Parallax

03/06/2026

What if mindfulness is not only about calming our own minds—but about how we create the conditions for one another to thrive?

In a world increasingly shaped by stress, uncertainty, and disconnection, perhaps the next frontier of mindfulness is not self-optimization, but relational awareness. How do our nervous systems affect each other? What is social mindfulness? And what becomes possible when we move from fixing ourselves to cultivating collective wellbeing?

These are some of the questions I’ll be exploring in an upcoming live conversation with mindfulness educator and systems thinker Mark Leonard as part of the Roots of Enlivenment series.

A space for reflection, dialogue, and shared inquiry.

More details below. I'd love for you to join us.

From self-contained regulation to relationally shared regulation

03/06/2026

Storytelling is not only understood as communication, branding, or the crafting of persuasive narratives, but as the very architecture through which reality becomes perceivable, organized, and lived. It is the invisible field that precedes interpretation, where perception, identity, and meaning are continuously shaped by the stories we inherit, enact, and unknowingly inhabit. Within this frame, stories are not things we tell about the world; they are the conditions under which a world becomes intelligible at all. Storytelling is a dynamic, multi-layered ecology—biological, mythic, social, and cosmological—where meaning is generated through relation rather than representation, and where every act of narration participates in the ongoing formation of collective experience.

Read full article:

Narrative as a Living System Across Species, Myth, and Memory

27/05/2026

At Parallax Media, the conversations unfolding through *Roots of Enlivenment* continue exploring the deeper layers beneath modern systems, culture, and consciousness — asking how humans might rediscover relational forms of intelligence in times increasingly shaped by fragmentation, acceleration, and disconnection.

The newest episode with mindfulness educator and systems thinker Mark Leonard moves beautifully into the themes of social mindfulness, collective intelligence, relational coherence, and the growing sense that many modern leadership and optimization models no longer truly nourish human life.

There was something deeply refreshing about this conversation.

Perhaps because Mark speaks about mindfulness not as self-improvement or productivity enhancement, but as a relational practice of listening, participation, psychological safety, and collective awareness.

The dialogue moves through burnout, nervous systems, organisational culture, embodiment, systems transformation, and the question of how humans create coherence together rather than merely managing complexity intellectually.

New episode on Roots of Enlivenment
https://www.parallax-media.com/roots-of-enlivenment

More writings & essays
https://cordulafrei.substack.com/

27/05/2026

At Parallax Media, a series of conversations hosted by Cordula Frei has begun unfolding through Roots of Enlivenment — dialogues exploring embodiment, ecology, nervous systems, imagination, consciousness, and the deeper relational patterns beneath modern culture.

Across the last podcasts, one shared thread keeps emerging in different ways:
that many of today’s crises are not only systemic, but connected to how disconnected humans have become from participation, belonging, wonder, and the living world itself.

Rather than offering quick solutions or optimization strategies, these conversations enter the quieter terrain beneath them:
how perception shapes systems,
how nervous systems shape culture,
and how new forms of intelligence may emerge once humans begin listening differently again.

Today’s new episode with Debra Ogilvie-Roodt from Women Wonder Wild moves into the feminine psyche, wilderness, archaic memory, and the untamed intelligence beneath domesticated life.

Together we speak about initiation, nature as teacher, instinctive knowing, rites of passage, sensory memory, and the subtle feeling that land itself may still remember parts of the human soul modernity almost taught us to forget.

A deeply atmospheric and moving conversation.

https://www.parallax-media.com/roots-of-enlivenment

New episodes on Roots of Enlivenment
https://www.parallax-media.com/roots-of-enlivenment

Women Wonder Wild
https://www.womenwonderwild.com/

More Essays & writings by Cordula Frei
https://cordulafrei.substack.com/

26/05/2026

Parallax Academy: The Developmental Growth of Positive Primordial Emotions

With Terri O`Fallon - the Development of Compassion, Gratidude, Joy and Love.

https://www.parallax-media.com/courses/terriofallon

This new Parallax course with developmental psychologist and integral scholar Terri O`Fallon is not simply about “feeling better.” It is about cultivating the very capacities that shape how we perceive ourselves, others, and reality itself, and the development of Compassion, Gratidude, Joy and Love.

Most people assume emotions are fixed traits: you are either compassionate or not, grateful or not. But developmental psychology suggests something far more radical: emotions themselves can evolve. Love can become deeper, less possessive, more spacious. Compassion can mature from personal sympathy into an almost universal care. Gratitude can shift from momentary appreciation into a stable orientation toward life itself.

What makes this course unique is that it approaches emotions not merely therapeutically, but developmentally. Terri O’Fallon explores emotions as evolving structures of consciousness — capacities that can become more refined, more conscious, and more integrated over time.

At a moment in history marked by fragmentation, polarization, anxiety, and emotional reactivity, the ability to stabilize deeper forms of love, compassion, joy, and gratitude is no longer a luxury. It becomes a form of inner grounding and orientation — a “true North” that helps us remain human amid complexity.

The course combines developmental insight, meditation, direct experience, and interpersonal reflection. Participants do not merely discuss emotions intellectually; they learn to recognize their own developmental patterns experientially, and cultivate practices that can gradually transform everyday life.

In this sense, the course is both profoundly practical and deeply transformative: not an escape from the world, but a way of becoming more present, resilient, and capable within it.

