Pursuing Questions
Welcome to Pursuing Questions: Imprints of inquiry, possibilities for play, and provocations for living. This is a podcast, formerly known as The Playful Podcast, is for those cultivating an ethos towards mutual flourishing, healing, learning and living well throughout the human experience; and that is the vision for this space. Guided by 5 values and 3 intentions, what might be encounter?
Intentions:
Imprints of inquiry: I wish to capture traces of my journey, because I believe it is worthy of being studied. critiqued, and expanded upon. I aim to cultivate my own awareness, reflection, and empowerment in moving my practice. What I say here is a landmark in time; not meant to be absolute truth, rather, to be interpreted within the context discussed. Podcasting is a tool for collecting and archiving pedagogical moments, thought, decisions, and practice.
Possibilities for play: I strive to expand the potential of parallel practices, by "going public" with incomplete ideas to seek feedback, to embrace questioning and being questioned, and to practice sharing knowledge generously. I believe that through knowledge sharing we are nudged towards improvising and playing with new ideas. Much of what I share is in a light-hearted spirit of saying "yes" to what is offered my way, and responding as best I can from a playful place.
Provocations for living: I take up long-term inquiries about fostering playful dispositions, pursuing human and more-than-human well-being, mutual flourishing, reflecting on practice as a facilitator, broadening relationships with knowledge, highlighting the value to revisiting experiences, playing with ideas, and unraveling pedagogy to inspect its ideals, protagonists, and assumptions. What I share is meant to be generative, to activate possibility and life itself by provoking, expanding, and spiralling that which is most compelling within a pursuit.
Values:
Curiousity: curiousity is my compass. I ask questions and work from a place of pursuing curiosity over compliance, normalcy, or or acceptance. I believe in living the questions, now.
Interconnection: Although I often prefer the term interdependence, my value of interconnection is what guides me towards pursuing connection, always, and lead through connection. I value serendipity, linking ideas, relationships, knowing that we are all connected in multitudes.
Reciprocity: I believe in sharing knowledge generously, making thinking available and accessible, and aiming to live in a world where we receive and give openly. I believe in modelling the kind of offerings I hope others to generate as well.
Wisdom: I believe in entering into embodied relationship with wisdom, as lived, rather than consuming and producing facts or information. I consider lived experience and generational knowledge to be as valued as reliable data, and as such, this podcast is not trying to elevate my work to a hard science; rather, declare its legitimacy as living wisdom and insight.
Upwards Spirals: Joy. Flow. Play. Revisiting. Repetition. Deepening. "Again"....I believe in pursuing the paths towards, and ingredients that, sustain upwards spirals of flourishing, passion, pursuit, and drive. Our nervous systems are hard-wired to detect threat and our instinct is to survive, and as a society we have put so many resources into correcting the undesirable. To compensate for some of these patterns, I believe we need intentional rituals of gratitude and generativity, and a practice of studying what "works". To do so, I believe in starting from a place of what "is," which is so often what "was" and what "will be": the patterns in our thought, behaviour, and emotion that cause us to wonder, repeat, and pursue. Noticing and attuning to our own spirals can support deepened intention, awareness, and joyful pursuit grounded in what we already know, value, and have affinity for.
Pursuing Questions
The Embedded, Embodied and Imbued; a Conversation with Bob Henderson
In this episode, I had the great pleasure of chatting with outdoor education 'guru' Bob Henderson. As an experienced educator, guide and writer, Bob exudes wisdom when discussing of ways being with people outdoors. Through this conversation Bob and I find many not-so-surprising connections between my own experience as a student and Bob's experience as an educator, despite Bob never teaching me. We cover everything from adventure narratives to play as cultural defiance to the value of baking cinnamon buns on trip. Running with Bob's ideas, we reflect on multiple ways of being, the role of relationality while being outdoors, the usefulness (or lack thereof) of hobbies, being in the present, tumbling and fumbling, and the possibility of 'joy' conferences in the future. This conversation is full of nuggets of wisdom for nature-based educators everywhere!