Ina Gjikondi

Ecocentric awareness — a mode of consciousness in which the human ceases to be the center of experience and the self is felt as a participant in a living, more-than-human world — is widely invoked in ecological and pedagogical theory, yet its lived structure remains largely undescribed. This study asks what it is like to undergo the shift from anthropocentric to ecocentric awareness, and how consciousness reorganizes as that shift occurs. The inquiry was conducted within a foundational leadership-coaching program through a blended first-person method. Reflective Lifeworld Research (Dahlberg et al., 2008), with its disciplined bridling of pre-understanding, rendered the essential meaning structure of the phenomenon across participants; micro-phenomenology–informed evocation interviewing (Petitmengin et al., 2019) returned participants to singular lived moments to unfold the pre-reflective, moment-to-moment structure of the shift — its "how" rather than only its "what." The two scales — lifeworld horizon and experiential grain — were combined deliberately: the first discloses what ecocentric consciousness means, the second how it arises. Thirteen coach-learners (aged 35–67) from two graduating cohorts each completed two in-depth interviews. The essence of ecocentric awareness was articulated through four interrelated constituents: the evolution of the human / non-human relationship; the dynamics of the relational space; the non-human encounter as a guide for becoming an observer of one's own experience; and making sense of ecocentrism as a way of being. Across these, awareness decentered from the human through embodied, multisensory perception, a redistribution of attention toward the more-than-human, and the heart as a center of knowing — yielding a felt sense of interconnectedness, reciprocity, and aliveness. These findings are consolidated as an Eco-Centered Learning Model and eight ecopedagogical characteristics naming the conditions under which the shift emerges: (1) relational and embodied ontologies; (2) an onto-ethico-epistemological bricolage of ways of knowing; (3) ecocentrism as the ontological ground of interconnectedness with the Earth; (4) ethical, reciprocal relationship with nature; (5) the entangled body and heart as a site of knowing; (6) co-creation and dialogue as transformation; (7) recognition of non-human agency as a gateway to connection; and (8) contemplation, curiosity, and reflection that deepen ecological awareness. The study contributes a replicable two-scale first-person method for investigating modes of awareness, and a worked phenomenal map of ecocentric consciousness — one in which decentering the human is not an abstraction but a describable reorganization of perception, attention, and selfhood, with implications for both consciousness studies and the pedagogy of perception.

Dr. Ina Gjikondi, Ed.D., is Director of Learning Innovation and Strategic Growth at the George Washington University Center for Excellence in Public Leadership and founder of the One Humanity Lab. A coach educator, scholar, and poet, she investigates the inner life and consciousness of leadership through phenomenology, contemplative practice, and first-person methods. She earned her Doctor of Education from the George Washington University (2025); her dissertation drew on Reflective Lifeworld Research and micro-phenomenology to study ecocentric awareness, and she is a 2023 MSR Fetzer Scholar (Academy of Management's Management, Spirituality and Religion Division). Among the contributions of her nearly two decades of learning, teaching, and leadership at GW are the white paper Remembering Wholeness (2026), an expansion of her dissertation; a co-authored chapter on the Knowledge Base of Coaching in Coaching Education: Foundations of Excellence (Fielding University Press); a forthcoming Emerald Publishing chapter on Quantum chaRacter; a webinar panel on Noetic Leadership at the Institute of Noetic Sciences; Leading From Global Consciousness and Wisdom at the International Leadership Association; connectedness-based practice at the International Transformative Learning Conference; and the keynote Elevating Consciousness in the Nation's Capital.