The Short Story: The Power of the Pause

In the world of climate activism, urgency is everything. The work is constant, the stakes are high, and the instinct is always to push forward.

Dekila Chungyalpa, the 4W Initiative’s director of faith, ecology, and resilience at UW–Madison, understands that instinct well. Raised among Tibetan Buddhist nuns in the Himalayas, she grew up deeply connected to nature. But when she moved to the United States as a teenager and began training as a scientist, she quickly learned what didn’t fit in scientific spaces. “If I wanted to be taken seriously as a scientist and as a professional, I could not talk about spirituality,” she says. “I could not talk about emotions.”

Early in her conservation career, that disconnect caught up with her. While working in the field in the Greater Mekong region of Southeast Asia, she found herself overwhelmed by what is now called eco-anxiety and climate distress. “At the time, none of those terms had been coined,” she says. “I just knew I was grieving.”

She noticed she wasn’t the only one. Many of her peers were struggling in similar ways, but few talked about it. Ignoring those feelings didn’t make the work easier or more efficient. In fact, it had the opposite effect.

Where many may have turned away from activism, Chungyalpa changed how she engaged with it. She returned to the meditation practices of her childhood, began having conversations with faith leaders and Indigenous knowledge keepers, and looked for ways to sustain the humans behind the work. That shift now shapes her leadership of the Loka Initiative, where science, spirituality, and community knowledge come together to support faith-based and Indigenous climate and environmental action. 

Her work challenges the idea that emotion and spirituality don’t belong in academic spaces. Instead, she points to the cost of that separation. “We are taught to disconnect ourselves from the thing we love most, which is our connection to nature,” she says. “But that ends up harming us because it’s our greatest source of resilience.” 

Making space for those feelings is now part of the Loka process. In classrooms, workshops, and programs around the world, Chungyalpa encourages people working on climate issues to do something that can feel counterintuitive: pause. She often begins by asking people how they’re feeling, making space for their answers, and letting them see they’re not alone. “It’s really important to remember that we’re part of a community that’s experiencing this.”

In a field driven by urgency, Chungyalpa’s message is a quiet counterpoint. Slowing down doesn’t mean stepping away from the work or ignoring what’s at risk. It’s a way of staying present long enough to keep going.