Gaia’s Garden
An Online Workshop for Personal and Planetary Flourishing
“We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.”
We warmly invite you into Gaia’s Garden — an online eco-awareness learning journey designed to nurture a deeper connection with Earth, self, and one another.
Gaia’s Garden is a transformative learning experience grounded in the Earth Charter’s principles and inspired by the Gaia Hypothesis, which views Earth as a living, self-regulating system that sustains the conditions for life.
Gaia’s Garden unfolds across four elemental quadrants – Earth, Water, Air, and Fire.
Each elemental quadrant is a ritual space for reflection, embodiment, mindfulness, visioning, storytelling, and ecological belonging.
In this garden, we will explore how we can flourish together, as individuals and as a collective, in relationship with the more-than-human world.
Dates
This live workshop unfolds over 2 sessions.
🌱 Day 1:
Sunday, March 8, 2026
12:00 – 1:30 pm Eastern / 6 - 7:30pm CET
Global time here.
🌼 Day 2:
Sunday, March 22, 2026
12:00 –1:30 pm Eastern / 6pm - 7:30pm CET
Global time here.
Details
Duration: 3 hours (2 days x 1.5 hours)
Workshop fee: Sliding scale: $40 to $80
Please contribute what you are able. Discounts available, inquiries: info@mbei.org
All proceeds go to support the work we do at the Mind Body Ecology Institute.
What to expect?
The program is an experiential and transformative learning experience weaving:
Earth Charter: a global declaration of shared values and principles for building a just, sustainable, and peaceful world. Think of it as a moral compass for life on Earth—rooted in care, interdependence, and responsibility to future generations.
Futures Literacy: the capacity to imagine, understand, and work with multiple possible futures
Nature-Based Practices such as elemental breathwork and ecological imagination
Sound Healing
Somatic Practices
Together, these practices invite us to reconnect with the living Earth, honor our intergenerational responsibility, and imagine regenerative futures rooted in care and kinship with the web of life.
Who is this for?
This workshop welcomes everyone from beginners to seasoned practitioners curious about:
Eco-spirituality & mindful living
The Earth Charter and regenerative frameworks
Nature-based contemplative and somatic practices
Fostering inner and outer sustainability
No previous experience is necessary! Merely a willingness to listen deeply, engage fully, and be in supportive and healing relationship with the Earth and others.
Workshop format:
This live workshop takes place over two sessions on March 8 and March 22, from 12:00–1:30 pm Eastern / 6:00–7:30 pm Central European time.
The workshop will take place via Zoom link sent via registration email.
Sessions will be recorded and shared with registered participants.
Program Guides
Yağmur Güngör
Transdisciplinary Researcher, Facilitator and Earth Charter Certified Educator
The Workshop Flow
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We begin our journey at Gaia’s Garden.
Our first destination is Fire, where we gather around a virtual fire for a storytelling circle and reconnect with the story of life on Earth. Through generative and reflective dialogue, we explore planetary mythologies from the Earth Charter’s Earth Stories Collection.
Next, we move to Water, delving into the Earth Charter’s vision and principles. We explore ecological and integrative worldviews, reflect critically on dominant paradigms, and nurture a shift toward planetary consciousness.
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We begin the day with Air, inviting breath into our bodies through elemental breathwork, accompanied by live sound healing instruments. These ecological practices cultivate presence, awareness, and a deep sense of connection with the more-than-human world.
Our final destination in Gaia’s Garden is Earth. We close our journey with a creative ritual: planting seeds in the soil and responding to a “letter from the future”—set 200 years ahead, when the world is largely living in an ethical and harmonious relationship with nature. We write a letter to this imagined great-great-great-grandchild (or future descendant).
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Workshop Foundations
This 2-day workshop is developed in collaboration with the Mind Body Ecology Institute, grounded in the Earth Charter and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), and nurtured by Gaia Hypothesis and the Work That Reconnects.
The Earth Charter
The Earth Charter offers a values-based, systemic, and integrated approach, painting a collective vision of a world rooted in justice, sustainability, and peace. It dares to articulate what many of us sense but struggle to name: that the ecological, social, economic, ethical, and spiritual dimensions of life are inseparable—braided together like rivers converging into a single, flowing ocean of life.
The Earth Charter is an international declaration of fundamental ethical principles aimed at guiding humanity toward a just, sustainable, and peaceful global society in the 21st century. It expresses a shared global vision of values and responsibilities that can support sustainable ways of living and human development.
The Charter was created through a decade‑long global dialogue involving thousands of individuals and hundreds of organizations across cultures, sectors, and regions.
It was formally launched in 2000 and has since been endorsed or used by a global movement that spans over 90 countries. (Source: Charter for Compassion)
Gaia’s Hypothesis
In Gaia Hypothesis (1970s), Gaia is a metaphor for Earth as a self-regulating system. Life (plants, animals, microbes) interacts with the non-living environment (air, water, soil, climate) to maintain conditions that support life.Read more in my article: A Systems Change Researcher's Journal #5: Gaia Theory and The Earth Charter
