Join the LIVE Nested World Lecture Series This Fall with Darcia Narvaez
Get a peek into the Nesting Ambassador Program's Lectures for 2026
About This Event
Join the singular opportunity to attend online live lectures from Darcia Narvaez, PhD, during fall 2025. She will lecture on each of the nine components of our evolutionary pathway to wellness, our Communal Evolved Nest, a transdisciplinary set of insights. Most component experiences are needed throughout life to maintain health and social wellbeing.
Join the live lectures. Recordings will not be shared.
You will be able to submit questions in the Q&A during the session and questions will be addressed at the end of the presentation.
You can sign up for individual lectures or the full series. Gift economy prices begin at $10 per lecture, or $99 for the series. Please donate more, if possible, to help support our nonprofit work.
These lectures will be integrated into the new iteration of the Nesting Ambassador Program 2026. We are accepting names for the waitlist at this time. Find out more about the program and sign up for the NAP waitlist here.
Read a story from one of our new Certified Nesting Ambassadors here.
What Nesting Ambassadors Are Saying About the Program
“I really appreciate that there is modern science to back up ancient knowledge I’ve know to be accurate for a long time. It’s really helpful as a bridge for those who need that in order to feel confident in adopting life affirming practices.”
“What I have learned and prepared for becoming more visible as a Nesting Ambassador helped me to take important new steps towards contributing to the healing and cultural changes that are needed.”
“I feel connected to a new network of change makers and also feel another layer of support.”
“I feel supported by the research and have more confidence in my own instincts that have known what species normal is, and that it is not being practiced in most of society.”
“I am much more aware of my own lack of nestedness which allows me to be more intentional on how to bring more of those principles into my own life and that of my child and community. I feel I am more oriented in wellness rather than just looking at or focusing all that is not well.”
DATES AND TOPICS
Human Pasts, Human Futures: Wellness or Trauma?
Saturday, September 27
We review the shifted baselines and cultural shifts that have moved us from our millions-year-old wellness-promoting pathway to a trauma-inducing death march. We examine how culture altered child raising to domesticate humanity, diminishing human potential and instead fostered destructive humans and societies. We examine capacities in need of restoration.
Nature Immersion & Partnership
Saturday, October 4
Modern humans have moved away from partnership with Nature in part because they feel separate from it. But we evolved with the rest of Nature, which heals and preserves us. We learn ways to reconnect and partner. We need to re-wild and re-indigenize ourselves to Earthways.
Special Session: Indigenous Worldview
Saturday, October 11
Four Arrows and Lisa Reagan discuss the integral aspects of the Evolved Nest and Kinship Worldview. Four Arrows is an international scholar of Indigenous Studies and Worldview. Lisa Reagan is the founder of Kindred World and the co-founder of the Evolved Nest Initiative. You will discover how our evolved nest is the neurobiological scaffolding necessary to develop our Kinship Worldview and its capacity for our full human potential.
Regular Restorative Healing
Saturday, October 18
Throughout life, we need regular, sometimes daily or hourly, rebalancing practices. We can get out of balance physically, emotionally, psychologically or spiritually—caught up in thinking too much, striving too much, trying to control others. We restore our ability to be present in the moment and to others. We return to the path to fulfilling our deeper purpose.
Social Free Play
Saturday, October 25
Play shapes and grows our brains in childhood. Self-directed social play facilitates emotion regulation development, including controlling aggressive urges. Throughout life, play grows our social flexibility and social intelligence.
Responsive Relationships
Saturday, November 1
Responsive caregivers, in mutual co-regulation, shape the infant brain for self-regulation within and across multiple sensory systems. Throughout life, we need friendships to co-regulate us and nurture our best selves.
Positive Touch
Saturday, November 8
Every age can benefit from positive, welcomed touch for calming and connectedness. Infants need touch to grow in a healthy manner. Babies should never be forced into isolation but should be in arms, or have nearly constant touch.
Welcoming Social Climate
Saturday, November 22
Humanity evolved to live in supportive communities throughout life, ensuring a feeling of belonging and mattering to others. Babies expect to feel welcomed 24/7.
Multiple Nurturers
Saturday, December 6
Moms and babies need 24/7 support from a village of support. Throughout life, we each need mentors as we move into new areas of life. We need people who listen, who care about us, who offer welcome advice.
Soothing Perinatal Experiences
Saturday, December 13
Gestational experiences shape brain function. If a mother is extensively distressed, fetal brain development can be impaired. Medicalized birth practices typically interfere with nature’s design for birth. Skin-to-skin contact after birth helps mom and baby recover from the mobilizing hormones of birth and relax into the bonding hormones that help both heal.
Breastfeeding
Saturday, Saturday, December 20
Breast milk is an amazing elixir which evolved to promote optimal health. Mammalian milk is species specific for each of the over 4,000 mammalian species. Human milk is thin, rather than thick, and so much be ingested frequently to bathe body and brain in growth-promoting elements.
About Darcia Narvaez, PhD
Darcia Narvaez is Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame. She uses an interdisciplinary approach to studying child development and human flourishing. Her recent books include Restoring the Kinship Worldview, and The Evolved Nest . Her recent short films are Breaking the Cycle, The Evolved Nest, and Reimagining Humanity. She is the co-founder of the Evolved Nest Initiative (EvolvedNest.org) and serves as president of KindredWorld.org.
In 2024 Darcia received the Presidential Citation Award from Division 24 of the American Psychological Association (APA). Established in 2019, the Presidential Citation Award honors a nationally or internationally recognized scholar who has made significant contributions to the field of psychology or to a body of interdisciplinary scholarship. Narvaez was nominated for the Presidential Citation Award based on her work that supports the flourishing of theoretical psychology in both a distinguished record of publication and teaching and the educational outreach programs and events offered to the general public through the Evolved Nest Initiative.The 2024 Presidential Citation is awarded directly from the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, Division 24, of the APA.
The 2024 award is the second time the APA has recognized Narvaez’s work. Her book, Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom, also won the APA’s 2015 William James Book Award. The Evolved Nest Initiative, ENI, is based on the interdisciplinary science research and insights found in this book.
A trilogy of films featuring the science of the evolved nest, narrated by Darcia, are: Breaking the Cycle, The Evolved Nest: Nature’s Way of Raising Children; and Reimagining Humanity. The films have been translated into German and Spanish, and Breaking the Cycle has additionally been translated into Turkish. All films are subtitled in 14 languages.
In 2022, Narvaez was elected a fellow to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the largest international body of professional scientists in the world and publisher of the prestigious journal Science. Narvaez was honored for her distinguished contributions illuminating typical and atypical development in terms of well-being, morality and sustainable wisdom.
In a 2020 analysis of top scientists, Narvaez emerged in the top 2% of scientists worldwide. Of the eight million scientists in the world, the analysis concerned those who had at least five articles published in scientific journals between 1996 and 2017 – over six million scientists. Individuals were ranked according to various criteria, including number of citations of their work.
In 2017, Narvaez’s book, Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom, was chosen for the Expanded Reason Award from among more than 360 total entries from 170 universities and 30 countries. Narvaez received the prize, including a substantial monetary award, at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in Vatican City on September 27, 2017. The book also received the William James Award from the American Psychological Association in 2015.