Rebuilding Nature Connected Communities

greetings everybody I'm gonna go into our slideshow here Josh lien calling in on our webinar today from Hudson Valley New York state with each shields here and I'm really excited to get into this open house today about rebuilding nature connected communities and this will be a deep dive not only into the details about our nine month distance immersion that's coming up the September for those of you who are thinking about doing that but also along the way we'll be sharing some of the the principles really the philosophy that underpins this program so you'll be sure to get some ideas from that as well that have proven helpful in many communities around the world and that'll help you get a better understanding of why we've put together this excuse me this program and why we put the pieces in places we have so I just want to start off just by saying thanks to Matt for holding space for us here and for all of you who are tuning in today or listen to the recording and just thinking about the stories that will be sharing here today I've had a lot of minds and hearts interlinked that have been experimenting with this idea of how can we build connection with the earth in this modern era with all the distractions we have going on today how can we effectively do that and so many hands many hearts many minds have gone into this over the years so just gratitude to all those who have played a role on that and speaking of that I wanted to invite John to say hello and see if you have any opening words for us here because I know that really so much of this work at eight Shields has been really supported by your dedication and commitment so thank you for being here today and and welcome Thank You Josh can you hear me okay yes indeed yeah I'm only here by a voice at the moment but yeah it's great to see people coming from all over the world I love that I'm just grateful for everybody's interest in participation and in the work of bringing people back in into balance in connection with themselves and nature and each other and yeah I'm really grateful for all the preparation Josh you and Amy and the team that the eight shields Institute has put together with us and me and and over these years to really create some continually improving systems to train people at all the different levels and layers of community mentoring so I'm really personally excited about you know what you're gonna be talking about today Josh and and really looking forward to participating in the program starting this fall with everybody again as we have for the last several years and it's just been a wonderful opportunity to build networks of support and connection all over the world and it just keeps growing and there's just a lot of cool stuff going on and my second year gratitude for Matt who is such an important member of our team and he really holds a lot together for us so thank you Matt and thank you Josh I'll give it back to you awesome well thanks for being here John and thanks for all your dedication to this over the years really helping so many people expand these connections in their communities so for those who don't know me my name is Josh Lane I've been working with shields really since before it was eight shields all the way back to 2004 and serving as a mentor and really bringing a lot of focus to our Shikari tracking mentorship in a bird language and also transformative mentoring which underpins both of those processes but my own journey with this really began back when I was a teenager back in I guess 1999 something like that 98 99 going to a wilderness workshop for a week where we were doing things like shelter building living in the debris Hut making fire by friction herbal studies all that kind of stuff but what really stuck with me from that week was not just the skills although those were transformative in and of themselves but there was something I couldn't quite put my finger on it that week because there were volunteers coming in there were people helping out role modeling these different skills sharing stories asking questions and bringing a certain spirit to the event through their own curiosity and passion and it all wove together and there was just a feeling in the air that whole week that really supercharged my experience it really got me into the moment it got me curious about that landscape about the beings that live there and it really more than anything got me asking a lot of questions that I'd never asked before when I left that week I was really buzzing and it really the impact of that lasted for months and really inspired me to go into a deep dive of naturalist skills right in my own backyard learning the plants that were growing on the lawn and working on my fire by friction and tracking and when I thought back to it I thought wow you know what was that what made that so powerful that experience how was it that so much happen in such a short time and it was until a bit later that I found out that part of that magic is what we're going to be talking about today and that's the Acorn model and this is the underpinnings of rebuilding it your connected communities this is what we're going to get into today and I just wanted to give that little backstory because it's something that's really driven my whole nature journey since then and if we look at the big picture of humanity on a long-term scale over hundreds of thousands of years what we see is a picture of this really beautiful interdependence between people on the planet cycle of nature and culture that feeds from one to the other that promotes a sense of harmony and really a sustainable regenerative type of living and on the culture side of that you could see practices such as just subsistence living actually finding food on the landscape and because people have been doing that that automatically gets them attune to the and that starts to feed into the culture it comes into the songs the dance that are the stories of that culture and so all those things are reinforcing what's coming in through living closely with the land not a nature side of that as they connect their senses as they're attuning to the plants the animals the weather and all these natural cycles there's these really intimate species connections people are getting to know the animals that live in their neighborhood like family they're getting to know the plants and the qualities of the Clay's that they're making pottery with the quality of of the plants that they're weaving and to baskets and clothing and fishing line and they're developing this amazing knowledge of place that's based on a