[Simka]

I’ve come back to writing this post so many times since April – and never actually managed to finish it. As usual, I’ve written way too much here, but not playing with fire by trying to cut it down – I tried again with a new perspective thanks to Daniel’s input from the StoryBrand Script group mentoring session and it stuck so I’m counting it as a win 🙂

My ideal client is looking for meaning in their life. They crave purpose and direction, but not just any direction — they want to have some kind of positive impact in the world. They are looking for depth, for connection, for a sense of being able to create a future not just for themselves, but one that also has ripples into their community and beyond. For themselves, they wish they could feel more joy, more of a sense of fulfillment. Sometimes they have fleeting moments of feeling that sense – when they are in the mountains, or have a particularly good moment of connection with friends, for example – but it passes, and they find themselves wondering ‘is that it? Should I stop chasing that feeling and just accept that life is duller than I always expected it to be?’

This ideal client has some deep interests, maybe even a sense of what they would do if they could do anything they wanted — maybe they are an artist or have a creative practice, or they dream of fostering communities, or love to be outdoors, or grow vegetables. Maybe there’s a part of their identity, like being queer or being Jewish, that is deeply important to them. But these parts of them, interests and aspects of themselves that are so important, aren’t centered in their lives in a way that gives them a sense of meaning.

So for example, maybe they are already a practicing artist, but they worry that they’ll never ‘make it’, and they compare themselves to others and feel torn between a love of making art and a sense that they have to be successful for it to mean anything.

Or another example might be that when they were a kid, they loved being in the woods, and when they visit home they deeply love the feeling of returning to the same landscape and places — but now they live in a city and work in an office, and though they know they “should” get outside more often, it’s hard to fit into their schedule.

Interwoven with the yearning for a sense of purpose is a desire to have a clear and stable way to make money. These goals tend to be pretty tangled for my ideal client; any thinking about their interests and how to center them in their life means also thinking about how to monetize them. This ideal client knows that it’s possible to make money from those interests, but might say something like “first of all, there are other people who are way better at it than me, and second of all, I don’t know how I could make that work, and third of all, I’m not even sure I’d want to do that for a living!”

That is all to say, my ideal client doesn’t know many alternative framings for the things that light them up, except in terms of their financial/commercial value.

Some common goals ideal clients might work towards with me could be: to develop clarity of purpose and direction; to deepen their sense of self and self-worth; to find meaning, depth, and joyful challenge in life; to feel they are creating good in the world; to feel good in their body; to feel hope, excitement, and energy; to know how to make decisions and feel they are on a good path; to feel confident in who they are and what they have to offer; to deepen their relationships and sense of community.

Some common challenges that my ideal clients might be faced with could be: self-doubt; financial pressure; social expectations and learned patterns of belief; going into freeze; dwelling on details and possible consequences of decisions to a point of anxiety; shame; comparing themselves to others; trauma responses; waiting for someone else to give them the answers; overwhelm; fear of the unknown.

All of this is, I have to say, fairly vague. Almost any business focused on wellness might list the same or similar outcomes and challenges for their clients, and yet, I don’t see my clients as people who tend to go for wellness-type services and products.

If I actually close my eyes and imagine a client who I absolutely adore working with, a lot of times the person who comes to mind is male. He’s between 25 and 35, perhaps without a lot of experience with (or patience for) “self-work” or “spiritual crap”. He’s fairly logically-minded, perhaps in a relationship, doing fine. But in the back of his mind he’s wondering what it’s all for. He’s not always the best at communicating his feelings or his needs to others, and has a hard time feeling vulnerable, though he knows as well that he’s not a “macho” guy, that he’s what people call “sensitive”. He doesn’t have an interest in the dude-bro aesthetic, but he also doesn’t really have a definition of – or a role model for – other kinds, healthy kinds, of masculinity. He’s just kind of coasting, dabbling in creative projects perhaps, reading or talking about issues in the world that interest him, but wishing for a deeper sense of meaning and connection, though he sometimes believes that’s a fairy-tale world that doesn’t really exist.

But my images of an ideal client aren’t all male. Some are femme or female; perhaps more are enby or genderqueer. Often the person in my imagination is Jewish. I’m not sure yet how these pieces fit together and what they boil down to.

How I plan to work with clients is kind of a twofold process of first of all introducing them from day 1 to the feeling of being home in their body and in the world through nature-connection and somatic practices, and second of all taking them on a path of compassionate self-discovery to uncover their true and unique gifts.

