[Naffer Miller]

Recently, in trying to put words to my work as an NCC for some of my more skeptical listeners, and in recognizing the roles of the brain and Nature, I landed on an equation that may help introduce Nature-Connected Coaching to some of my clients who are otherwise wary of the “squishy” parts of it. I introduce to you the Law of Non-Squishy Coaching: If everything happens in our brains and our brains are nature, then everything happens in nature. I’m still working on it. Where I am going with that loose application of the Transitive Law is that perhaps connecting the brain to coaching for our clients could also be a way to introduce Nature as a partner in the equation who is already doing the work with them. In working with an issue, Nature could be introduced as a safe source for metaphor and/or for resourcing, without raising the flags of “trust falls” and “touchy feely” aspects of coaching that some of my clients have expressed fear of in the past.

For me, the role of Nature in this module was like a salve for all of the triggers that threatened my ability to concentrate and engage. We talked about resourcing and its power to change people’s lives, and how we can always find and get to resource, no matter how challenging things are. Nature itself is an amazing resource, a bottomless well of resourcing.

In contrast, I have been sitting with the questions about the traumas and Traumas that Nature experiences. On a local level, I love my garden, and I talk to my plants. I know they are adaptable and resilient (for the most part), but I don’t want to be the source of their pain and/or trauma. In what ways may I be doing that? On a global level, I find those questions to oftentimes feel crushing and paralyzing, and I am feeling pulled, now more than ever, to fight that discomfort and find answers to those critical questions. In what ways can we help guide Nature through Trauma?

[Naffer Miller]

I have not yet had any sessions with a client that have touched on trauma. When I was trying to decide what I wanted to write about for this submission, however, I was overwhelmed by how many examples I had of working through trauma on my own and/or with others that I could share. From my personal life at home, to my experiences as a volunteer with my Rescue Squad, or to working as a teacher and at camp, I had examples of working through trauma in any direction I turned, and it made me think of the saying, “Everybody has their stuff.”

Everyone also has their resources.

In all of the examples I just listed, in addition to being able to identify traumas, I can also identify resources and experiences of resourcing. I appreciate how Katie talked about starting with resource, much like when we start from a place of strength in Partswork. The topic of resiliency has risen to the surface in many communities and conversations recently, especially in this time of COVID. Whether it’s named as such or not, starting with resource is a key element in building resiliency.

Resilience is a process. I have often thought about the contrast between the images of bouncing back and springing forward. For me, bouncing back feels like it starts from a place of a reeling, backward movement that is unsettling and out of one’s control. I feel it in my belly when I think about bouncing back because there is that initial state of unease, and a sense that it will require more effort to shift towards forward movement. Springing forward, however, feels like it can start from a state of stillness and calm, and there is more control over the process. With resourcing, we can start from a grounded point, naming challenges and obstacles, and collecting lessons learned. We can then spring forward as we work through sequencing and celebrate the capacity to heal.

One of the chapters in The Untethered Soul that resonated with me was, “removing your inner thorn.” I read that “thorn” to be trauma. “The first choice,” Singer says, “is to look at your situation and decide that since it’s so disturbing when things touch the thorn, you need to make sure nothing touches it. The second choice is to decide that since it’s so disturbing when things touch the thorn, you need to take it out.” A thorn doesn’t have to be big to cause serious pain, and we need to complete the process, sequence, and be sure it’s removed in a way that is going to allow for healing. Reading that makes it feel so obvious. Why wouldn’t you remove a thorn?! And yet…

When we participated in the different resourcing exercises, I was drawn to the balances between safety and fear, the familiar and unknown, fluid and frozen. The protection of the thorn from being touched and the process of the thorn being removed. I found comfort in the fact that pain and pleasure are both perceived and processed in the same part of our brains. I felt it in my heart and chest when Katie said, “Whatever happens is perfect.”

Rather than avoiding, masking, or suppressing trauma, which have been the prevailing responses in my personal experiences, for both myself and those around me, it is crucial to allow it to sequence. I am grateful for what we learned about trauma and sequencing, and I feel better equipped now to support a client in that awareness. I am also buoyed by the notion that with resourcing and support in sequencing, we can move forward with a wider window of tolerance and from a place of balance.

