Wild Nature Heart
Walking Together On An Ecospiritual Liberatory Journey
WALKING EACH OTHER HOME
I love that line, “We’re all just walking each other home,” by Ram Dass & Paul Gorman in their book How Can I Help.
But what does it mean? I think in part it means we are here to help each other live into our wholeness and deep belonging.
That we all have some feeling of separation, and anxiety around not knowing what the #€^¥! we are doing, that we yearn for aliveness, for being challenged to be our best selves, for being seen for who we are, and for being accepted for that, the good, bad, ugly, and yes, the beautiful. And that when we offer a gentle heart and big ears to one another, we are walking one another home.
What does it mean to you?
EMBODYING YOUR SOUL GIFTS
“Having uncovered your soul image or story, you long to embody your soul in a way that engenders genuine and intimate communion between people, the land, the other-than-human beings. This is the way you’ll participate in the unfolding of the world’s soul. you know the world cannot flower into its full potential without each person, including you, playing the part each was born to play.” —Bill Plotkin
Plotkin’s work is an important tool in the Wild Nature Heart toolbox. The nature-based map of the psyche, the 8 stages of psycho-spiritual development (Wheel of Life), and a variety of soul-craft exercises are delightful & useful for excavating our unique treasures/soul gifts, leaning into our growing edge, & anchoring how we BELONG to the greater story.
Where are you at on your psych-spiritual journey? I locate myself as having been in the Apprentice at the Wellspring stage since I made a huge transition (Initiation) in my life in almost all ways two years ago. I became an ecotherapist, crossed the threshold in a Wilderness rite-of-passage. apprenticed myself to the land, to the craft of poetry, to deep listening, and to bringing people into wild nature to Re-Wild and reconnect to themselves. After founding Wild Nature Heart, and offering a variety of reconnection programs, after publishing two books of earth poetry (and material for several other books), after living intimately with Nature for two years, after Wilderness First Responder Training, I now recognize I have passed into the Artisan in the Wild Orchard stage, which is demanding something more and bigger.
This is the stage when we step more fully into our power by developing new cultural delivery systems to share the essence of our gift. It is the great Giveaway as art form.
That is why I find myself up-leveling my work & expanding Wild Nature Heart’s offerings & network, with a focus on earth-rooted teaching, 1-on-1 Mentoring, and Inner/Outer Wilderness Guiding—All with a goal of becoming more fully who we are, acting from wholeness, and embodying our soul gifts in the world.
This summer we are launching Wild Nature Heart Academy’s first class with a cohort of 8 people (see previous post), and the Say Yes to Your Wild Nature Heart Wilderness Backpacking Journey, both in August. If this work speaks to you, drop us a line, ryan@wildnatureheart.com.
DEPART FOR THE GRAND ADVENTURE
Six years ago was the first day of my 10-week wilderness trek. The start of walking alone nearly 500 miles through the Sierra mountain range, carrying everything I needed on my back. It remains one of the most thrilling, grueling, and rewarding experiences of my life. I had 1 bowl and 1 spoon, a couple changes of clothes, no soap, no shower, no keys, no inbox for the entire summer. I formed a deep relationship with mountains and rivers, and as importantly, with my self. I became familiar with my own inner terrain.
It is a life-long lesson and reminder to start that grand adventure, whether that’s external or internal, or that big project or new direction your voices within have been whispering (or shouting!) about. For me, it’s the things we don’t do that we end up regretting.
From my journal entry, May 2013: “At last I depart for the grand adventure. I love that feeling of getting on a train for a new chapter, the motion, the unknown, the novel sites and smells, the anticipation of adventure. Life.
At 10,000 ft. I’m sitting on a marbled granite boulder atop a ridge separating three emerald lakes. All I hear is water flowing and trickling and birds chirping. Marmots play in the distance. It is Hot & sunny, yet snow rests on either side. On bouldering as a metaphor: sometimes your path is blocked…you only have to move over a little bit for a clear path through to appear. Sometimes the way up is the way down, and vice versa.”
(Real photo from the trip!)
🌱WILD NATURE HEART ACADEMY🦉
Really excited about what’s emerging! We’re launching Wild Nature Heart Academy.
It’s still early, but I couldn’t wait to announce it. In a couple months I will be Inviting JUST 8-10 PEOPLE to join the first edition of Wild Nature Heart Academy’s introductory online course: RECLAIMING YOUR WILD NATURE HEART. This is the online version of the on-the-land version of the course that I will host in Humboldt County.
