Welcome to Sensing Life! My name is Emma Kidd. I am a researcher, writer, underwear maker/designer, facilitator, photographer, philosopher and lover of life. After spending the first half of my career working as a Designer for International companies in Hong Kong and China, I experienced first hand the social and natural destruction caused by mass-production, globalisation and neo-Capitalism. Four years ago I relocated to the UK to begin my, inner and outer, journey to explore more meaningful, sustainable and harmonious ways of being and doing in life.

My personal intention is one of ‘becoming alive’, so that I may bring life to the world in my own unique way. I am doing this in various ways, and it is this process of ‘Sensing Life’, and becoming alive to the livingness of life, inside and outside of myself, that I would like to write about in this blog.

I am a guest writer for blogs such as Transition Consciousness. This was founded by a great friend and colleague of mine Simon Robinson. He has also been kind enough to feature my MSc Holistic Science dissertation on his site which is available for download here.

I have just finished writing a chapter for a book entitled “Stories of the Great Turning” which is contributed to by the great Joanna Macy, and is a wonderful collection of stories from a diverse collection of grass-roots sustainability projects – to be published April 2012.

I have particular interest in the practice of phenomenology – as a science of living experience, and a pathway to living knowledge. My key influence has been the writings and teaching of the English philosopher of Science, Henri Bortoft during, and after, the MSc in Holistic Science at Schumacher College. Part of my phenomenological work with the Nettle has been referred to in his latest book “Taking Appearance Seriously: The Dynamic Way of Seeing in Goethe and European Thought” which has just been published and is available to buy from Floris Books.

I also work with the Holistic Science Journal. It is aunique and independent journal uncovering the living dynamic within the facts of science. Set up as a platform for living inquiry, it extends an invitation for authors and readers alike, to become co-creators, participating in an on-going, dynamic, evolutionary dialogue of lived experience.

I am also very passionate about empowering and inspiring women, and to develop this further I am Associate Design Manager at the fantastic women’s ‘pants making’ cooperative, Whomadeyourpants?

I also run my own knicker making project Emiliana Underwear which aims to empower women by teaching them how to upcycle unwanted stretchy fabric into new knickers that they create themselves.

To leave you for now here is a quote that summarizes my journey of vitalizing myself and the world:

Joseph Campbell: The influence of a vital person vitalizes, there’s no doubt about it. The world without spirit is a wasteland. People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules, and who’s on top, and so forth. No, no! Any world is a valid world if it’s alive. The thing to do is to bring life to it, and the only way to do that is to find in your own case were the life is and to become alive yourself. … There’s something inside you that knows when you’re in the center, that knows when you’re on the beam or off the beam. And if you get off the beam to earn money, you’ve lost your life. And if you stay in the center and don’t get any money, you still have your bliss.