Conversations
in the Forest

Natural Wisdom that Conflates Time

Conversations in the Forest will deepen our ability to listen with "the ears of our hearts" to all that is speaking within us and around us. By bringing a question or an intention into time alone reflecting in nature, sharing councils, the mirror of nature and guided somatic experiences.

Answers come in real and significant ways when we take the time to truly listen - to track the threads and gently follow impulses through nature based ritual, entering into a call-and-response with the living world. An enchanted thread, greater than ourselves, revealing hidden gems.

Conversations in the Forest can open the doorway to a listening relationship with the natural world, inviting a deepening of your intuitive ways of knowing. Like a lantern in the dark, connecting you with a deeply felt belonging and guiding you toward your true nature in communion with the sacred and living earth.

Weaving betwixt inner and outer terrains, these three threads lead us into a fuller connection with our innate wisdom, our intuitive selves, and our most authentic being - while remaining firmly rooted in this world.

A Brief Explanation of The Mirror of Nature,
Threshold Walks and The Art of Mirroring Stories.

In the spirit of contemplative self-understanding, we take intuitive walks - also known as threshold walks - and engage with the mirror of nature. For this purpose, a symbolic ritual threshold is placed in a chosen spot, or an existing feature in the environment can be used as the threshold. It may be nothing more than a line in the sand, a fallen branch, or a garden gate. Like the threshold of a doorway through which one enters or leaves a room, it serves as a symbolic passage and a simple ritual aid.

Our inner soul landscape is reflected in the outer landscape through The Mirror of Nature (a rites of passage term). By observing and sensing this outer landscape and its impressions, we can learn more about what is inside us - sensing what is being reflected back to us by the more-than-human world.

However, threshold walks are only one part of the overall process. When we share stories in circle after our time in nature, we receive a mirror from the wilderness guide. This skill, called the art of mirroring, involves affirming and deepening the experience of the walk without interpreting it in a guru-like way or mixing one’s own. Through practice and experimenting with different approaches on this course, you eventually begin to discover your own style of mirroring.

I sometimes share small glimpses of my time on vision quests or threshold walks, but I rarely speak about them in depth outside of this circle sharing container, and especially not online. Speaking too openly about my encounters with the sacred-in-nature feels like handing over something delicate and fragile. The mystery, the still-unfolding nature of it can slip away in the telling. I like to keep the deeper stories close - in my experience, ritual is rather shy.

Whilst the outer form of making threshold walks is simple, the experience of threshold walks on the inside are far from simple, and hold many layers and nuances. Reading about these practices is much like being taught how to swim - you’ll never truly learn until you get in the water with an experienced swimmer. Learning a craft takes practice and time, and it’s the same here - through repetition and supervision - depth and understanding can emerge.

Lastly, to borrow a phrase from the Emerald podcast, the threshold walk “will not be psychologised.” When we over-psychologise these practices, we confine them to the hubris of human-centric thinking -reducing them to the interioriority of me, myself, and I. What’s happening here is ultimately a collaboration of being. This is why receiving a mirror is so vital: it’s far too easy to view the walk only through our own perspective.