I return again and again to the image of a covered lantern. So many of us have learned from such an early age how to cover up the light of the lanterns that are our real selves. But when we re-learn how to uncover them and let our own light shine, not only do we light the way for one another across all realms of human experience, it can also be seen by others when our candles need to be replaced and our flame nurtured.

Today I found this image posted by the Loveland Foundation on their Instagram, which sums this up well (https://www.instagram.com/p/CWEjSf3hwv1/)

This also reminds me of a quote from Braiding Sweetgrass, by Robin Wall Kimmerer:

“The most important thing each of us can know is our unique gift and how to use it in the world. Individuality is cherished and nurtured, because, in order for the whole to flourish, each of us has to be strong in who we are and carry our gifts with conviction, so they can be shared with others… In reciprocity, we fill our spirits as well as our bellies.” (p. 134)

My ideal client, at the root of it, is searching for how to flourish themself while at the same time helping the whole to flourish. As Kimmerer points out, achieving that goal is contingent on each of us getting to know ourselves intimately and deeply.

Collaborating with both external and internal nature, then, is a process of widening awareness, coming into the present, and discovering ways to see what’s actually in front of you instead of the past and/or future. It’s also a way of connecting with pleasure and intrinsic meaning in the moment. This in itself is healing, but beyond that, I want to interweave courageous exploration of the self into that, so that my clients can discover who they are and how their unique light shines, with that same kind of compassionate, open awareness.

As for the part about individuals and organizations who work with similar populations…! My research here has not really turned up many people or organizations doing exactly what I’m interested in doing. Everyone I’ve found seems to be people or organizations I could imagine working in tandem or partnership with.

The first person who comes to mind is a bodyworker called Prairie, of Somatic Connections: https://www.somaticconnections.org/. Prairie works specifically with the body, especially with the pelvis, to help people feel in alignment with themselves. The front page of her website asks “Ready to uncover and claim your inherent joy and pleasure, to feel secure and grounded in your root, and to walk easefully in your own skin?” – this is what shows me that she works with clients with similar goals. However, her approach is completely different – and it seems that the presenting issues people seek her out with are also very different (pain, birth trauma processing, sexual expression, etc). Yet still, she works very much with regulating the nervous system and addressing trauma towards claiming ease, joy, and pleasure in oneself.

Embodied Jewish Learning is another organization that I’ve found. Their website states: “Embodied Jewish Learning offers all people the chance to experience Jewish wisdom through movement practices that nourish their minds, bodies, hearts and souls and empowers them to fully embody and express their unique role in creating positive change for our world.” (https://embodiedjewishlearning.org/mission) I interpret EJL as oriented especially towards people looking for a sense of meaning in their everyday lives. For EJL, the target group already has a source of meaning, i.e. Jewish wisdom and teachings. So EJL focuses on combining this with embodiment as the way to align mind, body, heart & soul. The parallel here for me is of course nature connection, which carries its own inherent wisdom and meaning and can be accessed in tandem with embodiment/somatics practices in order to bring alignment to my clients.

The Fired Up Collective in Berlin (https://www.thefiredupcollective.com/) matches people registered as unemployed with coaches (for which the job center then pays). As a collective, their coaches are themselves diverse, but all seem to target an eclectic, young, alternative subsection of Berlin’s unemployed people who are looking for new direction and purpose — both expats and Germans who are typical to Berlin’s scene; that is, creative, diverse, political, critical of existing systems, and a bit lost. Their coaches employ many different approaches, but since all are accepted by the state job center’s coaching scheme, I believe that means all have completed a German-recognized career coaching training, and can then weave their own approaches into this. I believe this would be an incredible way for me to attract the kind of clients I am most interested in, as they are often financially challenged due to being between jobs.

And finally, I am already working in tandem with Nature Meet (https://www.nature-meet.com/) to deliver nature-based workshops and tours. Nature Meet’s mission is to connect people within and around nature, and organizes trips and tours around Berlin run by community guides. The tours’ participants mostly come from a fairly traditional career and interest background – i.e. have a steady job, etc, but crave both community and time in nature (in other words, more meaning!). The idea here is simply that by going on hikes, foraging trips, etc alongside others, people both get the benefits of nature and community in a spontaneous way. I’m still trying to figure out how to turn this into a client stream as well, but the potential is definitely there.

