Concepts
Ideas and topics that help us understand our world.
Future
How much time do we spend thinking about the future, how much of it is based on fear and anxiety, how much of it is based on hope? Here are a few light work methods to help imagine a better future:
Imagination
Growing our capacity to imagine how life and the world could be is a light work technique that cultivates hope. - Visualization techniques, e.g utopianism
Utopianism
Utopianism is a light work technique with the goal to envision a better future where humans live together in a healthy, sustainable way. It stretches our muscles of imagination and allows us to step outside of our current systems and thought patterns.
Compassion
Compassion is an important ingredient in conflict resolution because it allows us to take things less personally.
Love
"The word 'love' is most often defined as a noun, yet all the more astute theorists of love acknowledge that we would all love better if we used it as a verb." – bell hooks in All About Love
Judgment
Judging ourselves and others is often related to binary thinking of right or wrong, good or bad. As long as we judge ourselves for our mistakes, we also judge others.
Punishment
A society that reponds to failures in the form of blame and punishment leads to a high amount of fear of punishment and thus denying mistakes instead of taking responsibility. "It does not surprise me to hear that there is considerably less violence in cultures where people think in terms of human needs than in cultures where people label one another as 'good' or 'bad' and believe that the 'bad' ones deserve to be punished."
Safe Space
A Safe Space is a space where the goal is for people to feel safe, respected, and free from fear of violence or judgment. It provides a protected environment that fosters openness, vulnerability, and mutual understanding. It is also often referred to as a Safer Space to emphasize that no space is completely free from violence and to show the intention to make spaces progressively safer over time.
Violence
Many societal problems are based on disagreement about what counts as violence. Physical violence is easier to recognize than psychological violence.
Solitude
It can be a liberating process to learn to enjoy our own company and cultivating solitude as quality time with ourselves. "Solitude is for me a fount of healing which makes my life worth living." - Carl Jung
Meditation
Meditation is about taking time to slow down, be present, and listen to what's going on inside and around us. - Awe Walk
Anger
We understand anger as an emotion that reveals underlying feelings such as pain and grief. Anger shows us that something is wrong, that we feel unseen, misunderstood, or powerless.
Transmutation
Transmutation describes the process of transforming how we feel by letting our emotions flow. - Stream of Consciousness Writing
Attention
"What you pay attention to grows." - adrienne maree brown in Emergent Strategy "The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers." - Thích Nhất Hạnh
Cancel Culture
We've dismissed the term cancel culture for a long time because we saw it mainly as a way for people who are confronted with making a mistake to evade accountability. What’s often forgotten is that the roots of this practice lie in Black liberation movements, where calling out harmful behavior publicly became a vital way to seek justice outside of systems that fail to protect marginalized communities. Over time, however, the term has been co-opted and repurposed—often by those in power—to deflect criticism. Rather than taking responsibility for the harm that was caused, people often focus on how the injustice is communicated. This shifts the attention away from the root of the issue. We believe it's crucial to listen to people experiencing violence and injustice, no matter how it is delivered. There should always be space for righteous anger.
Morning Routine
A morning routine can be helpful to start the day with intention.
Conflict Resolution
From being against each other to being with each other.
Presence
Being in the now. Not moving between past and future times in our head, but being 100% present in the current moment. - Meditation
Attachment Theory
Attachment theory was coined by John Bowlby and aims to describe how the support and attention we get from our caretakers as children affects our behavior in relationships and conflicts as adults.
Gaza Genocide
While the word genocide was largely being suppressed by Western media until 2025, a growing number of genocide scholars and human rights experts are getting increasingly clear: - United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese calls Israel a settler-colonial project and highlights corporations who "have profited from Israel’s economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now, genocide."
Emergent Strategy
Emergent strategy is a way of approaching change that draws from nature’s patterns—focusing on adaptability, interconnection, and small actions that ripple into larger transformations. We discovered the term in adrienne maree brown's book Emergent Strategy.
Blame
In conflicts, we often fall into the mode of wanting to find someone to blame at all costs. It is important to understand what led to the escalation in order to jointly find out what went "wrong" and how to interact better in the future.
