[Katrien Deboutte]

Hi everyone,
I’m not sure if anyone will read this still as the current course is already at the 2nd lesson of the 2nd module but I’m catching up and would like to go through all the steps to complete the course.

My name is Katrien and I’m from Belgium, for more than five years now living on a farm in Spain with my partner and her children. I’m 33 and work in many fields: agriculture, carpentry, retreat and vision quest guidance, nature connection camps for kids, sweatlodges and I started as a soundhealer and dj recently. Our farm is a center where many people come to connect with nature, themselves and others. We’ve organized workshops, retreats, festivals, local exchange markets, community events etc. My partner does (ayurvedic) coaching, yoga, meditation and massages. Very amazing quiet place on the countryside.
But ! even when almost all my work is somehow related to nature and a lot of it I do outdoors, my big challenge is to take time for myself to just go off and be in nature without doing. There’s an amazing mountain range just at 20 minutes drive from our land yet I find myself yearning to go there more often than I do.
For me nature connection, is to Be. To become one, to dissolve the borders between ‘me’ and ‘nature’. Where clarity arises, inspiration flows, joy or bliss or gratitude naturally arise, meeting animals, trees, streams and communicating with them.
Since I was a kid I was attracted magnetically to nature, trees, plants, animals and could find solace from the crazy human world which for long I didn’t understand. Then I studied psychology and slowly started understanding a little more, but most I learned travelling. After my studies I went to Sardinia, an island next to Italy, where I worked with a friend picking grapes. After the harvest I sticked around a bit longer and had no real thing to do, so I went everyday from morning to dawn into the mountains on my own. This was where I discovered the healing and guiding powers of nature very clearly and also knew this was what I wanted to do in my life:: create spaces for other people to experience this !!!! It was amazing, like a vision that became so clear. All the things I saw then, I’m doing now.
Another big challenge for me is develop my skills in the field because I’m in so many fields and my attention is divided. I know I have plenty of capacities but feel I really need to broaden my skills and experience in the coaching of people individually and in groups. This is why I decided to follow the course and I’m very happy to read all of your stories, and be inspired by them.
If anyone feels like contacting me personally, feel welcome, I’d love to share and connect.