Welcome to The Commons

Tools for Reflection, Practice, and Integration

The Commons is our living library: tools, guides, card decks, and reflections gathered from years of practice with leaders, facilitators, and communities. Everything here is offered so you can bring healing-centered practice into your own work, your teams, and the spaces you hold. Like seeds carried on the wind, these tools are meant to travel. Use them, adapt them to your context, and share them with others who might need them.

How to share these tools:

The tools in the Commons are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0). This means they belong to the commons: free to use, adapt, and pass on, with a few simple agreements that keep them in the spirit they were made.

You are welcome to:

  • Share them: copy and pass them on to others, in print or digitally
  • Adapt them: translate, remix, or shape them to fit your context, culture, and community

We ask that you:

  • Credit the source: name Refugia and Lana Jelenjev as the creators, link back to the original, and say if you changed anything
  • Keep them noncommercial: don’t sell the tools themselves, or adaptations of them
  • If you’d like to use these tools in paid work, write to us, and we’ll find a way together.

A simple way to credit: Adapted from [tool name] by Lana Jelenjev, Refugia (refugia.world), shared under CC BY-NC 4.0. You can read the full license at creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0.

Knowledge that belongs to communities
Some knowledge shared in the Commons may come from communities who hold it as their own. That knowledge stays with them. If a tool names a community as its source, please honor that, and ask before using it beyond your own learning.


  • The Commons
  • From Colonial Patterns to Regenerative Practices: A Self-Assessment and Guide
From Colonial Patterns to Regenerative Practices: A Self-Assessment and Guide
From Colonial Patterns to Regenerative Practices: A Self-Assessment and Guide
From Colonial Patterns to Regenerative Practices: A Self-Assessment and Guide
From Colonial Patterns to Regenerative Practices: A Self-Assessment and Guide
From Colonial Patterns to Regenerative Practices: A Self-Assessment and Guide
From Colonial Patterns to Regenerative Practices: A Self-Assessment and Guide

From Colonial Patterns to Regenerative Practices: A Self-Assessment and Guide

To move beyond mechanistic systems that perpetuate harm, disconnection, and marginalization, we must first see the patterns we reproduce—often unconsciously—in how we hold space. Many of these patterns are rooted in colonial histories and shape how we design processes, frame language, distribute voice, and relate to one another. Without noticing, we may replicate the very dynamics we long to transform.

WHO THIS IS FOR...

This self-assessment invites facilitators, consultants, leaders, capacity builders, and space holders to reflect deeply on how they show up in moments of conflict, transformation, and growth. It is for those who already know change is needed and are ready to move away from colonial tendencies and lean into regenerative practices—practices that expand possibility, hold depth, welcome complexity, and adapt with care.

 

THIS IS NOT FOR YOU IF...

It is not for those who believe colonization is a relic of the past. Colonization isn't behind us; it lives in our structures, our relationships, our language, and even in our nervous systems. Shifting toward regeneration means learning to see these patterns and choose differently.

HOW TO USE THIS SELF-ASSESSMENT

This self-assessment is not a test with right or wrong answers—it is a mirror. The patterns described here are common, often invisible, and deeply shaped by colonial histories. By naming them, we begin to notice how they show up in our own facilitation, consultation, or leadership.

Move through each pattern slowly. Place yourself on the spectrum from colonial tendencies to regenerative practices. There is no need to rush; growth unfolds in spirals, not straight lines.

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