During a time when the rise of white Christian nationalism and increase in bigotry and racism is prominent in America, the Loka Initiative has spent the last four years building bridges with church leaders from the Evangelical community and bringing them together with scientists, theologians, experts and trainers to take on creation care and climate action. Over this period, we have provided training, capacity, and resources on the topics of biodiversity protection, climate science, disaster preparedness, campaign strategy and media training to leaders from 63 church institutions and in the process, built a network of support for these faith leaders in the US and around the world. As with all of our projects, we work in partnership with a wide array of organizations including A Rocha, American Scientific Affiliation, Blessed Tomorrow, Care of Creation, Christianity Today, Climate Nexus, EcoAmerica, Evangelical Environmental Network, the Fetzer Institute, Green the Church, Lausanne/WEA Creation Care Network, Ocean Conservancy, and the World Wildlife Fund.

In 2021, Loka co-hosted the Sacred Wisdom Sacred Earth convening with the International Mayan League. With close to 1,000 registered participants, the 3-day online convening focused on 5 themes: Food, Water, Medicine, Sovereignty and Spirit and was entirely Indigenous-led, with the goal of sharing Indigenous ecological and spiritual knowledge as means of sustenance for all Indigenous peoples around the world. In 2022, guided by our Indigenous Advisory Council, Loka pledged to executive produce a documentary that focuses on Indigenous resilience in the Great Lakes area. At this crucial time in our Earth’s history, we believe that Indigenous wisdom holds the wisdom needed to shift our way of being and living in relation to the Earth and to address the environmental and climate crisis. The film shows us how to listen to and learn from elders and knowledge holders on how to center our relationship with Mother Earth as the most important aspect of building kinship and reciprocity in our lives and our movements.

Khoryug is an eco-monastic association in the Himalayas working on environmental and climate issues under the auspices of His Holiness the 17th Karmapa. The organization consists of over 50 Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and nunneries ranging from Ladakh in northwest India to Ura in Bhutan. It was established in 2009 with coordination by Dekila Chungyalpa and technical assitance from her former colleagues at WWF, and has continued to flourish over the last 15 years. Since 2015, Khoryug has focused on disaster preparedness and has 300+ trained monks and nuns in disaster response and first aid. During the COVID pandemic, Loka was able to create, translate, and distribute COVID guidelines to all the Khoryug monasteries and nunneries, helping protect their communities from the dangers of the pandemic. Khoryug stands for Rangjung Khoryug Sunkyob Tsokpa, Environmntal Protection Organization in Tibetan. Its main coordinating monastic bodies are: Bokar Ngedon Chokhor Ling Monastery in India and Pullahari Monastery in Nepal.

The Resilience In The Anthropocene (RITA) summit was a three-day online event held in August of 2023 with almost 1800 registered participants. We brought together 40+ researchers, academics, experts from communities most impacted by environmental devastation and climate change, clinical psychologists, and contemplative leaders to discuss eco-anxiety and climate distress within a framework of inner, community, and resilience and to foster dialogue with the participants on how this could manifest for them. The summit presented various dimensions of emotional distress, attempting to understand the psychological and emotional impacts of the environmental and climate crises through an intersectional and justice lens, explored coping mechanisms from contemplative practices, clinical and counseling psychology, nature based and Indigenous wisdom traditions, and collaboratively initiating a new framework of inner, community, and planetary resilience that sustains us all. The rich dialogue at the summit sparked the original idea of creating the Psychology of Deep Resilience course program.

Loka has launched an online, self-paced, certificate course program on edX titled, “Psychology of Deep Resilience: Addressing Ecoanxiety and Climate Distress for Individual, Social and Ecological Well-being.” The program consists of four individual classes that focus on key environmental and climate threats; investigates different emotional and psychological impacts caused by our concern and care for the Earth; introduces scientifically-studied contemplative practices, meditation and community building exercises as coping mechanisms towards increasing our inner, community, and planetary resilience; and guides participants through self-awareness exercises that help us identify the most effective building blocks for our resilience and well-being. Participants can opt out of the paid certificate program and receive the same content for free. (You must scroll down and click on each individual course to register for free/ to audit the class.) Course materials include 15 contemplative practices from 3 wisdom traditions: Buddhism, Indigenous land-based healing/ Nature immersion, and Somatics.

Loka has launched a research project focusing on better understanding ecological emotions and how they manifest among different sub-identity groups and assessing how contemplative practices can help buffer the worst of these emotions and regulate them towards community or individual action. Studies include research embedded within the Psychology of Deep Resilience online course program, allowing learners to opt-in (consent) to share their coursework for research purposes. Another study focuses on convening a diverse advisory board of environmental professionals and experts to guide research investigating contemplative techniques for nurturing the emotional resilience of professional environmentalists, particularly the experiences of subgroups unjustly burdened by environmental crises, and with the advisory board’s guidance, creating an inner resilience program developed specifically for the wellbeing of environmentalists.

Loka is also working on a framework for Deep Resilience that will launch soon.