The interactive course is for people who are on the path of rewilding and cultivating a deeper belonging to place, purpose, and people. For those transitioning to a deeper earth-centered and sensual life and those unfurling a meaningful livelihood sharing your unique gifts that honors our earth home and our wholeness as people. And for those exploring their inner wilderness and eager to expand their toolbox of exploration, and wanting to share with others.
Participants will not only have a transformative, nourishing, and inspiring experience, but will also be in the first cohort who will help shape the Wild Nature Heart Academy. It is also an opportunity to be part of the growing edge of the ever-expanding rewilding and nature-connection/ecotherapy movements.
More soon on details as the curriculum is developed, but for a glimpse now: there will be 8 modules (on topics ranging from Deep Belonging, Deep Listening, and Stepping into Your Power, to Joanna Macy and The Work That Reconnects, the 4 Shields of Human Nature, and The Way Of Council), weekly video meetups, Deep nature and wild soul connection Practices and activities, guest teachers, 1-on-1 earth-rooted mentoring/inner wilderness guiding sessions, Assistance designing on-the-land experiences and creating a self-ceremony, poetry, and council circle with peers doing similar work and learning.
If this sounds like you, put a pin in it or DM me (ryanvanlenning@gmail.com) with your interest. More soon! 🤠
-Ryan
🌱Spring Emergence and The Great Turning
Dear Wild Nature Hearts
With migrating ducks and butterflies flitting about, the scent of cherry blossoms and lilac in the air, and brighter days, spring has Wild Nature Heart saying “Yes!” to the new season.
Quite a few new and vibrant leaves are emerging from Wild Nature Heart’s rested winter soil/soul, including developing more practical skills workshops (foraging, wild-crafting, backpacking, etc), beginning to grow a team to include collaborators with different skills and passions, weaving ecological/social justice values and indigenous struggles into programs, and launching a Wild Nature Heart school on Teachable.
But among the biggest news is that Katie Baptist, co-founder of Wild Nature Heart, is stepping down from her role as co-guide. It is with love and honoring her role in co-creating this business that we say goodbye and welcome her as one of Wild Nature Heart’s key cheerleaders. While we’ll miss her, it has opened up a re-imagining of what Wild Nature Heart is and what it can be. (See her heartfelt letter below.)
Wild Nature Heart is about re-connecting and living into our full selves so we can be of service in this time of transition. If we’re paying attention, the signals that we are in the midst of a Great Turning are abundant. We know we are facing ecological and cultural challenges of almost incomprehensible magnitude. But I don’t need to catalog what we are facing here, but rather point out that one way to look at breakdown is as a type of ‘positive disintegration’. That the the flip side of breakdown of the old is the build up of the new. Like the pupa stage of a butterfly, the entire body must disintegrate, before the imaginal buds form and the new creature (psyche/soul/butterfly/culture) emerges.
So also, if we’re paying attention, we can’t help but notice the phenomenal things taking place to re-connect us to the earth and to each other. Think Greta Thunberg, the climate prodigy who helped launch and unite youth and their followers (the adults) across Europe (and deserves a Nobel Peace Prize). Think Extinction Rebellion in the UK, bringing decisive direct action to the streets to demand a new way. Think the Sunrise Movement and the New Green Deal in the United States, pushing for a new energy economy.
Think the return of species to native habitat and repatriation of land to indigenous people. In my neck of the woods (Humboldt County), several wonderful things have warmed my heart and signal a different way of relating: the return of Tuluwat (Indian) Island to the Wiyot tribe by the City of Eureka, the pending return of the condor to traditional Yurok territory in northwest California, and the removal (and slated removal) of several dams on the Eel and Klamath Rivers. These types of renewals are happening across the globe, though they don’t get the ink and airtime they deserve.
Think earth elder and teacher Joanna Macy, who marked her own great turning this week by celebrating her 90th birthday this week (See below). And think all the ‘regular’ (read: extraordinary) people stepping into their power, lending their gifts, passion, and love to the Great Turning.
The paths to re-belonging and recovery are here. We and the earth need all of us to live our most whole and alive selves during this time.
One of the joys of this work is having the privilege to hold the space for people to encounter their own soul growth and unfurling in and with wild nature. When done with heart-centered intention and presence, the most magical things happen: we start hearing and honoring our true voices more clearly, our sometimes fragmented selves start to align in powerful ways, healing and re-connection naturally unfolds, and our inherent creative impulses emerge. I feel deeply the sacred responsibility of holding space for this magic to happen and am honored to be able to witness and mirror the transformations and learnings. I am excited to be able to offer many opportunities in the coming months, ranging from 1-on-1 Inner Wilderness Coaching and custom backpacking trips to workshops on wild writing, foraging, council circle, and deep belonging. See a bit more about each below and I hope to explore with you soon!