[Naffer Miller]

One of the common threads that has followed us throughout the course is that “one size does not fit all.” This is something I have intuited since I can remember, and it is one of my favorite aspects of coaching and guiding… and of teaching and facilitating, for that matter! In stepping us through the Stages of Change in Changing for Good, Proschaska, Norcross, and DiClemente emphasize the number of techniques that can be employed within each of those steps. While there are universals that serve as a framework for tracking where our clients are in the process of change, they are unique individuals working within and amongst those universals. The steps serve as a framework, and the deep work we do with our clients will flow iteratively and fluidly within it.

For my own neural pathways and reflections on my development as a Nature-Connected Coach, I journaled about my session with K on a few different days. One of the things I wrote about was how it helped me hear a familiar message in a new way, “What we focus on grows.” I have often used my garden as a metaphor for some of my own growth and my own journey. During that session, I also heard and experienced that interconnectedness between focus and intention. I am curious to see how that message comes back to me in future sessions, especially when my focus starts to turn toward any doubt about my ability to guide effectively, for example.

[Naffer Miller]

I have been in the role of a Career Coach at my company for over a year now, and I have been working with K recently on the issue she brought to our 1:1 of feeling stuck. We had only had one session prior to our Brain and Change module, and while it was a good session, I was excited to meet with her again after learning about the Stages of Change. While ‘stuck’ is a commonly used word – I know I have certainly used that word more than once in my own coaching sessions, and I have heard it in other sessions as well – here was an opportunity to explore it within my client’s unique experience and within this new framework.

K started the session asking for my advice on creating long-term career goals because she thought that might help her start to break away from her stasis that she described. She identified shifts that she had recently made in her personal life and with her career, and she shared her frustration with how none of them seemed to help her feel like she was moving forward. With each decision, she felt like she was just moving laterally.

As her coach, a struggle I had was in identifying which of the stages of change she was in. She wanted to get un-stuck and feel like she was moving forward in a constructive, meaningful way, but we hadn’t quite landed on her deeper need. Could the vague notion of just wanting to find her “next thing” be enough of a goal? It wasn’t a SMART goal, but it was a start. Her stasis had not been a problem before, those patterns were no longer serving her now, and now she was ready for a change, so it felt like she was in Contemplation.

As we continued to explore her deeper need, at one point she said, “Now I’m finding that I don’t much like not knowing.” We have been learning that the brain loves patterns and will find them where they don’t exist because our brains also don’t like uncertainty. The high level of uncertainty that K was experiencing was causing her stress, so I asked her some questions that I hoped would help get her neurons firing in a way that would find other patterns that did not cause her stress, patterns of certainty and knowing.

She was very fidgety, and while I can only see her from her shoulders up in our Zoom meetings, I was tracking her baseline and noticing signs of disregulation. After guiding her through some breaths and grounding, I invited her to keep her eyes closed and think about what it looked like for her at a time when she was in a place of knowing, when she was moving forward toward a clear goal. We then spent time with her experience of being in graduate school, in a program she loved, and explored those patterns and behaviors that she named as empowering and of service to her and her goal and how she could apply them now and moving forward. Her statements of excitement about her “homework” indicated to me that she was starting to write a new story for herself, focusing on possibilities.

K started by asking for my advice, and she left our session with next steps and a new excitement that she identified for herself without one bit of suggestion or advice from me. While we didn’t do a threshold out on the land, we did talk about the possibility of doing a wander in the future. I “put a pin” in the word wander for a future session because she talked at one point about being drawn to “people who like to wander”, envying them, and wanting to be able to do that herself.

I was unsure of myself at the beginning about how I would do with the Stages of Change, and I was excited when I noticed early on in the session that she was jumping into Planning. I also felt validated when I reached the bottom of page 41 in my copy of Changing for Good and read, “’I want to stop feeling so stuck.’ Those simple words are typical of contemplators.”