Transformative Magic
Transformative Magic is the art of changing the world by changing ourselves. In an era of widespread burnout, social fragmentation, and institutional collapse, many of us are waking up — but we’re unsure what to do with our awakening. Below, we intend to offer a map to reorient and rebalance.
Time
For us, it is helpful to think of time as a state of consciousness. - Past: Thinking about and visualizing past experiences.
Light Work
Light work means using tools that help us shape our world in a positive way. While shadow work is about recognizing patterns that might be holding us back, light work is about cultivating new, healthy patterns that have previously been beyond our imagination.
Arrival Fallacy
Arrival Fallacy The "Arrival Fallacy" describes the human tendency to believe that we will be happy once we reach a certain goal in the future.
Hope
"Hope is a discipline" - Mariame Kaba How can we cultivate hope while not ignoring the reality of oppression and violence that is currently happening?
Fetishization
When people wake up to their own prejudices and discriminating socialization, a first reaction can often be to overcorrect. Fetishization, although meant in a good way, is still a form of othering.
Manifestation
Manifestation is the moment an idea transitions from the spiritual realm into the material world. Often, when people talk about manifestation, they mean visualization, which is an important part of the process.
Organizing
Building collective power and community care structures.
Shadow
The concept of the shadow was introduced by Carl Jung. It is based on the observation that there is a large part of the human psyche that is being kept hidden, remaining in the subconscious. The shadow usually consists of parts of ourselves that we don't like, that we repress and deny. This denial, however, can lead to us repeating subconscious patterns.
Stages of Grief
The 5 stages of grief is a framework developed by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross with a goal to understand how humans deal with emotional loss. The stages are:
Visualization
Visualization is a light work practice that helps envision something that has not manifested in the material realm yet.
Free Palestine
How can we help end the violence Palestinians are facing, putting pressure on our governments to stop enabling the oppression and genocide? Our focus the last 2 years has been mainly on the external: Trying to raise awareness and amplify voices with the goal to have more people stand up and get loud agains the horrors of Israel's actions against the Palestinian people. Because we were socialized in Germany, this means specifically doing the shadow work in recognizing our own Anti-Palestinian and Anti-Arab racism and talking about this with other Germans, especially highlighting the media bias and state repression against Palestine solidarity here in Germany.
Shadow Work
"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate." - Carl Jung Shadow work describes the process of examining and integrating the hidden shadow parts of ourselves. It is about making unconscious patterns conscious, and integrating them so that we don't get controlled by aspects of ourselves that we deny.
Responsibility Mapping
Responsibility Mapping is a concept of finding the right balance of how much responsibility we are taking in a relationship or conflict. We learned about this in an article from Remodeled Love, which also highlights an important aspect of the concept:
Drama Triangle
The Drama Triangle is a psychological and social model that describes a common pattern of interaction in conflict and power dynamics. It consists of three roles that people unconsciously slip into: - Victim: Feels powerless, oppressed, or helpless. Often seeks rescue or validation but resists responsibility or solutions.
Holding Space
Holding space means being present when someone shares their inner world with us.
Grounding
Grounding means connecting more with the present moment, yourself and the Earth. Especially after drawing in a lot of external energy and emotions, it is important to find an outlet. Otherwise, it could lead to involuntary discharge or an inflated ego.
Lightning Rod
How can we move sensitively and open heartedly through a world where violence is often normalized? The many tensions present in the human organism are often absorbed by sensitive people. This can show up as many small stings that add up and eventually lead to too much pain and overstimulation, for example through:
Resilience
"You build resilience by exposing yourself to discomfort on purpose. Cold water. Hard workouts. Difficult conversations." - Damien Echols in The Warrior's Mind
Intention
Doing something with intention means being more present while doing it. In light work practices, the practice of setting an intention is also often used.
Vulnerability
Choosing to stay soft and vulnerable in a world full of violence and conflict avoidance is a powerful act. Being present with vulnerability enables deeper connection.