[Simka]

As a client going into Threshold, I have had a very marked experience of the raise in energy and also an experience of strong need to do the thing that comes to mind, even if I don’t express it strongly. There’s often a growing hint throughout Severance of what I want to do in Threshold in the form of a longing or pulling or embodied wish, even before the coach starts to transition the session. It’s this kind of knowing that what I need in that moment is to try out satisfying the need that has come up. I then often express it more shyly than how I experience it – for example, saying “well, I suppose I could go outside and take some breaths in my sit spot” when my desire to do it is really pressing.

What’s interesting about this to me is that this is a similar experience to what happens internally around my needs outside of a coaching session. I might know that it would be really good for me to, say, go for a walk with a certain awareness, but that part of me that knows is quite shy around the part of myself that actually makes the decisions about what to do. In a coaching session going into Threshold, then, that knowing part of me gets to experiment with saying what it wants. I think this knowing part of me is the aware, connected, grounded, embodied, intuitive part: in short, the nature-connected part or what I’m starting to recognize as the soma.

I think all the above applies when I have got to a defined deeper need. When things are still murky around what I need or even what I want, going into Threshold can feel like a blank; it’s not easy to think about what I can do to experiment because I don’t yet know what I’m experimenting with. I’ve had the experience of resisting that and not wanting to go into Threshold, I think because in these cases the unknown feels much bigger and therefore more edgy. In these moments I feel very disconnected from my body, often feeling a swirling in my head and heart and very little awareness of my lower body. In these moments, natural beings feel more like objects to me than presences to connect with.

I think what all of this tells me as a coach is that deep listening (ICF competencies C. Communicating Effectively 6. Listens Actively > especially 4 & 5) is really key to leading into Threshold effectively. I recognize that I am still learning to balance facilitating the ceremony of the session (i.e. getting through all the stages) with being really present and attuned to exactly where the client is. Listening not just to the client’s words, but also to their nonverbal cues, to know where they are and what they’re ready for, is something I want to practice actively.

Looking at my own experience, it seems that when you’ve hit the deeper need together, the client may already know exactly what they need to do to experiment with it in Threshold. But when the need isn’t yet clear, it can feel confusing and scary from the client perspective (and perhaps the coach perspective too) to go into a conscious experimentation. This is where I think it’s really helpful to go back to the beginning of the conversation if you opened with a question like “what would you like to get out of this session today?” This very crucially brings together the Core Competencies B.3 Establishes and Maintains Agreements > 6. and 7. (“Partners with the client to identify or reconfirm what they want to accomplish in the session” and “Partners with the client to define what the client believes they need to address or resolve to achieve what they want to accomplish in the session”) and C.7 Evokes Awareness > 8. and 9. (“Helps the client identify factors that influence current and future patterns of behavior, thinking or emotion” and “Invites the client to generate ideas about how they can move forward and what they are willing or able to do”). Threshold can then become a way of circling in towards the deeper need, but framed in terms of what they want to achieve in the session and empowering them to generate their own ideas about how to move closer to that goal.

To guide through all of this, it requires me as a coach to continue working on A. 2 Embodies a Coaching Mindset, especially 1., 6. and 7. (“Acknowledges that clients are responsible for their own choices”; “Develops and maintains the ability to regulate one’s emotions”; “Mentally and emotionally prepares for sessions”). Essentially, to be able to bring presence and openness and deep listening, I need to work on letting go of my worries about “being a good coach” through my own practices in mindfulness and nature connection.

Finally, with regards to how nature takes part in Threshold for me, I have to say I have not experienced many Thresholds as a client that are an active engagement with external nature. Rather, nature has been a kind, brave container for me to experiment with my comfort zones. To the extent that nature has actively come in, it has been in the form of active engagement with my body. That said, I think I’m quite used to engaging with nature in this way as a space, rather than as an active partner because I have a strong block against anthropomorphization. However, when we’ve done various exercises in Foundations like the activity exploring the boundary of a nonhuman being, I gained powerful insight. I wonder if I in some way block engaging fully and directly with nature in Threshold, for myself and probably as a result for my clients too, and if exploring my relationship with anthropomorphization would be a way into this.

What I’m taking away overall from this reflection is that asking a powerful opening question is key, but also that I would like to develop a practice to do before a session that helps me let go, tap into my intuition and individual needs, and center in the moment with playful openness to whatever comes through the session.

[Simka]

Oooof, Lilia, this phrase “allowing myself to enter the compost of my community” GOT me. Like full-body tingles. Yes, yes, yes. You’re so right: it’s going to take generations, and it can’t be forced or escaped. It’s utterly pointless and hugely painful to boot to take on the responsibility to change the entire system at once, though that certainly is something I tend towards if I’m not careful.