relationship so it's not just the mental knowledge of place of knowing what you can do but it's a felt knowledge it's one that's based on relationships and you'll notice in the slide that I also have rights of passage there on this nature side and you might think well why is that you know it isn't a rite of passage something a culture does you know an initiation of sorts and yes that's true but if you think about all the great rites of passage so many of them involve sending people into nature to have an experience so it relies on that space of nature to bring back something to the community and if we don't create these rites of passage co-create them with nature nature will give us rights of passage whether we like it or not sometimes in the fear of or in that in the sense of facing fear of cold and wet and dark and many other things so we see this interdependent cycle it's gone on for most of our existence as a species and on the cultural side there's wisdom that develops there through that applied continual connection with placed that place-based culture develops a wisdom for how to live and nature provides the wisdom of its own that infuses into that culture you'll notice the two sides of the wheel here the thing that keeps that going is mentoring so as the culture develops wisdom those ways get passed on across the generations now this is where the need for this program comes in today because in this diagram here we see that there's a gap where that place of mentoring was that place that supported the transmission of that cultural wisdom and the wisdom of nature there's a broken point there and that's there for a lot of reasons displacement war trauma all kinds of things have created this loss of wisdom of culture and now what's driving our culture right well we have media we have so many different distractions today and we see a lack of that mentoring of knowledge of police now there's good news though good news is that the wisdom of nature is still there it's waiting for us to tune back in so this is where we get into this idea of how do we do that how do we bring nature back into the dialogue of our culture and so let's talk about culture for a minute every moment we're surrounded by culture any time you get a group of people together there's gonna be this dynamic of culture but just like the picture here with a magnet and all of these paper clips lining up through the paper clips if you look at it you can see there's lines of force there's lines of tension and you can only see them because the paper clips are there they weren't there it would be invisible but that magnet would still be exerting influence and cultures like this - it's impacting us every day everywhere we go whether we realize it or not now that impact those lines of force are made up of things like attitudes that we hold it's made up of the beliefs that we hold consciously or unconsciously and these translate into actions that reinforce the culture and the things that we focus our sense is on so if we were to deconstruct some of those lines of force of culture that's what we would be seeing underneath in that invisible array so the thing is you know you might say well that's all well I'm good you know it's like but what can you do about it right you know we're experiencing the effects of culture every day but how much impact and we have on that well one thing I like to say is that culture isn't just something that happens although that does happen you get a group of people together and something will emerge some kind of culture will emerge whether it's unintentional or intentional but the good news is we can also be intentional about it just like if you took a piece of sourdough starter and you left it out to start it and it would catch some of that wild yeast that's in the air and it would start that dough turn it into sour don't get it to start to rise you know we can also jump start our own micro cultures you could say in our different team environments or community learning environments and we can look at how could we bring forth some more positive qualities in that so that's a beneficial thing and this is where we get into this idea of the Acorn and the Acorn is that team of people that works behind the scenes at an event to create a really connective amazing experience for that group and that's what I was feeling back when I was at that wilderness skills week and there was that thing that I couldn't quite put my finger on as to why it was so amazing and I saw there were volunteers I saw there were teachers and role models there what I didn't realize was that they were working behind the scenes they had a plan they were creating an intentional plan for how they would support that event and because they did that and they all brought their best to it they made this amazing experience to step into and so John I was wondering since you're here today if you could toss a little bit about you know the origins of the Acorn for a moment its phone which it turns out you can't can't use the the microphone on okay all right well alright we'll see if we get Jeb John back on her at any point but just for those who are curious about it I know just from working with John for a number of years that this is a teamwork framework that developed over a number of years as John and anyway and other different cultural experts work together to say you know how can we really how could we build up a learning culture in our programs maybe we'll hear a little bit more about that he's he's back now alright looks like he left he dropped again something happened okay okay all right well we'll give that a try later perhaps yeah the only thing I forgot to do was turn on my microphone sorry about that everybody I thought when I got the Demio app I'd be able to speak through my phone but I was fooled so yeah my apologies Josh for that little awkward moment and yeah you know the origin of the Acorn yeah Kerry is asking is it an acronym it actually is not an acronym I'm sure we could come up with one but let's not do that right now the the Acorn concept comes from what the tree that generates a corn represents so it's a symbol and the symbol is of course that an acorn grows an oak tree and if you're from other parts of the world where oak trees are not you know part of the ecology you may not be familiar with the symbolism of the oak but the oak tree is a very slow growing tree that produces very high quality food for wildlife the flowers are amazing for insects and and that of course feeds the insects and the birds that feed on insects and the acorns themselves are incredible sources of protein