Our Approach
Living systems: Using nature as a guide.
Learning for Well-being emphasises a paradigm shift towards a living systems perspective. This perspective sees life as a dynamic process built on relationships.
Nature itself, and everything within it, works as a living whole system. By understanding the evolutionary principles of living systems, we start uncovering notions which are foundational to understanding the nature of human well-being: wholeness, purpose, process, patterns, and capacities.
Wholeness: Whole people. Whole systems.
We define well-being as “realising one’s unique potential through physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual development in relation to self, others, and the environment.”
The definition acknowledges the desire for wholeness amid contemporary culture of fragmentation, and highlights that a well-lived life transcends conventional measures like educational achievement or income.
Purpose at the heart of one’s unique potential.
Every living system has a centralising impulse, a unique potential akin to the expression of one’s “soul”, “essence” or “true self”. With this notion we acknowledge the deep seated quest for meaning and purpose in every person, which is a source of vital energy and essential qualities throughout life.
Every person is born with the potential to be more fully and deeply themselves.
Process: Natural patterns of functioning.
Nature expresses itself in micro and macro patterns, which relate to a central feature of the Learning for Well-being approach: the relationship between our unique potential and the natural process through which we make sense of the world that we call inner diversity.
Inner diversity refers to the fundamental pattern through which we perceive, process and integrate information into a highly personal representation of our experience—our very own “operating system”. It is through this pattern that thoughts, feelings, actions, and beliefs are filtered, organised, and given meaning, resulting both in gifts and challenges in how we relate with ourselves, others, and the world.
Our well-being requires the self-discovery and expression of our particular qualities, present from the beginning of life, and unfolding as we grow. The quality of the structures we create in the world is directly connected to the quality of our consciousness, and our ability to engage positively with our ways of functioning, as well as those of others.
Core capacities for living and learning
To nourish and expand the vitality in our systems, by cultivating wholeness, purpose and appreciation for different ways of functioning, we must protect and strengthen our core capacities, innate abilities that support individuals and communities to function as competent (living) systems.
Through core capacities, we can address the tension between the “I” and the “We” in decision-making, fostering the natural wholeness inherent in all systems, allowing it to emerge and flourish.
The Learning for Well-being Framework
The Learning for Well-being integrative framework expresses the essential characteristics and organic ways systems function and evolve.
It includes:
- 4 Perspectives: Physical – Emotional – Mental – Spiritual;
- 9 Core Capacities: Relaxing – Noticing – Reflecting – Listening – Inquiring – Empathising – Subtle Sensing – Embodying – Discerning patterns
- 7 Principles for Action: Wholeness – Purpose – Diversity – Relationships – Participation – Systems – Feedback;
