Reclaiming connection, community, and the wisdom of place

We sit with Helena Norberg-Hodge, a pioneer of the localization movement, founder and director of Local Futures, and author of Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh.

Helena begins by naming a painful truth she has witnessed on every continent over the last forty years: young people everywhere are struggling with depression. She invites us to see this not as an individual pathology, but as a rational response to an economic system that pushes us into competitive, urban, sped-up lives that promise everything and deliver very little. From her decades in Ladakh, she offers a rare glimpse of a culture that knew neither suicide nor depression and lived with time wealth, many skills, and deep intergenerational bonds.

We explore how globalization, industrial agriculture, and algorithmic finance pull us away from each other and from the living world, and how localization offers a practical and spiritual path back to sanity. Helena shares stories of community food systems, farmers’ markets where conversations multiply, and even prison programs where growing food and crafting for the local community dramatically reduce violence and recidivism.

Along the way, we touch the themes of feminine futures and the hunger for a more caring, slower, relational way of living. Helena speaks about the loss of singing, the shutting down of tears, and the emergence of men’s and women’s circles as a spontaneous corrective. We look at how cracks in the dominant story can become thresholds into a different way of being.

We close with Helena’s focus on local food and soil as a primary leverage point for healing ecosystems, bodies, and communities. Her seed for the future of humanity is simple and radical: the seed of connection, planted in local ground, through food and relationships that bring us back into belonging with each other and with Earth.

If this conversation resonates with you, share it with someone who feels the weight of this moment and is looking for grounded hope and practical pathways into a more life-affirming future.

Voices of Emergence is a podcast about inner transformation and systemic regeneration, hosted by Alex de Carvalho and Rudy de Waele.

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🎵 Intro & Outro Music
Used with permission from AWARË
Track: Journey Live 5
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