Nature connection and outdoors adventures
Coaching and experiences that bring together aspects of nature connection, adventure, mindfulness, coaching, leadership and personal or team development. These are a chance to explore your own goals, development, success and challenges with the support and space of nature. Take a break from your everyday to experience the richness of nature and adventure in terms of building self-awareness, finding inner confidence, inspiration, exploring perspectives and letting go of stress.
I offer a range of nature based options, from short coaching sessions outdoors, to day long, over night and multi-day programs. These all have a strong immersive and experiential focus.
Why outdoors?
Countless scientific researches from the 1980s to the present demonstrate the positive impact of experiences in contact with Nature on our physical and psychological well-being. These positive effects translate into the improvement of the coachees’ ability to face their difficulties, developing their sense of self-efficacy, awareness and self-realization. At the heart of Nature Coaching is the reconnection of the coachee with Nature, as well as through it with its most authentic Nature, in terms of personal uniqueness, talent, skills, resources, ideas, intuitions, solutions, presence and awareness.
Getting out into the wild, and discovering the stillness and the vastness of our mind can be some of the most transformational experiences of our lives. For me, this is enough of a motivation to take coaching work outside. However, there is also a large body of research showing the positive impacts on wellbeing, creativity, transformational change, wisdom, resilience and growth that come from working within nature and with nature.
These programs are designed to develop awareness, intention and choice for individuals and teams in powerful and sustainable ways to support you. Like the natural world, we have all been shaped by the elements around us and by our own inner nature. We often show up in the world with limitations and conditions based on our past - this means we are all less impactful and less fulfilled than we could be. My invitation to you is to get in touch, and to find out how I can help you bring more intention, awareness and choice to your future and to develop your work and life goals - through adventures exploring beautiful natural places.
Nature Quests Supported by Coaching
This is your chance to super charge your coaching experience. Completely custom made coaching experiences that focus on you and your goals for coaching. The stress of disconnection from nature and cultural expectations has been shown to have a huge impact on our ability to function at a high level, and on our everyday wellbeing and mental health (for example as identified by Gabor Maté). Reconnection time with nature can be used as an effective "a shock absorber" to support us in our life, as well as giving us a chance to step back and reflect, and to delve deeper in to questions around meaning, and our place in the natural world. Whatever location, duration, environment - it's all your choice and I will personally tailor the experience to you. Get in touch to discuss your needs and goals.
The Door, by Adrienne Rich
Either you will go through this door, or you will not go through.
If you go through, there is always the risk of remembering your name.
Things look at you doubly and you must look back and let them happen.
If you do not go through, it is possible to live worthily, to maintain your attitudes, to hold your position, to die bravely.
But much will blind you, much will evade you, at what cost who knows?
The door itself makes no promises.
It is only a door.
Deep within your soul lies a fire that directs your passion and purpose. Often this flame lies quiet like the ancient whispers of smoldering embers; sometimes directed by those internal voices, not belonging to you, that came from another time and place. You reach out to your brothers and sisters and echo these words: "WHO AM I?"
Nature based questing is designed to help you develop positive transformation and wellbeing in your life, work and community. Authentic Nature programs are designed to develop awareness, intention, choice, relationship and action.
We have all been shaped by the elements around us, which means we show up with certain limitations and conditions based on our past. I believe it is vital to step up and face the uncertain reality we all have ahead of us. To do this, we must be aware of how important it is to operate from a deep sense of authenticity. This means having enough awareness to make choices in support of our own needs, but also the needs of others, the needs of systems we are part of and the needs of the world around us.
There are a number of tools, protocols and maps that we use to facilitate nature based questing. The simplicity of the approach actually supports individuals and groups to go deeply into their own exploration and to work with their own transformation and insight. One such model is based on the medicine wheel, used for centuries by indigenous cultures. This helps us to understand where we are stuck, where we are most effective, and what steps we can take to bring about our objectives. Another example is working with the four elements is an example of one way to experience and reflect on how nature functions as a system, and how we are part of this ever regenerating system.
Why nature? Why now?
We are all, fundamentally, part of the natural world. All our food, water, air and energy comes from the natural ecosystem, as does a lot of our medicine. All our waste is ultimately processed and recycled within the natural ecosystem. The biggest opportunities for our fulfilling and safe future come from being integrated into the natural systems, and all of our biggest threats as a species and civilization also come from the natural world, such as ecosystem collapse, climate change and new diseases. Simply put, if we don't start acting as though we are a key player within the natural world, we will miss our opportunity to have a successful and shared future looking ahead to our own lives and future generations.
Nature based coaching can be considered as an approach developed in connection with Nature (not in a simple “presence” of Nature). It is aimed at restoring human beings to their natural ability to take care of themselves, of other living creatures (human and non-human), and the Earth. We all have an ancestral ability to dialogue with Nature; retrieving it means recognizing our place in the broader context of all our relationships.
This way, coaching can contribute to conditions that help and sustain life on Earth, for generations to come. This nature-centred approach has, at its foundation, a view of each person (microcosmos) as the reflection of the macrocosmos (the world around us).
