Tangelic Talks – Season 03 | Episode 06
Saying Yes to Life — From Soil to Soul: Ecological Harmony & Playfulness w/ Lesley Joy Quilty
14 minutes to read
In this conversation with Lesley, we explore what it means to live, lead, and heal in times of ecological and social crisis. Drawing on decades of work across wisdom traditions, leadership development, and therapeutic practice, Lesley shares reflections on resilience, imagination, and the deep interconnection between personal and collective healing. We talk about hope, not as something abstract to search for, but as something grounded in the resilience and beauty of human beings, even in the face of hardship.
From her experience as a clown doctor to her work in breathwork and ancestral healing, Lesley emphasizes the importance of tending to both the body and the heart, alongside the strategies of the mind. She speaks about self-soothing practices rooted in nature, the vital role of imagination in embracing uncertainty, and how moving from head to heart can change the way we show up in the world. Ultimately, this episode is an invitation to consider how we meet the challenges of our time: with courage and tenderness, with imagination and humility, and with a shared commitment to remembering our place in the web of life.
The Art of Clowning: Playfulness as Resistance
One of the first questions raised was about her unexpected role as a clown. For Lesley, clowning is far more than entertainment. It’s an ancient archetype present in Shakespeare’s plays, indigenous practices, and medieval courts—the fool who can speak truth to power through humor.
As a clown doctor, Lesley has worked in hospitals and hospices with children facing life-limiting illnesses. Rather than putting on a show, therapeutic clowning is about meeting children and families where they are, inviting joy, silliness, and tenderness in some of the darkest places.
“Clowning asks us—how can we stay playful even when the world feels like it’s unraveling? How can we orient toward joy instead of despair?”
Clowning, Lesley says, helps activists and changemakers avoid burnout. In a world facing climate collapse and deep uncertainty, play is not frivolous—it’s medicine for the spirit.
Meditation, Presence, and Saying Yes to the Moment
Lesley has over 40 years of meditation practice, grounding her in presence and resilience. She defines meditation simply as:
“Paying attention to what is present in the moment with a kind, curious awareness.”
In a time of information overload, rapid social change, and ecological anxiety, pausing for three conscious breaths can be a radical act of resistance. Meditation teaches us to notice not just external events but also our body’s intelligence—tightness in the gut, contraction in the chest, or warmth in the heart.
This embodied awareness, she explains, is essential for climate resilience: if we don’t know how to ground ourselves, we can’t show up fully for the collective.
Ecological Harmony: Living at Findhorn Eco-village
For nearly 40 years, Lesley has lived in Findhorn Eco-village, one of the world’s oldest intentional communities focused on ecological sustainability and spiritual growth.
At Findhorn, sustainability is holistic. It’s not just about eco-houses and renewable energy, but also about “social technologies”:
- How do communities make decisions together?
- How do individuals flourish while supporting the collective?
- How do we face conflict and difference without fragmenting?
Lesley emphasizes that personal healing and planetary healing are not separate. Living in community means learning to embrace imperfection, work through conflict, and cultivate compassion—skills our world desperately needs for building sustainable futures.
Ancestral Healing and Interbeing
Lesley’s work also touches on ancestral healing, often integrated into her coaching and psychedelic facilitation. She reminds us that we are alive today because of the resilience and survival of those who came before.
“We are the best of our ancestors. Against all odds, we are here.”
But ancestors are not only human—the Earth itself is our ancestor. Plants, animals, water, and soil make up our lineage. Remembering this truth dissolves the illusion of separation from nature.
This worldview echoes the Buddhist teacher Thích Nhất Hạnh’s concept of “interbeing”—a radical interdependence between humans, nature, and all living systems.
Imperfection as a Path to Healing
A recurring theme throughout the conversation was imperfection.
In modern activism, there is a heavy emphasis on urgency, metrics, and being “perfect” environmentalists. Lesley challenges this mindset. She argues that perfectionism creates burnout and reinforces separation.
