Co-create to Co-regulate:

a pilot residency placement for two educators

In the summer of 2024, over a weekend in July, I hosted a land-based, residency placement for two Canadian educators (‘AB’ and ‘JV’) to whom I am eternally grateful for their active and thoughtful participation. This pilot was undertaken for the final unit of my Masters degree. We explored the question:

How does engaging with this land through creative embodied practice
impact awareness of the self and others? 

I was interested in working with educators for a number of reasons, including:

Firstly, there is evidence across cultures, that teaching is “a profession mired by anxiety, with teachers reporting record levels of stress over the last decade” (Farley 307). Further, students “who have more stressed teachers may have fewer opportunities to observe how to regulate emotions effectively because stressed people are less likely to employ effective emotional regulation strategies” (Jeon 28). Understanding and regulating unproductive stress responses requires awareness. I was therefore interested in whether creative embodied practice impacts awareness of the self and others.

Two core activities, of embodied stitching and impromptu movement experiments on and with the land, were the anchors for our assessment. These practices are further iterations of previous seasonal research. Foraging and natural dyeing became a part of the embodied stitching process for this turn of the spiral.

The pilot placement confirmed that new, shared understanding can be found when creativity is brought into play (Leeds-Herwitz 14) and all participants recognized the value in coming together in community and being able to have meaningful dialogue, facilitated by creative collaboration and co-regulation.

In terms of institutional critique, all participants felt that the education “system breeds lack of awareness of the self” (AB) and values product over process. A key recommendation is that valuing the process needs to be prioritized. This is inextricably related to the fact that we all receive lessons when we’re ready and that “everybody is on their own timeline and…we're planting seeds as teachers and we aren't always going to see the growth of those seeds” (JV).

Our small community found that engaging and connecting with the land through embodied creative practice does cultivate greater awareness of the self and others. Working with the body affects the mind and engaging creatively with materials that have a close connection to the Earth helps create “internal space” and the ability to “access a greater sense of ease and presence” (JV), as well as awareness of that which is beyond ourselves.