Read the rest of the newsletter here:
https://mailchi.mp/ac2a23b451d1/spring-emergence-the-great-turning?e=%5BUNIQID%5D
In all the best and wild mysteries,
Ryan
Director of Creative Earthiness
The Great Turning – Joanna is 90
Yesterday earth elder and teacher Joanna Macy turns 90.
I’ve learned a lot of things from Joanna’s teaching, courage, transparency, and passion, but among them are 1)the absolute necessity of acknowledging the difficult feelings, the sadness and anger—now sometimes called eco-grief—as essential feedback of Earth/Gaia itself, and 2)How fortunate we are to be alive right now, to experience this disruption, this awkward initiation of humanity into the next way of being and relating, and to lend our talents and our broad shoulders to the wheel of the Great Turning.
Happy birthday and Thank you Joanna!! And thank you all who are living love over fear, sharing your gifts and your hearts for the healing of us all!!
Deep Nourishment Gathering
Presence. Flow. Playfulness. Art Therapy. Holding the messiness. Music. Deep Listening. Brightness and vibrancy. Inner wilderness guiding.
These were a few of the gifts people committed to bring back to their community, planted as soul seeds in our council circle at our Deep Nourishment Gathering (co-led with Ariana Candell of The EarthBody Institute) among the redwoods yesterday.
After a relational protocol acknowledging the land and watershed that raised us, its original indigenous people, and a movement activity that had us embodying everything from the wind that teaches flow and black phoebes to resilient green grass and California poppies, we discussed the concept of cultivating Belonging.
Knowing that belonging to our gifts/powers/purpose is deeply fulfilling only when shared, which in turn cultivates belonging to community—we each articulated what we will be sharing more of in this new spring season.
Here’s a poem that emerged from one of the participants:
I’m the tree that feeds the folks
The wind that teaches flow
I’m the birdsong singing out
to let the people know
I’m the open meadow holding
space for all to spring
I’m bright and poppies growing
and every wild thing
Mirroring
Some are mirages,
some are mirrors,
and some are red-hot miracles
awaiting the eye of your heart.
Over the past year several people have reflected back to me that I (Ryan) have been a powerful mirror for them, through my presence & words. Enough times that it has made me really look in the mirror so to speak, to really claim it as one of my superpowers.
When I listen, I listen with all my ears—it’s like all my pores open up to absorb the information I am receiving, not just from words, but the body, symbols, & energies that are probably impossible to articulate into words. I attempt to listen deeply w/ mind, heart, soul, & body.
I take these skills into my work as a inner wilderness guide & poet. When I hold space for someone in 1-on-1 mentoring or in council circle, I have the best interest of the psyche/soul’s journey in mind. At times I see-feel someone’s sacred wound shining like a lighthouse on the shore. At other times I see-feel someone’s gifts in the form of an image or phrase.
When I am blessed enough to have poetry emerge through the soil of my psyche, it often can be like a dream, potent in expressing images & communicating messages exactly needed for the moment, whether for myself, another person, a group, or culture.
Recently, I had someone with whom I spent only three hours with tell me that a poem I wrote shortly thereafter struck to her core, & the poem saw her in ways and named things that no one else had. It helped in some way that even I don’t completely intellectually understand for her to continue deepening her soul journey.
I am of course still learning to listen. I am not always great—when I am not grounded, I am scattered. When I am not taking care of my own needs, I get hooked by my own stuff & can’t bring robust presence to others. But I trust & accept & am grateful for all the wild mysteries.
Indeed, I believe we are all mirrors for each other, & that it is necessary for our growing into wholeness. Of course we are also masters of projection, casting our own image onto others. But as clear mirrors, it helps us see ourselves, helping us reclaim abandoned parts. So here’s to claiming our powers & to really seeing each other!
Greet Yourself Arriving At Your Own Door
“The day will come when, with elation, you will greet yourself arriving at your own door….”
These words from the poem ‘Love After Love’ by Derek Walcott beautifully describe for me (Katie) that moment when we choose to stand fully in our own life, willing to offer the gifts that we are perfectly designed to give, with tender love for self and all that is.