[Naffer Miller]

When thinking about radical acceptance, I also think about the ways in which I strive to extend grace and kindness outward and to be compassionate with others. Going back to Dr. Taylor, something that stood out for me was when she said, “For me, it’s really easy to be kind to others when I remember that none of us came into this world with a manual about how to get it all right.” I believe it is vital that we strive to extend all of that grace, kindness, and compassion inward to ourselves as well. When I struggled with my well-populated Mandala while learning about and practicing with Partswork, I immediately connected with the concept of always starting with strengths. Instead of describing it as a mess, I need to reframe that and instead see my Mandala as fertile ground for the Partswork I will do on my own. Partswork feels to me to be big and vast, as we lean into the unknown, and simultaneously familiar and accessible, as we connect with what we can identify and name.

In the limited experience I have had with Partswork so far, I have felt like those parts that are best-known to me are a source of comfort and safety in my system. I also wonder if those parts will keep me from readily connecting with the rest of my system and being able to bring more order to it. One of my biggest takeaways from Partswork is that we have to practice it ourselves in order to be able to do it with a client. During the intensive, we experienced that it is possible to introduce Partswork into a single session and that it can be profoundly impactful. There is such a rich array of entry points and invitations into the work, and it feels like a modality that can be infinitely effective when used in long-term coaching as well.

On a different note, I was pulled to change my setting for this intensive and to go somewhere with access to a different space for Nature connection and awareness, and I am feeling pulled now to share this with you all. My daughter, puppy, and I stayed in a hotel on the beach. The entire week, I couldn’t bring myself to close the sliding glass door- I wanted to hear the wind and waves without a barrier! I left it open every night, and the last night there was a rainstorm. As exhausted as I was, I couldn’t sleep because I wanted so badly to listen deeply and take in every possible minute of the storm. It was like the last night of camp when I didn’t want it to end. I always “knew,” and now I KNOW that I need to live on the water someday. Or in the mountains. I need to be able to hear Mother Earth’s waves of water on the shore or wind in the treetops. I also need to be able to walk out the door and just. be. there. I have a pond off of my backyard, and I am grateful for the natural space in my house’s immediate vicinity. I am planning for my next space now.

[Naffer Miller]

As distant as I felt from Gestalt, is how hard in love I fell with Partswork. I know Gestalt and Partswork are connected, but I am not able to fully see how or why just yet. Gestalt baffled me, and Partswork empowered me. It instantaneously gave me a lens through which I could consider my feelings, my actions, and the world around me. Who, for example, is typing this right now?

I struggle with my Mandala, though. It’s a mess. I was a combination of ashamed, anxious, and determined when I saw Mandalas that others shared. I have parts on top of other parts, different colored stickies for parts based on what they bring to the system, and it is just a cacophony of words and colors! I even added pages to my Jamboard to make room for some reorganization, a “green room” if you will, for those parts I need to put off to the side for a bit, as I figure this all out. In Self, Soul, Spirit, I was comforted to see that there is no set number of parts. I also enjoyed reading the “descriptive phrases that give meaning” to their parts. Perhaps clearer, more articulated descriptive phrases that emerge over time will help to identify those parts on my Mandala that are truly parts. I also feel like some of the current names of my parts will eventually be absorbed by their descriptive phrases as their true names are revealed.

When I reopened my Mandala after being away from it for a while, my head felt like it was buzzing with indistinct chatter, conversations, and activity, like you might encounter in an exhibit hall at a conference. I felt welcome in that chaos because I knew who everyone was, and I was in familiar territory, which was a happy place to be after feeling so untethered in Gestalt. I knew, however, that if I was going to be able to do deep work WITH my Mandala, I was first going to have to do deep work ON it. I am grateful for the struggle with my oh-so-many parts and the process of sifting, sorting, and streamlining because it will help me as a Guide in doing Partswork with my clients.

I am also fascinated by the idea of making a Mandala in nature and wish we’d had the opportunity to that during this intensive. I picture my parts in a 3D sphere of sorts, outside of myself and usually above my head, with Soul at the center. I think the experience of working with my Mandala in Nature will bring it to life for me in a way that the Jamboard can’t.

