Research

Lucy Draper-Clarke PhD entered RinA’s Space of Beginnings programme to unearth a new research direction. A researcher-practitioner and retreat facilitator in Southern Africa, and author of ‘The Compassionate Activist’, she is now exploring how to contribute to community building and ecological restoration in the UK. This piece is structured around RinA’s approach, where a) “striking moments” are narrated, then b) investigated reflexively to reveal research questions and methods that may open a doorway to transformative insights.

Migration Routes

“She’s sitting on the porch roof, glistening navy jacket, black coat tails and clay-red cheeks. The barn swallows are back from Africa and their mud daubing task complete. Four pink, hairy, wide-mouthed chicks appear at the nest edge, waiting. I spend a moment in wonder; these birds have flown so far and still take care of their children. I once read that their flight path takes them over Palestine. What devastation might they have witnessed? Last autumn we watched hundreds gather along the eaves and then – an absence. They had gone south, and I was left behind. I’d been in the UK for six months but still grief poured through me.”

After 31 years in Southern Africa, I have returned to England. This migration, although chosen, has left me feeling bereft and prompts the questions: how does migration change us, how might identity reconfigure in a new place, and what can hold these transitions? In this era of climate disruption and escalating wars, many have been displaced while freedom of movement is increasingly denied. With a British passport, I move as freely as the swallows. I feel anger that this privilege is not available to those in the global South where I was made to feel so welcome.

I’m co-leading a research project in four South African primary schools. Called ‘Reconnection and Care’, the project explores the need for systemic change in this trauma-burdened education context. With the expertise of arts interns and dramatherapists, we are using the expressive arts to deepen children’s connection with themselves, each other and the living world. From our weekly sense-making sessions, one insight emerges clearly: collective care is necessary to address systemic harm. We work with ritual, movement and song; pre-colonial technologies that support co-regulation and resist modernity’s tendency towards disconnection and social anxiety. When we invite moments of reflection our whole selves are welcome, not just our professional roles. It’s meaningful work and we’ve formed a caring team, but I’m now 9,000 km away. On non-workdays I notice a sense of isolation and yearn for community. I reach out to colleagues to investigate my grief and turn to the natural world for sanctuary.

Uprootedness

“I message my friend[1], a Dagara stick diviner and practicing Buddhist, with Muslim, Christian and Hindu ancestral influences. Her vibrant ecology of identities inspires me. Her parents were anti-apartheid activists, and she has taken this inheritance into the world of healing. Via Zoom, she places a cowrie-decorated beanie on her head and begins with the ritual of calling on her ancestors, her bloodline, her spiritual lineage and the ancient spirits of the earth, the sky, the rivers and the forests. She then ‘throws the bones’, a collection of pieces that represent different aspects of the human experience. The very first to reveal itself is a three-pronged piece of wood; a mini tree with branches reaching upwards, but nothing holding it below. “It’s about being uprooted” she says, “Rooting is deeper than grounding - an energetic establishment. Losing that is huge.” I could cry with relief. Naming the truth is a balm. “Rooting is a deep sense of being held. Right now, you may not find soil, so root in your ancestors, both blood and spiritual. You are not alone.”

Her words steady me.

Gradually I realise that rootedness is not about stability or location. It is about being held in relationships across time: bodies, land, water, and lineage, especially when place is temporary or unstable. I still notice my own longing to grow roots, and I wonder how those forced to migrate, or living in camps, pass on their stories of remembering and belonging. I start paying attention to daily rituals that embed me in a relational field - within my body and within the natural world.

Tree Roots

“I’m starting to make friends, mainly with oak trees. Grandmother tree is 379 years old. Most of her branches seem dead, held up on crutches, yet nursing moss and ferns. Davy Crockett is a huge oak in a Cornish hedge bank of upright slates. At Christmas, Davy is decorated with a red ribbon. I get to know the oaks along the river, with roots visible as the tidal surges and high spring tides slowly pluck away the shillet and clay layers. I also remember a giant fig I met in Tulbagh, a few weeks before leaving South Africa. His roots were swaying in the breeze. I think I knew, even then, that I would have to find a way to care for my own.

