Description
A 6-week experience for people hearing the call to cultivate their ecospirituality, deepen their uncolonial journey, and practice belonging to place and purpose as we intentionally meet this collective initiation of intersecting ecological/social crises and opportunity.
You will forage:
- Deepen your ecospirituality by tending an earth-centered, purpose-anchored, and sensual life.
- Cultivate deep belonging to place, purpose, and people.
- Begin or deepen your uncolonial pilgrimage and process of interrogating your belonging.
- Re-align with your wild purpose and inhabit your unique gifts as an ecological niche.
- Become a conscious composter of the old paradigms and co-creator in the new paradigms.
- Explore your inner wilderness and expand your toybox of exploration.
- Experience a supported solo overnight or extended day on-the-land ceremony through the framework of wilderness rite-of-passage.
Dates: 6 Thursdays, Nov. 2-Dec.14
Time: 10AM-12PM Pacific Time
Where: ONLINE – Zoom (and practices on the land between classes)
*Maximum 10 participants to ensure an intimate experience.
Over 6 weeks, we’ll explore the following through conversation in circle, sense and somatic practices, soul work and integration activities, embodied action, poetry, 1:1 consultations, and a private online group::
- Deepening Our Ecospirituality:
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- Sacred Pause and Deep Listening
- Honoring the Season and Living the Cycles
- Exploring Deep Time and Practicing Reciprocity
- Belonging to Place: Befriending Your Watershed and More-Than-Human Kin
- Cultivating Ecosensuality
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- Sacred Grief and Pleasure as Portals to Liberation
- Wilderness Rite-of-Passage and Self-Designed Ceremonies
- Returning to Our Wild Purpose
- Trickster Values in the Great Composting
The program includes:
- Six 2-hour group Zoom gatherings with a small group of peers
- Sense-based and soul-expanding practices and invitations that help you re-connect to inner and outer wild nature, drop deeper into your body and senses to build embodied capacity; and reclaim aspects of your wholeness and wild purpose.
- Prompts and practices to deepen your uncolonial commitment and journey
- Two 1:1 consultations on program material and the solo wilderness ceremony experience
- Private online group to connect, share, learn, and ask questions between calls
- A copy of Re-Membering: Poems of Earth and Soul
- Additional decolonial/uncolonial and ecopsychological resources
- Discount on future Wild Nature Heart Courses and Wilderness Programs
- Invitation to the Annual Wild Nature Heart Gathering
A core component of this experiences is having the opportunity to do a supported solo overnight or extended day quest on-the-land ceremony through the framework of wilderness rite-of-passage.
Scholarships available for BIPOC and LGBTQ2+
*10% of the course’s proceeds will go to front-line indigenous water and earth protectors.
Recommended Investment: $199
Other options: $149-$249
A Note on Justice Pricing Structure:
I wish all my offerings could be free for everyone! I hope to work towards that reality. In the meantime, I am offering this course experience on a system of sliding-scale justice pricing to make it as accessible for as many folks who want to join us as possible.
Acknowledging historic and on-going structural harms for certain people, in particular black, indigenous, and communities of color, I support leveraging economic and white-bodied privilege to support others in our community, and ask that you pay on the scale according to your ability, in order to support access, and engage in co-liberatory interdependence-in-action.
The practice of choosing a rate that is both affordable and heartfully aligned is a mindfulness and liberation-seeking practice. I will not question your self-determined rate.
This helps make offerings accessible to more people and allows portions of the course proceeds to be given to BIPOC-led organizations and campaigns.
In this moment of vast unraveling of systems and forms, you know in your bones there is a more authentic, earth-honoring, community-centered way of living.
Or Email: ryan@wildnatureheart.com with your interest or questions.
About the Teacher:
My name is Ryan Van Lenning, Founder of Wild Nature Heart, and I am an earth-lover with a deep desire to be of service in the work of re-connection and re-membering during this Great Turning/Great Composting. I started Wild Nature Heart to support people to re-connect with the wisdom of both inner and outer wild nature, to live their soul callings into the world, and to assist in the work of repairing broken belonging.