I know that Dr. Taylor’s My Stroke of Insight focuses more on the brain, but as I was going through it, I kept thinking about Partswork. The ways in which she characterized the personalities of her hemispheres and the tasks and activities at which they each excelled made sense to me. The way she described how people could know, by how she carried herself, “who” walked into a room, felt very much like a description of her parts. What are the relationships between the two hemispheres of our brain and our parts? I am curious about what it would be like to drop into a part and consider whether it was in more of a right or left hemisphere space. Can a part flow between the two in the same ways Dr. Taylor describes?

Dr. Taylor also talks about the storyteller “portion” of her left brain, and then refers to it outright, as she describes observing “my storyteller”, as if referring to a part. She then goes on to describe the elements of her left brain that she chose not to recover because of how they made her feel and how they manifested physically in other ways. I keep thinking that her choice not to activate a certain neural network, and instead focus on activating and strengthening other neural networks, is somehow related to Partswork. For example, perhaps that “circuitry” she chose to leave behind is connected to introjects somehow, and that circuitry no longer served her and her system.

[Naffer Miller]

I described my feelings about Gestalt at one point as being the same as the frustrations I felt with those hidden 3D stereogram posters. When they were popular about 20ish years ago, I would stare at them, gaze at them, and look at them. And then I would throw a crazy combination gazelookstare at them some more. I would let my focus go soft and blurry. I’d look off to the sides. I would try to surprise it by looking away, pretending I no longer cared about seeing the hidden picture anymore, as if I were trying to trick my brain into remembering a word on the tip of my tongue by “forgetting” about the fact that I was trying to remember. Then, I would look back quickly to see if it spurred some ability to see and capture the image. I dared it to try and continue to elude and hide from me!

And it did. Every. Time.

Gestalt felt the same way for me this week. I listened so hard, I reread my notes during breaks, I looked stuff up online, and I still feel like I missed the entire parade, point, and purpose.

So, you know what I did? I researched those pesky stereograms to find out WHY I could never see them! I thought maybe that would help me understand, or at least serve as a metaphor for why I could not connect with or wrap my arms around Gestalt.

“A stereogram is an image which, when viewed with two eyes, produces the illusion of depth perception.” (Can YOU see the shark? Researchers reveal how the magic eye illusions work – and why not everyone can see the hidden 3D images, Daily Mail article from October 24, 2016) Instead of looking AT the image, you were supposed to look through it, which the article identifies as “divergent viewing”. That is in my notes! Gestalt is about seeing the whole picture, and also about looking inside. I know X-ray vision is not the same as divergent viewing, but they feel very similar.

In an article from Brown University’s Math Department, I can’t see the #$%!*&%ing thing! (a title I personally feel resonates with how I felt in the Gestalt module), there are several experiments shared to see if you might be one of the “rare” cases of people who are unable to see these pictures. I tried a few and think I fall into the “dominant eye” group, but I am not sure. If I do fall into that category, the article says I am one of the ’lucky few’ who actually has an excuse for not being able to see them. I’m not convinced, and that doesn’t make me feel lucky, but it is comforting to know that there are other like-minded (obsessed?) individuals out there who conducted studies and surveys (at MIT, for example) around this phenomenon.

What does this tell me? I am willing to research things to find out why, and I keep trying and trying if there is hope of figuring something out (I have gone back a few times to try to see the pictures). Specifically related to Gestalt, I think I understand the why, and I don’t yet know how all of this informs beginning to practice this with clients. I plan to continue to read and research more, and I would also like to join a Gestalt deep dive at some point.

[Naffer Miller]

Caving was my favorite trip to go on with campers and staff members because it was such a unique experience for them. For many of those first-time spelunkers, there was excitement and anticipation, and they had no preconceived notions or previous experience with which to compare it. For some, however, the unknown begat fear and apprehension. One afternoon, there was a camper who was so paralyzed by her fear that she stated she could not stand up from the floor of the library, where we had gathered before getting on the bus. The time I spent with her that afternoon is the most vivid and incredible memory I have of working with someone in what I now believe to have been a Gestalt experience.

