It wasn’t very long into the evolution of Transition in Totnes, in 2006, that Hilary Prentice and Sophy Banks came round to my house to discuss the seeds of what would eventually become known as ‘Inner Transition’, or the ‘Heart and Soul’ of Transition. I remember little about the hour that we passed in my lounge, but I do remember that something felt instinctively right. Their argument was that any successful Transition process needed to be as much about the inner life of the people and groups making it happen, with attention paid to group health, dynamics and resilience, as it needed to be about solar panels, carrots and Energy Descent Plans. It made a lot of sense. And it still makes a lot of sense today: which is why so many people want to hear more about it.
Now, 9 years later, the concept of Inner Transition runs through Transition like a golden thread (although admittedly more in some places than others). Transition has always stood on the shoulders of many great movements that came before it, and has tried to learn, where possible, from their experience. Burnout and conflict have long been the Achilles heel of bottom-up activism.
For example, among the road protestors I knew, burnout, often manifested as deep cynicism and resignation, was rife. Project after project whether permaculture, community activism of many types, or all manner of other ambitious world-changing efforts, collapsed under the weight of conflict and poor communication, squashed, inevitably, by the collective weight of all the un-named elephants in the room. Transition felt too important to not strive to learn from that. So here is my entirely non-objective selection of 6 ‘outputs’ of the Inner Transition work of Sophy, Hilary and others that I have benefited from, or which have transformed my experience of doing Transition.
by Rob Hopkins
Read more: Inner Transition innovations that changed my life | Transition Network
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