Something I’ve heard Tada Hozumi talk about recently is this idea in the somatics of ‘animist-indigenous’ cultures (he’s talking especially about Asian animist indigeneity) where first the embodiment changes, and only then does the worldview change — not through explicit teaching but in an emergent way from the somatic change. Hearing this was so deeply relieving for me; it allows me to take a deep breath, somehow, and focus on the ‘compost’ instead of thinkingthinkingthinking about the systems and ideologies and blablabla.

But it also gives me a way to walk that important line you mention, a way into deeper compassion for those folks who are perpetuating power dynamics out of ignorance, without compromising my own truth: if I practice my own embodiment and connection, and teach others embodiment and connection, then it’s kind of irrelevant what any of us believe; coming back to this bottom-up approach allows me to trust that as we fall into an embodied way of being, our worldviews and power dynamics will heal too.

This seems to tie in to exactly what you’re talking about. It’s like you say, the ideological issues kind of fall away and the question turns into how we reach our clients — especially the ones who would most benefit (and society would therefore most benefit) from these embodied changes! It comes back to that ‘creating a need’ sweet spot that Michael talked about in the ‘Who Is Coachable?’ webinar, doesn’t it? Although, I have to wonder… is this also in some way an emergent process…?

[Simka]

I realized I never made a summary post for this module, so here it is at last:

What I’m taking away from this module is that nature connection is a practice of stepping into relationship and reciprocity with other beings, which requires letting go of control and getting comfortable in the unknown. This module and this entire discussion deepened my understanding of what it means to be in relationship, whether that be with a tree, the land itself, or a client. It also helped me understand how this is a way of being rather than a thing you do, and that it’s an extraordinarily powerful partner when it comes to coaching and guiding. Finally, by reflecting on my own experience, I’m incredibly excited about bringing in the body as a way of being in relationship with self and how that might be woven into my coaching further down the line. It all just serves to confirm that I am where I need to be in this program and on this path!

[Simka]

In a recent collaborative workshop between the Berlin collectives Frauenzentrum and Black Earth Kollektiv, two activists outlined a nuanced and critical distinction between the environmental and climate justice movements which, though I had not heard it explicitly articulated before, felt deeply resonant. The environmental movement, they argued, is top-down, led mostly by white folks in the Global North, and focuses on industrial and governmental solutions to the climate crisis. The climate justice movement, on the other hand, is bottom-up, led mostly by BIPOC people and people in the Global South, and focuses on addressing community needs. This workshop taught that although well-intentioned, actions within the environmental movement often do more harm than good because they ignore the relationship between colonialism and the climate crisis, so they end up upholding power structures that erase the experiences of BIPOC folks.

Environmentalism’s future seems pretty bleak. Not only is it ideologically problematic, but economic sanctions and political campaigns have also proved themselves ineffectual; as Theodore Roszak points out in Where Psyche Meets Gaia, the boundaries of nation-states, free trade agreements, military alliances, and multinational corporations are far too rigid to incorporate the scale of change needed. No one’s healing can happen while we all live in what Buzzell and Chalquist describe as “an overbuilt industrialized civilization saturated by intrusive advertising and media, unregulated toxic chemicals, unhealthy food, parasitic business practices, time-stressed living, and… a heart-warping culture of perpetual war and relentlessly mindless political propaganda” (19).

So this distinction between environmentalism and the Climate Justice movement seems immensely important to me. Based in grassroots principles and without reductivist reliance on legislation, the climate justice movement positions relationships as paramount to ecological as well as intra- and interpersonal healing. It is also intersectional and centers BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and women’s stories and experiences.

Yet as people in the Global North grow aware of the climate crisis and there is an increasing pressure to Do Something, the Climate Justice movement isn’t always a clear alternative to environmentalism. As a white-positioned person from the Global North, my experience is that it can be challenging to connect to the climate justice movement. I recognize this partially as a product of privilege and white fragility; it takes work and commitment to search out and participate in community organizing, and that work is often too easy to not do, especially when I know my experience won’t be centered and there’s bound to be deep emotional challenges and self-reckoning involved. But it’s also a practical question of accessibility: I want to support and raise up BIPOC communities, and that has to be part of the work — but how do I engage my own community? How do I get others on board, especially those who are not as deeply engaged with racial, social, and climate justice issues?