The course will start Sunday, July 5th, with Terri O´Fallon

19/05/2026

A new conversation on Roots of Enlivenment.

What happens to human beings — and to our systems — when we lose deep participation with life itself?

In this podcast conversation, our Parallax editor Cordula Frei speaks with Roger Duncan — a systemic psychotherapist, ecopsychology educator, wilderness guide, Waldorf teacher, and author of Nature in Mind.
His perspective carries the understanding that healing is not merely individual, because the human psyche itself is shaped in relationship with nature, ritual, community, thresholds, and the living world.

Together they explore:
• ecopsychology and ecological belonging
• imagination as a mode of perception
• nervous systems and modern fragmentation
• the loss of rites of passage in contemporary culture
• burnout, meaning, and cultural transition
• what it means to become human during times of uncertainty and transformation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbWkPQAIO5A

Hear more: Roots of Enlivenment
https://www.parallax-media.com/roots-of-enlivenment/remembering-participation

Read more: Beyond Survival
https://cordulafrei.substack.com/p/beyond-survival

In this conversation, Cordula Frei speaks with systemic psychotherapist, ecopsychology educator, and wilderness guide Roger Duncan about a fundamental ruptur...

18/05/2026

Parallax is featuring a new series of essays and conversations by writer, consciousness researcher, in our podcast series "Roots of Enlivenment" founded by Cordula Frei exploring the relationship between nervous systems, perception, ecology, ritual, systems transformation, and embodied participation in life.

At the center of this emerging body of work lies one essential question:

What kinds of systems do human beings create when nervous systems organize around survival — and what becomes possible when enough embodied safety allows new forms of intelligence to emerge?

Cordula s recent essay "Beyond Survival" weaves together themes of neuroregulation, burnout, ritual, ecological belonging, imagination, relational intelligence, and cultural transition. Moving between personal experience, somatic inquiry, systems thinking, and deep ecology, the text explores how modern humanity may be facing not only ecological and social crises, but a crisis of nervous system fragmentation and disconnection from participatory life itself.

Read the essay here:
https://cordulafrei.substack.com/p/beyond-survival(https://cordulafrei.substack.com/p/beyond-survival)

Alongside the essay, a new series of Roots of Enlivenment podcast conversations expands these themes through dialogues with systems thinkers, ecologists, regenerative strategists, mindfulness pioneers, and educators working at the intersection of consciousness, culture, ecology, and collective transformation.

Upcoming and recent conversations include explorations of:

• regeneration beyond sustainability
• nervous systems and collective perception
• ecological participation and relational intelligence
• rites of passage and the loss of ritual culture
• systems thinking and embodied awareness
• imagination, initiation, and the living psyche
• mindfulness and the limits of optimization culture
• health as relational and ecological coherence
• the future of human becoming in times of transition

Featured guests include voices from the fields of regenerative systems design, ecological health, social mindfulness, ecopsychology, Waldorf education, and relational governance.

Cordula Frei’s work draws from somatic practice, Continuum Movement, nervous system research, ecological philosophy, mythology, and years of inquiry into thresholds of human transformation. Her latest German book Wild & Wunderbar explores neuroregulation, burnout, embodiment, and the recovery of relational ways of being. Her English work: "Alchemy of Soul" published by Parallax Book House moves through inner transformation as lived initiation and participatory becoming.

Through essays, dialogues, and gatherings, this evolving Parallax series invites readers into a deeper inquiry:

How do nervous systems shape perception?
How does perception shape systems?
And what futures become possible when humanity remembers relationship again?

Readers and kindred spirits are also warmly invited to join the upcoming live gathering:

Deep Ecology & Rewilding Your Soul
https://parallax.substack.com/p/deep-ecology-rewildering-your-soul](https://parallax.substack.com/p/deep-ecology-rewildering-your-soul)

16/05/2026

Back in black

https://open.substack.com/pub/parallax/p/sweeny-vs-bard-68?r=4r9f8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

13/05/2026

Dear friends of Parallax,

we are very happy to invite you to a new live online course with developmental theorist and STAGES founder Terri O´Fallon:
The Developmental Growth of Positive Primordial Emotions

Starting July 5th, 2026, this four-week journey explores something both deeply intimate and profoundly transformative: the developmental unfolding of our emotional life.

In this course, Terri will guide us through four primordial emotions — love, compassion, altruistic joy, and gratitude — and explore how these emotions evolve through increasingly refined stages of human development. Drawing from the STAGES model, participants will learn not only to understand these emotional capacities conceptually, but to experience and cultivate them directly through guided practices and meditations.

Each session includes:

+ developmental teachings
+ guided meditative practices
+ small-group reflections
+ integrative discussion
+ practical exercises for daily life

Terri O’Fallon is internationally recognized for her pioneering work in developmental psychology and consciousness studies. Her STAGES model is considered one of the most sophisticated contemporary frameworks for understanding human development and the evolution of perspective-taking.

The course begins: Sunday, July 5th, 8 PM CET / 12 PM MT

You can find all details and registration here:

https://www.parallax-media.com/courses/terriofallon

The Developmental Growth of Positive Primordial Emotions – Course Page

We would be delighted to welcome you for this exploration.

Warm regards,
The Parallax Team

The course will start Sunday, July 5th, with Terri O´Fallon

09/05/2026

Catafalque by Peter Kingsley, a review

https://open.substack.com/pub/parallax/p/catafalque-by-peter-kingsley?r=4r9f8&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true