- Remembering Our Rooted Selves -
Everyday Sacredness:
Conversations between Body, Land and Soul
Group Mentoring | Coaching
Online Facilitation | Trainings
Vision Quests | Wilderness Vigils & Retreats
Inner & Outer Nature | Personal & Collective Journeys
Vision Quest - 12 day facilitated processes at the core of which lies a 4-day solo fast
Wilderness Vigil - a 3-or 5 day facilitated process at the core of which lies a 1-day solo fast
Custom designed journeys | immersions for individuals & small groups in Europe and the UK
Buddhist Retreats for integrating awareness and contemplative practice
Women’s Retreats in nature
I have a tremendous amount of experience in my field. I believe these are vitally important processes for actualising a future that is good for soul, soil and society.
I need land, or access to land, to guide on. I’d welcome investment and possible partnerships.
“ Blending ancient wisdom with modern culture, supporting you to connect with innate wisdom and awaken your true nature whilst offering ways to ground it back home, one step at a time. Supporting both individual and collective change.”
I’m Natasha Lythgoe,
and I believe that quality of our relatedness determines the shape of our lives, and the life of our planet.
Traditional cultures throughout time were intimately bonded with the more-than-human world, which included nature ‘out there’, the realm of imagination, dream and myths (both creation myths and folktales). These relationships located us humans deeply within the family of things, in relationship with the different levels of reality, interconnected with all life.
Over time, many of these relationships have been severed along with it our sense of belonging and connection to the sacredness of all life.
Is there is a way to remember and embody this primal wisdom we all carry? I believe so.
Reconnecting to a view of the world that came so naturally to many of our ancestors might be challenging but if we are to adapt to ecological change, it’s vital we rediscover the sense that to be human is to be part of nature.
In at the deeper end of nature connection the way we guide does not end with increased mental and emotional wellbeing, but aims to create a profound shift in our sense of identity, transforming it from one that is isolated to one that is deeply rooted in relationship; from Isolated Self to Ecological Self.
This changes us at depth. We are grown through Earth’s Dream of us. It is this kind of shift in our perception which I believe is necessary to address today's social and environmental challenges.
Our own moment in the unfolding story of life may or may not be as extreme as the near-extinction of some of our ancestors, but certainly we are a species navigating quite a bit of stress. The kind of social and environmental changes we need, depends on us making change, at depth.
My unique offerings range from Vision Quests | Ways to revive the sense of Being-Indigenous to the land we live on and How to Grow Eldership (I know this is a niche word but it simply means how to grow wisdom, authenticity and maturity in people).
I’m an experienced wilderness guide specialising in Rites of Passage | Vision Quests having trained in the States and the UK over the past decade. I bring and blend my twenty six years of experience in complimentary modalities which I believe are necessary to guiding this work in a way that is relevant now in 2024.
My modalities include Generative Coaching, 25 years of meditation, Buddhist practice and Dharma teaching, trauma-informed therapy, Gendlin’s profound somatic process called Focusing and wilderness guiding. I am also a core member of the UK Wilderness guides council.
In addition to traditional ways of facilitating nature-based-rites of passage programmes I ensure the way I run my programmes are embodied, trauma-aware, do not overly psychologise the process at the expense of experiences of self transcendence, and emphasise integration.
The way I work with people emphasises experiential learning over just-concepts. It's the difference between talking about how to swim and at some point - getting wet in the water.
My work is ultimately at the service of actualising a future that is good for soul, soil and society. I offer online and in person programmes, nature based seminars and retreats, vision quests and 1-2-1 mentoring. I’m based between Austria and the UK. To stay in touch sign up to my newsletter.
Guardian (2024) 10 of the Best Wellness Nature Retreats for 2024
Elle Magazine (2021) Rewilding Feature
“ The medicine we need,
is in our wild,
both within us and around us.
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Murmurations Group Mentoring
Finding our way back to being dreamt by earth. Together.
I am launching a six month group mentoring programme in Deep Nature Connection for women this December.
We will be an intimate group size - max 8 participants.
REGISTRATION IS NOW LIVE.
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Retreats & Vision Quests
2025
January 22nd - 26th I’m co-guiding our Scandinavian Women’s Winter Retreat with Geeta Stilwell.
