Weaving and Being Woven
Preparing for the Pre-Conference Retreat and the 25th EUROTAS Conference, Oaxaca, Mexico
In Oaxaca, threads speak. Patterns are not mere decoration but cosmology—each woven strand a story, a lineage, a relationship. As we gather for the 25th EUROTAS Conference and its Pre-Conference Retreat, co-created with @EUROTAS2025, this ancestral art of weaving becomes both a practice and a guiding metaphor: we are not only weaving; we are being woven.
Weaving as an Ancestral Cosmology
For the Zapotec and Mixtec peoples of Oaxaca, weaving is more than craft. It is a living language of relation between humans, Earth, and the cosmos. Threads of cotton, wool, and natural dye intertwine with stories of mountains, rivers, stars, and ancestors. Each pattern encodes belonging: a sacred reminder that every being is held in the larger fabric of life.
This Indigenous science resonates profoundly with transpersonal and integral frameworks. Weaving expresses relational ontologies—understandings that life is interwoven, reciprocal, and alive. The loom is not only a tool; it is a ceremonial space where cosmic order is invoked and embodied.
Braiding Transpersonal Integral Frameworks with Indigenous Sciences
The 25th EUROTAS Conference calls forth a convergence of knowledge streams: transpersonal psychology, Indigenous sciences, ecological wisdom traditions, and planetary consciousness movements. This is not an intellectual exercise alone; it is a living practice of braiding—bringing together threads that once were held apart.
Transpersonal psychology offers languages of consciousness, healing, and transformation. Indigenous sciences offer ancestral cosmotechnics, ecological wisdom, and ceremonial ways of knowing. Braiding them is not about merging one into the other but about honoring each thread in its integrity, allowing them to hold their distinct beauty while co-creating a shared pattern of planetary peace.
Transcultural Respect, Reciprocity, and Responsibility
As guests on ancestral lands, we enter this gathering with deep humility.
The triad of Respect – Reciprocity – Responsibility guides the way:
Respect honors Indigenous sovereignty, cultural integrity, and the land itself as living being.
Reciprocity acknowledges that we are not passive recipients but participants in a relational field of giving and receiving.
Responsibility calls us to act with integrity, ensuring that our practices contribute to collective wellbeing—of people, places, and the more-than-human world.
These principles echo the heart of transpersonal education and planetary ethics. They invite a shift from extraction to relation, from separation to interbeing.
The Retreat as a Sacred Loom
Our Pre-Conference Retreat is envisioned as a sacred loom—a place where threads are brought together intentionally. Through ceremony, silence, movement, ritual, dialogue, and the guidance of ancestral wisdom keepers, we will weave a collective field of presence. It is a space to prepare not only intellectually but spiritually, emotionally, and ecologically for the conference.
This retreat honors the depth of Indigenous Mexican cosmologies, while holding a transpersonal, integral framework. It invites participants to ground themselves in place, to listen to the land and its stories, and to enter the conference field not as isolated individuals but as strands in a living fabric.
Being Woven – A Collective Commitment
To weave is to listen. To be woven is to allow oneself to be held by something larger. In this gathering, the warp and weft are not only our ideas and projects, but our relationships, our hearts, and our shared commitment to planetary peace.
As we prepare to enter this sacred space together in Oaxaca, may we remember:
“We do not weave the web of life; we are but a strand in it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.”
— Chief Seattle
This is not just a conference. It is a ceremony of weaving worlds—ancestral and emergent, Indigenous and transpersonal, personal and planetary.
Invitation
Join us in this shared act of weaving at the Pre-Conference Retreat and the 25th EUROTAS Conference in Oaxaca, Mexico, co-created with @EUROTAS2025.
👉 https://eurotas2025.com.mx
May our threads be strong.
May our weaving be beautiful.
May our presence be in right relationship.
From heart to heart,
Dr. Regina U. Hess
Birthing an Ancient Future – Multidisciplinary Council of Peace-Builders
