Whole Heart Connection is a way of connecting and tapping into the greater-than-human to ask for support for myself and my clients. In my work the primary way this comes into sessions is through my own preparation before sessions. It is my way of invitation to bring more than me or the client into the session for both wisdom and support. In general, it isn’t a practice you will see or hear in any obvious sort of way but rather through my being that day in session. I am human and while I try to access it as best I can as often as I can there are day and sessions where it will be thinner although through time I hope to lessen those days. For both of us. If a client is interested we can also work with some of the more direct exercises as taught by Thea Elijah.

For more information on WHC please visit https://perennialmedicine.com/whole-heart-connection/

I find storytelling so powerful because of the seeds it can plant in ourselves and others. When I am crafting a formal story I am looking for what seeds I want to drop into the listeners and while telling I’m feeling and watching if seeds are dropping. What I love about telling is that while I have an idea of what seed I want to drop I have no idea what kind of soil it will fall onto, when it will bloom, and whether or not there are other seeds being dropped too. Stories seem to get by some of our intellectual defenses.

And it goes both ways. Both as a sharer and a listener. I never know what seeds may get planted in me when a resonant story is told to me. And it doesn’t have to be a formal story either. Folks lives and lived experiences and desires and fears all have this same power. To share and connect. To not be alone. To be seen. To be heard. To catch. To listen. To trust. To be trusted. There are so many aspects to sharing story that I find nourishing me and others.

Awhile back I was on the phone with a friend of mine and she was telling me something from her life. I don’t recall the exact details but it was this combination of person, aspects of similar life situation, and wonderings that planted a seed in me. A seed that wasn’t at all related to what she was telling me but coming from this person it landed on very fertile soil and exploded. What landed in me was this release of shame I have about not going into formal science like I had planned to. Getting side tracked. And questioned. And then sick. A nascent career that never took off and a feeling of being unmoored since. And something about what my friend shared allowed that to be present but also the clear feeling that this path of hearing and holding other people in our efforts to be full selves is a strong path of mine. And that other paths while would have been good wouldn’t have been the same. And in that moment the grip of shame of that abandoning a dream …. became less. All because she was willing to share something entirely unrelated to me. She planted a seed she had no idea she was planting.

This is the power of storytelling I love.

There are many aspects that have influenced how I like to work with Nature Connection in myself and in my clients. As a child we played outside and camped. As a teenager I worked in a Natural History Museum doing science education. In college I studied Biology with a focus on Animal Behavior. Post college I went to work at a conservation institution. Later, I migrated from the science side of nature to the naturalist and connection side when I was connected with the Wilderness Awareness School in Duvall, WA. From there I was introduced to Wildlife Tracking as a skill and the deeper idea of listening to the land and connection to the land. Along each of those steps I gained another layer that fold onto themselves but all end in the same place: We as humans are part of nature and the less separate we hold ourselves the better off we and the world are.

It is from this core nugget I pull in aspects of all those experiences and work with my clients and myself. I’m far from skilled at being connected to nature even most of the time but it is something I’ve seen and felt really, really nourishing when it is there. It is something to cultivate and practice. To listen. To speak. To the more than human. To the other than human. Some of this is still theory in me and some is more practiced. But all I believe in.

One such experience was during my first year of wildlife tracking intensive. We had spent the day exploring the valley below and the mountain side on the way up to the ridge line. We had found and explored different track and signs throughout the day until we finally rested and ate lunch in a clearing overlooking the valley where we had started. Each of those moments earlier were specific to what we found: who made it? Why did they make it? When did they make it? Etc. Each a discrete moment of activity. But sitting up above all those spaces that day I started to see each animal in the landscape where it had been… all at once. The horses in the field. The pocket gophers under the field. The human shearing the deer hair. The mountain lion moving up the path. The sage grouse under the tree. The bobcat under the same tree. Each walking on the landscape at the same time. The same landscape I had just walked on. I too was in that story. In that vision.

We are all connected. Even if we walk along the path at drastically different times there is no way to remove ourselves from nature. We are nature.

This can come into my work with clients through understanding and invitation. Exploration of ideas or spaces. Especially if we work together in a park this influence can be strongly brought into a session. And while it can be activities or curiosities it also can just be the belief underpinning how I show up to session.

Read more about Wilderness Awareness School here.