Wild Nature Heart
Journeys Into Reconnection
Deep Belonging to the World
Belonging. Shedding and Letting go. Exploring roots. Community. Gratitude. Coming home to ourselves. Lightness. Pollination. Transition. Poison into medicine. Flow.
These are just some of the themes that emerged in yesterday’s nourishing, grounding, and connecting Deep Belonging to the World gathering in the redwoods. Through sense walking, council circle, & nature art, we re-connecting with the wisdom of our bodies, each other, and wild nature.
Here’s a haiku that Diane, a participant wrote after the Sense Walk:
With ear to the tree
my fingers scratching lightly
making tree music
Big Thanks to all the participants and to my co-guide for the day, Wellness Coach and nature artist, Christine Broz (@savornourishwellness).
BIG ENOUGH TO HOLD IT ALL
This is a shimmering Wild Nature Heart. We met yesterday on a walk at the holy feet of Mount Tuyshtak (So-called Diablo in the language of colonizers). But the Ohlone Chochenyo called it Tuyshtak, meaning at the dawn of time.
This wild nature heart is for Paradise burning. This is for the I-can’t-take-these-damn-shootings-and-lies-and-upheaval-and-callousness anymore. This is for the river of humanity walking towards a better life and their wounded feet, their sore hearts, their wild thriving hearts.
This is for the wounds of a culture that breeds wounded people who morph into distorted Selves who find the only way out is through violence, towards others and themselves.
This is for our deep grief—you know the one, the one we don’t talk about, that tidal wave just behind our smiles, threatening to overtake our shores, for knowing we can’t live like this anymore, yet not seeing the future shore where we live in abundance, reciprocity, vibrancy, care, wholeness—but that we feel.
Yes, we feel it in our ancient bones, our reddest blood, our wettest well, our deepest breath, our original pulsating love at the dawn of time.
This is for taking our first breath after coma.
This is for the crack that lets the light in, for trusting our wild heart bigness, for saying YES, we will feel the grief, we will mourn, because our wild nature hearts are in love with the world, and they are big enough to hold it all.
Our Wild Nature Heart Stories
November is National Novel Writing Month and we really believe what the organization says: the world needs your story!
Everyone has a story to tell—each unlike anyone else’s story. Our stories have shaped the people we are, who we are becoming, and helped shape the values we stand for. One of the values we believe in most firmly at Wild Nature Heart is that the world needs more authentic adults with the courage to tell their own origin stories–their own wild nature heart story!–in service to the greater conversation.
And so, in the spirit of council circle, and for the love of the juicy particularities of individual stories and the universal mythos they are held in, we are stepping forward with a writing challenge for each other and for you this month. We asked each other: do you dare to show up on the page with the truth of your own story?
And we answered, “Yes!”.
So here’s what’s happening: We each (@ryanreturntotheearth & @katie.baptist.1) signed up for @nanowrimo, with the aim to complete rough drafts of the memoirs we’ve been meaning to write for a long time. In many ways these are the back stories for the work we do at Wild Nature Heart, and why we care about it so much.
Throughout November we will do our best to each post on our Instagram and Facebook feeds our word counts, plus a juicy phrase or two capturing our latest writing session. You won’t see the stories in their entirety until they’re ready, but we will be offering these little glimpses as a way to include you in our process, so you know more about who we are, and we hope that by December 1st you will be begging to read more!
If you are also writing something, we’d love to hear about it! Tell us about what you’re writing in the comment sections of our posts, or share your own daily word count, Using the hashtag #mywildnatureheartstory. The more of us who have the courage to stand up & tell our wild nature heart stories, the more truth and courage there will be in the world!
Stay tuned! We’ll each post individually about the memoirs we are setting out to write. We are looking forward to sharing this journey into vulnerability & self-discovery with you!
Thank you,
Ryan and Katie
Trust and Self-Ceremony On the Land
During my time along the River last week, I (Ryan) re-read parts of Bill Plotkin’s Wild Mind (essential reading in my opinion, along with Nature & the Human Soul!). In it he describes a nature-based map of the human Self/Psyche, informed by & further developing the Four Shields/Directions system used by School Lost Borders. It is a tool to better understand the different aspects of our full selves. (A summary of the system/map coming soon in a post)
In part following ideas in the book about advanced healing for sub-personalities, I conducted a self-ceremony on the land. I wanted to share a little about it, as we all have our versions of Inner Loyal Soldiers, & this is something we can all do for ourselves. It is also something we suggest and/or guide in our deeper Wild Nature Heart programs, like Wilderness Vision Quest.
I created a colored Stone & Pampas Grass Mandala beside the river & did a ritual dialogue with my Loyal Soldiers, Inner Critic & Wounded Child. Different rocks represented different sub-personalities. (I can’t help noticing that ‘pampas’ is close to ‘pompos’ which means Conductor/Guide in Greek. Psychopomp is the Guide to the Soul in the underworld)
It kinda blew my mind (or rather, enlarged my psyche). Long story short, I thanked them for their service, loved them, then re-commissioned and enlisted them for my greater purpose. One thing about these energies in us, is that can’t simply be banished. But we can approach them with the trust and love of our bigger selves and have a new relation to them. Because of their long-time devotion, hyper-vigilance, & vitality (which previously could keep me small), why not point them in the right direction? Now their prodigious powers could assist in becoming bigger, more balanced, more aligned.