I have this kid inside of me who wants to sing, climb trees, and play dress up. I believe that as adults it is critical that preserve that childlike innocence and play. Being an authentic adult is also about being willing to put on the mantle of leadership and share what you know. In that spirit then, I want to make sure that all our followers know about the Wilderness Rite-of-Passage program I’ll be co-guiding with Ryan (@ryanreturntotheearth) from June 10-20 in the Eldorado Forest, California.
If you’ve been following Wild Nature Heart and thinking, maybe-I’ll-be-ready-after…(whatever YOUR thing is), I want to tell you this—Life changes very quickly. I will show up as your guide with all my heart and soul, and do my level best to give you all I have to give. I’ll teach you what I know about embracing wholeness & showing up to your life & to the world with all the love you’ve got. I will hold space for you, sit with you in circle, listen to your story w/ the ears of my body, heart, mind, & intuition. I’ll tell you the absolute truth about what I see when I look into your eyes and gather up the shining pieces of your story.
I’m not going to try to talk anyone into going on a wilderness rite of passage program. I don’t know anything about where you are in your life journey or whether this is the time for you. What I can tell you is that wilderness rite-of-passage has been transformative in my life and believe that our culture is in dire need of ways to initiate ourselves and reconnect and live into our most authentic selves.
Throughout February, I’ll be talking to people who think a wilderness rite-of-passage program might be right for them, answering any questions that I can, listening your soul story, and taking full or partial payments to hold spots. If you think you might be someone who is meant to be on this program, I’d love to talk to you further—DM me at passageways@sbcglobal,net.
With love and wildness,
Katie Baptist
Click here for more information about the June Wilderness Vision Fast/Rite-of-Passage Program.
P.S. This photo of me was taken by my brother Clay Kasserman, who is an amazing photographer. It’s part of a photo shoot that he did with me recently to help me fuse my rock star and my nature girl sides together. 🙂
Cultivating Belonging
At yesterday’s Wild Nature Heart Humboldt Gathering we dropped into our bodies, senses, souls, and stories of belonging in the Redwoods.
We explored the ways we find and CULTIVATE belonging intentionally and also the ways we can sometimes mis-belong ourselves to the wrong homes, people, ideas, and paths. We marveled at how the HOME WITHIN can not only make us happier, but makes more available to show up in the world and for others.
We became curious about our neglected senses and the simple, but mysterious way even the scent of the soil in our area can bring alive our body wisdom of our sense of home.
And we discussed a beautiful nugget from Toko-pa Turner’s Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home:
“Most of us think of belonging as a mythical place, that if we keep diligently searching for, we might eventually find. But what if belonging isn’t a place at all, but a skill: a set of competencies that we, in modern life, have lost or forgotten?”
Why Wilderness Rite-of-Passage?
Last week, I (Ryan) continued to put Katie on the spot during our drive to the coast and asked, “If you had to summarize in a few words why wilderness rite-of-passage is important right now, what would you say?”
Katie: I think that rite-of-passage is important right now because the world needs more initiated adults, people who know themselves, who live with purpose and courage to make the world better, share their gifts, and to lead and mentor others from a heart-centered place. (See previous post, “What is an Initiated Adult?”
Ryan: We have some rituals that in a way serve as transition markers. How are wilderness rites-of-passage different than, let’s say, commencement ceremonies?
Katie: Well, part of it is you’re following an individual calling, a seed of longing inside. Whereas a commencement ceremony may sometimes have a feeling of being perfunctory. It’s a rite of passage in the sense that many people go through it, and yes, it can be consciously chosen, like many things in our culture can be—but the key is the consciousness we bring to it, the intention from within. We encounter ourselves on a deep level. Another aspect is you are being held in a circle where your heart-story is being deeply listened to and mirrored back to you, which can be very powerful.
Ryan: Why go to the mountains or the high desert?
Katie: One reason is the wildness, the natural world is always being fully itself—the trees, the plants, the animals, the weather—and that’s what we need: to be more fully ourselves. And when we come into relationship with wild nature, there’s a mirror there, an I-Thou relationship, that I think is harder to find in the urban human-made environments. It provides an opportunity to meet an Otherness, and by doing so, parts of ourselves that maybe had been dormant can come online.
Ryan: Amen
WHAT IS AN INITIATED ADULT?
On our one day off during our 10-day Wilderness First Responder course last week, Katie and I drove to the coast to walk along the rugged beach of Bodega Bay. We got talking about our wilderness rite-of-passage program in June and the lack of initiation rites in our culture. I kinda put her on the spot by asking how she would describe an initiated adult to someone who’s never heard that phrase.
