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First Steps to Seeing
A Path Towards Living Attentively
Paperback
August 2015
9781782501695
More details
- Publisher
Floris Books - Published
15th August 2015 - ISBN 9781782501695
- Language English
- Pages 256 pp.
- Size 6" x 9.2"
$29.95
In the twenty-first century, we are confronted with a rapidly changing world full of socioeconomic and environmental uncertainties. We are all inherently connected to this changing world, and to create the best possible conditions for life to thrive we must each develop an inner capacity to respond and adapt to life in new, creative, and innovative ways.
The author of this visionary book stresses that the path to a happy, healthy, and peaceful world begins with the individual. By learning to recognize our cognitive habits of interrupting and defining life through fixed ideas, labels, and judgments, we can begin to develop a dynamic way of seeing that enables us to perceive and respond to life with greater attentiveness.
First Steps to Seeing reveals a practical set of stepping stones that guide the reader into this dynamic way of seeing and relating. Using personal stories, practical exercises, and real-world case studies in development, education, and business, the author takes the reader on a journey to explore how we can give our full attention to life, and how we can enliven the world that we each co-create.
This is an inspiring guide for all those who work for social change with young people, in business, with education or research, or simply in seeking fresh paths in life.
“I love Emma's book and the expression she gives to 'work as the gift'—this resonates deeply with me. How we value ourselves, whether we choose to view our work as a gift and whether we self-determine our own happiness—that is our gift should we choose to see it. Emma's wonderful book opens us up to a whole new way of seeing.”
— Polly Higgins, International Ecocide law advocate
“Emma Kidd is a practical visionary, and her book First Steps to Seeing is a most useful companion on our journey of transformation. Read this book—you will be delighted.”
— Satish Kumar, Editor in Chief, Resurgence & Ecologist magazine
“By offering many practical exercises and personal experiences, Emma helps us to discover the missed dimension of cognition in perception, opening up a new window on the world. First Steps to Seeing is a deeply insightful guide for anyone wishing to fully experience a more meaningful life, and engage more authentically with people, our organizations and the environment.”
— Simon Robinson, coauthor of Holonomics: Business Where People and Planet Matter
“First Steps to Seeing offers suggestions for seeing differently, both in its accessible and interesting text and also by means of simple but powerful experiments and observations, which include separating emotion from perception, and practicing ‘lived experience’ and ‘exact sensorial imagination.’”— Pat Williams, Human Givens Magazine
C O N T E N T S:
Author’s Preface
Introduction: Living through the Senses
PART 1: DEVELOPING A DYNAMIC WAY OF SEEING
1. More to Seeing than Meets the Eye
2. Rediscovering Our Own Experience
3. Imagination—a Mirror for Life
4. Understanding Wholeness
PART 2: GIVING LIFE OUR FULL ATTENTION
5. A Fresh Approach to Life
6. Seeing Inside Ourselves
7. The Ways in Which We Relate
8. A Dynamic Way of Seeing at Work
Conclusion
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index
Emma Kidd
Emma Kidd trained in Contour Fashion Design at De Montfort University (BA Hons) and worked in Southeast Asia as a designer and product developer for a wide variety of international brands. After witnessing the negative social & environmental impacts of profit-oriented, large-scale manufacturing and the take-make-waste approach of commercial design practice, Emma left her career as a designer and began to study and explore holistic alternatives.
After completing the MSc Holistic Science at Schumacher College in 2009, Emma focused her passion for wholeness & holistic thinking in her work as a writer (First Steps to Seeing, 2015), phenomenological researcher, lecturer, and holistic “sustainability” activist and practitioner.
She specializes in the practice of understanding life through lived experience (applied phenomenology) and the process of using a holistic approach to understand better the nature of nature, the nature of humans (phenomenology of perception), and the nature of human interactions & systems.
During her PhD research on Personal Sustainability Transitions in Clothing Consumption at Glasgow Caledonian University, Emma founded the public behavior change intervention—the Fashion Detox Challenge. This project aimed at reducing overconsumption featured in The New York Times, BBC, and El Mercurio (Chile). Members of the public were invited to stop buying new clothing for ten weeks and to reflect on the experience via a private online forum called the Detox Diary. More than three hundred people subscribed to the challenge worldwide and in 2021 the United Nations selected the Fashion Detox Challenge as a “Best Practice” for the Sustainable Development Goals.