I don’t remember the exact beginning of the conversation, but I always find a way to ask for permission, which is a step that was solidified early on by my first aid training- ask for consent first, before providing any care. I believe profoundly in the importance of asking permission before entering a new shared space with another presence- human or otherwise. (Note: I have put a mental pin in “shared space”. I will revisit it and see if I can’t more clearly articulate what I mean by it. I have a sensation when I think of those spaces, but I don’t yet have the words.)

Everyone was already on the bus by the time I was told about the camper who would not, could not, get up off of the library floor. After getting her permission, I approached her and sat down next to her. It was long ago, so I don’t recall most of what was said, but I remember that it was not much, and I focused on her physical being. She felt safe on the floor against the wall, and her arms were wrapped tightly around her knees. I assumed the same position, and invited her to gently unfold with me. I eventually had her put the palms of her hands on the floor on either side of her. Seeing her in that position made me think of the “three points of contact” that we would be reviewing in the clearing in front of the cave, so I reviewed that with her right there in the library. We eventually made our way up the wall, maintaining at least three points of contact at all times, and then we got to a point where she felt safe and comfortable enough to walk together to the bus.

I spent most of the time with that camper for the rest of the caving trip (we had enough staff with us to ensure the safety and uninterrupted activities in the cave for the rest of the group). Outside of the cave, I recall a lot of invitations to try new ways of approaching different sized boulders, touching, testing, touching again, and moving slowly to the mouth of the cave. I remember repeatedly asking, “How does that feel?” and “Where would you like to try next?” She didn’t make it entirely into the cave, but she did get to a place where she was comfortable venturing into the entrance, and she even got far enough in that she could feel a change in the temperature, see how dark it got when the rest of the group blew out their candles (one of the activities), and even chat with some of her bunkmates who came by on occasion to tell her what they were experiencing. That cave also had little, green plastic army men in different locations, and I remember her laughing when she spotted one from where she was sitting.

I had not planned it in this way, but we worked through her Cycle of Experience. In reviewing all of those phases, I think we hit on each one. I am not sure how her Withdrawal fully played out, but she was in an entirely different state on the bus ride back to camp. She did not sit up front with me, and she was laughing and talking with her friends the entire time.

The process was largely driven by her choices, and her choices gradually empowered her to make new, creative choices. For example, I remember her choosing to challenge a large rock to a duel because she was not afraid of it and then dancing around it as if she had a sword. It seemed that each choice felt bolder to her, and she seemed to challenge herself and the beliefs she was holding when she was anchored to that library floor.

[Naffer Miller]

When talking about the phases of ceremony and closing with incorporation, I found myself dwelling on the contrasts and similarities between coaching and guiding. I look forward to exploring this as we continue through the rest of the course, and at the moment, I find myself gravitating more towards Guide than Coach. When we work with a client as they move the needle from one point to the next, create goals, do “homework”, and so on, those feel like coaching activities that happen within the larger context of guiding, where they develop, edit, and update a greater, overarching strategic plan and vision.

Pulling on that thread a bit further, running as a metaphor came to mind for me. My regular runs are my moving meditation, and I have experiences during many of them from which I can draw parallels to my nature awareness practice and my sit spot. When I start to train for a race, the mileage builds in three-week microcycles within the macrocycle of overall training plan. The running metaphor can be broken down even further to reflect the phases of ceremony. It feels to me like coaching is where the microcycles take place and continue to move us towards our goals, while guiding is where they come together in a macrocycle and evolve, grow, and continue to move us towards vision.

[Naffer Miller]

The population that most excites me is the summer camp community, and my mind does not slow down or take a break when I think about working in that space. Some of my most powerful experiences as a camper and as a camp staff member were directly related to what I now think could have been threshold experiences. How much more powerful would they have been within the context of ceremony, invitations to partner with nature, and/or with set intentions?

I benefitted from executive coaching when I was the executive director of an overnight camp, and it was mostly conducted within the realms of the business side of the operation and the strategic planning process we had begun for the organization. To this day, I can name specific things we did together that helped me move forward, and I still apply some of what I learned with her to the work I do now. While I found the time with my executive coach to be valuable, there was no ceremony or nature connection incorporated into our sessions. With my combined experiences at camps as well as my time in the corporate world, partnering with summer camp administrators and Boards of Directors as a Nature-Connected Coach would be of value to them year-round.

I could also offer packages to camps where I work with their seasonal staff members and campers. How amazing would it be for staff members to feel confident and empowered to partner with their campers in their moments of wonder, fear, excitement, and boredom? To be able to help their campers and to be present with them, instead of feeling distracted by the often-hectic pull of the rest of camp going on around them, and/or feeling like they need to look to other staff specialists for ideas and assistance? How amazing would it be for staff and campers to go home at the end of the summer empowered to continue their journeys of connecting with nature on their own? They could find sit spots, set intentions, practice nature awareness, go on wanders, share what they learned with their families and friends at home, and, and, AND! My whole body is buzzing right now just typing this.

There are two types of organizations that immediately come to mind that connect with this kind of work- foundations like The Grinspoon Foundation, and associations like The American Camp Association (ACA) and the Association for Experiential Education (AEE). There are several resources on the ACA website that refer to coaching, but I could not find any indication that the ACA offers actual coaching services. Foundations sometimes offer coaching as part of their partnering with camps. My executive coaching experience that I mentioned earlier, for example, was packaged with the services The Grinspoon Foundation was providing to my overnight camp in support of our strategic plan and capital campaign initiatives. Again, that coaching was mostly focused on the business side of my role with the camp, and it definitely did not touch any connections with nature.

I also did several versions of a Google search on this, and I discovered that an ACA article with “coaching tips” was often at the top of the page, followed by pages of links about summer camp sports coaches and positions available. Upon further investigation, I found several articles that reference coaching on the ACA site. The ones I read offer helpful, useful information and activities, but they seem to be more about facilitation, mentoring, and overall engagement for groups and individuals.

When I added the word “executive” into the searches, the first website listed was for coaching services offered by an old acquaintance of mine from the camp world. It is an engaging website with a good mix of information, and I took some notes while navigating it. In looking at what he offers, compared to what I am considering for my coaching practice, his coaching is focused on the business, not the people. On the first page of the site, for example, it says, “…puts his experience to work GROWING YOUR organization. Any business working with children will benefit from working with…” (the caps are on his website, not my edit). It does have a great page that outlines how he structures his coaching packages and fees that I found helpful.

There is a long way to go in developing my brand and service offerings, but from what I can tell so far, there are not many others looking to do what I want to do. “The central idea in the Book of Nature presents learning through relationships: meaningful relationships and real connections.” (Coyote’s Guide, p. 283) Coyote Mentoring would be an invaluable service to camp administrators and seasonal staff who get swept up by the day-to-day of the business and the execution of the programs. This is farther off in my journey with EBI, but I also imagine working with summer camp populations in connection with the Transformational Wilderness Guiding certification I intend to pursue. I would also return to professionally advocating for the benefits of the summer camp experience for campers and staff members, and I would work with summer camp administrators on that issue as well.

[Naffer Miller]

I feel like I am starting to grasp the more specific aspects of ceremony that loomed large at first. Going back and forth between the big picture of ceremony, to its individual parts, to the big picture again, and back down to an even more granular level of the individual parts has been challenging, but it is starting to come together. I also see how being both client and coach with my cohort is helping ceremony come to life for me within the coaching context. I am also making connections with my experiential education experiences.

I don’t feel like I have fully grasped the business side of things yet. I know it’s still early on, and I think the homework about “One year from now…” is going to follow me this year and beyond. Those are key questions to be able to answer, and my sense is that my responses are going to evolve over time, especially in the first few years of my work as a Nature-Connected Coach. When we learned about “training inner vision”, I wrote some notes about how that will also apply to my work around developing my NCC business. For example, taking part of that discussion into thinking about my NCC work in the future, how will the world look when I am fully immersed in that intention?

[Naffer Miller]

Entering each day with a growth mindset and curiosity is a starting point for which I am grateful. Sustaining both throughout each day is another story. It is challenging, for sure, and I am now additionally grateful for the threshold experience.

I told my students in the first few minutes of the first day of each new school year that I hoped they would learn as much from me as I was going to learn from them. I have been reflecting on this after experiencing threshold as a client because I don’t think I ever said to myself, “Naffer, I hope you learn from you as much as I am going to learn from me.” Or something to that effect. Even if I did, I don’t know that I would have recognized threshold experiences for what they were and then have given myself the time to reflect on the experiences and what I learned from them.

Coyote’s Guide talks about Improvisation (p. 237) and how it involves a sense of play, expects risks, and is quintessential edge-walking. In threshold, I think ‘play’ could include the creativity of the experience itself. The “balance between dedicated study (planning) and in-the-moment creativity (improvisation)” is where I think threshold dances. I went into the session both as the client and as a student, as one who is a practice coach and as one who was planning for and then improvising a threshold experience for someone else. With all of those “alsos” that I shared with my coach, I was stunned at how much I didn’t know I wasn’t going to know about going into that experience as a client- the unknown unknowns.

Even in severance and up through the point of invitation into threshold, I still felt like I was anchored and had a grasp on the conversation and where the session could be going. Once in the threshold experience, however, it really felt like I had stepped off of solid ground into mid-air. I was surprised by how profound the experience was, the depth of the emotions that I moved through, and how exhausted and fulfilled I felt coming back onto that solid ground of incorporation.

Nature also helped to hold space for me in threshold, and I am still reflecting back on how different of a connection that was from my solo nature awareness practice and connections. I am excited about how powerful of a partner it was in my own coaching session as well and can’t imagine how much more there is to unfold in that partnership moving forward. As both client and guide/coach, my threshold experiences confirmed for me that Nature is the most magnificent stage for improv.

We plan. We plan, and we are still met with, and must remain intentional about, inviting in the improvisation and unexpected, both as client and as coach/guide. There are two competencies that are coming up for me at this point in my growth that I feel are essential for me to practice and build on to feel confident in that “place” as a coach. For ICF, it is designing actions to facilitate learning and results. Specifically, I think the skills of helping the client “Do It Now” during the coaching session, while also holding space for a comfortable pace of learning, providing immediate support, and encouraging stretches and challenges.

For NCC, I feel that all of the aspects of deep listening, inspiring nature-connection, and guiding the ceremony are essential for me to practice and build on. Guiding the ceremony is the newest to me of those skills, and I feel like it is my biggest learning curve so far.

[Naffer Miller]

Michael talked about how 80-90% of our energy is spent on the preparation and building of a fire, and only 10% is spent on lighting the fire. He used that as a metaphor for the time spent in severance and threshold. I love campfires, I love using them as metaphors, and this brought to mind my favorite fire to ponder and play with, the top-down or upside-down fire. My years of summer camp and outdoor education were filled with building fires. Everyone had their go-to methods, tricks, and hacks, and I encountered more than a few folks who believed their way was THE way to build the best fire.

For decades, my experience was that fires were built by starting with kindling and/or small combustibles at the bottom and then working up to the larger pieces of wood on top, leaving spaces for the fire to breathe. It was the way things were always done. My mind was blown the first time I learned about top-down fires. How could something practiced so often, still use the same basic elements and principles, and yet be so profoundly different and powerful in its own right? The top-down fire turns “conventional fire-building wisdom” on its head, invites new possibilities, and has tangible benefits.

Ceremony struck me in the same mind-blowing way. The basic elements and principles of ceremony are always the same, and yet the outcomes are profoundly different and powerful each time it is practiced. And speaking of fires as metaphor, I also really loved learning about metaphors and how they hold the connection of fact to creativity for the brain.

[Naffer Miller]

Reflecting back upon the questions from Foundations 1, my curiosity around the reciprocal relationship in our connection with nature remains. Almost dizzy from wrestling with this curiosity, I wrote “What are we giving back?” in the middle of a page in my journal, and I now think that I have been asking the wrong question. That wording implies a disconnectedness- that Nature has something we don’t have; Nature gives, and we take. Likewise, it implies that we have something Nature doesn’t have; we give, and Nature takes. No, that’s not it at all. The connection just IS, and we reciprocate seamlessly and continuously.