The clown archetype offers an alternative:
- Mistakes are gifts.
- Vulnerability is truth-telling.
- We’re all making it up as we go.
By embracing imperfection, individuals and movements can find resilience, compassion, and creativity.
Trauma-Informed Practices for Climate Activism
The conversation also explored how trauma-informed approaches can strengthen climate movements.
Lesley, trained as a breathwork facilitator, works with individuals to gently surface and integrate trauma stored in the body. For activists carrying climate grief, rage, or shame, practices like breathwork, meditation, and storytelling can create space for healing.
She emphasizes the importance of community spaces where mistakes are allowed—spaces where grief and rage can be expressed without judgment and then transformed into fuel for meaningful action.
Indigenous Knowledge and Avoiding Extractive Dynamics
Lesley and the hosts also touched on the role of traditional ecological knowledge. Indigenous wisdom has preserved relational and ecological practices at great cost. The challenge for global movements is to learn without appropriating, to engage with humility and reciprocity rather than extraction.
She notes that genuine collaboration requires:
- Willingness to make mistakes and offer apologies.
- Reflection on our own extractive tendencies.
- Creating long-term relationships of trust and respect with Indigenous teachers.
This is not a one-time exchange but an ongoing practice of responsibility and humility.
Hope, Resilience, and the Goodness of Humans
Despite the crises of our time, Lesley remains deeply hopeful. What gives her hope is the resilience and beauty of human beings.
She recalls working as a clown doctor, witnessing families in unimaginable circumstances still finding ways to laugh, connect, and love. These “tiny fires of beauty,” as she calls them, remind her that humans are astonishingly resilient.
“We can face unbelievable hardship and still flourish again. Whatever’s coming—we’ll figure it out, if we do it together.”
Her teacher Joanna Macy, a pioneer in eco-philosophy, once said:
“If we’re going down, I’m going down dancing.”
For Lesley, this is the essence of ecological harmony—to face uncertainty with play, compassion, and courage.
Thought Provoking Q&A Session with Lesley Joy Quilt
Lesley Joy Quilt
Facilitator and Guide of the playful and transformational
For over four decades, Lesley has been walking a diverse path of creative expression, healing, and leadership. Her work weaves together wisdom traditions from North and South America and the Far East, grounded in practices of courage, tenderness, and deep presence. She invites individuals and groups to meet themselves fully—in all their complexity—and to take the next aligned step with humility, humour, and heart. Lesley’s experience spans psychedelic preparation and integration, ancestral healing, leadership development, coaching, breathwork, meditation, public speaking, group facilitation, and clowning. At the center of her practice is the ancient framework of the Four Directions—a living map of balance and wholeness that guides healing and growth through life’s cycles.
She is a Senior Associate with Olivier Mythodrama Associates, delivering leadership programs and executive coaching worldwide, and has served as Lead Facilitator with the Synthesis Institute Retreat Team, supporting hundreds of participants in legal psychedelic retreats in the Netherlands. She has also taught and mentored students in Synthesis’ 13-month Psychedelic Practitioner Training. Rooted in the Findhorn Community in Scotland—an international eco-village and spiritual community—Lesley has trained in a wide range of modalities, including Family and Organisational Constellations, Archetypal Psychology, Process Oriented Psychology, Internal Family Systems, Conscious Connected Breathwork, and Joanna Macy’s Work that Reconnects. Her Buddhist-based Insight meditation practice spans more than 40 years, with ongoing retreats and daily commitment, and she integrates mindfulness teaching into all her one-to-one work.
Lesley’s journey has also included 15 years as a therapeutic clown in children’s hospitals and hospices, where she learned profound lessons in resilience and joy from some of her most courageous teachers. Her TEDx talk, which has reached over 14,000 viewers, shares part of this story. Across continents, stages, meditation halls, ceremonies, boardrooms, and classrooms, Lesley’s work is animated by one discovery: we are all on an adventure of remembering who we truly are, what we serve, and how we belong to one another.
