One of the best aspects of our courses are our facilitators: Gaia Education facilitators are usually experienced facilitators who are deeply involved in their own communities and "walk the talk", embracing in their own lives the practices and concepts they share with participants. Many of our facilitators are also Gaia Education Certified Trainers and/or recognized facilitators in other networks, including the Work That Reconnects Network, Permaculture Womens Guild, the Transition Network, etc. 

Module 1: Holistic Worldviews

We start by exploring different ways of knowing and participating in the world that have shaped the evolution of Western culture, taking a closer look at the role of ‘organising ideas’ and different modes of consciousness in our experience of reality.

Module 1 explores the following questions:

• What is the dominant cultural narrative that has shaped the worldview that is informing the behaviour of modern globalised culture?
• What are key obstacles to holistic thinking and how has a holistic approach to science – Goethean Science, the new physics, and complexity theory – contributed to the gradual transformation of the reductionist and mechanistic worldview?
• How can we become active participants in a global transition towards a more compassionate and biophilic understanding of our interdependence with all Life expressed through design for whole systems health and wellbeing for all?

Module 2: Reconnecting with Nature

The healing of many of the ailments afflicting nature and culture in this time of converging crises requires us to first and foremost solve our ‘crisis of perception’ (Fritjof Capra) and recognise our interconnection with planetary life support systems. We need to reconnect with nature as an expression of our wider ecological self in order to find a deeper source of meaning, insight and strength.

Module 2 asks:

• In what way can Deep Ecology, Ecopsychology, Gaia Theory and reconnecting with the Universe Story of 14 billion years of cosmic evolution help us to become re-enchanted with the world again?
• What is the role of indigenous wisdom traditions and their technologies of the sacred, for example council, pilgrimage and vision fasts, in our reconnecting with nature?
• How can we learn to design for interbeing in ways that create a sense of place informed by integral ecology and a new kind of cosmopolitan bioregionalism?

Module 3: Transformation of Consciousness

Regenerative development at the scale of communities or regions will always need to go hand-in-hand with the personal development of the individuals and collectives involved in facilitating this change. Effectively communicating sustainability and facilitating the multi-stakeholder dialogues that are necessary for transformative innovation is greatly aided by a more integral understanding of the different worldviews and value systems we might encounter in our work.

Module 3 addresses to the following questions:

• How can frameworks like Spiral Dynamics, the Four Quadrants of Integral Theory and other developmental models of consciousness and value systems help us to facilitate constructive integration of multiple perspectives in diverse groups?
• What are the commonalities and differences between spirituality and religion, as well as, between different religions and spiritual paths? How can we respect and value these diverse ways of meaning-making as contributions from different traditions?
• How can each and every one of us integrate personal development of heart, mind, body and spirit into our daily life practice in ways that support our self, our communities and the world, on our paths as evolutionary activists?

Module 4: Personal and Planetary Health

The healing of self, community and world is a central focus of effective change agents around the world. Designing for sustainability and co-creating diverse regenerative cultures is fundamentally about salutogenic (health-generating) design for human and planetary health. We have to take care of our self and our community in order to effectively take care of healthy ecosystem functions and the biosphere, and vice versa.

In module 4 we offer tentative answers to the following questions:

• How do healthy lifestyles, greater equality, community cohesion and a sense of belonging and place contribute to a more holistic understanding of health?
• What is the scale-linking connection between human, ecosystem and planetary health, and what are the major constraints to this pattern that connects?
• How does understanding personal, community and bioregional resilience as interconnected aspects of systemic health inform our actions and designs?

Module 5: Engaged Spirituality

Our worldviews and value systems influence our behaviours and judgements, and these result in our designs and the systems and processes we set up. The world we have created around us then in turn influences how we see the world. Together we are bringing forth a world through our intentions, actions and inaction. This module explores how we can become effective cultural creatives, facilitating transformative change and leveraging the power of local and global networks of change through collaboration.

This module invites you to consider the following questions:

• How can Will Keepin’s guidelines for engaged spirituality inform a more effective practice for cultural creatives and facilitators of transformation and change?
• What processes exist to come together in community and envision the futures we want to co-create together? What are the steps in such visioning processes?
• Are there any common themes between existing visions of sustainable societies and regenerative cultures and how might they inform our individual and collective work in the transition into the re-localised planetary era?

• The worldview course will run every year and runs for 8 weeks (including an orientation period).
• We suggest you dedicate a minimum of 10 hours a week to receive maximum benefit from this programme.
• A limited number of full and partial scholarships are available. (please read below for more information before you apply). We will be accepting scholarships until March 15 and notifying you of the results by March 18.
• For further information, please email: info@gaiaeducation.org

The Worldview dimension can be taken as a stand-alone programme or as the starting point for our 10-month online Design for Sustainabilitycertificate course.

Graduates of our programmes have gone on to contribute to sustainability projects, build communities, become social entrepreneurs, partake in permaculture projects and bio-dynamic farming, support transition movements and much more.

A limited number of full and partial scholarships are available. We will be accepting scholarships on an ongoing basis but there are deadlines that depend on when each dimension starts, scholarships are offered only for individual dimensions. Please note that scholarships are awarded one course at a time and never for the full program. Awarding successive courses is dependent on your completion of the courses and performance. Applications to partial or work-trade scholarships are more likely to be approved. Incomplete applications will not be processed. To apply please fill out this form up to two weeks before the course you want starts. Please refer to the course page for information about dates and deadlines.