I think this is where ecopsychology can be a powerful ally. As a framework, it is the lovechild of the environmental movement and psychology, which are both dominantly white, rationalist frameworks on their own. Yet in recognizing the history and shortcomings of its parents, ecopsychology applies an approach akin to critical theory, rejecting logic and rationality as the ways to solve either our psychological or our ecological ailments. Instead, as Roszak puts it, “ecopsychology as a field of inquiry commits itself to understanding people as actors on a planetary stage who shape and are shaped by the biospheric system.” Like the Climate Justice movement, it centers relationships, yet it speaks a powerful academic language that is positioned as white and western. From that comes a potential to reach folks who as it stands don’t have access to communities where this is taken as given.

Yet I believe this must be approached with massive attention to colonial history and power dynamics. It is crucial to recognize that a) ecopsychologists did not invent this idea and b) ecopsychologists are not the only ones working from this perspective. It might be revolutionary in white Western rationalist spaces, but interconnectedness of people and planet is an understanding that has never stopped being carried and tended by BIPOC communities worldwide, in spite of colonial attempts to destroy that knowledge. The grassroots Climate Justice movement is an example of the output of such communities — as are traditional practices of nature connection (which all too often get appropriated by white western culture).

This danger of appropriating and erasing seems to be something ecopsychologists are aware of: Roszak states that “ecopsychologists are acutely cognizant of how difficult it will be to bridge the gap between the dominant society and the surviving, often fragile and marginal primary cultures of the world” (Where Psyche Meets Gaia, 6). Yet it’s so easy for the idea of ecopsychology to get warped into something marketable. This is why we see “smudge kits”, western yoga practices, forest bathing, natural healing (and, perhaps, even nature-connected coaching) cropping up everywhere. As practices with hefty price tags in the West, they are all examples of BIPOC knowledge and practices are converted into something that is widely marketable to white, wealthy Americans and Europeans. It’s a form of modern-day colonialism which can strip those customs of their meaning and potential to benefit the already-disenfranchised communities where they originate.

So in working ecopsychology into my coaching practice, this is something that needs to be at the forefront of my mind. As Buzzell and Chalquist point out, “ecotherapeutic practices cannot be used to lasting effect from within the old colonial-consumerist mind-set…. Using nature as a mere tool for human healing perpetuates the very self-world splits responsible for both our ecologically resonant maladies and a deterioriating biosphere” (20). For me, this means I need to continue learning and working on dismantling white supremacy and decolonizing both in my personal life and in my offerings as a coach, for example paying close attention to accessibility for my services. It also means I want to give the utmost attention and intentionality to my language, such as on my website and in courses, and hold myself and my colleagues accountable for creating alternatives to appropriative practices within the wellness industry.

None of these musings particularly answers the kick-off question of where ecopsychology and coaching come together, it must be said. But that’s easy. For me, they’re the same. Is coaching is built on the framework of ecopsychology, then folks have a chance at making a difference both in their own lives and in the world around them. Coaching, then, becomes a practice of guiding people to explore their relationships with the planet. This point of relationship is what we explored in our last forum posts – that nature connection amounts to relationship and reciprocity.

I think the reason for all the politicized musings above is that the consequences of this in terms of social change are enormous. We’re all hurting. Though that hurting has different forms and different histories, we need communal ways of healing and restructuring that create a livable world for all beings. Ecopsychology offers an interdisciplinary approach to creating that communal, interconnected healing that is in some way harmonious with existing institutions and dominant communities in the Global North. If approached responsibly and conscientiously, ecopsychology can lend a Western-condoned psychological framework and vocabulary to guide folks in my own community towards sustainably transforming not only our unhealthy power dynamics we have with the earth, but also those we have between humans. That’s huge.

[Simka]

I really appreciate this ‘microcosm’ approach Erin! I wouldn’t call myself an individualist in any way, but I think I’m coming much closer to that place of focusing on ‘what I can DO right now, right here’ (see my comment below in response to Lilia!). It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that the macro/top-down approach is important for context and understanding, but doesn’t itself change anything. The process has to be iterative: start with the individual, make the change on the level of the body, allow that change to trickle through to your behavior, and then step back to see how your world-view changes as a result. Then start all over with the body and repeat. On a collective level, this seems like it holds real power for change, just like you say.

[Simka]

I love that, Erin! I’m feeling you on the not wanting or needing to always have scientific backing — so long as it works for you and it feels good, then screw the reductionism of scientific studies! I value science deeply for how far it has brought us in terms of rigour of thinking and depth of understanding, and insofar as it is a product of curiosity and connection — but as soon as it becomes colonial, telling us how we should or must think or behave, it’s time to put it behind us. Go you for living for you <3

[Simka]

Lilia,

Thank you deeply for such a nuanced, thoughtful, and challenging response. I wanted to really think about these questions for a while before responding. As with the last forum discussion, I can feel myself being deeply stretched, and I’m so grateful to you for that!

