In-Person Climate Cafe & Adaptation Gym

Every living being on Earth is feeling the effects of how our climate is changing.

Temperatures, rainfall, plant conditions, food availability, migration patterns, seasonal rhythms, water levels, and more, are different from even 3 years ago.

These changes and their accompanying uncertainties affect our internal “weather” – habit patterns, expectations, and, often, our emotional states – as well the places we have known, where we live, and where we are going.

Climate Cafe is an opportunity to share, listen and connect with folks who are concerned about climate change and its impact on individual, local and global levels.

This is a mindful conversation group.

It is not a lecture, therapy group, or an informational meeting. It is not about guilt trips or judgment. It is also not a group for debating whether climate change is “real”, or whether it is human-induced -- we take that as a given, based on overwhelming scientific evidence.

Climate Cafe is a safe place for deep listening and mindful sharing of experiences, resources, worries, hopes, fears, sadnesses, and ideas. It offers an opportunity to see what emerges when people come together with respect and caring for each other, Earth and all her beings. Often, there is comforting and easing in discovering/knowing that we are not alone in what we are experiencing and to sense the support that feeling in-community brings.

Adaptation Gym is an offering of somatic, neurological, and contemplative practices that support our processing of anxiety and grief – emotions that naturally arise when we are meeting uncertainty and loss.

Uncomfortable emotions are energetic signals that arise in us when something needs tending. When we turn towards these signals and listen to them, rather than turn away and deny them, we support their movement and processing as we tend to what is needed. In this way, we cultivate adaptation to uncertainty and change – we strengthen our capacity to access clarity and compassion even when we are uncomfortable. In this way, we can be responsive (awake and engaged) rather than reactive (overwhelmed and shut-down) when circumstances are hard, unpredictable, and unfamiliar. There is more of us available to support and assist ourselves and others when support and assistance is what is needed to get through the storm.

In this way, we free the energy that is taken with trying to suppress or deny what is happening inside and around us and bring that energy to meeting the challenges and changes that we (and everyone else) are navigating.

Climate Cafe and Adaptation Gym is a unique combination of engaging mindful communication, authentic relationship, and somatic/energetic practice in service of supporting ourselves and each other as we are in this time of transformation … together.

The challenges that we are facing cannot be solved in isolation. As communities are dealing with unprecedented devastation, we need to support and assist each other as we find our way through to a different world with a different way of being together.

Climate Cafe and Adaptation Gym offers a way of practicing, growing and changing together, as we meet the personal and global changes that we are all experiencing.

Each Climate Cafe and Adaptation Gym is limited to 12 participants.

Registration is required.

Join us and let’s talk about the weather -- tending to the internal, as well as external change and transformation with consciousness, connection, and courage.

Please Note:

For our in-person gathering,

we will meet at entrance to Rip Van Winkle Open Space, 1072 Congress Ave., PG, (across from Forest Grove School).

Rip Van Winkle Open Space is a favorite place for dog-walking. Dogs are allowed to be off-leash when accompanied by a human. Even though we will settle in a (fairly) off-trail place, we may have occasional 4-legged visitors.

To sit-on, please bring a cushion or towel or a light-weight chair that you can carry for a short, level-ground walk.

If it is raining or if rain is predicted for the later afternoon, you will receive an email by Noon with a Zoom link, and we will meet online rather than in-person.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Rip Van Winkle Open Space, 1072 Congress Avenue, Pacific Grove, United States