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Mode
Online Study
Qualification
Certificate of Completion
5 Months
Duration
Wild Reverence:
Somatic Ecotherapy
Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood
~ Pablo Neruda ~
Welcome to the Somatic Ecotherapy Guide Training Program.
This professional training is a love letter to embodied truth—a five-month immersion into two profoundly powerful paradigms of healing and wholeness: somatic inquiry and ecotherapy.
Over the course of the program, you’ll gain practical, grounded skills to guide others in nature-based experiences that foster healing, connection, and growth. The journey weaves together psyche (mind), soma (body), and soil (earth), inviting a deep and experiential exploration of the synergy between somatic work and ecotherapy. Through this integration, a new way of being in relationship with nature—through the doorway of the body—is made possible.
This training also invites you into the art of deep listening: to the body’s innate knowing, the subtle language of the senses, the symbolic stirrings of the imaginal realm, and the quiet intelligence of nature herself. This multidimensional attunement empowers you to hold deep, spacious presence for others—always in partnership with the more-than-human world.
Rooted in the spirit of deep ecology, Somatic Ecotherapy is a wild remembering: that we are not separate from the earth, but living expressions of the web of life.
In these times of disconnection, decimation, and despair, may this program offer its own kind of medicine—in service to the more-than-human world, and to consciousness herself.
Please enquire or enroll here:
Upcoming Events
27 May 2025, 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm AESTOnline (Zoom)
Acknowledgements
Before we begin, a few acknowledgements.
We acknowledge the legacy of deep listening that was born through the dreaming of aboriginal people: the practice of listening to self, to place, to each other and to the dreaming itself. We acknowledge that Somatic Inquiry and Ecotherapy flow in the same river, and borrow much from the wisdom traditions of First Nations.
We acknowledge the privilege and rank we hold as white, western practitioners, and that this shapes our perspective on life and healing, together with our world view. What is offered in this program is drawn from practices that have deeply benefited us and we encourage you to explore whether they work for you. Your own experience is the best litmus for what is right in your life.
We acknowledge that, for aboriginal people, deep healing must also involve reconnection with land, ancestors, family, culture and community. This holds true for us as well, and we invite you to explore whether it holds true for you.
Program Overview
Program Overview
The Somatic Ecotherapy Guide Training unfolds over five months through a carefully sequenced journey of 17 live classes and 3 remotely guided nature therapy walks. The course is rooted in the Five Terrains Framework of somatic ecotherapy—a unique developmental map that leads participants through ritual connection, nervous system regulation, deep sensing, relational repair, and embodied conversation with the more-than-human world.
Each terrain offers distinct practices that build sequentially, supporting trainees to guide clients with depth, attunement, and safety. While all Five Terrains are introduced as part of a visionary framework, this professional training centres
its focus on the first four: Trailhead, Meadow, Forest, and Mountain. These terrains form a robust foundation, equipping students to meet many of the most pressing challenges of our time—nervous system dysregulation, inner fragmentation, runaway busyness, grief, anxiety, and the deep ache of disconnection and not belonging.
The final terrain, Sky, opens into subtle and transpersonal dimensions of ecotherapy. It will be the focus of future professional development opportunities for those wishing to deepen the journey.
The Rhythm of Classes
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The first five weeks of the program offer a deep dive into somatic inquiry tools, supporting students to reconnect with the body’s way of knowing—an embodied intelligence that is often overshadowed in a culture that privileges thinking over felt experience.
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Weeks 6–9 explore foundational ecotherapy tools, including the use of ritual, sensory immersion, liminal space, and relational work on the land.
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Weeks 10–14 move deeper into inner parts work, earth-based resourcing, mythopoetic mirroring, and the open-handed artistry of guiding.
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Three nature therapy walks—facilitated live during the course—support students to experience and embody the work they will go on to lead. These are progressively scaffolded to demonstrate how different elements of the training can be woven into practical, nature-based invitations on the land.
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Midway through the training, students begin practising by guiding their own somatic ecotherapy walks with friends or family, submitting reflections in a templated report for constructive feedback.
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Attendance at scheduled, live Q&A calls offer students the chance to debrief their guided walks and to receive feedback in a supportive group setting.
Throughout The Course Students Will Learn
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Guide participants to gently reconnect with their bodies through sensory meditation—meeting each person where they are.
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Craft supportive, trauma-informed, nature-based invitations that awaken felt experience, sensory perception, and inner imagery.
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Support clients in entering liminal spaces where a deeper sense of wholeness—beyond identity and narrative—can be encountered.
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Help clients find a little slowness and presence in an age of runaway speed.
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Guide clients to tend and turn towards inner wounded parts in partnership with the more than human world.
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Reflect and mirror client experiences in ways that honour mystery, multiplicity, and the mythopoetic layers of the psyche.
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Offer invitations that help clients rekindle relationships with the natural world and more than human kin.
As a whole, the course invites a participatory and relational view of nature therapy—where guides and participants alike are shaped by their interactions with beings on the land, and by the ongoing dreaming of the earth. Learning to guide in this way means cultivating the capacity to listen: not just to inner parts or feelings, but to the voice of the land, the wind, the stillness between things.
