The promises were big, the summits grander, and all pledges headline-worthy. We have watched governments announce net-zero targets, businesses rebrand themselves as “green,” and startups churn out climate solutions. Yet soil keeps disappearing, pollinators vanish at unprecedented rates, and our food systems grow more fragile by the day. Clearly, something fundamental is missing from our approach to healing the planet.
What’s Missing
In recent years, we have approached environmental challenges as technical problems requiring technical solutions: more efficient tractors, carbon capture techniques, lab-grown meat. Whilst these innovations matter, they don’t address the deeper patterns that created these problems to begin with.
The regenerative movement offers a different insight: there is a connection between stressed souls and stressed systems.
This concept of inner sustainability, explored by Leah V. Gibbons in Regenerative—The New Sustainable?, suggests that our external world reflects our internal landscape.
Consider this: if we move through life driven by constant urgency, endless consumption, and fierce competition, these patterns show up everywhere. We see them in industrial farming that strips soil bare. In supply chains that prioritise speed over care. In food systems that treat land as a resource to extract from rather than partner with.
To address these global challenges, we need to transform the beliefs and feelings that drive our actions.
Tending to our Internal Landscape
Inner regeneration involves transforming the intangible aspects of our lives: our worldviews, emotions, values, and spirituality.
This transformation often begins with shifting how we see ourselves in relation to the world. Instead of viewing nature as separate from us, we recognise that we are part of an interconnected web of life.
For example, this might mean seeing by a river and feeling how the water connects us to mountains, oceans, and every creature that depends on its flow. Or eating a piece of fruit and channeling gratitude for the soil, rain, and sun that helped it grow.
This awareness could also lead us to embrace the cycles of nature. We might choose seasonal produce not just for its lower carbon footprint, but because eating strawberries in winter feels disconnected from the rhythms of life.
Inner regeneration also encompasses creating space for stillness. Stress and constant hurrying diminish our creativity, empathy, and care. Precisely the qualities needed in this day and age.
This could look like reframing cooking as a ritual of gratitude rather than a chore to rush through, or taking moments throughout the day to simply breathe and reconnect with our deeper intentions.
Beyond Individual Change
But inner regeneration isn’t just personal work. As Gibbons notes, it can happen at a societal level too. Societies can help individuals nourish their inner landscape by creating environments that cultivate care, humility, and gratitude.
This might look like organizations that begin meetings with moments of gratitude, companies that measure success through ecological and social impact, or cities designed with abundant green spaces for social gatherings.
The Ripple Effect
This inner transformation (whether personal or societal) then ripples outward into concrete actions. “Regenerative Ripples,” as Laura Storm calls them.
When we feel calm and connected, we begin making choices that nourish rather than deplete without effort or struggle. A simple mantra like “slow and gentle” becomes the compass guiding our daily decisions.
What’s missing from our approach to healing the planet isn’t just more technology or better policies, it’s the inner transformation that makes regenerative action feel inevitable.