I was also surprised to discover that there was a component of Shame that existed as part of a sub-personality. Whenever my friends talk about their experience of Shame, I always denied having that emotion. So it lived in my Shadow—in coming to light I was able to transform, then re-channel the energy. The shame had to do with my sensitivity, or rather the message from others from early on in my childhood over my ‘over-senstivity”. However, I know that sensitivity to my inner system and outer systems (often mirroring each other) is one of my super-powers, without which I could not do the work that I do.
Historically, I have had an overblown West Shield, the Muse/Beloved, & under-developed other shields. Now, after a lot of self work, while West is still easy access for me, I am (I think!) much more balanced in each directions/facets, and live in the space of Big Trust.
It is part of my work to continue deepening and balancing each facet of my psyche, and help others do the same. I invite you to explore Bill Plotkin’s soulwork, and experiment with dialogue with the parts of the psyche that used to serve you as a child, but perhaps make you small or less vibrant now. How can they be re-visited and re-purposed, so that you can live your most fulfilling and authentic life, and give your gifts back to the world?
Free Online Ecotherapy Conference: Empowering Visions, Diverse Voices, and Practical Tools
Dear Wild Nature Hearts,
JOIN ME, JOANNA MACY and 12+ diverse, inspirational leaders in the FIRST EVER ONLINE ECOTHERAPY CONFERENCE. Learn practical tools and inspirational concepts to catalyze your next steps in nature-connected work!
In a culture that seems intent on separating us from nature and our truest selves, we all need supportive community to continue our work of nurturing relationships with nature.
I (Ryan) have long had a personal and deep relationship with wild nature, but it was only a couple years ago that I found that I was being called to share that sacredness and the ways in which it can create space for healing and growing into our biggest selves.
Before Katie and I co-founded Wild Nature Heart last year, I began my first experiments in bringing people together to re-connect to each other, to wild nature, and to our deepest selves, most often in the redwoods and creeks in what I call the Nearby Faraway, just on the edge of the town. I saw myself as being a co-guide with nature, on the threshold between the city and the wild, and finding that people were not merely wanting that, but needing it, as a balm for their overwhelmed and distracted lives. Not merely as some place they could go to, but as a more-than-human community, with whom they are related, and to whom they belonged. Here they could slow down, they could listen to their bodies and inner voice, with nature as ally.
Since then, we both have found our tribe and a whole field of practitioners doing various amazing and important nature-based projects across the world. Now we have colleagues, clients, and an earth-loving community which has helped us continue to live and teach from a deep place of connectedness to the Earth and to experiment with soulful and earthy offerings.
But we know how challenging it can sometimes be to integrate your love of nature into your life and profession. And we also know how deeply satisfying it is, and how crucial it is for the survival of humans and more-than-humans to shift the mainstream culture to a nature-honoring one.
That’s why I was so excited when Ariana Candell, founder of The Earthbody Institute and Ecotherapy Certificate trainer, invited me to be an expert in her Online Ecotherapy Conference: Vibrant Branches: Empowering Visions, Diverse Voices and Practical Tools for Reconnecting with the Earth and Ourselves on October 27.
I was so glad to join two extraordinary and earthy practitioners (Adriel McCluer and Beverly Ingram) on our panel and we were able to talk about the world we envision and approaches to re-connecting. I’m also thrilled about the rest of the stellar and diverse line-up, including earth elder Joanna Macy and The Work That Reconnects, Pinar Sinopolous-Lloyd of Queer Nature, and Victor Lee Lewis of the Radical Resilience Institute. I will be inspired and learning a lot from them, as I think you will too!
Throughout the 12+ dynamic video interviews you will learn practical tools and inspirational concepts from diverse leaders in the field such as:
- Joanna Macy’s “Deep Time” concepts of calling upon the powerful wisdom of the ancestors and future beings to support you in these challenging times.
- Why it is crucial for Ecotherapists to shift the paradigm from the mindset of using the natural world for healing, to one reciprocity and respect.
- How to include people of color and marginalized communities in nature connection work.
- Case studies and interventions from seasoned ecotherapy practitioners about how to work with trauma, refugees, veterans, and inner city children, to name a few.
- How to grow your nature-connected business organically from seeds, to roots, to fruit with the “Natural Business Cycle”.
Join me and 12+ inspirational leaders who can help you to take the next steps towards your nature-connected work in the world and feel part of an earth-honoring community that is making a difference on our planet. I hope you’ll join us! Reserve your free spot.
In earth community, autumn blessings, and all the best wild mysteries,
Ryan and Katie
All Donations Go to Support Wild Nature Heart’s Scholarship Fund
