discourses as energy

Poststructural deconstruction has been useful in identifying ways in which discourse works to produce an ecologically destructive culture. Yet, it is still only marginally successful in showing how one might move beyond the power of discourse either at an individual or a wider cultural level.

If discourse can be conceived as energy (see Goswami, 1993; McMaster & Greene, 2003), then shifting discourse may not be as difficult as one might think. Energy work can take many different forms, but is based on assumptions that 'discourses' are embedded in the body at cellular, genetic and/or energetic levels and can be changed by shifting the body's energy flow energetically (Lipton, 2005; Njio, 2006; Njio & Yuen, 2006). This idea has been difficult to think and talk about within my local context, however, since it requires moving beyond many dominant assumptions of Western culture generally and the medical field specifically (Hufford, 2003).

I am encouraged, however, by educators such as Kevin Kumashiro (2004) and organizational change theorists such as Margaret Wheatley (2000), who claim some of the most significant breakthroughs in change theory are coming from beyond mainstream (Western) ways of knowing.

How might the world be different if we all learned how to change limiting discourses?