Living Waters:

A Panpsychic co-operative inquiry with water bodies worldwide

10th March – 30th April 2026

Online

Invoking the presence of Rivers round the world and establishing an active mode of communication with our Earth.

A panpsychic view starts from the understanding that all things, including the Earth itself, are integral to the fabric of the living cosmos, all of the same sentient cloth. Mind is a fundamental aspect of matter just as matter is a fundamental aspect of mind: we are part of a world that has depth as well as structure, meaning as well as form. In Thomas Berry’s words, all beings live in as a community of subjects, not a collection of objects.

During this 8-week online course, we will explore this perspective through a co-operative inquiry with Rivers in the vicinity of participants: if we invoke their living presence, address them as subjects and as persons, what manner of response might we receive? Rivers may include everything from mountain torrents through mature watercourse to tidal reaches; underground flows, wild streams or industrialized waterways.

This is a unique opportunity to develop the skills and capacities needed to develop a different way of looking at the world; and new ways to integrate this into everyday living. Through weekly touchpoints with participants from across the globe, together we will engage in a lovingly curated process of deep reflection and relating - to feel ourselves directly as participants in the process of life on earth itself.

Course Fee: £399

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Course Structure

10th March – 30th April 2026

  • Weekly online seminars (1½ hours) on Tuesdays at 12.00 noon UK time conducted via Zoom.

  • Weekly online facilitated inquiry groups will meet on Thursdays at a near local time [eg Europe, Americas, Australia]. Facilitators will make arrangements with participants accordingly.

  • In addition, there will be pre-recorded videos, online responses, and further video inputs made in response to the unfolding inquiry.

This course will take the form of co-operative inquiry, a form of inquiry pioneered by Peter Reason, in which all participants work together as both co-inquirers and as co-subjects in six cycles of action and reflection. In this panpsychic inquiry, both human and non-human participants are engaged in the design, experience, and sense-making of the experience.

Participants develop understanding and practice through an 'extended epistemology' of experiential, presentational, propositional, and practical ways of knowing. In each action phase, participants explore their relationship with their local river, invoking its living presence through loving attunement, song, prayer, pilgrimage, ceremony, myth, art, or traditional religion, then attending to the response. Following this, participants share experiences, make sense together, and design the next engagement cycle, concluding with final reflections and conclusions.

These inquiry cycles are supported by seminars on the panpsychic perspective, co-operative inquiry, biopoetics, biocultural stewardship, and indigenous worldview. Two seminars allow the whole community to identify shared themes. Participants are also asked to view video lectures before each seminar and engage in discussion.

Why join this course?

Beyond practical changes to our civilization, we need a radical alteration of our lived experience to feel ourselves as participants in the process of life on earth. This alternative perspective is offered by living cosmos panpsychism (Freya Mathews), biopoetics (Andreas Weber), biocultural stewardship (Sandra Wooltorton), and Australian Indigenous worldviews (Anne Poelina).

From a panpsychic perspective, the cosmos is One; a coherent field of mind/matter that differentiates into many self-realizing and self-refective beings. These beings form a community of subjects that communicate and co-create a 'poetic ecology'—the fundamental experience of being touched by the world and touching it in return. Trees in forests, for instance, continuously communicate with each other and with fungi through their roots. 

In this relational reality, a communicative order of meaning unfolds alongside the material order through images, metaphors, and the language of things rather than human words. Modern humans are alienated from this poetic order: if we view the world as brute object, it will only reveal itself as such. But if we invoke a living presence then we may receive a meaningful response—if we are open to it.

We focus our inquiry on rivers, recognizing their ecosystem significance and integration with land and creatures, as well as human influence upon them in order to…

Further Information

Accounts of the inquiry process drawn from previous workshops can be found at Learning How Land Speaks,  Reading Lists and introductory videos  are also available. Links and further information will also be sent to you closer to the start date.

Tutors

  • Andreas Weber

    Andreas is a biologist, philosopher and writer. His work focuses on a re-evaluation of our understanding of the living. Read more…

  • Anne Poelina

    Anne is a Nyikina Warrwa woman from the Kimberley region of Western Australia. She is an active community leader, human and earth rights advocate, film maker and respected academic researcher. Read more…

  • Ezekiel Fugate

    Ezekiel is the co-founding director of Deep Belonging, a co-founder of Springhouse Community School, and a co-editor of Starborne: The Journal of Autocosmology. Read more…

  • Freya Mathews

    Freya is Emeritus Professor of Environmental Philosophy at Latrobe University, Australia. She is the author of over one hundred books, articles and essays on ecological philosophy. Read more…

  • Jacqueline Kurio

    Since experiencing the Tohoku earthquake in Japan in 2011, Jacqueline has been engaging the living world in rituals of healing and connection through drawing and walking labyrinths. Read more…

  • Peter Reason

    Peter was Director of the Centre for Action Research in Professional Practice at the University of Bath, and an international leader in the development of participative approaches to inquiry. Read more…

  • Sandra Wooltorton

    Sandra is from Noongar Boodjar, also known as southwest Western Australia. She works as a Senior Research Fellow at the Nulungu Research Institute at the University of Notre Dame Australia, in Yawuru Country (aka Broome) in the Western Australian Kimberley region. Read more…

Frequently asked questions

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  • The minimal commitment to the course is: one encounter with the River each week; composing and posting an account of the encounter; reading and commenting on one fellow participant’s account; viewing video lectures and participating in a Zoom reflection meeting facilitated by a lecturer; contributing to community discussions.

  • Participants must be prepared to spend significant time outside, possibly in inclement weather. They must make sure they have appropriate clothes, waterproofs, walking boots, flask and whatever else will help make them comfortable in their local climate.   Participants are responsible for undertaking their own individual risk assessment to ensure their health and safety.

What Participants say…

“The key learnings were being pushed into trying new things, daring to be awkward and get out of the comfort zone, being confronted with habits, such as scepticism and one’s own values, and allowing to overcome them to see the river as a clear mirror, to see yourself to get reflected, where you are and what you are, through the river. We also found that the water brought personal healing, even release from bodily tensions and injuries. At least two people said that water brings huge joy and is a source of vitality. One of the takeaways is that this river gives so many of us this profound courage that is so much, truly so much more than human anxieties and egos”