Our offer to you falls into 3 broad categories
Creative Practices
Creativity with natural materials, including wild art, willow weaving, hurdle making, tool and wood craft, fire cooking.
Active Practices
Movement based practices including tree yoga, woodland dance, wildlife and foraging walks, river movement.
Mindful Practices
Mindfulness and Deep Ecology meditation. Awareness of all life, ecopsychology and self-reflection.
Active Practice Examples
Below are examples of the types of active practices we offer.
If you would like to organise any of these events for your group, please do get in touch.
Woodland habitat familiarisation walks
Learn more about the woodland environment and the traditional medicinal and culinary uses of its plant and fungal life. Connect to the ancestors through the folklore of the plants and trees.
We take you on guided walks through lesser known routes of the woodlands, enjoying whatever the season brings.
Nordic Walking
Nordic Walking (with Yvonne Bignall) is a great way to gain strength and fitness outdoors all year round. With an experienced leader and a joyful atmosphere you can connect with others and improve your health.
Yvonne can support those who have gone through health challenges such as hip replacements and other medical issues to come back into movement, confidence and strength.
Treeyoga
Treeyoga is an EcoWild approach to stretching our bodies while getting to know to the trees. Both physically and spiritually, trees are a great inspiration to many. In Treeyoga we use their strength and support for balance, and as an alternative to a mat. We see the trees from a different perspective and move our bodies while connecting with their whole system, from mychorrizal fungal networks and roots, to the canopy stretching to the sky.
Treeyoga can be done with walking shoes or trainers on, or even wellies, but stretchy / loose trousers are best.
Tai Chi in the Woods
Tai chi Tao Yin Fa is a Five Element Based meridian focused series of movements. The movements balance the energy in the body and mind, increasing wellbeing and energy. The practice of Tai chi in the natural environment is uplifting.
Moving the chi on the earth, in the woods, feeling the gently dancing canopy of chestnut leaves in the autumn sun is a wonder to behold.
Mindful and Self-Reflective Practice
Below are examples of the types of contemplative practices we offer.
If you would like to organise any of these events for your group, please do get in touch.
Deep Ecology Mindfulness
We use the phrase Deep Ecology Mindfulness to signify that in this practice we go from noticing our own senses, to an awarenesses of and connectedness to our wider Earth body. We are in intimate connection to the air, water, soil and all living beings, just through breathing and eating. Coming into an experience of this broadens our perspective and sense of selves.
NatureWell
Based on the 5 pathways to Nature Connectedness, NatureWell is a framework for exploring how the living world constantly holds up a mirror for us, reflecting back our internal feelings, needs, wishes and emotions. It helps us make sense of our lives and feel more resolved. The 5 pathways are Contact, Beauty, Emotion, Compassion, and Meaning/ Purpose.
In these fast-paced times, it is easy to become disconnected and lose touch with our inner sense of feeling balanced and well in our everyday lives.
Our practices in Woodland Connect, Lakeside Wellbeing, Nature’s Respite and Nature Connect allow us to become familiar with or deepen a practice of mindfulness, with the added benefit of being in the calming and rejuvenating surroundings of the living world.
Combine Mind, Body and Creativity in a whole day’s session to guarantee coming out feeling renewed and more resilient.
Being outside in nature frees us!
Living in B&NES we are fortunate in that we are surrounded by beautiful countryside that is easily accessible to most people. Yet how many of us actually make use of this wonderful resource to enrich us and help us find peace in our demanding lives?
Being outside in nature frees us from the confines and pressures we feel in everyday life, calms our busy thinking mind, encouraging moments of deeper peace and insight. It helps to remind us of the essence of who we really are, grounded and safe in each moment.
Why practice Mindfulness outdoors?
This profound change of perspective helps us to appreciate the simpler things that are so easily overlooked. It inspires us to be more creative and helps us to explore how we can bring sense and deeper meaning to everyday life.
Mindfulness practice outdoors in the natural environment provides a nurturing to explore our conscious awareness of sounds, sights, scents, textures and tastes of the elements abundant in nature, bringing us back to the sense of joy and connection with ourselves in the present moment.
Book your private event
Please contact us to discuss or book your private Contemplative Practice event.
Creative Practice
Below are examples of the types of creative practices we offer.
If you would like to organise any of these events for your group, please do get in touch.
Choose from Willow Weaving, Woodcraft, Fire Cooking, Singing, Wildlife Walks, Wool Craft, Wild Art, Foraging, Charcoal making, Natural pigments and more
Wellbeing for adults sessions are tailored for carers, people who are isolated, at risk of mental health problems, and anyone in need of a break from busy lives.
We know that contact with the natural world can transform your state of mind and these sessions will help to create a connection with the seasons through outdoor activities that stimulate, refresh and invigorate the senses.
What happens during the Creative Practice sessions?
