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FROM COLONIAL PATTERNS TO REGENERATIVE PRACTICES: An Ongoing Journey of Decolonisation

I was surprised with how people started sharing and connecting with me around the work "From Colonial Patterns to Regenerative Practices" that I shared in Linkedin. The deep resonance with this work is palpable. 


Having lived most of my life in the Philippines, I grew up looking up to American and European standards as the “go-to” frameworks, processes, ideas, and tools. I was immersed in the colonial narrative that “they do things better than we do.” Like many others, I adapted these practices and internalized them as the measure of success—shaping the ways I related with myself, with others, and with the world.


This was reinforced by the culture around me, where Western hegemony was seen as the norm. To be educated, respected, or seen as capable often meant aligning oneself with imported systems of thought and practice.


Moving to Europe shifted a lot for me. I remember an incident just three years into living in the Netherlands, when I attended a learning conference. A sociologist stood on stage, touting a new methodology as the “next best thing” in the field. I sat puzzled, knowing this exact framework had already been introduced to us back in my university days in the Philippines—over ten years earlier.


In that moment, something cracked. I realized: “It’s not what I expected.”


This experience marked the beginning of my decolonisation journey. I started questioning and noticing my own patterns of self-oppression—the ways I defaulted to quoting Western voices, the ways I doubted my own cultural knowing, the ways I shrank or performed in rooms where I was one of the few, or the only, melanated person. I noticed how people’s energy shifted toward me: the initial skepticism when I entered a room, followed by surprise or respect only after I spoke or facilitated on something unfamiliar to them.


It was in these cracks—between how I saw myself and how others saw me—that I began to awaken. I started to reclaim which stories I told, which knowledge I centered, and how I showed up in spaces.


Decolonisation for me has not been a single moment, but a continuous, moment-to-moment process of learning and unlearning. It is a practice of noticing where colonial patterns still live in me—how I replicate them, how I resist them, and how I can consciously choose more regenerative, life-affirming ways of being.


From Saviorship to Stewardship

One of the most important learnings I continue to embody in my life is showing up as a steward, not as a savior. For far too long, I found myself in programs, services, and practices where consultants, space-holders, or capacity builders—including myself—were positioned as the “experts in the room,” there to save the organization or community.


Looking back, I realize how deeply this posture of saviorship was entrenched in my own cultural conditioning. I carried a hypervigilance to contribute, to support others, to produce change. I adapted the narratives of proving one’s worth, of striving for excellence in order to be seen as “better,” of climbing the ranks by being indispensable.


But underneath this striving, a distortion was at work. The people and communities I partnered with were not broken. Yet I saw them through the lens of problems to be solved, rather than inherently capable individuals who cared deeply for their causes, organizations, and futures. My focus landed on the pathology of the situation, and I made it my mission to “save” them.


I cringe when I think of those moments where I stepped into a room as the expert, the know-it-all, the one who believed change depended on me. What I missed then, and what I try to remember now, is that stewardship asks something different: to walk alongside, to co-create, to tend. Not to save.


Re-Rooting Myself

This is why I had to change. I had to redefine myself and how I showed up in these spaces and relationships. I also owe it to my children—to let them experience a version of me that is not deeply entrenched in feelings of inferiority to the European context and environment we are living in.


I knew I had to re-root myself. In doing so, I began to define the essentials of how I want to show up in life: with care, connection, contribution, and community. These are the core tenets of my life—not coming from a place of self-abandonment in order to over-give, nor from self-restraint that slips into hyper-individualism.


To re-root myself meant unlearning patterns that reproduce colonial narratives. What began as a wish to heal histories has grown into a mission: to cultivate healing-centered ecosystems. This work emerges from a belief that we are not separate, but profoundly connected—that we are one nervous system attuning with each other.


In Filipino, there is a saying: “Ang sakit ng kalingkingan ay sakit ng buong katawan.” The pain of the little finger is the pain of the whole body. What is true in the body is true in society. The harm carried by one of us is felt by all.

There is so much healing needed in this world. And we can only begin by tending to the healing within ourselves.


An Invitation to Begin


Colorful infographic with circular icons on practices like Voice, Power, and Inclusion. Title: From Colonial Patterns to Regenerative Practices.
From Colonial Patterns to Regenerative Practices: A Self-Assessment and Guide

From Colonial Patterns to Regenerative Practices came from decades of noticing, unlearning, unpacking, and reframing. As a systemizer my brain naturally saw the connections on how we engage in our relationships and work with these patterns. This work is not just about tools or methods. It is about how we show up—with ourselves, with each other, and with the communities, and causes we care for. It is about noticing the patterns we have inherited, the ways we unconsciously reproduce harm, and the choices we can make to move toward practices that are more life-giving.


I have shared pieces of my own journey—from saviorship to stewardship, from self-abandonment to re-rooting, from colonial narratives to healing-centered ecosystems. These stories are not offered as answers but as mirrors, in the hope that you might see your own reflections too.


This self-assessment is not a checklist. It is a practice of noticing. It is a mirror that can help you see where colonial tendencies still live in your work and where regenerative practices are already taking root. It is a compass to guide you toward care, connection, contribution, and community. Not coming from a place of saviorship, rather, from the wellspring of healing-centered stewardship.


As you begin, I invite you to pause. Take a breath. Feel into your body. Ask yourself: Am I willing to listen and respond to what I notice here?


May this work ripple outward—not just as insight, but as practice. Not just as reflection, but as re-rooting. Not just as personal growth, but as part of the collective healing we are all called to tend.


Hiraya manawari,

Lana


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