you think social and earth activism can benefit by holding more space for love in spirit.
Shilpa Jain: Love and spirit are at the center of everything, and truth—which is deeply connected to that. We have these sayings that "love conquers all". When I slow down enough to love myself and love others, then everything that I'm creating from that place is fundamentally different, I notice that it has an impact on me. And spirit is such a core part of that, because it is tapping into that collective consciousness, ancestral wisdom, the spirit guides that are all around us—and certainly, nature is full of that as well.
Most of my work is with groups of people, and when I see us bringing this opportunity for love and spirit, both in naming and noticing the connections that are there, and giving space and opportunity for that, and also actively cultivating them, these really shift the way a group operates and works.
When we can do that on the micro level, we can do it on the macro level. What happens as we build a culture that's rooted in that kind of mindset? And I have a friend who talks about culture as being made up of structures, skill sets and mindsets. When I think about that, I'm like, "I can have the mindset of love and spirit, but I need to have skills that help me express that." These could be as simple as eye contact, or asking someone a question and listening for their answer, really listening, vulnerability, consensual touch...
And then there are structures that can support all of that love and spirit to manifest in movements and in organizations, so like, "how do I how do we make the space?" It's about hosting meetings where instead of everybody talking at once, we take some moments of silence to really hear if there's any deeper wisdom that's coming in through us from our spirit, from our ancestors; or before we start our meeting, we go out and take ten minutes in nature, and just commune with the trees and the plants and see what we can learn; or we invite someone to share a prayer from their tradition; or we invite someone to tell a story of their grandmother or grandfather, and bring that into our space.
Doing all this fundamentally alters the DNA of movements and organizations because they're rooted in not doing—and they have the doing piece too, they don't lose their doing, but—the beingness of us comes through far more.
So I'm seeing who is there in the room, with a sense of their being, and they're also seeing that. When we root from there, the work we end up doing is much more integrated. We're not checking ourselves at the door, and then trying to do work. We need to bring ourselves there, and be with each other in that. That's what wholeness and making a better world means.
So, for example, a lot of times, I'm doing work and someone comes into the meeting or gathering and is really struggling with something. I learned at a young age that people matter more than an agenda item, or even a principal, or an idea. So we slow down, and say, "we have time, what's going on?" It's a learning not just for that person, but for the entire community. For us to say, "am I here? What's going on for me?" And here's a person who's expressing that, "can we tune in? Can we listen?" Because there's something deeper that's coming through.
And there's love that shines through—most of the time people hold things in because they're afraid that they won't be loved if they're shared. What I see over and over again is when people share, and when they look at who's with them, and they see more love in people's eyes for them, that is fundamentally revolutionary. It shifts something so deep for that person's light, and also for the community.
Being with someone through something that's hard and painful, gives us power and strength, and capacity, along with being with them to find their way back towards their own being. That shift is profound.
*** CLOSING ***
Kamea Chayne: What's an uplifting social media account or publication you follow or a book that's been really profound for you?
Shilpa Jain: I would say, YES! Magazine—which is not connected to our YES!, but we're deeply intertwined in spirit.
Kamea Chayne: What personal mottos, mantras or practices do you engage with to stay grounded?
Shilpa Jain: Tuning into my body is really important, so I do a lot of core workouts, and try to tap into my core, sleep, drinking a lot of water every day, trying to eat healthy and just moving as much as I can every day, because I feel like in the body wisdom a lot gets revealed.
Kamea Chayne: And what have been some of your greatest inspirations recently?
Shilpa Jain: I'm so inspired by the young people in our world right now who are just standing up for all kinds of things. The movements around gender equality, LGBTQ movements, the movements around Black liberation, climate movements, people's loving of the earth... And how young people are at the heart of all of that work. I'm also just so inspired by elders stepping up and forward into their elderhood. The intergenerational, multigenerational work that can happen in this time is closing of the loop and bringing everything together.
Kamea Chayne: Shilpa, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. I really appreciated this conversation and time with you. What final words of wisdom do you have for us as green dreamers?
Shilpa Jain: Take the time to really look inward, and see who you are, and what's there for you, and trust that and that wherever you look, there are people who want to join you in that. No one is alone. We actually have community beyond measure in our lives, so tap into that.