Attachment
Attachment means trying to control things the way they currently are (or our idea of how they should be). The practice of non-attachment means gradually letting go of desire, expectations, and idealization.
Conflict Avoidance
Conflict avoidance means having (conscious and unconscious) strategies to evade conflict resolution and the vulnerability that comes with it.
Spiritual Ego
Spiritual Ego is the phenomenon when spiritual practice and the power that comes with it inflates the ego. "The energy doesn’t lie. It just flows. And if you’re not aware of the structures it’s pouring into, you may be reinforcing the very illusions you’re trying to transcend." - Damien Echols in The Shadow Fed by Light
Fear of Judgment
Fear of judgment means we worry about how others perceive us and that we could be evaluated negatively, potentially leading to blame, rejection and punishment.
Fear of Outshining
Fear of outshining is a form of self-sabotage where we actively hold ourselves back in order to not invoke negative emotions in people around us. - Downplaying our own accomplishments, knowledge and skills
Fear of Punishment
Fear of punishment can slow us down. Instead of taking responsiblity for our mistakes and learning from them, we try to avoid them and act in perfect ways.
Fear
How can we use fear as a catalyst for change instead of something that paralyzes us? - Fear of punishment
Finger Pointing
Why does society so often focus more on the people pointing out problems than on the problems themselves? We want to take responsibility in the following ways:
Upper Limit Problem
Upper Limit Problem The Upper Limit Problem describes the tendency to unconsciously sabotage ourselves when we surpass a familiar level of success, happiness, or love. Rooted in internalized beliefs and fears, it limits our capacity to grow, like an internal ceiling. Overcoming it means expanding our ability to receive and sustain well-being without self-sabotage.
Quality Time
Spending time with intention has the potential to deepen the experience. Often overlooked: Quality time with ourselves, in solitude.
Transparency
People can't read our minds. By sharing what's going on inside of us, we enable other people to understand us better and open up themselves.
Big Words
Using big words can sometimes be a distraction because people have different associations with them. The words might spark emotions, leading to more difficult discourse. It can be helpful to try to explain the concept rather than simply using the term.
Nonviolent Communication
Nonviolent Communication (also NVC) is a philosophy developed by Marshall B. Rosenberg. Its goal is to raise awareness of how violence can be conveyed through language, often leading to unproductive conflict resolution.
Product Updates
tender.garden is our platform for learning in public. By sharing product updates, we want to be transparent about our progress and the motivations behind certain features we are developing.
Collective Liberation
"Nobody's free until everybody's free." - Fannie Lou Hamer The term collective liberation describes the notion that everyone suffers under oppressive structures.
Learning in Public
Learning in public describes the practice of openly sharing the process of learning. Instead of showing up as a teacher, the learner is documenting their reflections, mistakes and adjustments along their path.
Resentment
Resentment makes us see people with less loving eyes. By choosing to address a conflict instead of sweeping it under the rug, I can take responsibility to prevent resentment from building up over time.
Patterns
According to estimates, we make at least 90% of our daily decisions unconsciously. This often leads us to repeat patterns we learned at some point (often in childhood).
Human Organism
When we're zooming out, we can see that each of our actions has an impact on the human web as a whole. Emotions, ideas... a lot can get carried over.
Othering
Othering means focusing on our differences instead of what connects us. Instead of seeing the whole of humanity as an organism with the potential to collaborate with each other, it draws artificial lines between us and them.
Privilege
For us, one of the most effective ways to understand how privilege works is the following question: Whose voice gets heard?
Responsibility
To us, taking responsibility means recognizing which aspects of life we can control. It means doing the necessary shadow work to understand how our unconscious behavior might affect the people around us and society as a whole. It also means leaving space for other people to take responsibility for their own behaviors.
As Above So Below
"As above, so below" describes the idea that the world is connected across zoom layers. The micro and the macro perspective are intertwined.
Relationship Anarchy
The term Relationship Anarchy (RA) was coined by Andie Nordgren in an article called The short instructional manifesto for relationship anarchy. Relationship Anarchy is understood as a philosophy that applies anarchist principles to relationships, which means: