In Gaia University, we encourage Re-evaluation Counseling (RC) training (specifically the Fundamentals Course and Ongoing Classes) for the whole Gaia University community. We have recognized that, because our world change work is challenging the dominant culture, we cannot be truly effective without a healthy connection to others. Thus, using RC, we seek to eliminate our patterns of isolation and competition and, instead, work to build around us a context of deep, mutual support from other people who themselves understand the challenges involved in pushing through to taking leadership and action in a culture that would rather have us hopeless and passive.

In our view, it is not sufficient to believe in the ideas of power, hope, leadership, and support. Repeatedly we notice that, even despite our own espousal of these ideas, we can regress to depression, despair, and even denial unless we clear the emotional baggage that holds the patriarchal matrix of oppression (we call this the “patrix”) in place.

Re-evaluation counseling is based on a set of skills and insights that enable us to discharge emotional baggage and come to vital realizations about how, for example, class, power, and privilege patterns hold us back from taking the lead in creating intelligent, ecosocial human cultures. In re-evaluation counseling, people exchange the roles of counseling and being counseled. For this reason, it is especially appropriate for egalitarian groups and people who want to take a direct role in their own healing.

Using techniques that can be learned in the 4-day Fundamentals Workshop, we quickly begin to reap the benefits of emotional discharge. Although it can seem strange and somewhat awkward at first, with the guidance of an experienced teacher, RC can become a potent tool for regaining clarity and ease.

Recovering our natural states of exuberance and understanding leads to several key advantages. Our personal relationships can be based on the true needs humans have for closeness instead of being driven by desperation. Also, it becomes easier to recognize the patterns of oppression that hold our current culture captive to distress.

All Gaia University sponsored RC Fundamentals workshops are open to the public. Email nopatrix@gaiauniversity.org for more information.