Here was her answer, and I think it is brilliant, and as good a definition as any I’ve heard:
Being an initiated adult has two pieces—One is knowing who you are, trusting your internal compass. Second, it is finding the willingness, courage, and strength to become an offering for the world in pain, an agent of change for good.
Making Room For Growth
Yesterday I was called to do a spontaneous letting go ritual on the land with a friend.
It came to me suddenly at dawn when I was taking some questions out for a walk and I found myself drawn to a particular eucalyptus tree.
It reminded me of an experience a had last year w/ another eucalyptus. It was on the first weekend of our ecotherapy certification with Ariana Candell of the Earthbody Institute (where Katie & I met and started dreaming Wild Nature Heart), and we were doing a somatic exercise (what we consider associated with the south shield of the 4 shields, or nature-based map of the human psyche).
At that time, I had particular hang-ups around body and movement; it was one reason I chose to study with her. I had particular stories and beliefs around, such as “I’m not a mover or a dancer” or “my body is ____” “my sexuality is ____”.
As a result, I was having difficulty dropping into the experience—then I saw all these strips of eucalyptus bark at my feet, then looked up & saw them falling off the trunk, while the upper branches danced in the wind and the new flowers were emerging.
I was just moved viscerally and it was one of my first real conscious experiences of nature as mirror, nature and psyche as co-partners in expression.
Everything alive sheds the old to make room for growth and the new.
I knew I had to strip away beliefs and attitudes that I’d carried for too long and were no longer serving. It resulted in me being much more comfortable in my body, and in the poem Peel Away the Bark Of Yesterday.
But back to the present: I knew I wanted to do an intentional ceremony and my friend was up for it, so we created a circle with bark and limbs, then wrote out limiting beliefs on madrone leaves, read them one by one aloud to each other, crumbled them, and then threw them behind us.
BYE-BYE!
This time the limiting ideas I stripped away had to with my relationship to money, family, & love.
How liberating!!
We both felt energized by the experience by making room for expansion. This is a type of activity we use in Wild Nature Heart programs. But you can do them yourself—I highly recommend these sort of spontaneous self-ceremonies done with intention. Listen to your intuition, get out of your own way, and honor your soul by trusting it knows what it needs.
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
Re-Membering is Here!
We’re excited to announce that Ryan’s book Re-Membering: Poems of Earth & Soul is now live and available!
Re-Membering has 75 earthy, soulful poems in it. If you are a nature and poetry lover, we think you will love this 🙂 May the poems in Re-Membering inspire your fierce and big wild nature hearts and be a small part of The Great Turning.
“Grandfather knew to ‘Look out for rattlesnakes and rusted nails’ and he also knew what too many have forgotten, the primacy of the earth and our place with her. Ryan Van Lenning’s poems restore what’s been lost to our souls, knowledge and love that was once considered basic and obvious. Poems are the perfect form for this remembering— Van Lenning takes us back to mud, to fire, roots and leaves, restoring what our species will not get far without.” —Patrice Vecchione, author of Step into Nature: Nurturing Imagination and Spirit in Everyday Life
Wild nature is always there to jog our memory– to whisper, to sing, or sometimes to yell, “Hey, remember your childhood curiosity? Remember your creativity and your gifts for others? Remember your senses and your animal sensuality? Remember your great love affair with the earth?”
The poems in Re-Membering are about evoking that gasp of memory. To re-member is not only to recall the treasures that have been lost to forgetfulness, but about re-integrating the body and soul, putting the members of our whole selves back together, and to re-belong ourselves to the vast and beautiful and endlessly fecund home we call earth, to become full members again in the great earth community.
Re-Membering is Wild Nature Heart Press’s first book, and we have several literary projects planned, including a curated collection of poems and reflections from participants in our programs.:
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Early praise for Re-Membering:
“Bless Ryan Van Lenning for listening to the wild voices and bringing back the news for those who have lost their way. Bless him for reminding us of our original
love affair with the earth and of what we know deep in our souls. His poems give wise counsel: let go of the debris, remember who you are, do not abandon your
luminous thread.” —Lorraine Anderson, editor of Sisters of the Earth and Earth & Eros
“Ryan’s poetry speaks deeply and clearly to the awakening to our true interconnected nature, which is the only way we can transform our world.” –Molly Young Brown, Author of Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects (co-authored with Joanna Macy), Editor of Deep Times: A Journal of the Work That Reconnects
“Ryan’s poetry sprouts out of him from moist, fertile soil – painting a lush landscape of sensual and philosophical magic. His poems transport you to a way of living in relationship with the earth that is lovingly intimate. Ryan integrates body, spirit, and social commentary into a vision of how to live a nature-inspired life amidst noise and overrun technology. ” Ariana Candell, LMFT, Founder of The Earthbody Institute
Deepen Your Connection With Nature & Your Wild Soul Calling
It’s deep summer–sun-kissed blackberries, cool water, hot skin, Venus nights, toes in the sand, playfulness. We’re right there with you!
