Wild Nature Heart

Excited to announce two courses this fall: Deep Belonging in the Great Turning and a new course: A Hoof in Each Direction: Cultivating Earth-Rooted Wholeness. See below for brief descriptions. Follow the links to full course information or drop me a line at ryan@wildnatureheart.com.

A 6-week experience for people hearing the call to cultivate their ecospirituality and ecosensuality, deepen their decolonial journey, and practice belonging to place and purpose as we intentionally meet this collective initiation of intersecting ecological/social crises and opportunity.

WHEN: October 14 – November 18 (ONLINE PROGRAM)
TIME: 10:00am-12:00pm PST | 6pm-7:30 GMT (London)
COST: $179 (Other Options: $139-$289)
REGISTER HERE

This is a 5-class series for people ready to take a deep dive into intentionally cultivating their own wholeness, exploring their own inner wilderness and eager to expand their toolbox of exploration.

WHEN: Wednesdays, November 9–December 14
TIME: 5pm-7pm PST
COST: EARLY BIRD-$125 if you register before Oct. 31
(Regular $150 starting Nov.1)

REGISTER HERE

AT THE TRAILHEAD

Posted on September 4, 2022 by Ryan Van Lenning

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The trailhead is such a magnificent moment, carrying its own species of energy. It is a threshold of sorts—the threshold into the unknown. A crossing from one world to another.

An excitement and curiosity runs the blood hot regardless of the weather. What beauties and mysteries does the trail hold? How will this rewild me, what aspects of myself will the mountain help me re-member, reclaim?

The threshold also marks our trepidations, our fears, for we know we will be changed by the trail, by the mountain—we will return a different person. With new gifts, new perspectives, yes, but also perhaps new scratches and bruises.

The trail may stretch us into a different shape.

Truth be told, it is a risk to set off into the unknown. Am I up for climbing this mountain? This new project? This Mystery? Is my body capable? Is my psyche rooted? Am I prepared? What about my old life, habits, patterns—which of those will the mountain kill off? They may be silly habits and patterns and ways of seeing, but they are MY cute and pathetic habits and patterns and ways of seeing. They are comfortable.

But you cross anyway, because you’re not going for just comfort, but for Life, your Whole Self, because everything up to this point has prepared you for the journey. You may not know what is around the next switchback, but you know you will greet it with all you have—you are on the right path. It might not be THEIR path, but it is YOURS.

The paradox is that you already aren’t the same person that is taking that first step. And yet there’s something about enacting the visceral visitation of each paw print along the path that gets that truth in you down in your bloods and bones.

So You step from the trailhead onto the trail, with dedicated feet and an eager heart.

WHAT WILD NATURE IS

Posted on September 2, 2022 by Ryan Van Lenning

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WILD NATURE HEART is:

A Geo-Mystical Cracking
A Hoof in Each Direction
A Bright Green Trust
A Spiraling Upward
Heartbroken and Whole
Vulnerable and Robust
A Tender and Savage Pulse
A Yes in the Darkness
A Threshold of Unrelenting Mystery
Bright and Slow Caress
A Strange Curiosities Tent at the Festival of Slow Surrendering
A Re-Membering
A Sacred Stillness
A Cairn of Holy Longing
A Whale Ear of Deep Listening
Ever-widening Circles
Deep Time Love
A Pollination Party
The Grand Metabolism
Holding the Holy Wholing
A Cunning Silence
Rainbow Wizardry
An Enchanted Experimentation

Honoring Our Love and Pain for the World Gathering

Posted on July 6, 2022 by Ryan Van Lenning

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“There is some strange intimacy between grief and aliveness,
some sacred exchange between what seems unbearable
and what is most exquisitely alive.” – Francis Weller

We will gather to Honor Our Love and Pain for the World. It will be part council circle where we share our truths about things on the tip of our hearts, part simple grief ritual, witnessing and being witnessed in grief and other energies together, lending our tears & laughter to the watershed; and part eco-art and ecosensual exploration, getting curious about earthy joy/pleasure to root our work/play in the world.

Date: July 24
Time: 10am-12pm
Where: Mad River (Baduwat River), Blue Lake
Meet at Mad River Hatchery Parking Lot

We are in a collective initiatory moment. The old forms are dying away, and the new is emerging simultaneously, though it may often feel like the new is not emerging fast enough and we feel overwhelmed by the state of things.

Because we love and care for the world, we feel grief and other emotions when we see the harm being done. Because we are NOT separate from nature and others, we cannot help but be impacted on many levels. We are often not able or willing to fully feel or express these emotions for a variety of reasons. The idea here is that by allowing the space to feel, to witness and be witnessed with these energies, we are honoring nature’s feedback loop and can become unstuck. .

By sharing grief and other emotions, and moving through them, we can step into new ways of seeing and reconnect to each other and nature, and thereby become even better stewards of the world and the work that needs to be done to heal. And by giving gifts of beauty, love and gratitude for all the more-than-human world has given to us, we renew and deepen our relationship with the world and each other.

This is a FREE simple earth-based gathering and everyone is welcome.

What to bring:
Just your self, Water and a snack. If you’d like, bring an item you’d like to temporary place on the centerpiece. Perhaps an item that symbolizes a loss or gratitude or something you are feeling about what is happening in the world and our relationship to Mother/Lover Earth.