and all of the wildlife that eats anything like nuts just goes crazy for acorns the trees are very strong and they and they live a very long time the Timbers of the oak you know the actual wood that comes out of it is very very hard and dense and makes great building material but it also you know they build ships from it in the old days and also the shade of the oak tree is extraordinary and in a hot summer's day to get under a big spreading oak tree and sit under the shade so the oak represents you know nourishing the community and our elder who's now an ancestor ingwe was the one who came up with the name acorn to describe the group approach to creating that you know that micro culture that Josh was talking about and the acorn itself is symbolic of you know a person representing each of the attributes of connection or the archetype that has to do with that time of day that direction and it's an extraordinary little magical model you know ingly of it and we worked with it from 1983 until 1995 together in New Jersey and it just kept getting better and better and more and more refined as more and more people got in there and played with it you know because it it really is like clay you know we don't have a manual that says this is how you have to be on the acorn we say you know these are this is the general intention or feeling that you're holding in this direction you know you represent the East so that's where the Sun rises so welcome people you know think of it as the beginning of the day and this is the beginning of their day with us so welcome them like a sunrise and you know do it your way whatever feels good to you so it's it's a wonderful symbol in the Acorn of course when it when it went down to Australia the art of mentoring Australia crew and New Zealand crew Barilla hi I know you're on here now decided that they didn't want to call it the Acorn because the oak is not native to California so they they called themselves the acacia crew and so you know whatever you are on planet there is a slow growing tree that becomes its long-lived that feeds of the people and gives shade and feeds the wildlife you know and that that was a totally appropriate thing for you for the Australian New Zealand team to do but yeah the other thing that anyway would say is if you believe in the future plant an oak tree because you know you won't live long enough to nourish from its shades or climb and its branches or swing from a tree swing because it'll take a very long time for it to get big enough to do that so that means I believe in the future generations I love them I care about them I'm giving them something that I myself will not nourish from in that way but you know so it's a commitment also to the well-being of future generations so yeah thanks for the opportunity to share that Josh and next time Matt text me a little bit ahead of when josh is gonna call it can get this microphone weird it hey thanks John and I guess you probably can't see it right now but we have up an image of that oak with the acorn there in the middle of it yes so thanks for that story I can see it's beautiful yeah so with that in mind thinking about these microclimates of connection their local little learning cultures that we can build you know within the ecology of a connected community we would have mentors working individually with people that's where transformative mentoring comes in they would be looking for the individuals potential just like the potential of that according to become the oak tree and those mentors would one-on-one support those kinds of gifts to grow now that acorn would magnify that out and they're the team working behind the scenes for the village so to speak or the village of your event whatever the the moment is you're enacting this and they're looking on the community level to build up that potential and help that open up so you have the mentor and then the Acorn team working on different levels to support this to happen and it's just like John was saying you know there's different levels to this that creates that engagement and one of the just like with any kind of team framework you have logistical things they have to happen right and you know there might be a ton of tasks at your event or just throughout the day if you're running a camp or whatever your event is you have things they have to get done whether it's gathering firewood or dealing with registration tables all that kind of stuff so it makes sense that you want to be able to split up those logistics and have a team to handle that so that one person isn't stuck trying to do all that and that's where many hands make light work and for instance you might have a greeter right somebody who's greeting people as they come in they arrive on-site and you have that logistical side of it but for me what I found part of what makes the Acorn framework so special is that it's based on nature and we'll get more into this but underneath that logistical role there's a deeper layer and if you pattern off of nature you find that there's these different archetypes this is something we really get into in the rebuilding nature connected community is course because we really take the time to experience each of these eight natural archetypes and for instance this is dealing with the East which is the sunrise and that's a very inspiring time so we say that the archetype that time of day is inspiration so besides that logistical side of it of helping the Greek people that East role would also involve holding a sort of vibe an archetype of nature which is inspiration and so it's almost like a theatrical aspect to it but really in an authentic way of finding what's my connection to inspiration how do I bring that through so it involves each person's creativity there's not a right way or wrong way to do it but it's just how do you find this and have this happen and if you haven't checked this out there's a great interview with Rowena that I got to do the other day that's up on our page for rebuilding nature connected communities and she talks about her journey with that east archetype and finding her own authentic way to connect with that and there also that so if you haven't seen that I highly recommend checking that out but imagine that you have a team of people that are each holding the different vibe of nature at an archetype that's like a vibration of feeling and that is underpinning all of the logistical things that they're doing so you have this interweaving of all this creativity happening that's where the magic happens it really brings in an amazing feeling to an event and so what happens is you