Schnuffi nudges my leg, and I look up from the laptop. It’s walk time. She is my canine therapist, offering a sense of shared aliveness. She speeds off in front of me towards the woods. At the gate, I smile, ask permission to enter and my lungs release a gentle sigh. This bodily signal feels important. It may not be direct communication from the living world, but it indicates my receptivity and willingness to listen more deeply, shifting my relationship with the land. We walk together along moss-softened pathways, and under beech canopies. Where the wind has plucked holly leaves and scattered them, she dances along the path. Then she tiptoes into brambles, tentative but undeterred. Watching her curiosity is a lesson in joy and zestful living."

I am learning arboreal strategies of adaptation; rootedness feels not just ecological, but pre-verbal, energetic, and ancestral. By noticing visible roots in the natural world, I reframe uprootedness as a phase of visibility rather than a loss of belonging. Some roots hold, others reach, some break and regrow. These daily walk rituals offer a sense of grounding and remind me that rooting involves support that precedes my individual self.

Ancestral Roots

“I’m on the dance floor, letting the music have its wonderful, wicked way. Stretching, spinning, pulsing, floating, until the Ancestral Connections facilitator[2] calls us to stillness. “Imagine your father at your right shoulder, your mother to your left, and their parents and grandparents and all the great grandparents who came before them.” An ancestral cloak fans out in my imagination becoming vast wings whose tips meet on African soil. Perhaps 3.2-million-year-old Lucy or Mrs Ples is among them. Living near the Cradle of Humankind in South Africa, I once felt their presence: each survived long enough for the next to be born. I’m from resilient root stock! We all are.

In South Africa I learned to respect ancestors and met many healers who would call on theirs for guidance. I also confronted the legacies of my British forebears within oppressive systems of colonisation. “I’m not sure I want to call on them,” I’d say. “Don’t worry”, a friend offered, “they get an upgrade when they die.” I make a silent promise, “I receive what nourishes. What harms ends with me.”

Upgrade or not, I didn’t know my ancestors’ histories. I use technology to replace fireside stories. I’m hoping for Celtic or Viking blood, for pirates and witches and shamans. Perhaps they are there, but Census data offer limited insights, particularly for the women labelled only as ‘wife’ or ‘unpaid domestic work’. I read names - Clarke, Noah, Slaiter and Smith, Stoffel, Cornwell, Yarrow and Brown. Tragedies surface between the lines - infant deaths and early widowing. I know little of their lives but marvel at their longevity. Great grandmother Amy Louisa was 100 when she died, looking out over the ocean in Christchurch, Hampshire. It was the year after I was born, near the ocean in Sri Lanka. My own father crossed those oceans during the war.

Returning to England, I am faced with the history and affluence of this colonial legacy – statues of explorers and stately homes. I also sense that modernity is crumbling and communities seem disconnected. Western individualism has left people isolated and lonely in contrast to the collective cultures I have been part of. Could these rituals of ancestral connection offer an antidote? By focusing on lineage rather than achievement, I feel the warmth and texture of ancestry carried in my body and a sense of dignity being restored.

Spiritual Roots

“I light the tall white candle, the short dark incense. Blue-grey smoke spirals upwards and drifts off in the breeze. I bow to the land I am on, the land I am from and the land I miss, groaning quietly from the pain in my hips. I meditate facing west. The warmth of the morning sun warms my back and illuminates the shrine. I am not seeking to be fixed in place; I am seeking to remember what already holds me. The table displays a Buddha rupa, a lavender wand, a clay blue heart held by fat clay hands and a singing bowl. A comforting mix of the traditional and the personal. These practices have been passed down for millennia and I seek refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Interconnection across time. I set an intention; to stay present, to return to breath and body, and to ask, “What do I need a little more of today in order to be present for others?”

The air is body temperature; hard to feel at my nostrils but as it rises upwards through my belly, pelvis, waistline, ribs and chest, I sense some space around the breath. When my hips complain, I ask, “What are you protecting?” and pause. As my belly fills, I imagine sending a warm tingle of life force energy through my sticky hips, contracted psoas and creaking knees. I breathe in physical sensations and send out compassion to all those whose bodies are in pain. It’s not a magic potion, but soon I notice that something inside has softened. I used to feel the litheness in my body created a flexibility in my mind. Now I must work in reverse. Perhaps an acceptance of my aging body can free up movement elsewhere.

