Health and Wellbeing: u.lab 2x track stories
With the current global pandemic being our shared reality, the u.lab 2x has definitely had to shift gears, with many teams no longer being able to meet in person. However, the 2x community has not been sitting still, and has reinvented practices and discovered different ways of connecting and co-creating together. As many of the various teams operate in specific focus areas, they have been meeting along specific topic tracks. During this global pandemic, the Health & Wellbeing track has grown into a place where teams in health & wellbeing have come together with participants in other topic areas as well, who simply felt drawn to the conversation due to the current global health challenges that touch us all. On April 14th, four u.lab 2x members shared their prototypes during the Health & Wellbeing Track call.
ELIZABETH CARNEY
A whale as a symbol of hope
Elizabeth and her u.lab 2x team have been prototyping a nature-based healthcare system and community center. Here, Elizabeth reflects on the power of sensing into the intelligence of nature by remembering an impactful experience she had in March 2020: for the first time in her 20 years of living in San Francisco, she saw a whale in San Francisco Bay. This whale reminded Elizabeth of the extent to which planetary and human health are interconnected. Her take-away: as soon as human beings begin changing their behavior and stop trying to dominate nature, nature will respond immediately. At the moment, we’ve been given a “time-out”. This “time-out” calls for a collective slowing-down. Slowing down and listening deeply (to nature, to each other) might be the most important tool to radically shift into a world in which sardines swim up the river again and where forests, as well as humans, are thriving.
BRIAN SHERWIN
Strengthening our self-awareness muscle
Brian is part of the Self-Awareness Prototype u.lab 2x team. Brian describes self-awareness as a muscle which can be strengthened. In order to help with strengthening this ‘muscle’, Brian and his team have been working on an online tool called Inside Feedback, which allows its users to check in on themselves by indicating their levels of attention, mood, mental and physical state on several different sliding scales. One category is called ‘Presencing,’ which includes a check-in on feelings of gratitude, trust, and connection. After checking in, the website moves to a ‘results’ page, which provides a summary of the check-in. These check-in states can be accompanied by a feature called ‘journal’, where the user can write a journal entry alongside the check-in. In order to describe and focus on a feeling through visual analysis, Inside Feedback also has a tool where one can indicate visually, by drawing on an image of a human figure, where one experiences a certain emotion (for example, anxiety).
LAURA GARBER
Plants as a way to connect
Last year, Laura was part of the Building a Stronger Bitterroot u.lab 2x team. This year, she is moving forward with an idea which was born in the 2019 cycle: Reimagining School Lunch. Laura also works with an initiative called Youth Farm Internship, which teaches youth about organic farming. In bringing together these two initiatives, a new project called Mayday Garden was born. Mayday Gardens allows the Youth Farm interns to continue to learn how to grow food, which will then be used by the Reimagining School Lunch initiative as food to implement their initiative with.
RONELLE LANGLEY
A healthy system is an open system
Ronelle and her u.lab 2x team called Health 4.0 held a global webinar on the 8th of April, 2020. Having planned it far in advance, they had no idea how fitting this webinar, called Resilient Option, would be with the outbreak of Covid-19. Health 4.0 aims at providing resources for self-care by fostering a strong sense of community and providing holistic resources on a global scale. Adapting to the challenges of Covid-19, Health 4.0 shifted gears and focussed their webinar on resources necessary during the outbreak.
Are you also active in the area of Health & Wellbeing? Feel like joining the global conversation around this topic? Keep an eye out for our topic hubs coming up later this week, and feel free to create or join a hub around your topic and/or region or context.
