Co-Constituted Mandala-Making in Nature: A Trauma-Sensitive Field Protocol for Investigating Attention, Regulation, and Relational Orientation Toward Place

Authors

• Merve Kurt, University of DundeeFollow

Abstract

This article presents a theoretically grounded field protocol for mandala-making in natural settings using only already-fallen materials and intentional dissolution. The mandala is treated as an anthropogenic cultural form whose structural features, including radial organisation around a centre, bounded containment, and provisional totality, are shown to be analytically consequential for the process-level shifts the protocol seeks to foreground. Drawing on posthumanism, new materialism, Buddhist psychology, and ecopsychology, the article conceptualises this process as co-constituted mandala-making, a descriptive term for a field in which human attention and choice operate alongside material and ecological constraints and affordances, without attributing volition to nonhuman elements. Four process-level shifts available for empirical investigation are identified, namely attentional humility, sensory and affective regulation, tolerance of contingency, and relational orientation toward place. Buddhist psychological concepts, specifically sati (mindful attention), anicca (impermanence), and anattā (selfing-as-process), provide phenomenological vocabulary for these shifts, while ecopsychology locates them within embodied contact with place. The protocol operationalises these commitments through eight stages, from thresholding and attunement through non-extractive gathering, circle-setting, co-constituted arrangement, witnessing, dissolution, and integration. Its design is trauma-sensitive, access-oriented, and guided by minimal-impact ethical principles. Proportionate mixed-method evaluation strategies are proposed, with explicit mapping between the four process-level shifts and corresponding measurement approaches. The article does not presume ecological or therapeutic benefit but offers an empirically examinable framework for investigating how situated contact with place may support the process-level shifts identified.

Recommended Citation

Kurt, Merve (2026) "Co-Constituted Mandala-Making in Nature: A Trauma-Sensitive Field Protocol for Investigating Attention, Regulation, and Relational Orientation Toward Place," The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE): Vol. 12: Iss. 1, Article 5.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/ije/vol12/iss1/5