have this picture of a grid that's up now from the Acorn if you imagine all these little nodal points these connections of all this interweaving of these different perspectives this different vibrations of these archetypes that there's this emergent culture of connection it just comes up and out of all this creativity really fun stuff starts to emerge and it's different every time based on who's holding the roles and also that place where you are and the people that are there there's this recipe of magic that happens it's just this connective really creative amazing experience and just to look at these archetypes really quickly we won't go too deep into them now but you can see things like inspiration and motivation integration celebration all these different things imagine just if that's what was creating the underpinnings of the culture for that week or for that day or however longer your program is or your community event is that if you had people intentionally holding space for each of these qualities to come through what would happen well that's basically what happens when you have an acorn support a here event and this is something that we really spend a lot of time with in the immersion program we actually throughout the year one by one go through these different archetypes and embody them through our own nature connection and we found this is really important because we're working with this concept that change begins within so the things that we want to see in our community in the world around us if we can embody that in ourselves can naturally start to inspire that just through our own presence and it helps us really understand how to start to build an acorn team and bring these qualities out so if we can find that in ourselves through our own nature connection through our own creativity it becomes that much easier and more authentic to bring that into our teamwork as well so we spend a lot of time really through our own connection practices getting up into nature and finding those archetypes inside of us through our nature connection and you'll see in the picture here now we've got it magnified those little attributes of connection this is sort of our litmus test this is how we know that connection is present and I was wondering John will give you a second to get your microphone queued up here but be great if you have anything you want to share about the attributes because this is something that over the last few years we've really put a lot of emphasis on and realizing this is a core piece to what we're doing with eight shields and we'll see if if you're in a spot there you can get the microphone going again well perhaps he'll jump in when you can but yes okay the attributes of connection um you know I was I have the pleasure of sitting with Asher charnel who's also listening live to this webinar she's here and Soquel with us for a couple weeks and supporting us as we're moving and she was talking to me about a presentation she gave it a library up in the Ontario region and she was she made a handout where on one side of the handout were these core routines of nature connection and on the other side were the attributes of connection and she basically said it's simple if you stick to these core routines you know for a year or two in a routine way and you will have these attributes you know and it's it's pretty much that simple you know our friend Kathleen luckier is an occupational therapist and she makes a very important point maybe the most important sentence of my entire career I heard from Kathleen and it comes out of occupational therapy and neurobiology and it essentially says that emotional regulation sits on the foundation of sensory integration and and those are all very big words but it essentially is saying that we are happy and healthy you know we are vital we are empathetic we're helpful we're alive we have the quiet mind we have an open caring heart we listen well to each other we have that emotional regulation when our senses are integrated in the way that the neurobiology of our body is is essentially set up to do like if if we meet our nervous system where it's at and use it for what its purpose is for which is connecting to nature to other people to ourselves if we use it for what it's intended we exercise it and we awaken it and it grows into this greater system of interconnection which for energy to flow and in the in the healthy and natural an original way that that this this being this human being is set up to optimize through so you know you know what josh is referencing right now you know this is the mission and vision of eight shields to get every person on the planet to these attributes and then to surround them with the culture that supports those attributes in that individual and then passes it forward seven generations to come because you know that's a big mission and we're not you know we're said you know change starts with us right when we habilitative system and reawaken our connection capabilities and are capable connection potential we end up with these attributes because in a sense these attributes are a direct reflection they are another way to describe emotional regulation which is health and happiness you know and the other thing that I think that you know should be mentioned is that you know we all understand educational and vocational training and we use metrics and processes that support educational vocational training but we wouldn't use health and fitness metrics and processes to get an educational outcome in the same way the connection system of the human being is is different than how the vocational training system works with us or how health and fitness works with us they're interrelated they're overlapping they're complementary but we literally need to take a different approach to get the results of connection so we say we we talk about connection modeling and the acorn leadership model is that the core of connection modeling like it's it's a way to ensure that the circuitry is there to awaken the senses and to awaken the attributes of connection so maybe that was more than you bargained for Josh thanks for giving me a chance to speak to that that's great that's perfect John thank you that really is the core or whether we're doing a true connection mentoring work bird language anything that we're doing really in the eight shields framework ties back to the score of these attributes of connection and in the immersion program we actually spend a couple of weeks at least on each of those attributes and throughout the nine months we work through practices that really bring us deeply into each of those and that's one of our outcomes that we're looking for and so we see that when we have that interdependent cycle functioning when nature is supporting culture and culture is supporting nature through mentoring through connection that we get these predictable results we get these attributes of connection emerging over and over so if we were to look at our event or whatever it is that we're implementing our acorn around this would be something we're tracking throughout the day throughout the week or however long the event is and beyond you know what attributes are emerging what can we do to facilitate this to happen within the framework of our gathering and just to chart the impact of this for a moment we have some data that was collected by our friend Mark Morey and his organization we are nature rising dot earth it's a very cool website that's worth checking out and they actually spent some time interviewing different alumni of events that have had this acorn model as part of it and he's identified that there's over just in North America I don't think they were able to do any international research on this yet but at least within North America there's over 73 nature connection organizations that have been inspired by this model with five hundred thousand plus alumni and this group is collectively serving over 50,000 people annually so just for a moment feel into that all these little pulses of microclimates of connective learning environments that are out there connecting with the cycles of the earth through mentoring and through this team approached cool and I know that there's also you know on a number of other places around the world in different continents this is also reaching out so it's just cool to see you know since those days the John is describing working on this model with anyway and now you know since the early eighties now seeing this spread out to help so many youth and adults around the world it's very cool and yes there's definitely some gaps on this map so if any of you out there listening are working with this I would definitely recommend going to we are nature arising dot earth and adding your location in there you know so that's the question would you like to bring this to your community as well you know there's a lot of potential there on any scale we've had people come in to this training just because they want to do something for themselves to really bring those attributes into their own life and we've all had to go all the way to people who are starting schools you know starting actual schools with different grade levels and things like that that wanted to bring this in so there's a lot of room for potential on just about every scale you can imagine so let's talk now that we've gone through some of the philosophical underpinnings of this that really are driving what we're doing here let's look at the actual program for those of you who are thinking about getting into this what it entails and just on the outcomes level again really its initially about deepening your own nature connection journey connecting with those eight natural archetypes and with those attributes of connection that we talked about really waking that up bringing those fully into your life and then during that journey experiencing a mentoring community being on these phone calls you get to you know connecting with the stories from people around the world that we're also doing this and all asking questions together both on the group calls and on our online forum and it really is about stepping into this new level of connective potential and we actually dedicate a whole part of the winter block to a process called renew of renewal of creative path and it really dives into your creative connective journey so there's that individual level and then there's also the availability with us to really springboard this in your community as you learn so as we go through the year what we do is we start to implement little practices step by step that you can bring into your community on any scale that you feel ready to do and there's group facilitation tools processes we use in circles and in different levels of the group work and there's also the chance to create seasonal nature gatherings throughout the year and so we actually guide you through four of those through the different seasons and give you tools that can help you bring people together to connect with nature and then implement the Acorn as you do that step by step so this is things like potlucks or you might apply this to an event or workshop or some other kind of community setting that you have going where you can recruit a few friends or people that you're working with and actually put these tools into use step by step so by the end of the year you've had four opportunities to actually implement this in a guided way so that's what we're getting at here with this and we have a number of calls throughout the year where we get together and we move through some different materials and move through these practices together we have some amazing staff that have been working together for several years on this that are helping this to happen including Amy Hyatt who's helped launch and really get acorns going in a strong way in many places especially based in the Northeast Amy's an amazing resources she does our one-on-one calls as well as part of this program helping people really troubleshoot or just vision for where they're at with this process and implementing this stuff you also get to experience period of peer learning because on every call we have moderated small group discussions where we get into the material of that section of the course and every call also features a live mentoring demonstration so usually we'll have one or two people the out of those small groups will we'll come together and actually get to demonstrate transformative mentoring live so everybody can benefit from that person's learning journey that's an amazing feature because by the end of the year you've experienced so many people being on that live mentoring seat right there that you get to really feel how mentoring works and it also helps because their learning becomes your learning and vice versa it's really amazing so on each call we also have a keynote from John and from myself that guide you through the archetypes guide you through the attributes of connection and give you practices you can try for that week or so and it really brings in a lot of inspiration it helps you bring these practices to life so you can apply them for yourself in your community we also have some videos that really detail how to get the Acorn going so there's a lot of different resources we'll get more into that but just the calls themselves are held on Thursdays beginning at September and then go for nine months and there's two call times you can choose from an 11:00 a.m. Pacific or a 5:30 p.m. Pacific and it has 16 calls total over nine months so about every two weeks or so we have a call and they're each an hour and a half long and you get recordings of them and it's really just amazing so we really have the spaciousness that way to go deep into these topics and that's why we've designed it this way oh I'm sorry I see Matt's telling me it's actually 5:00 p.m. I needed to update my slide there so it's 11:00 a.m. or 5:00 p.m. Pacific we've also included four members of the training program access to our village talk calls and these are not required but they're highly recommended and you get them as part of the package because we'd love to build that layer of connection really strong and these are weekly calls every Tuesday and it's a great opportunity to connect with a community of practice with peers from around the world who are implementing this kind of stuff for discussion around all things to do with connection and there's three times and maybe John you can speak to that a little but you get your mic up and running just a little bit about you know village talking what that is but there's three call times 11 4 or 7 p.m. Pacific and you also get a recording of that so even if you can't be on their live they'll still be able to get those recordings and it's just an amazing amazing way to connect with so many people around the world on a regular basis share stories and get even more practices that you can use related to this whole connection journey so John whenever you're on just let me know I'll keep going until I hear from you I'm ready this time all right hey there hey um yeah village talk um I guess Matt would know he'll probably type it in the chat for us there but I it's been going for about seven going on eight years now seven point five years and it was something that Josh Lane that's Josh talking you know now myself John Young we created at the behest of a consultant who basically said if I go on the eight shields website you guys talk all about mentoring and then I try to sign up for a program that actually teaches me mentoring by mentoring me and I can't find it where it's and we're like oh good point so Josh and I formed a focus group with the number of wonderful men and women around the world and talked about you know what what are the core elements that we need to hold space for in order to create a mentoring experience that uses mentoring to model mentoring to then teach mentoring and we invented what is now called village talk and it's been running every Tuesday and Matt's been on it since almost the beginning and a lot of us who are supporting our team entering leadership are also staphon village talk and i I try to make every single Tuesday and and we have three call times 11:00 a.m. 4:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. I try to be on all three calls when it's possible I'm always on the eleven o'clock unless I'm travelling and then I pre-recorded a keynote but we have such amazing mentors now who have many many many many years of experience both through village talk and in their communities as mentors who are holding space elders and wonderful elder men and women and fantastic tech people in a great forum and it's true what Josh said earlier you know if if you're in our dementing leadership and you can make it to village talk and take full advantage of it because it's a fantastic learning opportunity and it just deepens and deepens what's happening in the art of mentoring leadership program but I I personally love Ilic talk it's become like my my virtual village I mean I I just have so many wonderful relationships around the world through village talks so yeah do you take advantage if you can I mean it's a lot I know to have a cause on Tuesdays and Thursdays but if you got the time and you can drop in please do for those of you who are wondering john was referencing our two mentoring leadership and that is the program that is now rebuilding interconnected communities we we ran with that title for several years and we decided to to go with this new name just because we realize that so many of the folks coming in you know not only wanted to do this for bringing a this art of mentoring model into their communities but they just wanted to get their feet wet with the heat shields model and you know bring this into their own life as well so we decided that rebuilding nature connected communities would be a bit more of an inclusive name for what we're doing because that's what John was referencing there was the original name of this program just so you guys know and that village talk program it really is quite amazing to see people who've been in there for a long time how they have absorbed that mentoring capacity and we often have people come back as helpers as well as they move through that down the road so just know that you know that option is there too and that's something we'd love to see as people who keep coming back and then start to help out so they can put these skills into a deeper practice beyond you know the training calls we've talked about we also have include three personal mentoring call spread throughout the training and this is really crucial we've found because everybody's journey is so unique and different with this process as you integrate the information as you embody the practices and just depending on what's going on like if you're working more on your own or if you're working on a community level there's different ways you want to put this information into practice so the one-on-one calls are really meant to give you personalized guidance to do that and the best way and then the troubleshoot too and just help you you know refine what you're doing as you move forward and we're really lucky to have Amy Hyatt providing these calls because Amy's been involved with the art of mentoring which is one of our events that utilizes the Acorn behind the scenes and she's really helped so many people over the years to get trained in the acorn model and to put that on the ground in their community that she's just a wealth of information and insight that really can help you to get this going so it's just an amazing chance to work with Amy as you go through the training on that along the way - as we get into the winter as I mentioned before we work with the renewal of creative paths and this is a toolkit that John has