Rewild Your Mind: Use nature as your guide to a happier, healthier life

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Between the online sessions, you’ll be given guidance around a number of outdoor experiential exercises, as well as being offered reading material and prompts for written reflections, along with other resources. When we meet online each week for three hours, we’ll share some of these experience, and deepen into some of the theory. WHAT DO I NEED? The course is very experiential, and you’ll be encouraged to spend a lot of time outdoors engaging in various practices. In addition to this, we have build the course using an online learning platform that enables you to access content, audio instructions, readings, and other audio/visual content from your phone or computer. Are we experiencing an unintentional human rewilding? Either way, it’s time to start taking nature seriously. What is human rewilding? In almost all cultures, the oak is used to represent strength – for example, says Hooper, "the Suffrage Oak was planted in Glasgow in 1918 to mark the Representation of the People Act passing into law – the first step in establishing votes for women in Great Britain". There are examples too of how trees have helped shape or symbolise ideas. The Wesley Beeches are a famous arch created by two intertwined beech trees in Lambeg, County Down: "They formed in 1787 when John Wesley, founder of the Methodist church, twisted two saplings together to demonstrate to his congregation the bond between Methodism and the Anglican Church of Ireland." There is a level of acceptance and awareness needed that our phones are an extension of our physical being. There are some EPIC apps and podcasts out there that can open up the outdoors in a way you may not have seen or thought of before. Climate anxiety is a very real thing, however learning about what action is being taken on a local and global level brings hope and lots of ideas of you can get involved too.

Rewild Your Mind | Nick Goldsmith

Well, I’ve had that sentiment shaken. While I get to work with a few people a year at Rewild University, my YouTube videos have allowed me to reach thousands of people around the globe. On a daily basis, I get to hear how these videos have inspired people to climb trees, take a cold shower, change their diets, or embark on an extended wilderness adventure. Technology is with us, and it can have positive uses. If five minutes in front of a computer can inspire someone to spend five days in the woods, well . . . I think that’s a good use of video technology. He admits that he still “has his bad days” and is deeply triggered at times. “Remembrance Day is very difficult for me,” he says, “but I know how to take care of myself around that time. I take time off work, get a massage and do what I need to get through it.” The pandemic has given us a unique opportunity to look at our relationship with nature, and for most of us this has been an incredibly positive experience. The reality of our changing planet cannot be ignored and it’s no longer ‘someone else’s’ problem or in someone else’s county. It is our reality on our planet. Extreme weather; flooding and heat waves along with frightening and rapid decreases in over 50% of our wildlife since the 70’s is already having a dramatic and worrying effect on the way that we live our lives. We often do this without even realising, yet when we do, and bring more consciousness to how we integrate nature into our lives we can begin to experience positive effects on our mental and physical wellbeing and begin to thrive.Thanks so much — it means a lot to hear that my videos have inspired you! This course does not include any primitive skills — it’s just about making mental shifts that aid not only in our bushcraft experiences, but in our everyday lives. I may do a course in the future that focuses on skills, but the next courses we have planned will be aimed more toward rewilding routes that don’t include the primitive skills. Open your windows and get some fresh air and ventilation in your space. Allowing the air to circulate will get the pollutant baddies and stale air out and the fresh air in. Not only that, you can tune into the sounds of the outside, from glorious birdsong to the patter of rain.

ReWild Your Mind, Use nature as your guide to a happier ReWild Your Mind, Use nature as your guide to a happier

I believe that nature is really important to us as humans and that it is essential for us to remember that we are part of nature, that whilst nature needs us, we also need nature." I hope this course proves helpful in your goal, and I’d love to hear how things unfold for you along the way!We may not all feel the urge to re-locate to the wilderness, live off grid or completely re-wild our minds, but we can all find this sense of wonder and meaning in nature. Not only in our connection with it, but in the sense of hope and renewal it seems to offer us, each spring and summer. As Philip Larkin puts it in The Trees: "Last year is dead, they seem to say / Begin afresh, afresh, afresh." Rewilding is ajourney with no fixed endpoint. The goal is to help nature help itself so it can thrive into the future. There’s not adefined set of actions to take. What you do will depend on your finances, your ambition, the size of your land, the state of your soils and water, the features in your landscape, your neighbour’s activities and so muchmore. Whatever you do, do not fall for the suggested planting of the commonly known butterfly bush. There are several other plants you can use to attract them instead. It’s not unusual to find ourselves in a constant pursuit of external ways to ‘fix ourselves’, seeking endlessly for solutions to outsource problems and automate life, but we ultimately forget, we instinctively already have our own answers and solutions.