I think you hit the nail on the head with regards to my concerns when you said “everyone and their grandma is advocating for it regardless of context and stripped of its spiritual potency and culture.” I think the thing I want to keep in mind at all times is that the wellness industry is now literally bigger than the global pharmaceutical industry (globally it’s worth something like $4.5 TRILLION!! absolutely mental…) The vast, vast majority of it is dedicated entirely to extraction of capital – and I think what is particularly sick about that is that it comes with a label of healing. It preys on the people who are looking for meaning in life, and corners them in a spandex-clad, green-smoothie-drinking, designer-yoga-mat-using parasitic relationship.

And yet the world isn’t black and white, so even when we’re clear that this is not the kind of wellness industry we want to participate in or perpetuate, it can oftentimes be hard to see below the surface at what we’re accidentally perpetuating. People’s intentions can be really, really good and they can still do a lot of harm. So that’s where I’m working – how can I see below the surface and make sure my practice is actively doing good, not just for myself and my clients but in service of something greater?

Something I’ve been thinking and learning about recently is that one thing the wellness industry and capitalism generally tricks us into believing is that our happiness, healing, and wellbeing are fully and completely our own responsibility. It feels really important to name that trauma is something we collectively experience (this podcast episode blew my mind around this: https://www.robhopkins.net/2021/02/15/from-what-if-to-what-next-episode-20/). So healing must be as well.

So to answer your first question – who will be reaching my services, and how can my coaching practice be an intervention – I’m still figuring this one out, but my vision is to tailor my services to folks who want to create new ways of existing and healing, especially activists, artists, and likeminded healers. I want to be in a community of folks who are doing things differently, challenging themselves and one another with radical kindness, and creating something better together. Money can still be involved – we need it to survive in the current context – but I want to be integrally a part of something different than what we’ve been told is the only option.

I love your exploration of how all of this fits with Nature-Connected Coaching. I’d tentatively agree with what you said about indigenous ways of thinking being a methodology — I’m not indigenous myself, so I don’t get to own that truth. But what I have heard talked about recently is indigenous ways of being coming down to being in relationship — something that, even if not a methodology, has the emergent outcome of an aligned way of being on this planet, just as you say. I definitely agree that that’s a large part of what we’re learning to do here at EBI. I guess I wish the glorification or romanticization of indigeneity was left out of it; can’t we just learn to be in relationship in our own contexts? (That sparks a bit of a rabbit hole in my thinking – I wonder if owning our own relationships instead of borrowing from indigenous relationships would force us (by ‘us’ I’m talking from my perspective as a white person from the US, so I don’t mean to speak for you) to confront all of our colonial and oppressive history and internalized generational trauma. It’s much more comfortable to just borrow from the folks who got it right, without doing the deep work of understanding ourselves and why we don’t have these relationships. I don’t mean this as a critique of what you’re saying, but rather a reflection on institutionalized, unconscious avoidance of the hard shit. But like I said, a rabbit hole…)

But all of that aside for a moment, I particularly love what you say about the western idea of the solid, fixed individual; that feels really important. I feel like that might relate to what I was musing about in terms of the collectivity inherent in the coaching/healing world I want to participate in. Individuals are then neither fixed in terms of their lives, nor in terms of their boundaries with other beings, human or otherwise.

But I think I have a bit more of a pessimistic view on this than you, or at least I’m skeptical about whether this can arise simply from awareness and nature connection. The boundaries between participating in dominant culture and being in service to the greater scheme of life are fuzzy at best. I feel like it takes a lot – a LOT – of work, listening, intentionality, and willingness to be wrong and be uncomfortable to get to a place of truly living responsibly.

And yet… none of us are perfect, and it is totally counter to the entire goal if I try to hold on to some ideal endpoint of perfection and freedom from mistakes. It’s a constant process and there’s no right answers. So I guess I feel like so long as we’re willing to do the work, we’ll be okay.

Okay, that was a long one. Would love to hear thoughts of yours if they come up, but I’m sure this is something we’ll keep exploring together as the year progresses.

[Simka]

Whoa, Julie, I love your rabbit holes so much! Your post helped me to discover a new layer to my own excitement around NCC. I totally agree that considering NCC to belong under the umbrella of applied ecopsychology provides a structure and context for the work as well as a freedom from having all the answers. This is so well expressed when you say “ecopsychology has the potential to still place the psychologist in a healers role, whereas coaching places nature in that role. This simplifies the coach’s role from dominate healer to knowledgeable facilitator.”