I close with a chant that always steadies me, ‘Precious mind of awakening, may it arise in those who are without it, and never fade from those who hold it, but continually grow from strength to strength.’ “

Cultivating presence is my daily practice. Preparing the relational field with candle and incense helps me cross the threshold into the sacred. By overcoming the resistance to sitting still, I challenge modernity’s push for productivity and my own conditioned habits of overwork. I remember that I am held in partnership within my own body and reframe physical limitation as information rather than failure.

Over time, I see that rootedness is not a state but a practice. It is not where I stand but how many relationships I allow to hold me at once. Ritual offers not a solution to instability, but a reminder that support exists even when the world feels uncertain. I begin to sense a playful friendship between movement and rootedness that emerges through care rather than control.

Waterways

“It’s summer and we move onto our sailing boat, Popsie, to explore Cornwall’s rivers, rias and estuaries. Although hard to grow roots in the ocean, I remember that interconnectedness becomes visible through water. Everyone lives near a water source – an underground stream, river or sea and I begin to sense that connection with all those I love, however far away.

Along the beach, yesterday’s jellyfish, translucent with four pink inner rings, has dried to a fragile skin. It would disappear under a single footstep. By the water, I don’t feel alone. I stroke the dead branch where I hang my clothes, alive to the texture of dry bark, like flaking skin. Aging gracefully. Home for armoured woodlice and scurrying ants. Dead, but life giving. A tree ancestor.

I walk into the river Lynher sensing where it has been, where it is going and who it connects me to. My feet feel shillet and sherds, soft mud below. My toes enjoy the creeping coolness, ankles and shins too. But as the water rises with each step, the velvety smooth skin of my thighs begins to goose flesh, while I stand and wait for acceptance. My waist and chest resist more actively until I bring a handful of water to my neck, titrating the cold. An opening, a softening, the rest of my body relaxes as my mind differentiates cold from sensation and my body distinguishes between discomfort and danger. I ease myself forward, arms outstretched while droplets bounce upwards and scatter in the evening light. I’m in. A thousand acupuncture needles pricking my skin.

I’m alive – so very alive. Breath pumping, body gliding along the shimmering sunset path. Swimming in this living, flowing, salty, healing being, I wish to be nowhere else.”

From the questions I first pondered, a research project slowly emerges. My love of our waterborne home replaces the longing for territorial rootedness with a sense of adventure and circulatory belonging. We plot a seafaring pilgrimage around the British Isles. My identities of world lover, meditator and compassion-focused activist coalesce as reflexive researcher, seeking kinship with mother earth and those who care for her. I’m drawn towards estuaries – places where fresh and salt mingle, and where death creates birth – and elderhood, a life stage that understands paradox and can hold complexity.

Drawing from indigenous Buddhist and African epistemologies, phenomenology and ritual inform my method of relational enquiry, combining curiosity and reverence. This ritual mode of investigation both organises my attention and stabilises my body, inviting ancestral and more-than-human ways of knowing. Through repeatable, embodied practices, I trust that knowledge will emerge as sensation, image, affect, and story and creative play will be my approach. Analysis can follow later, through reflective sense-making and metaphor, prioritising resonance over generalisation.

These ideas extend beyond my personal search: if ritual can support my own sense of spiritual rootedness, might it also help others navigate instability and precarity, transition and displacement? Perhaps these practices, born from migration and longing, could become shared resources in community work, river restoration or migration support - ways of cultivating relational belonging in a time when many people will be forced to migrate, grieve, and grow roots again.

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Bio

Lucy Draper-Clarke PhD is a retreat facilitator, spiritual mentor and researcher-practitioner in the fields of mindfulness and compassion. With a doctorate in mindfulness and teacher education, she offers retreats and conducts research at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. In her book, the Compassionate Activist, she shares stories and practices to support those engaged in social transformation and healing. As a practitioner with the Karma Kagyu School of Buddhism, she attends regular meditation retreats to deepen her own practice.