- Remembering Our Rooted Selves -
Supporting both individual and collective change, I strive to blend
ancient wisdom with contemporary culture, connecting you with your innate wisdom and awakening your true authentic nature.
“Natasha is a lover of mystery, translator of ancient thought, a shamanic buddhist feral and right-left brain passionate.”
I’m Natasha Lythgoe,
Welcome to the Art of Rewilding.
The binding thread of my work supports both individual and collective change. I strive to blend ancient wisdom with contemporary culture, connecting you with your innate wisdom and awakening true authentic nature. Whilst offering ways to ground it back home one step at a time.
Our own moment in the unfolding story of life may or may not be as extreme as the near extinction of some of our ancestors but certainly we are species navigating quite a bit of stress, amidst an extended period of radical change with uncertain outcomes.
Here you’ll find learning grounds of ways to work with mind, body, psyche/soul and mystery - sharing the skills that have been shared with me over the last twenty six years.
My work as a vision quest guide, retreat leader and mentor is without doubt impacted by my earlier life as an artist, and my buddhist practice which includes a personal penchant for the practices of wisdom, kindness, spaciousness-within and the four sublime abodes, in particular equanimity.
Elements you will find repeated throughout my work are: rites of passage supporting transformation with nature, embodiment practices that listen to the wisdom of the body and aid integration, the creative impulse, soul craft, ritual and myth.
I began facilitating and guiding 21 years ago, setting up the Art of Rewilding nearly a decade ago. I offer online and in person programmes, nature based seminars and retreats, vision quests and 1-2-1 mentoring. I’m based between Denmark and the UK. To stay in touch sign up to my newsletter.
“ The medicine we need,
is in our wild,
both within us and around us.
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Retreats & Vision Quests
This year I am co-guiding four retreats.
In early August I’m I’m guiding our signature Women’s Nature Retreat over a long weekend.
Later that month I’m leading a Buddhist retreat on the themes of Creativity and Focusing.
Come September, we have our annual Vision Quest.
Ending the year with our Winter Companion Retreat in Sweden.
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Elemental Soul - Three Month Journey
Drawing on my buddhist background and work as a vision quest guide, this experiential programme braids together nature-based ceremony, the felt-sense of somatic focusing and folk stories.
Weaving betwixt inner and outer terrain, these 3 threads lead us into deeper connection with our innate wisdom, intuitive selves and authentic being, while remaining firmly rooted in this world.
Starts April 30th
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Murmurations - Group Mentoring For Women
I am launching a six month mentoring programme for women.We will be an intimate group size - max 8 participants.
If you’d like to know the details once they are finalised register your interest below.
When we fall out of myth we fall out of meaning
By courting and nurturing relationship with the mythic dimension of our lives we find the healing, courage and wisdom needed to navigate a life lived with purpose. The mirror of myth, deeply intermingled with nature and rites of passage, wakes us up to the big questions and reveals to us the dormant parts of our lives.
Entering the forest at dusk, diving into wild rivers, watching the sun rise from a dewy patch of earth and sitting around open fires as the birds sing up the dusk and moon…
It is in these moments that we might ‘catch the quiver’ as it moves. Touched by awe and wonder when we listen for the call of the land and the myth of our lives we begin remembering ourselves to ourselves, and sensing what our hunter gatherer ancestors always knew;
That we are part of a bigger story, way beyond our comprehension and that our lives matter.
Remembering Our Roots
You may already be familiar with the Celtic wheel of the year interwoven with the solstices, equinoxes and seasonal fire festivals. The wheels I am most familiar with, based on natures cycles and our own natural cycles, map the Body in the south, Soul/Psyche in the west, Heart-Mind in the north and Mystery in the east.
These maps, deeply woven with land and cycles, are known as the Four Directions Medicine Wheel and the Nature Based Map of Psyche. Their teachings of nature within us, and around us, contain sacred paths and ceremonies which were once the life-blood of our ancestors and communities. Various forms of these ancient, circular, seasonal teachings have been used pan culturally by peoples to navigate what it means to be humans deeply connected to the wild.
Marking important life transitions, growing a person and connecting them with their innate wisdom, these rites of initiations are known as vision quests, rites of passage or wilderness vigils.
Ultimately they show us paths that enable healing, whole-ing and transformation - how to align with our true nature and embody the gifts we carry so that we can live as potent, healing influences in our communities. These teachings show us how to become mature humans and eventually elders for the health of the community in the largest sense of that word.
The first paragraph of this page is based on a quote of Geneen Marie Haughen.
To be authentic means to be true to oneself.
It is a very, very dangerous phenomenon, rare people can do that. But whenever people do it, they achieve such beauty, such grace, such contentment that you cannot imagine…
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
Human Growth
There are particular points in your life when something needs to change and you have the feeling that you want to evolve into the next chapter. An identity shift, if you will. These shifts are as natural as life itself; whether from childhood to adulthood, singledom to marriage, or youth to middle age we all know something of these passages. There are also more nuanced passages but no less important; times when it might seem like the hardest thing in the world is to be ourselves.
When we ask, Who am I? Really? Aside from what family and society and conventions tell me. And how do I get to that place of self knowledge and conviction where I are able to state without doubt, fear or anger, ‘This is who I am, this is what I stand for, this is how I intend to live my life’?
These are all death and rebirth moments within a life; when we die to what is no-longer so that we can open to what is new. Natures cycles of death and rebirth are inherent to all life, human and more-than-human. My passion is to share ways in which we can live in harmony with these cycles, to support folk in navigating and transitioning the different seasons of their lives.
Who do we walk this path for?
Ultimately these journeys invite us to embody the gifts we carry so that we can live as mature, powerful, healing influences in our communities. We do this not only for ourselves, but for our kin, human and more-than-human. These are our offerings for future generations.
Quote by Brigit McNeill
Art Credit: Miles Toland
An interesting idea that turns up in myths and stories is that the crises we experience, both individually and collectively, are not here to destroy us but rather to break the spell of the little self, and to break the spell of collective lives that are also imagined as small and not connected to the source and origins of life
That the crises that we experience individually or collectively are here to crack the shell and break us open to the inner eyes of the soul and to give us the opportunity to reconnect to the deeper self which knows why we are here and what our life purpose already is.
- M. Meade