I’m absolutely fascinated by your discussion of generalizations around gendered character traits. I have a similar response to seeing domination gendered as masculine. Although I tend to believe that historically it has been that way, it doesn’t seem to me to be fair, useful, or correct to generalize from this. As you so eloquently point out, it only serves to alienate swathes of people which is totally counter to the goal of connection and relationship.

Though, as you say, this is a rabbit hole, I still find it an incredibly useful one. Unpicking these setbacks in the theory of ecopsychology helps me to finetune my language and orientation as a coach, which ultimately will help me better facilitate that connection and relationship for my clients.

Just as a final thought about your discussion of ownership… in Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about how in the Potawatomi language, words that are nouns in English like “bay” or “river” or “mountain” are, brain-bendingly, verbs. She says this encodes the worldview of animacy in the Potawatomi culture. What follows from this is that unlike in English (or German or whatever), an it when you talk about land and nature just doesn’t exist; it’s impossible to own a verb! So I wonder how much of our “domination over nature” thing is actually encoded in our language, rather than in anything as loose as character traits and gender… Just some food for thought 🙂

[Simka]

Hi Erin,

It was really interesting to read your post and I totally agree when you say “human consciousness loses the polarity of good versus evil in Nature-Connectedness” — your example of the “badness” of the eagle being irrelevant in the greater ecological context feels so right!

That said, I had a really different interpretation of the conception of the psyche in ecopsychology. I also found the discussion of Freudian psychology really interesting, but I understand ecopsychology and fundamentally rejecting that idea. From that same chapter “Where Psyche Meets Gaia,” I understood that modern psychiatric theory is based on a scientific worldview that positions the psyche as distinct and removed from the world around, but still at the mercy of the second law of thermodynamics. However, to me, the ecopsychologists seem to pretty clearly reject that view. Roszak quotes Paul Shepard about the psyche and self in ecopsychology: “the self with a permeable boundary…constantly drawing on and influencing its surroundings, whose skin and behavior are soft zones contacting the world instead of excluding it…. Ecological thinking registers a kind of vision across boundaries” (p.13). So in this way I don’t see the divide between Ecopychology and Nature Connection that you describe — to me, the polarity of good versus evil is just as absent in Ecopsychology as it is in Nature Connection.

So I’m fascinated that we had such a different interpretation!! I’m really curious about this sentence in your post: “That evil residual in the human must be explored and brought to enlightenment for us to be in connection and harmony with our natural surroundings.” Would you say a little more about this and how you see that playing out in ecopyschology? I would love to understand better the limits you see there!

[Simka]

Hi Lilia, equally thank you for your deep responses, I feel the stretch in return!

Your insight about your time in Borneo is so interesting. And wow, that sounds like an extraordinary experience! What kind of research were you doing there? I think that getting pulled out of daily reality is exactly it. I wonder if part of the reason that daily walks don’t quite bring the same experience is not just due to the time element but about how they don’t pull you out of everyday sensory realities. Your comment about everyone being dirty and stinky stuck out to me not just because it’s funny, but also because of how vivid and sensory that is. My sister recently discovered how wonderful gardening is, and she was talking to me this week about exactly this experience of time stretching for her in the garden, and it really struck me how vividly she was talking about the sensory aspects of her hands in the soil and the scent of it and so on. I’m reflecting on my own walks, and I realize that even though I try to bring in touch and smell into them, they just aren’t particularly out of the ordinary of daily life in terms of my senses. Sp I wonder if that’s part of what causes that slower state of being that you mentioned – just the wealth of sensory information that we don’t get in our daily lives, coupled with the totally different pace of tasks and routines…

Oh, WOW. I love what you say about reciprocity, and I totally agree that reciprocity is a fundamental part of nature. What you say reminds me so deeply of the themes that weave through Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass – I read that a few months ago and I swear it completely changed my life. There’s a beautiful recent episode of Emergence Magazine Podcast where she discusses the idea of reciprocity in the gift economy through describing gathering serviceberries. It’s so funny that you mention Andreas Weber – I didn’t know who he was until this week, but on Tuesday I was at a monthly art-science event where he was one of the guests for the session! He actually lives in Berlin, and he’s was really friendly. Anyway, Enlivenment sounds great, I’ll definitely check it out.

