Flowchart of RC Pathways developed by Siobhan Vida Ashmole for Gaia U

Beginning in 2023 the Permaculture Colab sponsored Andrew Langford, assisted by Vida Ashmole, both of Gaia U International, to work-up online Re-evaluation Counseling (RC) training opportunities for members of the Colab. 

The initial plan was to organize a novel 4 part online training including a free introduction run by RC colleagues who have developed a valuable 3 hour OMBRA training (see graphic above for the meaning of OMBRA), available once a month.

This was to be followed by a 3 module version of the Re-evaluation Counseling Fundamentals that a student could start by entering any of the 3 modules thus providing 3 starting points per cycle. An infographic seeking to explain the format of this online RC training can be seen above.

It is important to note that RC trainings are regulated by the International RC Community (IRC) and that the format of the training is indeed novel in several aspects according to the IRC. Careful, extended negotiations between Gaia U and the IRC, mediated by the Area Reference Person for the Sacramento and Foothills RC Community in California, USA and the supervising Regional Reference Person for this Area have been necessary.

Andrew Langford is a member of the Teachers and Leaders group in the Area RC Community and is a Credentialed RC Teacher. The IRC, with its regional and area offices, takes a good deal of care to ensure that teachers and their training offerings meet IRC standards.

Landing pages for the training were built on the Gaia U website, the training advertised across the Colab 6 weeks in advance of the start date of the first module, an enticing blog post was written and published offering full scholarships but the take-up was surprisingly slim. We had probed, then sensed and, as a result, determined that an entirely new response was called for. 

This new response has taken the form of offering the RC training as a one-to-one option. That is, Colab members who are ready to engage, get to learn RC basics in the first place through one-on-one sessions with Andrew Langford. Dates and times to suit the learner are arranged via online messaging and no-one needs to wait for a viable course cohort to emerge. This is as friction-free a process for the learner as we can currently imagine and requires significantly less administration effort.

Folks signing up for one-to-one process so far show rapid progress. As clients they access and get to work on healing their chronic material at an accelerated rate compared to folks in multi-person classes and their counseling skills also develop fast. 

Once they have the fundamental concepts in mind and have shown the capacity for practicing these effectively, they are invited to connect with other Gaia U trained RC practitioners. This route enables people to begin building a support network of RC allies besides their teacher whilst, in turn, they also become valuable RC resources for their allies. This mutuality, the capacity to act as client and counselor, is a cornerstone of RC peer-to-peer practice. By these means we go a long way to: –

• eliminating the steep affordability barriers found in many other mental health practices
• contradicting the common hierarchical relationship of therapist/client and 
• emphasizes the view that everybody can reclaim adequate power to thoroughly regenerate our ecosocial relations 

These are potent outcomes that enable folks to become ever more confident to: –

• take increasingly bold, thoughtful risks in their work-in-the-world, 
• rapidly recover their spirits when faced with set-backs and disappointments, 
• know that their RC colleagues have always got their back 
• while all the time clearing up any distresses that might be holding them back.

To enquire about accessing this flexible format for Re-evaluation Counseling training please WhatsApp Andrew at +1 805 610 0899. 

Andrew Langford, co-founder of Gaia University, is an unusualist and possibilist blending small-scale living with large-scale systems thinking. The author of Ecosocial Design, he champions participatory transformative action un/learning. Andrew is a member of the Teachers and Leaders group in the Area RC Community and is a Credentialed RC Teacher.

Charting a route for online RC trainings in a complex and busy international network © 2024 by Andrew Langford is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Note: This article veers off wildly from my learnt writing style of trying to create a cohesive narrative with limiting sentence structure and instead explores the plotlines & images my mind was drawn to over the course of this work, without trying to overexplain my thoughts. In celebration and experimentation of finding my own neurodiverse voice I have made no attempt to ‘correct’ these to ‘pass’ as neurotypical  – this work is much more how my brain experiences different threads – a single word prompting a jump to a different stream. For a more cohesive (and longer) read- see my resource on the tools and practices we explored during the course. I have also left other ‘mini articles’ in the report which I did not have space for here. 

