Who are we?

photo: Anne Nygard

Welcome to the village hearth!

This is where all the preparation is happening

and where you can meet us…

Make yourself some tea and gather in…

Since growing up amongst the oak trees in leafy Surrey, I have been living an earth-led life, from building treehouses to protest against destructive developments, to teaching permaculture around Europe, to founding a woodland eco-community where I lived for 7 years.

These days I rent a hobbit cottage on a Dartmoor farm with my partner Rebecca, and I am still passionate about nature connection and creating regenerative cultures. I work with the 8 Shields Institute’s map of culture repair to nourishingly connect people to themselves, other people and the rest of life.

You can find links to some of my work here – My website: https://www.livingincircles.com/

The 8 Shields flagship UK event – http://artofmentoring.life/

I love listening to bird song, being around trees, processing firewood, building simple structures, wild running and swimming, and helping wildlife to thrive in this time of ecological die off.

I long to live in community where there is co-support, healing, useful boundaries, music, joy, awe and wonder, accountability, deep nature connection and heartfelt sharing.

This one is brimming with passion and care and curiosity and most of all LOVE for all beings. I long to more and more reveal the truth of my being as part of the wider golden web of life. I am driven by a ravenousness to live as more and more expansive Love and a reverence to the radical inclusivity that requires. To this end my life is committed to the shadow work that embodied awakening supports – and to sharing my gift for supporting others to more and more drink from this precious awakening medicine. I am here to serve the dis-entanglement needed to co-liberate ourselves from the cultural conditioning that created this entangled pickle we currently find ourselves in as a species.

I love authentic movement and dance, being in land-based ceremony, adventuring within the mythic realms of the underworld, cooking up culinary feasts, the exhilaration of cycling and splashing around in what it is to meaningfully relate in ways that actually meet my deep seated longing to live as Love and connection. As you may have already sensed, I am an intense being with an epic heart and a vast Love of life’s inherently transformatory nature as we surrender to the perennial life-death-life cycle.

My current work includes:

– Coordinating Starter Culture: www.starterculture.net

– Soul Initiation guiding (currently apprenticing with Animas Valley institute www.animas.org).

– Embodied awakening guiding (currently apprenticing with Movement of Being www.movementofbeing.com)

As a child growing up in Kent surrounded by oak woodland I was fascinated by nature & wild and domestic animals and found in their company a place to feel connected and happy. I work as a Therapeutic Horsemanship practitioner and I ran a charity for many years training and rehoming semi-feral dartmoor ponies. I love how being in relationship with others (the wild, animals, each other,) teaches us so much about ourselves and how connection begets connection.

My personal life & experience of burnout led me to a practice called TRE (Tension & Trauma Release Exercises,) and after seeing how healing this work can be I am now a trained practitioner. (www.dartmoortre.org is my own website and www.traumaprevention.com is our international website)

I am interested in all things that help us to feel more grounded, rooted, safe & alive. I am interested in how when we feel these things in our body we can make better decisions, for ourselves, the planet and others, and how we can feel greater love, compassion & kindness for ourselves and others (humans & other than humans.)

I love spending time on Dartmoor and other wild places; riding, running, swimming in the rivers and the sea. I love cooking and sharing meals with my friends, family and community. I love singing and dancing, especially with others. I love sitting in circle and sharing with friends and community and I love that living as part of a community can be incredibly supportive as well as challenging and a place of learning & healing.

Hello! I’m excited about co-creating reciprocity with both humans and other-than-humans to bring us all back into a deeper, more connective relationship with each other. I see the need for us humans to re~member ourselves as part of nature and belonging to the earth as an imperative for the collective evolutionary shift that I believe this moment is asking of us. My encounters with the other-than-human world and tracking the soul’s journey inspire me to write creatively and be in self generated ceremony with the land and Mystery. I believe in the power of ceremony, community and sitting in circle for deep healing and authentic connection and I find great satisfaction in tending the ‘village hearth’, the garden, being with the birds,the land and spending time nurturing deeply fulfilling friendships.

I have the privilege of supporting people as a nature~based Soul Guide and Human Development Mentor and I’m currently training with the Animas Valley Institute in the Wild Mind nature-based map of the psyche, which I use in my work. I’m also a Wilderness Rites of Passage Guide, having trained with the School of Lost Borders and I’m passionate about cultural healing practices that support people to re~member Wholeness as part of the collective initiation I believe is needed at this time and as part of the journey towards knowing our belonging to the earth and the earth community.

You can read about my offerings here: https://naturewisdom.life/

Who are we?

photo: Anne Nygard

peter cow

claire milne

natalie torr

Rebecca card