I love your perspective on reciprocity in the realm of coaching. I definitely agree. I think when you meet somebody with deep, powerful listening and reflection, the kind of trust they often return is an incredibly precious gift. Curiosity, empathy, humor, and willingness to learn are all gifts that I would like to bring as a coach as well.

Yes, I think you’re right – the separation of heaven and earth in Christianity, and later the materialism of science (oh boy, Descartes has a lot to answer for) seems to be a huge influence on the dismissal of the idea of the world as sacred. And yet, the alchemists were deeply religious Christians, and still alchemy was fully dedicated to the sacredness of matter. There’s some deep, deep beauty in alchemy, I think. It’s roughly understood now to have been ‘early science plus belief in magic’, but I think there’s a lot of richness in including it alongside indigenous practices of uniting heaven and earth. It’s an especially good example of how ‘indigenous cultures = good and nature connected, white/european/western culture = bad and not nature connected’ is just another problematic dualism, you know? I fall into that trap way too often, I think, and especially as a white person I feel a responsibility not to lean purely on the practices and worldviews of indigenous folks for my personal ‘cleansing’ of the nature/human dualism. That said, we are, exactly as you say, so indebted to those who are still holding the wisdom and I have so much gratitude for folks like Robin Wall Kimmerer whose generosity in sharing that wisdom is enormous!

Anyway, I love the image of nature-connected coaching as a guidance towards uniting heaven and earth. I’m grateful to you for this beautiful, deep, inspiring discussion!

[Simka]

Thank you Julie! I’m glad you connected with it. I definitely did – and still do – feel more in harmony with my body; I can hear its needs better (for example I realized how often ‘I want coffee’ is actually ‘I want water’ – and sometimes vice versa!). When it comes to mind, mine gets preoccupied with consequences and starts spiralling around in the future. What connection to my body or to nature does is pull it back to the present moment. So for example if I’m trying to figure out what to do about something, the question stops being ‘what will happen?’ and turns into ‘what do I want right now?’ – which is often a question my body helps to answer. Does that make any sense? I guess a better way of putting it would be that there’s better harmony between my body and mind in the present moment since I started partnering with my body.

I’m really intrigued by your bringing in the internal relationship between mind, body, and spirit! It reminds me of a passage from Braiding Sweetgrass where Robin Wall Kimmerer talks about how in her indigenous (Potawatomi) tradition, one can only really “understand” something when one understands it through all four ways of being: mind, body, spirit, and soul. I’m so curious what you think about how those aspects of self engage with the external world and how the boundaries meet & blur, if you feel like sharing some thoughts!

[Simka]

Lilia,

Thunderstorms are so powerful, aren’t they?! I definitely connected to them through that summer camp, and now where I live there are massive thunderstorms every summer. I love that time of year so much!

Anyway, you’re so right, thank you for the reflection. I think I started out feeling unsure, and figured it out through writing it. I’m really curious to see how that weaving together of the different parts ends up looking for me (and for everyone else) over the course of the year.

As for humility, intentionality, and reciprocity… I think that’s my way of being in an I-Thou relationship. If that requires stepping into the unknown – and I believe it does – there has to be a willingness to shed what you think you know, to be present, to both give and take in ways that are sometimes wordless.

So how will that show up in my coaching? I think it’s a matter of letting go of trying to control things, and stepping into the moment with a client with the acknowledgement that it takes trust from both sides to do that. I think it’s about invitation rather than instruction, about making room for my client’s intuition as well as my own, for being wrong and allowing my client to be wrong. More than anything, I think it’s about saying hey, this is a journey we take together, and we can’t know exactly where it will end up, but things will shift along the way if we’re willing to attend to them.

I don’t know if any of that makes much sense, but it’s an exploration 😉

[Simka]

Thanks for your reflection Greg! I know what you mean about the self-fulfilling prophecy. I’d love to hear about if any memories came up with regards to your relationship with nature as a child vs now, if you feel like sharing!

[Simka]

Kendy,

In reading your beautiful descriptions of finding guidance, comfort, and healing in wordless relationship with Nature, I am reminded of Julie’s post, and how she described connection with nature as a relationship which is always there, even if unconscious. Sounds like you do a lot to tend that relationship, even if you haven’t been conscious of it until recently. How wonderful to become aware of it, and realize it’s always been there!

This quote resonates with me deeply: “experiencing Nature can heal us and be a prayer without words if only we allow ourselves a second to be still and known.” This is something that I’ve only recently been learning in a deep way for myself, and it really does feel like mending a relationship that had gone many years untended.

Thank you for sharing with us. And thank you for the inspiration to finally read some Mary Oliver…!