As a child I was lucky enough to have been homeschooled by my mom, Belinda Merven, who is a truly excellent educator. We would choose how to structure our days- picking from various subjects and topics we wanted to explore based on our interest. We had a curriculum to follow, but if we wanted to hyperfocus on maths for the whole day and do only art the next day it was allowed. Heck, it was encouraged!

My favourite topic was always science and nature play. Growing up on what I now recognise as a prototype of an organic, polycrop permaculture-styled farm, I had access to an incredible range of nature experiences. If we were learning about trees- we had an adventure to find as many different types of leaves as we could (acacia, lucky bean tree, stinkwood), we would then organise them into categories and learn the names of different leaf types (compound bipinnate, simple cordate, simple oblong toothed), then create trees which were part art project, part botanical illustration. I was fascinated by the adaptation of nature to fit into the environment (how acacias had millions of tiny leaves to deal with hot dry conditions in the South African veld), and by the relationships between different species (the tree providing shelter for the birds who would grow up to eat and distribute the the tree’s seeds).

Looking back, my Mom and I both had formative experiences around this time- for me she enabled a deep and lifelong curiosity and love of learning; and a learning experience centred on how my brain and body worked. For my mom, she discovered a love of teaching through teaching my brother and I, which she later pursued as her vocation.

Through the contrast of my experiences at ‘normal school’ I was able to see the stark differences in how most children’s brains were moulded. There was no customisation, niche construction, or design thinking. We were 30 nameless, faceless bodies filling seats, our minds equal and empty to be filled up with history and chemistry and lessons on how to be a ‘good citizen’ in our fledgling democracy- taught by people who were still grappling with what this meant for themselves. 

My mom’s IT classroom in the High School she taught at, is again a contrast. I feel like many of her students were likely neurodiverse. Unable to cope with the monolithic rote-teaching and being disciplined for not learning in a socially-acceptable way;  they would thrive in her relaxed and practice-oriented environment. Although cliche, it seems computers were a safe haven where neurodiverse students could finally feel intelligent because they were allowed to work with headphones on, stim and fidget, and emphasis wasn’t placed on outward social confidence – or who was on the rugby team. Her classes felt more like an office in Google than the learning-by-force of her peers. My mom is now a highly celebrated teacher, with many certifications and awards, as well as teaching IT at one of the most progressive schools in the country – but my measure for her success is the grown men who stop her in the grocery store, teary eyed, to thank her for saving their lives during highschool.

My mom never had any training in neurodiversity-inclusive ways of teaching, although through conversation we now suspect we both might be more neurodiverse than anyone had realised. She never had any training in permaculture either, but through instinct, creativity, a deep connection to the earth, and a mind which could see logical patterns in nature and business and education she created flexible, thriving, interconnected, organic spaces on our farm and in her classrooms. 

Working through this course I recognise my mother in her genius of positive niche construction, understanding interest-based nervous systems and using INCUP to motivate her students (and herself), using tools like mindfulness to teach us how to downregulate our nervous systems, always building confidence through a strengths-based culture, creating spaces of belonging – especially for the most marginalised, understanding stimming as engagement with interoception, being trauma-informed and engaging with the challenges she faced through a post-traumatic growth lens. It’s humbling to find the language to describe our shared experiences, and yet still those experiences go beyond the siloed theory into a space of living a deeply connected and vibrant life; and basing life and educational design on deep engagement and connection which results in more honest observation. More than that I can attribute my mom’s genius to her own wildly different brain, and a certain disregard for society’s illogical norms; and I am glad she had the courage to follow her own innovative and creative ways of understanding the world. In this way she embodies what a strengths-based view can do for a person who embraces their own brain-strengths and lives authentically. 

