Embracing the Natural World as your Teacher

This course combines naturalist study, survival skills and bushcraft training, and deep nature awareness. Embedded within that will be an indepth exploration of our interconnected relationship with the natural world. We will explore how an embodied approach to these skills can lead us into an expanded state of discovery, not just of the natural world, but a deeper discovery into our own personal nature. Learn to listen and interpret the different ways Nature speaks to us. Through the tracks and trails, bird calls and body language, through the howling winds and ripples in the water, through the chorus at dawn and dusk and the silence of the midday rest. Nature is always speaking and teaching, we just need to learn to listen. This course will invite you to slow the pace of the busy mind and relax your body into a deeper awareness, awakening you to your intuitive design and helping you reclaim your connection as a natural, enlivened and radiant human being. 

This course will be 5 sessions extended over 6 months, May to October. Each session will be a full day exploring different natural areas around Guelph, ON, with one day being a field trip to a natural area of the group’s choice in the Southern Ontario. Each month we will explore different themes, all of which will build on each other while providing you with an abundance of experience and indepth knowledge into connecting with the natural world in a profound way.

Themes that will be explored in this course:

Fundamentals of Nature Awareness

Bird Language and Wildlife Tracking

Plants and Trees - Learning from the Rooted Ones

Survival Skills and Bushcraft

The Art of Wandering - Nature’s Classroom

Tending the Flame of Awareness

Fundamentals of Nature Awareness

Learn foundational skills that will broaden your sensory perception and heighten your attunement to the dynamic rhythms of the natural world. Through experiencing our senses fully and cultivating inner and outer quietness, we root ourselves more deeply into the connective fabric that binds us with the ebb and flow of the Earth. By doing this we discover a deeper awareness and fullness of life.

• Enhancing our sensory perception

• Earth Paced walking and stalking techniques

• Create awareness of the analytical mind and the quiet mind.

• Learn to lessen your zone of disturbance while increasing your zone of awareness

• Effective and easy grounding techniques

• Dynamic meditation practices

• Learn the basics of reading weather patterns and signs

• Understanding Natural rhythms and cycles

Bird Language and Wildlife Tracking

Learn to read the tracks and signs of the animals through Bird Language and Wildlife tracking. The animals are always telling a story, by learning these skills you begin to be able to interpret their story. Sometimes you are reading the story after it happened, sometimes interpreting it as it is happening in the moment and if you hone your skills well, you can begin to predict the story before it even happens. These are essential skills for learning to awaken your ability to interpret and understand what is happening in the landscape around you.

• The 5 voices of bird language

• Bird sits and mapping bird behaviour

• Basic techniques for identifying birds

• Developing a tracking journal

• Differentiating between wildlife track and sign

• How to measure tracks and trails

• Understanding different animal gaits

• Learn to track using all of your senses

Plants and Trees - Learning from the Rooted Ones

Learn how to identify plants and trees, wild edibles, medicinal uses and how to listen to the Rooted Ones. Through experience with the plants and trees we begin to grow a sense of deep respect and embody a frame of mind directed toward responsibility for the health of the ecosystems that nurture these wise and gracious beings.

• Techniques to identify plants and trees

• Gain an understanding of seasonal food sources and edible wild plants and trees

• Learn medicinal uses for some common plants and trees

• Create basic teas, salves and survival medicines

• Create a deeper relationship through compassionate explorative practices such as asking permission to harvest and delving into our metaphysical kinship with the trees and plants.

• Plant and tree communication

Survival Skills and Bushcraft

In order to learn to thrive in a place, first you must learn to survive! During this course we will explore the techniques that help us survive in the woods by learning to live with the resources the land and water provide. By tapping into these ancient skills, we also learn how to steward and care for the natural places we rely on. During this weekend you will gain a basic understanding of how to be more prepared, resilient, confident and at home in our local landscape. 

• Learn how to find clean drinking water and filter water using natural materials

• Survival foods and medicines

• Learn to build different types of survival shelters

• Make cordage (rope made from natural materials)

• Containers made from bark and wood

• Knife skills and craft

• Alternative tools to steel: stone, bone and wood

• Basic knots

• Fire structures, friction fire, flint and steel and ferronian rods.

• Survival traps and hunting tools

• Navigation

• Camouflage 

The Art of Wandering - Nature's classroom

Wander the landscape while learning to embody an interconnected and instinctual approach to relating with the surrounding landscape.

• Learn to explore the forest, fields and streams. Finding tracks, listening to birds, looking at wildflowers, inspecting insects and being curious about what the landscape has to offer.

• Learning to feel and listen to our body's instinctual connection to the world around us.

• Flowing with the dynamic natural rhythms and learning the difference between a wander and a hike.

• Attuning to the Nature Mind and your body's natural intelligence.

Tending the Flame of Awareness

Once you learn all of the skills in this course, you will begin to see and experience the world in a new way. We will outline ways to help you continue the journey on your own and integrate these skills into your life. We will take time to reflect on how all of our ancestors at one time lived closely with the cycles and seasons of the Earth and relied upon what natural materials the Earth provided. By grounding these skills into our present life, we invoke and enliven them into our future and into the wellbeing of the generations to come, for both human and non-human beings alike.

• Reflection and introspective activities to better understand your journey.

• Evoking ancestral natural ways of living and traditions while understanding the impact of Colonization on Indigenous peoples of this land.

• Creating a meaningful relationship to your ancestry through storytelling and gratitude practices.

• Integrating these skills into your everyday life to continually deepen your awareness.

$595 plus HST

$75 deposit to reserve your spot

If interested, please email awakenature.on@gmail.com

Payment plans are available and sliding scales.