September 9, 2024 - November 4, 2024

Group Calls on Mondays at 5:00 pm PST.

In this world, we are taught that we should strive to be someone special. As a result, we tend to think of our lives as journeys toward self-improvement and self-realization. Through this conditioning, we become fixated on the story of who we are, of how the world sees us, and whether we are enough. Yet with every attempt to become someone heroic, we become more estranged from the inner nature and the ordinary beauty of simply being alive. We are thirsty for definition because we have been taught to crave acceptance from the world of humanity, but what if we were worthy of belongingness just as we are in each moment? What if nature was waiting for us to remember what we are?

In this 8-week course, we’ll be exploring how to experience ourselves as nature experiences itself. Beyond separateness and specialness and egoic stories of who we think we are, this is a journey towards the most essential self, an ecological identity that is given to us even before we are born. It is something emergent, spontaneous, and beautiful in its ordinariness. We don't need to earn it or prove ourselves worthy of it; it comes naturally when we relax into being what we are.

This course is open to anyone who is curious about exploring the ecological self, the inner nature that connects all beings. For those who have trained as Forest Therapy Guides, this course may also offer a subtle exploration of the philosophy and embodiment of the Way of the Guide, focusing on principles of authenticity, spontaneity, unconditional acceptance, non-doing, playfulness, and paradox. The course is not designed to teach the Way of the Guide, but to explore the inner nature; however, you may find that these experiences inform one another at a fundamental level.

In this course, you will learn and experience:

1.     Storytelling practices and expressive arts to represent and create distance between the ego self and natural consciousness

2.     Nature Immersion practices to investigate how the more-than-human-world can act as a mirror to our inner nature

3.     Contemplative Journaling with Sit Spot Scrolls 

4.     Embodiment techniques to cultivate ecological awareness

5.     A subtle exploration into ‘Way of the Guide,’ a core philosophical concept in the practice of Forest Therapy Guiding

6.     Supportive group calls to cultivate a learning community

7.     Much more.

IMPORTANT: This course requires a minimum of 10 participants