It’s very interesting to be alive in a time when (as neurodivergents) instead of being marginalised, made to feel stupid, or categorised as diseased and disordered; we are being given language to explore and explain the things we have done always, to survive in a world not designed for us. I want to emphasise, we have always done these things. No academic researcher can claim or own the techniques and tools here, they belong to the community and have been co-developed through generations of testing. My own mother is a pioneer in neurodiverse education research, but you won’t find her name on any academic reports (She was also a pioneer as a woman running a financially viable, polycrop, mixed animal, mostly organic, permaculture farm/homestead; but you won’t find her referenced in any design manual – a topic for another day). Just like her, how many millions of us have contributed to the design and thinking and innovation which makes our world so interesting?

Are we creating spaces for all these voices to be heard? Or are we limiting their genius through a restrictive environment and demanding intelligence only shows up in the clothes we are used to? 

I’m moved to make space for giving thanks and celebrating the excellent work of the CoLab in granting me the ability to access this course, to give me the space and time to really dive into the findings and reflections throughout, and to hopefully have created something of deep value which can help us all build self-organised spaces which are more inclusive of all diversities. I also want to thank my co-course-navigation partner Jyo, who through her own brave and defiant voice gave me the courage to explore and reveal my own mind’s workings and musings. It’s been a truly nurturing & healing experience to experience this course together as a marker of the progress we are making, and of how far we still have to go. 

Links and references can all be found in the report here which dives into the tools, practices and theory of the Wired Differently course on how to create inclusive workspaces for neurodiversity. Please do explore this resource – if terms here are unfamiliar they can be found there (as well as many links for further reading on this fascinating topic). You may need to become a CoLab Member (it’s free!) to access this. 

Lastly thanks to my mom, Belinda Merven, who gave me permission to write about her, and for the grounding in my own brain strengths which allows me to explore the world in such a unique way. You can follow her on LinkedIn Here

These reflections are from attending a live course called Wired Differently – Creating a Team Culture Where All Minds Can Thrive, hosted by Lana Jelenjev and The Hum. You can find future iterations here: https://www.thehum.org/courses-and-events/wired-differently%3A-creating-a-team-culture-where-all-minds-can-thrive

You can also find further free resources for neurodiverse education at the Neurodiversity Education Academy https://www.neurodiversityeducationacademy.org/digital-downloads

Siobhan Vida Ashmole is a neurodiverse permaculturist and entrepreneur based in rural South Africa. Her focus is on creating resilient organisations capable of rising to the challenges of the transition to a regenerative future. Vida has worked in ecosocial entrepreneur education, regenerative agriculture and conscious business coaching and development.

When I first signed up for the Wired Differently: Creating a Team Culture Where All Minds Can Thrive workshop, I approached it with optimism and a sense of purpose. The training, hosted outside the International Permaculture CoLab, was also attended by a fellow member, Vida, and aimed to create inclusive team cultures. As a neurodivergent person who has often worked within neurotypical-led environments, I felt compelled to participate, envisioning an opportunity to refine my strengths, learn new collaborative techniques, and perhaps even recalibrate my understanding of inclusion. With excitement and a touch of anticipation, I joined my first Zoom call on October 16, 2024.

Session 1: Learning to Embrace More Than Strengths

Our first session introduced a concept of defining and embracing our strengths, with the intent to help neurodivergent individuals recognize and feel empowered by what they bring to the table. But as I listened, I felt my enthusiasm wane. The focus on strengths alone seemed to slice away parts of our fuller identities. Are we not more than just our strengths? I wondered. The constant emphasis on strengths felt reductive, especially for those of us who, as neurodivergent individuals, have spent so long being “redefined” to fit societal molds.

I found myself paired with a partner who spoke from a neurotypical perspective. Their insights—while valuable in their own way—revealed a limited curiosity about how neurodivergence truly manifests within team dynamics. I could feel the session edging toward a framework that seemed like yet another box for neurodivergents to fit into. By the end, I felt raw, unexpectedly triggered. However, sharing my reflections with Vida afterwards offered a safe space to unpack this experience. Her presence was a balm, reinforcing the significance of supportive networks in learning environments.

