[Toni Blanton]

What does it mean to be connected to Nature, and how can that relationship support your coaching?

We live in a culture of doing. “Busy” and “Tired” are the currency of worthiness. When someone asks “How are you?”, answers of busy and tired get you into the club. They imply that you’re properly focused on keeping your task list full beyond completion and following the approved cultural script for worthiness. What a lie!

Ugh. Just describing that makes me feel icky and twitchy.

A connection to nature is a connection to Being, rather than Doing. We are nature. Even a moment of true connection to the natural world puts us in touch with a true part of ourselves. It reconnects us to a resonant frequency and quiets the dissonance created from navigating the lie. True connection heals.

As a coach, being aware of the power in a moment of connection, in a threshold experience, and being capable of holding space for that client experience is a beautiful gift we can provide our clients.

In my own practice, I’ve seen how impactful the connection can be. As I’ve been writing, one experience keeps hovering in my awareness. A woman in her 20s was dealing with a lot of anxiety. She described it as “spinning out”. We stepped outside and she sat down and placed her bare feet in the grass and started taking some deep breaths while feeling her feet on the ground. I watched her energy start to shift from the moment her feet hit the ground, as she came back into herself with each breath. When she stopped, I could see the difference and she talked about how different she felt, calmer. My personal experience at Gunnison also reflects the profoundness of nature connections. I came down that mountain a different person than the one that went up.

As a coach, expanding the depth and breadth of my own nature connection will build the capacity to help guide clients through their own experiences. I’m reminded of a saying, though I don’t know who said it and am probably misquoting it. “Nature accomplishes everything.” The context was that nature gets everything done but doesn’t require a frenetic schedule, a long to do list or exhaustion to do so. Nature works from a place of Being, not Doing, and everything gets done with more ease and beauty and flow that our task lists could ever provide.

Being connected to nature means valuing ourselves and the earth first. It means valuing our inherent worthiness first then acting from that place. We are living with the results of Doing being most valued. The result is a world full of toxins, an ocean full of plastic and a food system full of products but little nourishment. Shifting our value system will happen one person at a time until we reach a tipping point that reorients everyone to a connected place of Being.

[Toni Blanton]

Hi everyone! My name is Toni Blanton. I live in the beautiful Pacific NW in Olympia, WA. I grew up in a small town in the middle of the woods where the forest was the mainstay of the local economy and consciousness. Nature has been my playground and refuge for as long as I can remember.

I found EBI about a year ago. It seemed to just appear in my browser one day. I didn’t know I was looking for my next thing until that moment. I’m in the Nature Connected Coaching program cohort that starts January 2021. NCL is my first step into that larger program. In the first couple weeks, I’ve already noticed some shifts taking place as a result of the work. I’m looking forward to discovering more about myself as this all unfolds.

As far as my professional background, I have several hats that I wear interchangeably. I’ve spent almost 30 years working as a Business Systems Analyst designing IT systems in both the public and private sectors. I’ve been a Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner for 11 years and spent several years as an instructor and the Program & Curriculum Manager for the school. I’m also certified in multiple energetic healing modalities, including Food & Spirit and Reiki.

When I give people this list of professional labels, their first response is usually to think that these are all such different things. But really, they’re all about managing and guiding change. Whether I’m using software to help an organization change or nutrition and energy to help a person change. Same skillset, different tools.

I’m looking forward to seeing how NCL and NCC help me bring more of me to all of these.