Description
“There is an intimate reciprocity to the senses;
as we touch the bark of a tree, we feel the tree touching us;
as we lend our ears to the local sounds
and ally our nose to the seasonal scents,
the terrain gradually tunes us in turn.
The senses are the primary way earth has
of informing our thoughts and guiding our actions.”
~David Abram
EARTH INTIMACIES
A 6-week journey into reinhabiting the animate web of Life
We are not separate from the world—we are living threads within it.
What if you began the new year not with a list of goals, or a resolution to to improve yourself, but with a deepening of your relationship with the living world you’re already part of?
What if you made a commitment to become more intimate with Life?
To slow down enough to notice and deeply listen (“opening all our ears”). To become acquainted with the more-than-human neighbors you never knew you had. To attune to natural cycles and re-sensitize the body as a portal of perception. To deepen your relationship—with place, pattern, change, beauty, and mystery.
This is an invitation to begin the year not with self-improvement, but with re-enchantment.
Earth Intimacies is an apprenticeship—not to an idea, but to Life itself. To the slow intelligence of soil and season, to the language of our bodies, to the subtle conversations already unfolding between you and the more-than-human world.
Together, we practice listening and intentionally re-enter relationship—with the many presences that shape and hold us.
I slowed down and bent my ear to the ground
I had to give them what they asked for…
In this apprenticeship, we’ll encounter new more-than-human teachers, explore the intelligence of landscape and soundscape, and cultivate our capacity to notice the subtle, surprising ways Life is continually becoming.
This is not about learning about the world. It is about learning with the world.
Open your skin to the textures of life
Open your ears to the heartbeat of things…
What might six weeks of Earth Intimacies look or feel like?
- Spending twenty minutes with a grandmother tree, elder stone, or patch of moss until something unfamiliar becomes familiar
- Learning to listen to a soundscape as a living community of voices
- Meeting lichens as teachers of symbiosis, mutuality, and unexpected forms of belonging
- Experimenting with the pace of a slug or the shapeshifting wisdom of water
- Tracking the Moon and the subtle changes in your local landscape
- Speaking from the perspective of a more-than-human being in a Council of All Beings
- Developing a small, repeatable practice of reciprocity with a place or being you come to know.
Without trying, you touch everything
and everything touches you…
Earth Intimacies might be calling if…
- You feel a hunger for a slower, more sensuous, more enchanted way of living.
- You want to deepen your relationship with the particular beings and places where you live.
- You suspect the world is far more alive, intelligent, and communicative than we’ve been taught.
- You are longing to deepen your earth-centered, purpose-anchored, and ecosensual way of living
- You want to grow your creative and relational “toybox” for engaging the living world and expand your capacity to listen, feel, and respond
- You’re weary of relating to nature as scenery, resource, or occasional escape.
- You’re seeking companions who share your longing for a more reciprocal and life-honoring world.
- You want practices that don’t simply help you cope with the world as it is, but help you participate in bringing another world into being.
Our Journey:
Week 1: Slowing & Opening into the World
Pace, presence, and body wisdom
Kin Apprenticeship: Slug + Water
Choose (or be chosen by) beings to whom you will apprentice
Week 2: Re-whoing an Animate World
Kin Conversations and Symbiosis
Kin Apprenticeship: Lichen + Mycelium
Week 3: Living the Cycles
Seasonal attunement & natural rhythms
Kin Apprenticeship: Moon + your landscape
Week 4: The World is Speaking
Deep listening and reciprocity
Kin Apprenticeship: Soundscapes + your landscape
Week 5: Council of Many Whos
More-than-human perspectives and ecological imagination
Week 6: Becoming Imaginal and Emergent
Transformation and Trusting what is becoming
Kin Apprenticeship: Butterfly + Emergence
How We’ll Gather, Wander & Play:
This is an interactive, experiential space. We gather in a style that is emergent, playful, curious, and honoring.
Each session weaves:
- Earth Intimacies Council where participants share their encounters, receive mirroring, and witness each other’s unfolding relationships.
- Naturalist and place-based practices
- Somatic and soul-centered invitations
- Creative expression and integration
- Between-session practices with the landscape where you are
The invitations are meant to weave into your everyday life, not become another list of things to accomplish. Some might take a few minutes. Others might invite an afternoon of wandering. There is room to follow your curiosity and honor your own pace.
What Might Begin to Blossom:
- a more intimate relationship with your body as a sensing, knowing instrument
- a deepened capacity to stay with what is real—within and around you
- renewed connection to the more-than-human world
- a more spacious relationship with grief, beauty, and belonging
- simple, grounded practices for ongoing relationship
- a subtle, perhaps surprising shift from observer → participant
Hello with the belly, hi with the eyes.
Not moving, but meeting and receiving…
The program includes:
- Six 2-hour live Zoom gatherings (small group, max 8 participants)
- Sense-based and soul-expanding practices to reconnect with inner and outer wild nature
- Optional one-on-one consultation support
- Private Signal group space for connection, sharing, and integration
- Earth poetry book (digital copy of one of the collections – your choice)
- Ecopsychology and naturalist resources
- Discount on future Wild Nature Heart offerings
PRACTICAL DETAILS:
When: 6 Thursdays — January 14 – February 18
Time: 12pm–2:00pm Pacific / 3:00pm–5:00pm EST
Where: Online (Zoom) + practices with your local landscape
*Maximum 8 participants to ensure an intimate experience.
EXCHANGE:
Recommended: $175
Sliding scale: $150–$225
Register on this page
Or you can also send payment via:
PayPal.me/WildNatureHeart
VENMO: RyanVanLenning
(note: “Earth” + your email)
Returning Wild Nature Heart participants: 20% off with code EARTHINTIMACY
Contact Ryan with questions: ryan@wildnatureheart.com
COME WITH KIN:
Bring a friend or loved one and you’ll each receive $25 off.
Some forms of intimacy deepen when they are shared.
(enter “buddies” in coupon field at checkout)
CLOSING INVITATION:
If something in you recognizes this—
not as an idea, but as a longing and quiet remembering—
you are already in conversation.
Come apprentice to Life.
About the Facilitator:
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, re-membering, and re-inhabiting the animate web of life. I started Wild Nature Heart to support people at a crossroads 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 a threshold guide and barbarian poet of the Great Turning (author of Re-Membering, From Inside These Wild Ones, One Bright and Real Caress, An Ambitious Silence, Trust the Ceremony, F*ck the Ceremony, and Trust the Ceremony, Then Yeses Come Bubbling, Within the Cave Something Pulses, and High-Cooing Through the Seasons: Haiku From the Forest. I am trained as a rite-of-passage/wilderness ceremony guide through the School of Lost Borders, certified as an Ecotherapist through The Earthbody Institute, where I teach the Level 1-3 ecotherapy courses, and am a Certified Wilderness First Responder through Foster Calm. Prior to moving to California 18 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. I like cinnamon ice cream, fantastic fungi, and river ottering.
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 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
“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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