Ourselves, others, nature: The three relationships in regenerative tourism

At a women’s retreat that starts soon, Sonia Ter­uel would like par­ti­cipants to “rein­force [their] fem­in­ine essence, and to flow with life and the nat­ur­al cycles” so as to more effect­ively work on the three rela­tion­ships of regen­er­a­tion (and regen­er­at­ive tour­ism).

In this “Good Tour­ism” Insight, Ms Ter­uel describes the three relationships.

[You too can write a “GT” Insight.]

When I was in Mex­ico, I worked with col­leagues to give vis­ib­il­ity to rur­al and indi­gen­ous com­munit­ies and small sus­tain­able enter­prises. We looked for answers to make them feel included, empowered, and proud. 

I even­tu­ally came across the paradigm that would answer many of the ques­tions that remained unre­solved in my sus­tain­ab­il­ity jour­ney, such as: How can we cre­ate a tour­ism plan that adapts to the place? How can we improve rela­tion­ships? How can we be much more inclus­ive of all loc­al stakeholders?

I came across regeneration.

Also see Susanne Beck­en & Dav­id Gill­banks’ “GT” Insight
“Regen­er­at­ive tour­ism vs sus­tain­able tour­ism: What’s the difference?”

I remem­ber clearly how one of the things that really caught my atten­tion about the regen­er­a­tion paradigm was the emphas­is on three rela­tion­ships: the rela­tion­ship with ourselves, the rela­tion­ship with oth­ers, and the rela­tion­ship with nature. 

And I asked: How can regen­er­a­tion help us solve the glob­al crisis we are exper­i­en­cing at the moment? How can this help me feed my chil­dren? How can it tackle the issues I men­tioned above; inclu­sion, empower­ment, and pride?

We have more conscience. But is this enough?

In this era in which we are slowly evolving into more socially- and envir­on­ment­ally-con­scious indi­vidu­als (although we are still not con­nect­ing both), we have a series of indic­at­ors and guidelines to fol­low to have a more sus­tain­able world. 

If you do this, you are sus­tain­able, if you don’t, you are not. If you have a cer­ti­fic­a­tion, you are com­mit­ted. But if you don’t, we can ques­tion your actions.

This is par­tic­u­larly rel­ev­ant in tour­ism, an ‘industry’ that moves mil­lions of people every year and has shown to have the power to cre­ate a very sig­ni­fic­ant impact (both pos­it­ive and negative). 

But, is this enough? 

Also see Lor­etta Bel­lato’s “GT” Insight
“Is ‘regen­er­at­ive tour­ism’ just a rebrand­ing of ‘sus­tain­able tourism’?”

We real­ise that we are liv­ing through a major glob­al crisis: cli­mate crisis, loss of biod­iversity, the approach of peak oil, value crisis … 

It is so over­whelm­ing to think that we have to trans­form our lives and give up on cer­tain com­forts recently acquired, that we just insist on focus­ing our atten­tion on com­pens­at­ing for our impacts, such as: When trav­el­ling, how about buy­ing a car­bon off­set or plant­ing a few trees? That will cre­ate bal­ance, surely? 

We are in such a rush to extin­guish the fires we have cre­ated (often unwit­tingly), but also to get back on our feet after this long pan­dem­ic, that we are not giv­ing ourselves time to reflect and ques­tion if maybe we should change the way we do things. 

Also see Tazim Jamal’s “GT” Insight
“Towards a new paradigm for regen­er­at­ive tour­ism and just futures”

It is very import­ant that we under­stand that the way we see the world, our eth­os, our val­ues, our rela­tion­ships, and even our self-con­fid­ence can have a great influ­ence on the type of sys­tems we cre­ate. And of course, that humans are not sep­ar­ate from nature; but on the con­trary, are part of it. 

Our obser­va­tion, rela­tion­ship, and reci­pro­city with nature has the poten­tial to cre­ate resi­li­ence and life, in the fullest sense of the word. 

So, work­ing on the three rela­tion­ships of regen­er­a­tion can make a whole world of dif­fer­ence before we design an eco-social net­work that will allow our des­tin­a­tion to thrive. But, what does it mean, exactly? 

The relationship with ourselves

This is the capa­city we have to show our essence through a pro­cess of self-real­isa­tion. By doing that, we become more human; more com­pas­sion­ate, thought­ful, and hol­ist­ic. In this pro­cess, we begin a jour­ney of deeply get­ting to know ourselves, to under­stand our iden­tity, our pur­pose, and how to integ­rate that essence in our actions towards the world. That is, to be congruent. 

