Kinship Praxis is the embodied, regenerative application of Evolved Nest science and Kinship Worldview in everyday life, relationships, and systems. It bridges the Theory-Praxis Gap by translating developmental, neurobiological, and anthropological evidence—along with Indigenous precepts of relational kinship—into trauma-informed, heart-led actions that nurture secure attachment, nervous system co-regulation, and nested wellbeing for individuals, families, communities, and the living Earth.
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Core Features of Kinship Praxis (for Nesting Ambassadors)
- Trauma-Informed and Regenerative: Practices prioritize safety, choice, consent, and co-regulation first (e.g., through worldview literacy, nature connection, restorative healing, and play), while repairing ruptures and building resilience without re-traumatization.
- Relational and Multi-Entity: Actions honor kinship with humans and non-humans—through deep listening, ceremony, positive touch, responsive caregiving, and ecological stewardship—fostering partnership societies rather than domination.
- Practical and Scalable: It manifests in concrete tools, curricula, community applications, policy advocacy, and train-the-trainer models that ambassadors adapt locally, test in the field, and share through communities of practice.
- Heart-Led and Emergent: Guided by the Nested Kinship Pathway, it integrates sensing, presencing, letting go/letting come, and co-creating nurturance ecosystems that align personal healing with collective worldview shifts and systems decolonization.
In the Nesting Ambassador Program, Kinship Praxis is the active, participatory “doing” that closes the gap: ambassadors live, model, teach, and iterate these practices to grow decentralized coalitions of parents, educators, wellness professionals, and cultural creatives—helping birth cultures where the Evolved Nest is the norm and kinship is the guiding ethic. It turns science and ancient wisdom into lived, measurable regenerative change.
The term Kinship Praxis was created by Lisa Reagan, who originally studied, explored, and created Kindred Activism with the Kindred Fellowship Program. KFP worked with global college students for a two year period to gather insights into the practical possibilities of integrating Evovled Nest science into a new form of social and cultural activism.
Also see Nested Kinship, Kinship Worldview, Evolved Nest.
How the Kindred Activism Shaped the Vision and Ground for Kinship Praxis
The Kindred Fellowship Program (KFP), launched by Kindred World in 2021, was a completed summer social-justice education fellowship for college students (undergraduate and graduate) that explored “Kindred Activism”—a theory and practice of activism that centers childhood (and the Evolved Nest) as the root of social (in)justice and sovereignty. It ran primarily in 2021 and 2022 that ended after the COVID quarantine period. KFP served as a practical laboratory whose insights directly informed the later development of Kinship Praxis.
What the Program Was
KFP’s mission was to guide fellows on an innovative educational journey examining the systemic roots of social injustice in childhood through kindred activism: activism that is authentic, reflexive/relational, and imaginative, rather than the “hamster-wheel” style of conventional activism. It treated childhood experiences of the Evolved Nest (or its absence) as the foundational site where patterns of domination/oppression or cooperative companionship first form. Fellows worked with Kindred thought-leaders to connect inner work (personal rootedness, voice, relational intelligence) with outer action and to design their own community-engagement plans.
Kindred World’s nonprofit resources that emerged just prior to KFP and supported the program were the Evolved Nest website and its Learning Center (2019) and the Worldview Chart by Four Arrows, featured in his book The Red Road, and published by Kindred in 2020. The Evolved Nest Learning Center enabled a clearer understanding of Darcia Narvaez’s holistic, transdisciplinary science and its nine components. The Worldview Literacy Chart also enabled the students to begin to work with worldview with greater clarity. Eventually, the Evolved Nest and Kinship Worldview were integrated into Nested Kinship for teaching purposes in the Nesting Ambassador program.
Key elements included:
- Summer sessions (roughly mid-June to end of July), with weekly process meetings and seminars.
- An “Ecology of the Child” framing that linked inner and outer activism.
- Instruction from an international lineup of presenters, including Darcia Narvaez, PhD (Evolved Nest science), Four Arrows (Kinship Worldview), Robin Grille, Teresa Graham Brett, JD, Pam Leo, Stephanie Mines, PhD, Dieudonné Allo, Suzanne Zeedyk, and others. Some prior fellows returned as contributors in later years.
- Culminating showcase presentations in which fellows shared insights and action plans integrating Kindred Activism.
- Mentorship from Kindred’s network and emphasis on lifelong, sustainable practice rather than one-off campaigns.
The inaugural 2021 cohort (small, highly selected) and the 2022 cohort (six fellows chosen from over 40 applications) participated. The program was founded and facilitated by Lisa Reagan, with graduate assistants for support in program operations. The program was featured in contexts such as Riane Eisler’s Center for Partnership Studies and Rutgers’ Childism Institute.
While KFP is a completed project, video presentations (fellows and instructors) remain available on the organization’s YouTube channel. It is characterized as a “social lab experiment” whose purpose was to gather practical insights into integrating Evolved Nest science and worldview literacy into a new form of cultural and social activism.
How It Was the Forerunner to Kinship Praxis
Kindred Activism, as developed and tested in KFP, was the direct precursor to what is now understood as Kinship Praxis. The term was created by Lisa Reagan, who originally studied, explored, and created Kindred Activism with the Kindred Fellowship Program. KFP worked with global college students for a three year period to gather insights into the practical possibilities of integrating Evolved Nest science into a new form of social and cultural activism.”
In other words:
- KFP provided the experiential ground for testing what it means to center Evolved Nest science (the developmental, neurobiological, and anthropological baselines for human thriving) inside activism.
- The fellowship focused on authentic, relational, and imaginative action that treats childhood experience and worldview as leverage points for lasting cultural change (rather than treating symptoms or waiting for external systems to shift).
- Those explorations matured into Kinship Praxis: the embodied, regenerative, trauma-informed application of Evolved Nest science together with Kinship Worldview (Indigenous relational precepts) in everyday life, relationships, communities, and systems.
Kinship Praxis is now the active “doing” layer of Nested Kinship (Kindred World’s unifying term for Evolved Nest science + Kinship Worldview). It prioritizes safety, co-regulation, choice, and relational multi-entity kinship first; it is heart-led and practical; and it is scaled through the Nesting Ambassador Program, where ambassadors live, model, teach, and iterate the practices to close the theory-praxis gap and grow decentralized coalitions. The KFP’s student-centered laboratory work on Kindred Activism supplied the early insights and proof-of-concept that this integrated approach could be taught, practiced, and adapted for cultural transformation.
In short, the now-complete Kindred Fellowship Program was Kindred World’s intentional social laboratory for reimagining activism through the lens of childhood and Evolved Nest science. Its three years of cohorts, instruction, and community projects generated the practical understandings that evolved into the broader, more fully articulated framework of Kinship Praxis now central to the Nesting Ambassador Program and Nested Kinship work.
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