25th Apr - 2nd May 2025 I’m leading a Buddhist retreat on the theme of Everyday Sacredness: Conversations between Body, Land and Soul
7th May - 18th May 2025 we will guide our Cretan Vision Quest.
30th July - 3rd August I'm co-guiding By Still Water Women’s retreat in Denmark with Lotte Trinhammer.
20th - 31st August I’ll be returning to Findhorn to run a Vision Quest in Scotland.
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Commissioned Programmes | Personal Journeys
I take small groups and individuals on contemplative adventures and guided solo immersions in nature, with limited access to technology, lasting anywhere from one day to twelve days.
We have access to a variety of places to stay, from camping to catered, from indoor retreat centres to the wilds.
Commissioned programmes are designed with you and can form part of a wider programme of mentoring sessions.
When we fall out of myth we fall out of meaning
By courting and nurturing relationship with the mythic dimension of our lives we find the healing, courage and wisdom needed to navigate a life lived with purpose. The mirror of myth, deeply intermingled with nature and rites of passage, wakes us up to the big questions and reveals to us the dormant parts of our lives.
Entering the forest at dusk, diving into wild rivers, watching the sun rise from a dewy patch of earth and sitting around open fires as the birds sing up the dusk and moon…
It is in these moments that we might ‘catch the quiver’ as it moves. Touched by awe and wonder when we listen for the call of the land and the myth of our lives we begin remembering ourselves to ourselves, and sensing what our hunter gatherer ancestors always knew;
That we are part of a bigger story, way beyond our comprehension and that our lives matter.
Remembering Our Roots
You may already be familiar with the Celtic wheel of the year interwoven with the solstices, equinoxes and seasonal fire festivals. The wheels I am most familiar with, based on natures cycles and our own natural cycles, map the Body in the south, Soul/Psyche in the west, Heart-Mind in the north and Mystery in the east.
These maps, deeply woven with land and cycles, are known as the Four Directions Medicine Wheel and the Nature Based Map of Psyche. Their teachings of nature within us, and around us, contain sacred paths and ceremonies which were once the life-blood of our ancestors and communities. Various forms of these ancient, circular, seasonal teachings have been used pan culturally by peoples to navigate what it means to be humans deeply connected to the wild.
Marking important life transitions, growing a person and connecting them with their innate wisdom, these rites of initiations are known as vision quests, rites of passage or wilderness vigils.
Ultimately they show us paths that enable healing, whole-ing and transformation - how to align with our true nature and embody the gifts we carry so that we can live as potent, healing influences in our communities. These teachings show us how to become mature humans and eventually elders for the health of the community in the largest sense of that word.
To be authentic means to be true to oneself.
It is a very, very dangerous phenomenon, rare people can do that. But whenever people do it, they achieve such beauty, such grace, such contentment that you cannot imagine…
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
Human Growth
There are particular points in your life when something needs to change and you have the feeling that you want to evolve into the next chapter. An identity shift, if you will. These shifts are as natural as life itself; whether from childhood to adulthood, singledom to marriage, or youth to middle age we all know something of these passages. There are also more nuanced passages but no less important; times when it might seem like the hardest thing in the world is to be ourselves.
When we ask, Who am I? Really? Aside from what family and society and conventions tell me. And how do I get to that place of self knowledge and conviction where I are able to state without doubt, fear or anger, ‘This is who I am, this is what I stand for, this is how I intend to live my life’?
These are all death and rebirth moments within a life; when we die to what is no-longer so that we can open to what is new. Natures cycles of death and rebirth are inherent to all life, human and more-than-human. My passion is to share ways in which we can live in harmony with these cycles, to support folk in navigating and transitioning the different seasons of their lives.
Who do we walk this path for?
Ultimately these journeys invite us to embody the gifts we carry so that we can live as mature, powerful, healing influences in our communities. We do this not only for ourselves, but for our kin, human and more-than-human. These are our offerings for future generations.
Quote by Brigit McNeill
Art Credit: Miles Toland
An interesting idea that turns up in myths and stories is that the crises we experience, both individually and collectively, are not here to destroy us but rather to break the spell of the little self, and to break the spell of collective lives that are also imagined as small and not connected to the source and origins of life
That the crises that we experience individually or collectively are here to crack the shell and break us open to the inner eyes of the soul and to give us the opportunity to reconnect to the deeper self which knows why we are here and what our life purpose already is.
- M. Meade