The ReWild Your Mind course is for anyone who wishes to explore and deepen their felt-relationship to the natural world.
ReWild Your Mind
Introductory Course - ONLINE
An Intimate and Personal Exploration of Eco-Psychology and Nature Relatedness.
Next Delivery: TBC
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WHAT IS IT?
The ReWild Your Mind course is for anyone who wishes to explore and deepen their felt-relationship to the natural world. Over six weeks you’ll actively inquire into, and deepen, your personal relationship with the natural world. The model of learning for this course is “group inquiry”, and it is a great way to meet and connect with like minded people. You’ll also learn about some of the key ideas informing eco-psychology (the human-nature relationship) and explore how these ideas are relevant to your own experiences of being in nature.
The course is very experiential, and you’ll be encouraged to spend a lot of time outdoors engaging in various practices. In addition to this, we have build the course using an online learning platform that enables you to access content, audio instructions, readings, and other audio/visual content from your phone or computer.
There are a number of reasons people are drawn to this kind of work, but two of the most common ones are:
A desire to develop a relationship with nature as a key aspect of health and well-being.
A desire to become a better human and help begin to heal the humankind-earth relationship.
Course Structure - 6 weeks
Online Sessions (3 hours/week) - Live online
Nature-based Exercises (2-3 hours/week) - In your own time
Reading and Reflection (1-2 hour/week) - In your own time
Between the online sessions, you’ll be given guidance around a number of outdoor experiential exercises, as well as being offered reading material and prompts for written reflections, along with other resources. When we meet online each week for three hours, we’ll share some of these experience, and deepen into some of the theory.
WHAT DO I NEED?
Curiosity & Openness
A Journal
A Computer, Internet, Zoom
Access to Nature
There are no prerequisites for this course, beyond feeling called to deepen and explore your connection to the natural world. You will need a journal and access to nature - the wilder the better. But a bit of rugged parkland will do. At a stretch, you could get started in your own garden!
To get a taste of the terrain we’ll be exploring, check out these blog posts:
IS THIS COURSE PURELY experiential?
Mostly. But many of the barriers to nature-connection exist at the level of language and cognition. Thus, while experiential work lies at the heart of the rewilding process, it is essential that we find ways to help our thinking minds make the journey. To this end, this course moves between experiential activity, sharing with others, reading, and expression (writing/drawing). This combination of pathways is essential to the unlearning process, and will support you in shifting your embodied experience of the natural world.
“Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation...”
Why WOULD I WANT TO Rewild MY MIND?
You probably feel it, somewhere in the flow of experience that is your life. Perhaps it’s a sense of being slightly off the ground. Perhaps it’s a sense of holding your breath, just a little. Perhaps it’s a faint ache in your heart, or an ever-present fatigue. Perhaps it’s a sense of loneliness that seems untouched by your human relationships.
We might call these the symptoms of existential isolation. However, this is not a fundamental human condition, as much of western philosophy would have you believe. Instead, it is an ontological blindness that is cultural and learned. As adults, we find ourselves walking around as strangers to the natural world - othering the world - burdened with a longing we can not readily articulate.
The ReWild Your Mind courses are an invitation to attend, unlearn and rewild your mind. In time, this will help you find your way home to your natural inheritance - a deep sense of existential relationship, belonging, participation and vitality. As the poet David Whyte says, everything is waiting for you. So let’s get into it.
ReWild Your Mind
INTRODUCTORY COURSE CONTENT
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Part I - Being in Nature
Part II - Listening to Nature
Part III - dialoguing with Nature
Part VI - engaging with Nature
Part V - Nature as ALLY
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WHAT WILL I learn (and unlearn)?
At the conclusion of this course…you will have:
developed a greater trust in your intuitive sense of being intimately connected to the natural world.
explored and deepened your own relationship to/with the natural world through a range of experiential activities.
shared these explorations with others in small groups, to help unpack and “ground” what you are coming to know in common human experience.
reflected on and given expression to your changing experience of relationship to the natural world.
explored the writings of others who have found their way back to a sense of “at-homeness” in nature.
gained a basic understanding of the philosophical and historical underpinnings of your experience of separation from nature.
WHAT IS INVOLVED?
Online sessions: The online elements of this course will be a mixture of teaching, small group work, and large group discussion.
Out of session: During the week between sessions, you will be asked to engage in experiential exercises in local parkland or bushland, as well as completing simple reading and journalling tasks.
WHO IS RUNNING THE TRAINING?
The trainings are run by Sean O’Carroll. Sean is an academic and psychotherapist in private practice. He lectures in psychotherapy, psychedelic psychotherapy, and eco-psychotherapy. His ongoing research interests include eco-psychotherapy, psychedelic psychotherapy, and embodiment practices. You can learn more about Sean and his background in eco-psychotherapy at www.wild-mind.com.
HOW TO Enrol?
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