I am an inner/outer wilderness guide and poet (author of Re-Membering: Poems of Earth & Soul) and High-Cooing Through the Seasons: Haiku From the Forest. I am certified as an Ecotherapist through The Earthbody Institute, at which I teach the Level 1 and 3 Ecotherapy courses. I am trained as a rite-of-passage/wilderness vision fast guide through the School of Lost Borders, through which I assist wilderness ceremonies, and am a Certified Wilderness First Responder through Foster Calm. Prior to moving to California 13 years ago, I taught Comparative Religion, Philosophy, and Environmental Ethics at Sinclair College in Ohio. I live among the forest and rivers in northern California, ancestral Wiyot and Yurok land.
Recent Appreciations:
“Thank you for your dedication to this work and for modeling new/old ways of being in leadership and community! I gained a sense of companionship on the journey of exploring some of life and death’s biggest questions. The community formed in the group gave me a glimpse into how we can come together to unlearn, deconstruct, remember, and create more natural and balanced ways of being and relating. One of my biggest take-aways is understanding belonging as something inherent rather than “found” or “earned”. Being witnessed and witnessing others after our solo time on the land was very powerful and deeply meaningful to me on my/our journey.” —Leslie Hammer, Deep Belonging in the Great Turning (Fall 2022)
“Ryan is an amazing human being and teacher. This course will nurture your soul, challenge you, and open up new ways of seeing yourself and our wonderous planet. I will definitely be signing up for another Wild Nature Heart experience!” —Rob Daroff, MD, Deep Belonging in the Great Turning (Fall 2022)
“I loved this course! This is the second course I’ve taken with Ryan and both times I felt affirmed and supported as he led us on a journey delving into themes of belonging, being, grieving, healing, and growing. Ryan encouraged us to engage with the more-than-human-world on an intimate level of discovery and connection thus cultivating a more earth-centered life. I highly recommend this course to anyone seeking a deeper connection with self and with the natural world.” —Cecelia Futch, Deep Belonging in the Great Turning (Fall 2022)
“Ryan was FANTASTIC. He was knowledgeable and most importantly, a great listener and guide. I greatly admired his mirroring skills, which have clearly been learned from Mother Nature herself. I have learned so much from Ryan and look forward to incorporating his techniques into my practice as well.” — Participant in Spring 2021 Earthbody Institute Ecotherapy Certificate Course
“I find myself repeatedly touched by the depth of your caring for Earth and all her beings and by your dedication to practice and evolving new pathways of relationship and culture. I am moved by the presence that you bring to deep listening and your willingness to explore different perspectives. Your ability to express through poetry and action what’s in your heart and your desire for healthy relationship among all beings is a source of inspiration for me.” —Marianne B. Rowe, MS, LMFT, Summer 2022 Level 3 Ecotherapy Training, Earthbody Institute
“Ryan’s well-designed course on Deep Belonging for the Great Turning was just what I needed at a stressful time in life. The facilitation, knowledge and materials shared were generous and truly a gift to enhance my nature connection and learn about myself. This course also provided support for a solo experience which was rich and rewarding. I appreciated being in a group and connecting with other like-minded people.” — Lezlie Scaliatine, Psy.D, California, Deep Belonging for the Great Turning Course Participant
“Ryan is a very thoughtful and sensitive instructor. His background in teaching and poetry, along with his ability to effectively “mirror” our stories about our journeys make him an excellent facilitator. Ryan helped us to organize our thoughts and feelings in this politically and environmentally challenging time, gave us hope, and guided us towards developing a personal plan for coping with the future of our planet.”
— Nan S., California, Deep Belonging for the Great Turning Course Participant
“Thank you again Ryan for your mentorship prior to this quest of mine. You empowered me to trust in myself, in the wild, and in the ceremony and it seemed so fitting to receive these gifts of yours just prior to a decent. I love and am sincerely grateful for your poem. It certainly helped give me courage to unflinchingly make those leaps over trees and off every known cliff and will continue to do so. I feel super motivated to continue on this path of mine and stay open to all the wild mysteries that present themselves within myself and within this more-than human world of ours. And to taking the next steps in unfurling my own gifts and presenting them to the world.”— Brady W., Wisconsin, 1-on-1 Ecotherapy Client and Course Participant
“This course is a deep-dive across 6 weeks. Ryan’s skill and generosity of spirit has guided me through a variety of themes and practices that have been both thought-provoking and empowering. I’ve valued this time immensely, and the abundant materials provided will keep me moving through this journey for a long time to come. I’ve developed a richer relationship with my Urban Wild environment in very unexpected ways, and for that I am so very grateful.” —Claire (United Kingdom)
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