Building your Regenerative Vocabulary #1 - Hormesis

Natural systems, including our bodies, benefit from small, dose specific, and time limited experiences of stress. We need stress to grow and thrive - too little stress is known as sustress, where the individual or ecosystem will actually become less resilient over time. And too much, of course, is distress, which over-burdens the system. Hormesis describes the sweet spot of beneficial stress, where the amount of positive stress - eustress - is just right for supporting growth.

For human bodies, an example of hormesis is getting the right amount of exercise - too little or too much will lead to suboptimal consequences. We each have to figure out what's the right amount, what kinds of stress are beneficial. I often give the example of having a sauna - a short dose of heating the body in this way can be extremely beneficial, but you wouldn't want to sit in a sauna all day!

The same applies to different ecologies. This case study from the Las Damas ranch in Mexico describes grasslands that were deteriorating because of both over-grazing (distress) and over-resting (sustress) - neither were resulting in health. I see examples of sustress in a lot in forests here in the UK - no animals are digging up the soil, little fertilisation via dung, the ground is consequently dried out, there are few funghi, and the whole place feels sterile, there is little birdsong, even though it is technically a 'natural' environment. There just isn't enough positive stress to stimulate the system into growth and flourishing.

In the case of Las Damas, when they changed to a holistic grazing system they began to achieve hormesis - just the right amounts and kinds of stress to sustain a virtuous cycle of change, for the soil, for the biodiversity across the whole terrain, for the cattle, and for the farmers.

https://understandingag.com/case_studies/las-damas-ranch-case-study/

Thinking about hormesis via a human systems lens, we need to carefully observe what constitutes eustress, which will differ from one individual to another, and from one system to another. It's a big topic, but one pattern I've observed is that stress related to core purpose can be extremely enlivening. Many years ago I was facilitating the Exec Team of an ambulance service on a day where there had been storms and a neep tide that meant there was serious flooding across their region, presenting an enormous challenge to getting emergency services to where they were needed. I have yet to witness such an energised team! They were in their element! The eustress of the floods and storms saw them communicating and making decisions as a unitary whole, not divided by some of the less urgent matters that used to block them. It reminded them what they were there for, what they were about.

And sometimes eustress is related to organisational maturity. Recently I was working with a client organisation where some of the inter-personal challenges stemmed from the fact that many staff, having recently joined a very well-known regenerative brand were struggling to deal with the realities of an economic downturn. They had joined when the company was on a high, where there was scope to invest in many aspirational cultural projects and programmes. To these newcomers, the shift towards a more austere modus operandi given financial constraints felt like a betrayal of some core values. What they were experiencing was actually a different season, a different part of the cycle that they hadn't encountered before. The wisdom of team members who had gone through such waves of change held the potential for learning to be passed on - for distress to be transformed into eustress.

So for those of us attending to the health and regeneration of systems, how can we help identify the eustress that will achieve hormesis? Where is it already happening in the system, where we can help amplify the benefits? How can you support the system to embrace eustress for its greater resilience and evolution, to integrate the learnings, and to pass them on?

I think the concept of eustress and hormesis are relatively new within the regenerative sphere. I would love to know your thoughts. What does this article surface for you, and the contexts you are working with? Share your thoughts in the comments!

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