We wanted to let you know about three different opportunities to deepen your connection with nature and your wild soul calling that we are offering in these next few months: a Wilderness Backpacking Journey, a Writing Wild Workshop, and a Vision Quest.
Say Yes to Your Wild Nature Heart Backpacking Journey, August 22-26.
We just returned from the Yosemite high-country, scouting locations for some of Wild Nature Heart’s upcoming journeys, including the one coming up next month, our final mountain adventure for the summer. It’s simply stunning and unbelievably peaceful up there. We had some inner and outer wilderness adventures of our own, including creek therapy, fire night, lake swimming, cross-country orienting, and oh yeah, the marmot that stole our socks. We’re pumped to bring people up on the mountain! Are the mountains calling you?
Write Your Wild Daylong Workshop
Writing and nature a good allies and good medicine. We invite you to spend a day in nature to explore the magical alchemy that can happen when you take the time to slow down, be really present to the natural world, and then write from that place.
Fall Wilderness Vision Quest
The voice of your true self does not give up easily. It’s been whispering to you, maybe for a long time, and maybe the time to listen has arrived at last. The modern day vision quest is a new-old practice of setting time aside in sacred ceremony to be by ourselves in wild nature in order to leave behind the voices of the world, cross over into a liminal space where our senses re-awaken and we are able to re-member our place as a part of and a-kin to nature.
Wild Nature Heart’s wilderness vision quest program involves 2 days of preparation, a 24-36 hour solo fast, and 1 day of incorporation before returning home. The fast is not only from food, but from news, devices, and other ways we can distract ourselves. Our programs are small (group of 4-6 participants), to ensure an intimate setting.
Celebrate Your Summer Wild Nature Heart
Nature is the Master Teacher. One of the biggest lessons is that change is a constant and movement is perpetual–nature unfurls the next moment/season/image out of the old. This applies as much to the movement within–can we be present with this ever fascinating dance?
Our Wild Nature Hearts are rich from spring nurturing and swelling with the unfolding summer season. In April, we marked spring with a powerful EMERGENCE weekend of nature, community, and soul witnessing. It feels like yesterday we were sitting in the meadow together in council circle with the sun on our backs, creating nature art, mirroring, sense walking, and singing and sharing around the fire.
It was such an honor to share time in sacred circle with 7 other people on the land! We all returned nourished by each other’s soul stories and a connection with the earth community. The mystery of how it is that the exact right people show up to weave the tapestry of interconnected stories continues to astound us. And it’s what feeds us as we create new programs.
Now, spring is ripening into summer and Wild Nature Heart too is ripening with summer programs that celebrate wholeness, affirm our sensual bodies, and embrace our big dreams with purpose and playfulness.
Many summer fruits are growing, but we are excited to announce two of our juiciest: Say Yes to Your Wild Nature Heart July Wilderness Journey and our Claim Your Wholeness and Soul Calling Individual Mentoring Packages.
Of course, we are also continuing to expand our free themed Meetups along the American River in Sacramento and the redwoods in the Oakland hills.
OTHER OFFERINGS & UPCOMING EVENTS
- Ryan is offering custom-designed 1-5 Night Individual and Small Group Guided Soul-rooted Wilderness Journeys during parts of July through September–Contact us with your dates and needs.
- Nature Art From the Heart – FREE EVENT (June 2, Redwood Regional Park, Oakland)
- The Way of Council and the Four Shields – FREE EVENT (June 3, River Bend Park, Sacramento/Rancho Cordova)
- Wilderness Vision Fast (August 22-26, Yosemite Backcountry – Contact us for details)
Featured Offerings
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Watershed Paperback
Price range: $16.00 through $45.00
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Becoming Beautiful Barbarians Paperback
Price range: $16.00 through $45.00
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Moon Has a Long Memory: A 13-month Lunatic Apprenticeship
Price range: $325.00 through $520.00
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Kiss Me a Huckleberry, Teach Me the Storm: An Ecosensual Playshop
Price range: $125.00 through $175.00