“The country knows” a Koyukon elder warns. “If you do wrong to it, the whole country knows. It feels what is happening to it. I guess everything is connected together somehow under the ground.” That quote from Where Psyche Meets Gaia struck me as offering a different way of considering one’s connection with Nature. If we reframe it in the positive, we do right by Nature, and then that is what the country knows and feels in those connections. Reframed in that way, I can hear the quote reverberating within an intention that one sets at the beginning of any wander, journey, or quest. Just as we talk about approaching our clients from a place of ceremony, I also marvel at the power of approaching nature from that same place. I have always referred to being outside as “being in my natural habitat,” but until this course, I don’t know that I ever approached the outside with such ceremony and/or intention. On occasion, sure. But regularly? No.

Being connected to Nature is listening and trusting that there is a story to be told and understanding that we are also a part of that story. When we trust, we can listen and also hear our own story within, hear what Nature is telling us, and gain more clarity as a result. The longer and more deeply we listen and trust, the deeper and wider our connection with Nature becomes. It’s a beautiful cycle. It is, I believe, one of the places in which Ecopsychology and Coaching connect.

A connection with Nature also inspires awe and wonder. That feels silly to state in this space… as a part of EBI… in this like-minded Cohort of NCCers. That statement, however, is a touchpoint for me in the question around what skills are needed in Nature-Connected Coaching. We are discussing the art of asking questions, the science of the brain, the act of deep listening, amongst others, in Foundations. Coyote’s Guide (sidenote: it is hard not to talk about EVERY page in this book!) illuminates the power of entering Nature with a beginner’s mind and childlike curiosity, and I feel that is how we need to enter into a coach/guide-client relationship. With our clients, we can then enter Nature from a place of “authentic curiosity” and “become partners in a joint venture of discovering the complex subtleties.”

Are childlike curiosity and a beginner’s mind skills? On their own, I do not think they are, but to execute anything well requires preparation, warming up, maybe even “getting in the zone”, and definitely practice. The acts of reconnecting with our childlike curiosity and of reminding ourselves of the criticality of entering most spaces, and certainly any client session, with a beginner’s mind can be part of that intention-setting, preparation, and practice. They are both muscles we can strengthen and part of the foundation from which we can exercise, hone, and develop our skills.

I love the idea of being a walking sit spot for a client, and I think this is another place where Ecopsychology and Coaching come together. If we are nature, we are a part of the natural world, and we hold that space for a client. As a consultant, I rarely get to hold that space with my clients. One of the metrics of success that is sometimes identified in consulting is being able to work ourselves out of a job. Where some consulting firms resort to off-the-shelf, cookie cutter recommendations and solutions, the work I do with clients is similar to that of a coach in that I partner with them to identify their wants and deeper needs, articulate goals, identify milestones, and move forward towards their desired outcomes. Eventually, we get to a point at which the client is poised to take what has been co-created and run with it, implement it, and execute it in-house, without the support of a consultant. That high-level description also touches what I’ve begun to learn about with regards to Nature-Connected Coaching. The consulting and client partnering I do, however, is often conducted in spaces that are siloed, cut off, and disconnected, which then often stunts the deeper and broader growth and evolution that could emerge as a part of our work together. Nature-Connected Coaching, honors, recognizes, and embraces connections, and it invites Nature in as an essential partner in co-creation with a client.

[Naffer Miller]

Summary: In <i style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>Wilderness As A Healing Place, John Miles refers to wilderness walking and mindful walking in ways that resonated with me after this module. Running has been what I always referred to as my moving meditation, and I don’t hold any land speed records, but I have noted that I more easily drop into a calm, contemplative state while I’m moving quickly through space. This week, I was exhilarated to reconnect with also being able to achieve that state of being while moving slowly through space, taking the time to stop and listen, <i style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>truly listen, to nature.

In addition to my deepened awareness around movement, I also deepened my connection with my sit spot this week. The nature awareness that we practiced is more nuanced and intentional than what I’ve practiced in the past. A gift to me from that nature awareness was the ability to maintain the sphere around me and carry it back inside during the sessions throughout the intensive. It was a bubble that held the magical space and time that I shared with everyone during the intensive. I will explore how else to dwell inside that sphere and what other sacred spaces it can hold.