Session 2: Reclaiming Neurodivergence as Ability, Not Disability

With the second session, I braced myself for a different perspective and walked in prepared to share openly. Early on, I voiced my insight: “Neurodivergence is not a disability; it’s a different ability!” To my relief, this declaration was warmly received by the group, marking a shift in tone and direction that I hoped would continue. The session delved into nervous system regulation, offering scientific insights and tools for self-assessment that were both validating and practical.

This session brought a certain ease, highlighting ways to self-regulate and recognize how our nervous systems respond differently in varied situations. I felt more aligned with the content and appreciated the focus on actionable, science-backed techniques for self-support.

Session 3: Creating Positive Experiences for Healthier Outcomes

In the third session, we explored how nurturing our environments can lead to healthier outcomes and foster positive self-concepts. This material felt fresh and insightful, though the fast pace and influx of data left little time for real engagement. I sensed an opportunity here for more storytelling and creative expression—areas I know many neurodivergent individuals like myself benefit from. The theoretical knowledge was sound, but my brain craved a space to actively integrate and apply what we were learning. A faster-paced workshop style seemed to prioritize information over reflection, leaving me with mixed feelings.

Session 4: Toward Growth and Integration

The final session, extended to make up for the previous ones’ rapid pace, focused on post-traumatic growth and the power of empowered self-definition. Here, the concept of building environments that foster growth resonated deeply. Reflecting on my journey through this workshop, I saw how much we all, neurodivergent and neurotypical alike, need spaces to grow in ways that transcend predefined roles or skill sets. This, to me, became the true essence of the workshop’s mission.

By the end, I realized I had embarked on an unexpected self-discovery journey rather than simply learning to enhance team collaboration. While I had hoped to explore team dynamics more directly, what I gained was a renewed appreciation for nurturing creative, inclusive spaces—ones that welcome all humans, fully and authentically, into collaborative environments.

To my fellow facilitators, community members, and all who believe in the value of diverse minds, I invite you to consider how we can co-create inclusive spaces. Let’s build environments that welcome creative expression, personal growth, and collaboration beyond labels and limitations. Let’s create spaces where we all, wired differently or not, can truly belong.

A Path Forward: Building Spaces for Creative Expression and True Inclusion

Reflecting on this experience, I see how the session structure, heavy on data and assessments, lacked moments for genuine connection and self-expression. I’ve learned that, as a neurodivergent facilitator, creating harmonious spaces for diverse minds will require a balance of structure with ample room for creativity and presence. I am motivated now, more than ever, to foster these spaces with the tools I’ve acquired, with plans to continue this journey into 2025 through my work with the Minimum Viable Academy and within the CoLab.

To close, I offer my gratitude. This training experience was made possible by a diversity stipend from our CoLab, for which I am sincerely thankful. And a special thank you to Vida, who was not only a colleague but a steadfast companion throughout this journey. Here’s to more learning, collaboration, and the work of creating a world where all minds can genuinely thrive.

For more references on this work, written by Vida please read on at “A Strength-Centered Approach to Designing Workplaces that Work (For All of Us)“.

Jyotsna (Jyo) Maan is a dynamic leadership & community facilitator, a culture-builder with a passion for creating environments where people and ideas flourish. With expertise in regenerative transformation, leadership, and human-centered design, Jyo helps individuals and organizations navigate complexity, foster meaningful collaboration, and drive sustainable growth. Her approach blends deep professional insight with a commitment to wellbeing and creativity, ensuring her work resonates both personally and organizationally.

Outside her professional endeavors, Jyo embraces life as a seeker and creator. A neurodivergent thinker with an insatiable curiosity, she finds joy in sketching—especially drawing eyes—playing the flute, creating healing soundscapes with gongs, and singing Indian and American songs. She also has a passion for cooking and sharing meals, seeing food as a way to connect deeply with others.