The Power of Different Realities, Different Truths
Regenerative Rising, a Colorado non-profit has become a staple in the regenerative community. Through the stewardship of Founder and Board Member, Seleyn DeYarus, Regenerative Rising has built a powerful community of incredible people across various industries to share in re-imagining our collective future and connection building. Last year, Seleyn DeYarus stepped down as Executive Director, the position now filled by the talented Nisha Mary Poulose.
With a background in architecture, Poulose has always felt a connection to nature and the delicate balance between human needs and the land. In 2015, Poulose won an award from the Prime Minister of India for her work on Smart Cities and has always been passionate about finding a way for “human beings to interact with land, with nature as a way that there’s a balance between our comforts and our needs and the needs of other beings in nature as a whole” Poulose says.
After what could only be called a kismet moment, Nisha and Seleyn were introduced by a mutual friend. The two spent months keeping in touch and exploring a shared dream they had both been holding. Poulose accepted the position of Executive Director with Regenerative Rising in the fall of 2023. As she has stepped into this role, Regenerative Rising has grown into a global organization spanning the United States to India.
Poulose explains that her personal mission is the same as Regenerative Rising, “what can we do today….how can we become a collective sort of force for reintegrating our lives as humanity, as a community, back with the way the Earth is?”
As Poulose plans for what Regenerative Rising will look like now under her leadership, she explains her vision for the future and one of the new initiatives she’s bringing to the organization, Tantara. Poulose explains the power, and the sheer necessity of bringing people together, as working together is what is gravely needed in this space in time. Passionate about creating space for people across the globe to share stories from different regions and cultures, Tantara will be a series for sharing cultural stories and a discussion about current complex topics. “I’m really keen on bringing different realities and truths into the mainstream picture because that’s something that has been sort of subdued and oppressed over the last few centuries where now, there’s only one truth that is an acceptable truth,” Poulose says.
She explains that a key component to broadening our ideas is to involve all people in the conversation and that stories from different parts of the world hold sacred information for understanding these important and intricate topics. Poulose explains that tackling conversations like “how do we become more regenerative” is akin to taking a “complex topic and trying to simplify it into a series of linear steps.” This is where Tantara comes in.
“Ancient stories from different parts of the world already have this information. So if you’re thinking of something like ‘how do we become stewards of the Earth?’ you have to tap into that intuition, that consciousness and I believe that stories have the power to ignite those parts of our brain and heart” Poulose says.
Poulose aims to continue Regenerative Rising’s work of building intentional community across the globe so that we may re-imagine a new, collective future for us all. Sharing stories is just one piece of the puzzle to help us bridge the gap between complex questions and attainable action.
“When we’re imagining this future, it needs to be a collective imagination, and that’s why it’s really important to bring different realities, different truths, different contexts, into this imagination at this level, because if small part of the world as it is today, is doing the imagination, then that’s why we are where we are. Because it’s not a world we imagined collectively. It’s it’s a world a few imagined and imposed on the rest and then ever since then, we’re all been struggling to keep up or to make up for something or to just fit in or whatever.”
Nisha Mary Poulose
Poulose asks that regardless of entry, perspective, framework, or methodology, we all hold intentionality so that we may listen to each other, sit with each other, and create an inclusive and expansive movement. And maybe, we will start to understand more of these complex topics and work towards re-imagining and building that collective future.