It seems very simple, but it can be a chal­lenge (at least ini­tially) for those that are not used to doing intro­spec­tion exer­cises and ques­tion­ing. Dur­ing the exer­cise, some lim­it­ing beliefs can come out, and with them insec­ur­it­ies, fears … 

But if we don’t do this intern­al work, our actions will be guided by what we have been told is okay. And ques­tion­ing is tre­mend­ously import­ant. Believ­ing in our poten­tial and our capa­city is extremely important. 

The relationship with others

This is the capa­city to work and par­ti­cip­ate in social life. It sounds easy, doesn’t it? But in fact, through­out his­tory, we have evolved towards a more indi­vidu­al­ist­ic model. 

Sev­er­al experts point out that indi­vidu­al­ism is one of the reas­ons for the deteri­or­a­tion of our envir­on­ment, and that our social ali­en­a­tion is from the lack of com­mit­ment towards community. 

Moreover, it has been proven that if we want to over­come a crisis of great mag­nitude and design innov­at­ive, effect­ive solu­tions, we must do it collectively. 

There­fore, it is espe­cially import­ant to re-devel­op our capa­city to relate to each oth­er and col­lab­or­ate (instead of com­pet­ing) and dis­cov­er our com­mon pur­pose, which will awaken our cre­at­ive side to gen­er­ate innov­at­ive systems. 

This mind­shift can mean a very sig­ni­fic­ant change, not just in how we do busi­ness or man­age a des­tin­a­tion, but in our own lives! 

The relationship with nature

In our efforts to gen­er­ate wealth and know­ledge, we have thought that this must be done at the expense of nature. 

For cen­tur­ies, we have believed that growth was lim­it­less, using nature like a machine and tak­ing resources from out­side when we exhaust our own. So, pro­gress­ively, we have lost our con­nec­tion with the Earth and the Sun, both of which we depend upon. 

The capa­city to co-evolve in har­mony with the liv­ing sys­tems that we are part of is going to help us gen­er­ate the neces­sary con­di­tions to cre­ate life and abund­ance (in every sense of the word, not just economic). 

Under­stand­ing that eco­nomy is there to serve soci­ety, and not the oth­er way around. Under­stand­ing that there are plan­et­ary lim­its that we must not sur­pass, and that is okay. Under­stand­ing that our inter­re­la­tion­ship and reci­pro­city with nature is much more power­ful than we think. 

If nature is per­fect, hav­ing a great capa­city to share inform­a­tion, nutri­ents, com­mu­nic­at­ing, and regen­er­at­ing, ima­gine how our organ­isa­tions and lives would thrive if we applied these same principles. 

A retreat for women

At The Regen­Lab, we have designed an in-per­son retreat for women, where you will be able to learn experientially. 

This retreat offers everything you would expect: relax­a­tion, dis­con­nec­tion, nat­ur­al sur­round­ings … but also, it will help us work on our deep pur­pose, our intern­al rela­tion­ship, to change our rela­tion­ship with oth­ers (in our day-to-day lives and our busi­nesses or jobs), and it will plant a seed to help us over­come lim­it­ing beliefs, give us the con­fid­ence to do things dif­fer­ently, rein­force our fem­in­ine essence, and to flow with life and the nat­ur­al cycles. 

Don’t miss any “GT” con­tent tagged with
“Sus­tain­able tour­ism and regen­er­at­ive tourism”

A work­shop that will bring us closer to like-minded people who are on the same wavelength as us, where the focus will be on sis­ter­hood, mutu­al sup­port, and the vit­am­ins that we need to focus, not on the crisis that we have, but the won­der­ful poten­tial that lies ahead of us. 

Join us June 23 – 26 in a beau­ti­ful nat­ur­al envir­on­ment in the region of l’Anoia, a few kilo­metres away from Bar­celona, Spain at “Women, Sol­stice and Regen­er­a­tion”. The lan­guage for the event will be Spanish.

What do you think? Share a short anec­dote or com­ment below. Or write a deep­er “GT” Insight. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog wel­comes diversity of opin­ion and per­spect­ive about travel & tour­ism because travel & tour­ism is everyone’s business.

Fea­tured image (top of post): Ourselves, oth­ers, nature: The three rela­tion­ships in regen­er­at­ive tour­ism. Image by sas­int (CC0) via Pixabay.

About the author

Sonia Ter­uel, founder of The Regen­Lab for Travel, has a strong back­ground in the travel industry, spe­cial­ising in com­munity-based tour­ism. As gen­er­al man­ager of an eth­ic­al tour oper­at­or in Mex­ico since 2015, Ms Ter­uel helped the organ­isa­tion with its trans­ition towards a regen­er­at­ive mod­el. She pub­lished a thes­is about regen­er­at­ive tour­ism in 2018 “to trig­ger fur­ther research on the sub­ject”. Sonia is also a lec­turer and con­sult­ant on sus­tain­able and regen­er­at­ive tourism.