By course end, students will have designed and delivered their own somatic ecotherapy experiences, with a solid foundation in embodied, nature-based guiding. A full weekly schedule, complete with topics, learning outcomes, exercises, and resources, is provided separately as part of the course materials.
Information Talk
Scope of the Course
The five-month Somatic Ecotherapy Guide Training is a rich and immersive experience. It is intentionally intensive, requiring not only attendance at weekly classes but also time dedicated to practising on the land, integrating material somatically, and showing up in guided and reflective roles.
The training includes:
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Weekly live Zoom classes covering key content and practices
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Practical exercises to take onto the land between classes, helping you embody the theory and deepen learning through direct experience
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Dyad partnership sessions to refine somatic listening and reflective presence
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Reflective journaling to support inner integration of experiences
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Three remotely guided nature therapy walks
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A supervised co-guided walk, in which students guide each other
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Two 1.5-hour live Q&A debrief sessions, offering a supportive space to receive feedback and deepen your skills as a guide
Experiential practice on the land is integral to embodied learning. Students are strongly encouraged to set aside regular time in nature between classes, as well as during the scheduled break weeks, which are included in the program structure to allow for integration and deeper practice.
As the course progresses, students begin guiding somatic ecotherapy walks with friends or family. Each of these walks is followed by a templated written reflection, inviting thoughtful integration and offering a basis for personalised feedback and mentorship.
Type | Fee |
|---|---|
Full Price | $5,520 |
Early Bird Price (10% discount) | $4,968 |
Alumni Price (15% discount) | $4,692 |
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Metavision alumni: 15% discount available to graduates of our 1-year or 2-year program (not applicable in conjunction with early bird discount)
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An early Bird discount of 10% is available to students who enroll before the 30th April 2025
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Non-refundable Deposit is required to secure your place in the course $1500 - (a credit card fee may be applicable)
Payment plans are available
Payment plans are available enabling students to pay fees in monthly instalments.
Investment
Timings
2025 | Start Date |
|---|---|
Course | 31st July - 18th December |
Weekly Zoom Class | Thursdays 6pm - 8.15pm |
Student-guided walk | Saturday 29th November 10am - 12.30pm |
Guided Nature Therapy Walk 1 | Saturday 13th September 10am - 12.30pm |
Guided Nature Therapy Walk 2 | Saturday 15th November 10am - 12.30pm |
Guided Nature Therapy Walk 3 | Saturday 13th December 10am - 12.30pm |
Your Guide
Rob Engels
My calling as a guide to the inner wilderness began in childhood, and was forged through big, life-altering traumas that led me to believe there was something inherently wrong with me. As a young adult I wandered aimlessly, seemingly without purpose or any real sense of who I was. I moved through bouts of depression, imprisoning myself in a tight complex of deficiency stories that felt like despair. In my late teens I turned to meditation to transcend my suffering rather than face my demons head on.
At some point, however, Mystery called me to turn inwards to heal. This launched a lifelong pilgrimage of deep self inquiry and spiritual wandering as I learned to question everything I had taken to be true about myself. Aided by plant teachers, human elders, Jungian writing, the profound wisdom of nature and, in time, the inner teacher, I tended my wounds, called in the lost, forgotten and disavowed parts of myself and awakened a deep sense of wholeness.
With Animas Valley Institute, I embarked on a long program of nature connection, Soulcraft and Wild Mind training. This culminated in a vision quest in the wilds of Wollemi, NSW, including a four-day wilderness solo and water fast, during which time I underwent an initiation with soul: the mythopoetic remembering of my ultimate place and purpose in the web of life. This seminal, earth shattering encounter gradually restructured my psyche and entire way of being, propelling me into a life of service, guiding others through the inner wilderness to the truth at their centre.
In addition to postgraduate training in holistic psychotherapy, I guide nature connection programs to rewild the human soul, empowering a deep discovery of what is fundamentally right about you. As both a certified nature and forest therapy guide and co-founder of the Wild Edges nature healing program in the Blue Mountains, I have guided others to call home the lost, forgotten, and disavowed parts into the family of wholeness. As an ACMM-certified meditation teacher, I guide others into the practice of mindful awareness and somatic self inquiry, facilitating deeper self awareness, personal growth and transpersonal exploration. I am also a trained facilitator of the Kiloby Inquiries method, a ground-breaking, mindfulness-based approach to treating depression, anxiety, trauma and addiction, which has intensive outpatient centres across the US. Honouring my commitment to the practice of embodied listening, I am also co-founder of the Blue Mountains Men’s Group. My collected work falls under the banner of Wild Reverence, which is a love affair with the wild earth, a remembering of our own wild wholeness, and a communion with the inner sacred.
My journey has been light and dark, wild, beautiful and, gnarly, and I would be honoured to guide you in this treasure of an offering: Somatic Ecotherapy, on the path of healing, wholeness and self discovery.
