What is a Good Life? #126
The Wild Power of Imagination with Geneen Marie Haugen Ph.D
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This Week’s Podcast
On the 126th episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast, I’m delighted to welcome our guest, Geneen Marie Haugen, PhD. Geneen grew up a little wild, with a run amok imagination, and has lived at the wild edge for most of her life. Once upon a time, she was a whitewater river guide and a tipi dweller who loved knowing that only thin canvas separated her from the the world. In her wild wanderings, she’s been amazed to have had dozens or maybe hundreds of close encounters with creatures such as moose, elk, grizzlies, wolves, black bears, cougars, bison, and more. For her, the sulpher-scented hot springs of Yellowstone smell like home. A content creator and guide to the intertwined mysteries of nature and psyche with the Animas Valley Institute, she has been on the faculty of the Esalen Institute and Schumacher College. Her writing has appeared in Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth; Thomas Berry: Dreamer of the Earth; Parabola; Kosmos Journal; Ecopsychology; The Artist’s Field Guide to Yellowstone, and many others. She believes in the world-shifting potential of the human imagination allied with the planetary psyche.
In this glorious conversation, we explore the nature of reality and the role of imagination in shaping it. We discuss the current suppression of imagination, the vast possibilities that remain, and how imagination has profoundly influenced Geneen’s life. She shares captivating stories of connection with the world around us and moments of shimmering aliveness.
This conversation is a powerful invitation back to our imaginations—to a world rich with possibility, connection, and aliveness.
The weekly clip from the podcast (4 mins), my weekly reflection (3 mins), the full podcast (66 mins), and the weekly questions all follow below.
1. Weekly Clip from the Podcast
2. My weekly reflection
When was the last time you felt deeply connected to your imagination?
I asked this question to a group recently, and about three-quarters of the participants went back to their childhood.
One participant suggested there was something a little sad about that.
While reflecting on the role of imagination throughout her life, Geneen, this week’s guest, brought up the experience of putting on shows for the adults around her as a child—almost with the suggestion, or invitation, that they reconnect with what they were no longer in touch with.
When she mentioned that experience, it stirred something in me.
I recalled the shows I too took part in and created at home. I’m guessing I was between the ages of 4 and 8.
Skits, tin whistle performances, Irish dancing.
My mind also wandered to wet, dreary days when “giant” forts were erected like tents by draping blankets over chairs. New worlds seemingly appeared in living rooms or bedrooms, places where they hadn’t existed before.
These memories stirred something in me—accompanied by the thought: How could I ever have considered myself not very creative or imaginative, if this was the starting point?
While in the last decade I’ve reconnected with that sense, I momentarily felt the pain of the judgment I had imposed on myself through most of my later teens and twenties.
During our interview, Geneen alludes to humans having this unique ability to imagine. She compares it to a beaver whose teeth never stop growing—if it doesn’t keep chewing, they grow painfully long. Our imagination works like that. It keeps moving, whether we tend to it or not.
Why are we here, then? What is uniquely ours to do?
To imagine, perhaps.
So what happens when we live in a system that suppresses it? That says it doesn’t exist anymore? That tells us we’re not really imaginative or creative?
As Geneen points to in the interview:
“It seems to me that we are in the greatest colonisation of imagination that has ever been known to the human journey, that through all of our technology, the screens, the advertising, the billboards, all of this, our own imaginative capacities are in many ways being smothered by all the images and the ideas that are coming and accepted as if this is reality, rather than stimulating our own imaginative responses to things like climate change, for example, or the seemingly endless wars that we're in; that the suppression of the creative response seems to be kind of built into our capitalistic, consumer, industrial world. And I think, to me, in the world according to Geneen, this suppression of imagination—of free, wild imagination, especially that which has coherence with living systems, with living Earth—suppression of that is creating a huge crisis of depression and all the damaging psychological states that we see. The possibility for our lives and for our world is suppressed.”
I sense our imagination gets trapped. Locked in the domain of the world we’ve created—call it capitalism, consumerism, whatever name fits. A world where imagination is only allowed to engage with the physical and visible.
Even feelings are considered soft data. We are separated from connection and intuition. A distinction is made between ourselves and the natural world—which allows us to plunder it and use words like resources to describe it.
All while drawing clear lines between what is sensible and acceptable and what is not—even as our culture increasingly behaves in ways that are anything but sensible.
Our imagination becomes trapped within what already exists. Consequently, the only thing it can conjure, when shaped by these energies and mindsets, is the idea of more.
Not happy? Get more. Do more. Be more. Buy more. Own more.
It gets stuck in a loop.
And yet, what makes me optimistic is how natural it is for us to reconnect with this part of life—if we give ourselves the space and opportunity to do so.
Even in the conversations I host—even within corporate settings—I’m continually amazed by how much we can express and share when we enter spaces that are not shaped by the current dominant system or culture.
The insights people naturally arrive at on retreats, or when they begin to meditate or when they spend time away from devices—sitting on a park bench or in a forest, walking, hiking, gardening. I’ve even heard of insights emerging while someone was knitting.
Sometimes it’s as simple as a meaningful, heartfelt conversation.
I sense that visions of a new future will come from those who live increasingly outside this colonisation of imagination—not those still deeply subscribed to it.
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3. Full Episode - The Wild Power of Imagination with Geneen Marie Haugen - What is a Good Life? #126
4. This week’s Questions
When was the last time you let your imagination lead the way?
What do you sense is currently suppressing your imagination the most?
About Me
I am a coach, podcast host, and writer, based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed nearly 300 people. I’m not looking to prescribe universal answers, more that the guests’ lines of inquiry, musings, experiences, and curiosities spark your own inquiry into what the question means to you. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience and more meaningful conversations.
If you’re interested in exploring your own self-inquiry through one-on-one coaching, joining my 5-week What is a Good Life? group courses, or fostering greater trust, communication, and connection within your leadership teams, or simply reaching out, feel free to contact me via email or LinkedIn.