put together again over many years of working helping people not only kind of reboot their own connective system but work with the things that come up as that happens with the blocks that sometimes come up just from our different past experiences and to really get that connection flowing in our lives and that's an amazing resource just in itself to work through that but it really helps jumpstart when you're looking at how to put connection and build those roots into your community the things that will come up along the way and this helps you really work through that and in build a vision for where you want to go with it so just on its own that's amazing as well throughout the course we have the Acorn leaders toolkit and this is something where John has condensed all that knowledge and wisdom that's emerged from these years of working with this framework and put it all into one audio training and so there's so much there and what we do is we spread it throughout the course throughout the nine months and together we work on that stage by stage so that you can learn every aspect of the acorn model how to implement it what the roles are what the archetypes are all these different things and there's also some great stories in there and you know we really help you to integrate this piece by piece and that's our goal is not to overwhelm you with stuff but to give you things you can do bit by bit put them into action so if you're feeling like this is something you're interested in and you have more questions we'll field a few questions here before we wrap but if you definitely are feeling called to this you can book a discovery session by emailing Garrett at each Hills org and Garrett helps out so many things that shields behind-the-scenes and he's always happy to talk with you you feel your questions and just get a sense of what programs right for you as you look at your training moving forward so definitely drop Garrett and email if that's something you're interested in and you can learn more about the program and all the dates for the calls all the different things involved with it on our site if you go to the mentoring tab you'll see rebuilding nature connected communities there so do you check that out I've got a link up here as well you can see but yeah just go to the site and you'll find that off the mentoring tab pretty easily so that's you know the information on the program here and just for those who are on here well first John any any other thoughts you want to share before we take a question or two and for those who are on here just think if you have any questions you'd like to share through the chat about the program we'd love to to try to field a couple of those before the hours up here as well Thank You Josh yeah I'm here to also support in the answering of questions I did want to also mention that Marilla just offered a nice chat she's been one of the people who's helped facilitate you know the rebuilding nature connected communities course on when we were calling it art of mentoring leadership and she's an amazing elder and a wonderful presence in village talk and likely a lot of the other group calls that are coming up so it's not only Russian myself and Amy helping to run this course but Matt is helping and people like Barilla and Melina and Ruth kori helps with responder stuff on different parts of things for aid shields there's an amazing community of helpers and mentors so please you know consider this if it feels oh yeah realistic it's fun yes I agree so yeah I guess well take it take it over to the questions and thanks for the wonderful slideshow Josh yes John let's see John maybe could feel this question lily has a question coming in is this related or connected with or aligned with NBC or permaculture great question you know there's overlaps with both NBC and permaculture art of the art of mentoring in you know connection modeling is based on a deliberate and careful communication style you know to create connection people need to feel safe and how we use our words as important and also what energy we're coming from when we speak you know so there's a big overlap with NBC techniques and over the years we've had a lot of NBC practitioners working with aid shields and and vice versa and we find a lot of complementary stuff going on there and we feel in alignment and in strong collaboration with NBC as far as permaculture is concerned you know the eight shields math integrates permaculture principles and that wasn't too hard to do when we started the very first project in 1983 we also started an organic farm and a natural foods restaurant that incorporated permaculture so we were aware that the permaculture principles were very much in alignment with the wisdom principles and I came to find out later by becoming a member of the permaculture teaching team at the regenerative design Institute that you know both permaculture and H fields are sourcing from earth-based wisdom so there's a big overlap there as well and we work very cooperatively with international permaculture movement and we have a lot of projects that employ both permaculture and the H fields model and that's a especially strong in Europe and it's there's a couple of sites in the US where that's catching on along with that too I'm thinking about you know penny Livingston at RDI what she always used to say was you know the first principle of observation and permaculture and how she would see people go through this nature connection process at their sit spot you know just emerging is really powerful observers of the land and having a really strong connect just through getting out there and activating all their senses regularly so just you know in a way we do that through this course getting a lot of sit spot time in different times a day at night and really watching what happens and feeling it in our bodies on the land so that definitely goes hand in hand with that permaculture approach and since we have Ruth Cory out here - I saw Ruth put in on the chat and I just really want to echo what she's saying cuz Ruth is our course responder and she just really makes a space such a nice space for folks who are going through our different online trainings as they're sending in their reflections on the different modules through email - Ruth and Ruth gets back to folks and just really holds that space to catch those stories and reflections so that's also part of the the course as you go through the toolkits the renewal of creative path and the Acorn toolkit that you know Ruth will be there catching your stories and yeah just grateful that Ruth's you know with us in that