synthegrative
Regenerative Evocation
Evocation: the act of bringing or recalling a feeling, memory, or image to the conscious mind. In order for us to evolve, we must recognize the trauma and resulting limiting beliefs we hold that prevents us from coming into our wholeness as human beings. We need to evoke our own regenerative capacity and capabilities if we are to heal ourselves and the traumas we inflict on one another and the other than human beings of this world. Healthy living systems are constantly evolving. They remain healthy by aligning their [...]
Manifesting Potential
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” – Socrates “Nature uses human imagination to lift her work of creation to even higher levels.” – Luigi Pirandello “Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.” – Robert A. Heinlein. Most of us have been educated and trained to solve problems. We’re all pretty good at it . . . but imaging and manifesting potential? Not so much . . . yet effecting change requires building our capacity to do [...]
RE Farm Café – The Power of Storytelling to Introduce Regenerative Thinking and Design
7group and the West Penn Power Sustainable Energy Fund have just released Remarkable Reinvention, a 10-minute video that compresses years of regenerative thinking and design effort. Following the journey of owners Duke and Monica Gastiger, we see the initial idea for a green restaurant on a farm evolve to RE Farm Café at Windswept Farm - a café nested in a farm, a farm nested in a community and regional food production and consumption system. And while direct experience certainly offers the strongest learning potential, the role of storytelling to [...]
Webworking
“The web of life both cradles us and calls us to weave it further.” — Joanna Macy At the heart of 7group’s essence is a web of interrelationships. From the very beginning, we have woven individuals and organizations into a loose, rather organic form, a set of relationships aligned around a direction for a particular purpose – transforming how we are thinking to align with the way nature works. We view the growth and development of our company as a living system, trying to be native and contributory to [...]
7group Welcomes New Partners
Please join us in offering a warm welcome to Alvin Changco and Chris Klehm, 7group’s new partners.Alvin Changco has been working closely with 7group for nearly 15 years as President of West Main Consultants, LLC, a sustainable materials consulting firm and a 7group member company. He manages client projects pursuing LEED® certification and reviews certification submissions under USGBC’s LEED green building rating system. Alvin also provides intellectual property and corporate legal services with a particular focus on developing property right issues in international carbon emissions programs and policies. He earned [...]
Working with Wholes
"Mythologist Joseph Campbell once said, "People who don’t have a concept of the whole can do very unfortunate things." But the corollary is rarely considered: People who understand the whole can do very fortunate things." - Linda Booth Sweeney Humans possess the capacity to think in wholes – to see whole systems at work. Our ancient ancestors did so without the aid of our current dependence on machines. Everything in creation was viewed as inter-related and connected. Then a new story emerged, slowly and then almost all at once. [...]
About
Of course we made up synthegrative, so don’t try to look it up. This “word” reflects our approach to thinking, learning, projects, story and process. It combines real words, synthesis – a combination of ideas to form a theory or system, and integrative – serving or intending to unify separate things; to create a systemic vision of wholes which are greater than the sum of their parts. This reminds us that our work in regenerative design must begin with working on whole systems and not just the parts.
Our synthegrative posts will explore our thoughts, beliefs and ideas. We will share news about our events, our projects and our work. We will tell our story and the stories we find along the way.