CONWAY — Shelburne Falls resident Karina Lutz, a facilitator with the Work That Reconnects Network, says anxiety found in your body is often your mind’s attempt to make change. This can be true when it comes to interpersonal relationships, difficult life situations and even fears about climate change.

Timed with the launch of her eco-grief support group to help people process their thoughts and fears about climate change and how it may affect communities in the future, Conway resident Hannah Harvester also started monthly workshops with trained facilitators at her 46 Delabarre Ave. studio. Lutz led the first workshop on Saturday, where she helped participants work through their pain about the climate and inspired them to take action.

“We are shifting to the understanding that we are all connected,” Lutz explained when speaking about what her workshop entails.

Lutz follows a workshop manual by philosopher Joanna Macy, who talks about “deep ecology” in her book, “Coming Back to Life.” Deep ecology is an environmental philosophy that discusses the inherent value of all beings. It attempts to show the interconnectedness of all living things.

In an example, Lutz noted that a bee needs flowers to survive. The bee uses the flowers’ pollen to make its housing and food. On the other hand, a flower also needs a bee to survive, as a bee helps spread the pollen to other flowers to allow them to reproduce. Regardless of whether the two know it, they are helping each other while helping themselves.

In Lutz’s workshops, participants go through a series of exercises to understand this theory as a way to help them deconstruct their fears and anxieties about an environmental collapse in the midst of climate change.

The workshop starts by focusing on gratitude.

“We explore our gratitude for being alive,” Lutz said, “especially in this difficult time.”

The workshop then pivots to examining people’s pain to understand their grief. Lutz explained pain is important in the cycle of understanding.

“If we cut off feedback loops, then the healing cannot happen,” Lutz said.

With this opening of feelings, Lutz said people can understand things about themselves and what actions they need to take.

Montague resident Zach Bouricius attended Saturday’s workshop after participating in one previous eco-grief support group meeting.

“I was trying to protect myself,” Bouricius reflected. “This workshop made me open up.”

“There is something amazing about having other people witness you expressing your emotions and being seen in your strength,” Lutz said about offering the workshop, especially in person after many similar workshops were moved to Zoom after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Something large needs to happen, and quickly, to combat climate change, she said. When systems collapse there can be potential for change, but holding onto anxiety can result in losing that potential.

Bouricius echoed Lutz’s sentiment, adding that the world is on two tracks: one is being aware of the looming collapse of ecosystems as we know it due to climate change, and the other is moving forward normally in the current system that is not sustainable. He said Saturday’s workshop helped him find clarity in this feeling and gave him ideas for his personal goals.

“The scale of the change that needs to happen right now is big,” Lutz noted, “and it is going to have to be faster than the Agricultural Revolution or the Industrial Revolution.”

Harvester’s eco-grief support group is held at her studio, 46 Delabarre Ave., each Monday from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Bella Levavi can be reached at 413-930-4579 or blevavi@recorder.com.

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