Welcome to the Connection and the Nurturing of Real Human Beings course

A female tourist is sitting on a large bird nest on a tree at Bali island, Indonesia

In this course we explore the reason that most modern humans are so profoundly stressed out, and what we can do to transform this. Featuring Dr. Darcia Narvaez, one of the world's leading trans-disciplinary psychology researchers, and connection phenomenologist Natureza Gabriel.

Darcia Narvaez, PhD, was Professor Emerita at the University of Notre Dame, and is author many books including Restoring the Kinship Worldview: Indigenous Voices Introduce 28 Precepts for Rebalancing Life on Planet Earth (2022 with Wahinkpe Topa (Four Arrows)), and the award-winning Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality (2014). Her groundbreaking trans-disciplinary research asserts that Small Band Hunter Gatherers (SBHG) are the baseline of human normalcy, and charts the deviation from ancestral modes of living in relation to moral breakdown of modern society.

This course is drawn from a filmed conversation between Dr. Narvaez, and Natureza Gabriel, convener of the Restorative Practices Alliance, and focuses on Dr. Narvaez' conceptualization of the Evolved Nest. This set of cultural and child-rearing practices, which is trans-cultural, shows us what is required to set the neurobiological foundations for healthy human beings in infancy and childhood.

Structured in segments of 3 to 12 minutes, with key take-aways and links to resources for further inquiry, this course is a key foundation in understanding how to unite what we understand about optimizing human development from neurobiology with the ancestral awareness of traditional and Indigenous cultures. It helps us chart a way forward toward wellbeing in a moment of massive systems transformation.