During the sessions you will also get a chance to use natural materials and gain skills in activities such as willow weaving, fire lighting with natural materials, using kelly kettles, charcoal making, hazel hurdling, making a Swedish fire torch, god’s eyes and dreamcatchers, whittling a spiral or cooking fire bread.
We combine sitting or lying mindfulness exercises with these hands on experiences as they help us to be present and connect with the living world around us. They are simple but therapeutic ways back to our nature connection.
Sitting around a fire among the trees is another deeply rooted experience which helps us to be mindful.
Building and cooking on a fire, identifying trees and wildlife, creating natural art, craft making, toolwork, shelter building, and being part of the ever changing and inspiring beauty of nature will give you new perspective.
Locations
Woodland sessions are held in Greyfield Woods in High Littleton and Lakeside sessions at the Chew Valley Community farm (technically overlooking the lake rather than beside it). Other sites are Combe Hay Vineyard woodland, The Botanic Gardens Minerva Temple, Bath, and in Norton Radstock; The Miners Pool/ Church Rooms, Welton Manor Farm and the Town Park.
Wild Drumming
We hold Wild Drumming events for adults in summer and autumn evenings. A highly experienced and inspirational drummer who has worked with many well known West African drummers brings her djembes and dunduns to the trees! The deer peek through at our fireside gathering as we share a drink and snack in between playing intricate and beautiful rhythms that take little time to learn.
We can plan Wild Drumming to meet your needs; contact us to discuss.
Team Days
Take a break from the office or your usual workplace and let your team feel the benefits of fresh air, light and natural beauty. Using hand tools make wooden crafts such as mallets, cook on a fire, create a natural art installation in the woods, build a shelter or undertake woodland management tasks. You will come together as a team in a way you never have before, and leave feeling that you have been on a mini break!
Please contact us if you are interested in a team day with EcoWild.
Respite
EcoWild offers respite days for groups.
These days may include cooking lunch together on a fire, a range of natural art and crafts, the use of hand tools, wildlife identification and tracking, shelter building, foraging and of course boiling the kelly kettle for a fresh air cuppa or two.
Please contact us to find out how we can tailor a Respite Day to meet your needs.
Book your private event
For group bookings, whether it’s a personal or a business team building event, a Creative Practice session is perfect to connect with ourselves, each other and nature. Weave a beautiful willow basket, make charcoal and draw something, or learn to cook together on the fire.
Please contact us to discuss or book your private Creative Practice session.
Other offerings
Deeper Nature Walks 1:1
Emily runs this 75 minute session during which we enter a framework of regenerative ecopsychology.
She supports and guides you, deepening into your reciprocal relationship with the living world, which in turn may offer healing.
Through reconnecting with this most ancient of relationships the transpersonal or eco-spiritual aspect of ourselves may be accessed.
Going beyond the self as defined by habit and society we may experience a much greater depth of perspective and connection.
A moving, beautiful, illuminating journey awaits. Also available through remote practice as part of EcoWild’s response to COVID19 lockdown, and beyond for those who are shielding and need to isolate for longer.
Resonance & Resilience Programme
Supporting positive mental health cultures in tech-led working lives. By creating spaciousness of mind with outdoor mindfulness, and balance through experiencing interconnectivity with the living world, we address the overwhelm and disconnect which are so prevalent today.
This programme builds habits that create a positive resilient work culture. For the past year we have been delivering this for Storm Consultancy; a visionary Tech firm in Bath.
As employers are now responsible for employee mental as well as physical health we want to take a meaningful approach to this which improves everyone’s daily experience, rather than just dealing with crises and adding to daily to do’s with tick box exercises that can be annoying. Its not just about coping with what life throws at you, its about thriving; feeling fully alive; giving and receiving the most in the time we have.
Get in touch to book Deep Nature Walks and the Resonance & Resilience Programme
Please contact Emily to discuss these offerings.
Feedback from a Deeper Nature Walk
Passionate about nature, I am always drawn to & intrigued by practices that work outdoors. And as a coach finding other therapies that focus on inner & outer wellbeing, can be incredibly insightful as well as being a wonderful experience as part of a self-care ritual. Nothing beats the opportunity to be at one in the woods and I wanted to use this session to engage with it on a deeper level.
Having contacted Emily, we arranged a pre-session call to help me understand what to expect and to have any questions answered.
The session itself combined stillness, mindfulness & movement, all beautifully interlinked in a way that made me feel connected and grounded with the surroundings, and with Emily setting the scene and gently guiding me into a state of relaxation.
I would describe it as a gentle nurturing approach to opening up to nature and working with it to tap into your internal dialogue. I gained some personal insights around loosening the need to constantly plan every step in all areas of my life and, much like the trees, fully surrender to the seasons (interpreted to me as surrendering to life chapters), accepting the shaping & reshaping that comes with growth.
I also realised that even as someone who spends a lot of time in nature, I don’t spend enough time being still in it, just allowing self to be. That was a key takeaway and something I will be making more time for.
Thank you, Emily, for holding the space for me. I left feeling buoyant and recharged.
Yvonne