capacity and bringing all her gifts with that so know that that's part of it too and that's really helpful to know somebody's there catching your stories and step of the way on different levels so Thank You Ruth and let's see we had a question from Sarah here let's see is this good for those wanting to develop a nature connection program to share with people but don't know where to start also would it be too much to do with come on a3 and/or Shikari - hey Sarah glad you're on here with us yeah there's a lot to that question this will give you a good framework in terms of you know different simple things you can start to implement in terms of potluck gatherings or little moments that help you connect with nature and your neighborhood and gathering people around that and those things can translate pretty much on any level whether any kind of program you're on e you can bring that model into it so in that way it does support it I'd say you know if you're starting a whole nature program that's that's a pretty large scope to it and this would be supportive of that it could be done alongside kumano because the sits by practices can overlap it just depends on how much time you have I think for your situation that might work so I know you for some folks that might be a little too much to do but I think you could probably you could probably handle that John any thoughts on yeah just folks who want to develop a nature connection program they don't know where to start and how this will support that you know I think it's all about pacing you know I I would hate to think that at any point you know take doing too much at the same time would make this feel like a strain or work you know remember that when we're doing connection activities in our lives were feeling safe we're feeling relaxed we're feeling open so I would tell I would guide people as I always have to really you know trust your gut feeling on that and to pace yourself and not to put too much of an expectation on yourself in terms of like having to finish for instance kumano by a certain time you know allow it to be organic allow it to flow and integrate it into your everyday life in a relaxed way and the same is true with Shikari which is a more of a tracking program but we you know I I don't see that there would be a conflict to have our dementing leadership in come on and going at the same time I think it would be a wonderful overlap and there would be ways to stack functions and become accomplishing goals for both programs at the same time because both are working with sit spot and both are working with various sensory awakening techniques and nature connection stuff so especially with kumano I see it as highly complementary and not you know not not pulling you in two directions but the most important thing is that you're enjoying the journey for both of them great thank you John yeah taking the slow and steady approach to all the stuff really creates space for things to percolate but I could see you know with we work through these different events throughout the year in this program and I could see some interesting space for connections with tracking around that gathering people around tracks that would be a very interesting direction to head let's see any other questions coming in thank you everybody looks like where we're at time here I'm not seeing any last questions Matt any any additions here before we wrap no I don't think so I just well I guess I said no and then I'm gonna say something so yes just briefly yeah I'll just I'll just double down on the village talk recommendation to go along the way it seems that the people who have who have gotten the most out of the the prime program are those who have also been able to show up for village talk and and how much of that is just a general level of commitment and and willingness to to show up and how much of that is the direct impact of village talk it's it's hard to say but but there is definitely in my experience under appreciated power in showing up you know the the commitment to showing up overtime you know any given village talk call any given art a veteran call sometimes there's something that's sort of profound that that comes out of those but the my experiences that mostly it's just little nudges but the cumulative effect of those little nudges over time the the continual engagement of these kinds of conversations in these kinds of connective settings helps you come to embody the experience and the understanding in ways that allows you to then bring it to to others that you're working with which is just the large part of the intention of this course is to or this program is to help people achieve that so I'll just yeah give up give it a two thumbs up for our village talk as part of the as part of the process and then of course all the great work that is in the heart of memory herbs yeah excuse me the rebuilding nature connected communities core our materials as well great thank you Matt yeah just one last we had one last question come in real quick from Glen Glen says found myself becoming disabled three years ago any ideas about participating in village talk when I have a difficult time talking and we do use a note system in there when we're in small groups or we can through Google Documents actually share our stories we usually take notes for each other in there so that there might be some creative ways you know we could we could get into that so I'd recommend emailing support at eight shields org and perhaps Matt can guide you and some ideas on how that might work for you client and so yeah I just want to thank everybody who's tuned in today thank you John thank you Matt and Ruth and everybody Barilla and everybody behind the scenes at all these programs and everyone who's was signed in today or it was listening to this thanks again and yeah we wish you all the best in your connection that you're creating in your life and in your neighborhood yeah John any last words as we wrap here today I'm gonna echo what everyone's saying in the chat thank you thank you gosh thank you everybody yeah together we'll do something truly beautiful in this world and let's let's keep it going yeah all right well sign out here today thanks everybody please do email if you have questions or to set up a discovery session with Garrett and enjoy the rest of your days or nights wherever you are until next time take care

Channel: 8 Shields Institute

Views: 848

Rating: 4.4285712 out of 5

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Id: 2SDgq7SOXSg

Length: 59min 45sec (3585 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 19 2018