Certificate of completion
Online Study
5 Months
Welcome to the Somatic Ecotherapy training.
This program is a love letter to embodied truth—a five-month immersion into two profoundly powerful paradigms of healing and wholeness: somatic inquiry and ecotherapy.
Whether you are here to deepen your own healing or to learn how to guide others on the land, this journey invites you into a rich, experiential exploration of the body’s wisdom in relationship with the living Earth.
Over the course of the program, you’ll gain practical, grounded skills to cultivate 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 your inner landscape, to the more-than-human world, and to the stories that flow between the two. This multidimensional attunement empowers you to hold deep, spacious presence for what is emerging in you or the people you guide.
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.
Somatic Ecotherapy is not your typical classroom. It opens a doorway into the teaching of wild spaces, where the body is compass, and relationship with the more than human world becomes a treasury of knowing.
Whether you’re drawn to guide others or to deepen your own personal unfolding, this program invites you to slow down, awaken the senses, and remember how to be in dialogue with the land. Through immersive practices, nature-based ceremony, and the wild container of your learning cohort, you’ll open into ancestral ways of sensing, being and connecting that foster a re-enchantment with all life, and the pulse of the mystery that permeates it.
This program offers two distinct learning pathways:
While your intention shapes your path, the journey begins together.
All participants learn side by side in a mixed cohort, moving through a sequence of 12 live Zoom classes, 3 immersive ecotherapy walks, and the foundational Five Terrains Framework—a poetic, developmental arc that weaves together body, psyche, land, and soul.
Ravens receive four additional classes on the art and ethics of guiding, along with key assignments and a practicum to develop confidence as a somatic ecotherapy guide.
Echidnas walk a parallel path—but one that is directed inward toward personal transformation, participating in 2 deep council sessions to gently catalyse their own unfoldment.
For those seeking personal healing, reconnection, and pathways of renewal
You’ll learn many of the same practices as the professional stream—like interoception, sensory grounding, The Spiral, and Earth-Based Listening—but you’ll move through them on a reflective path that blends theory with lots of time on the land. You’ll learn how to cast the fishing line into the sacred well of the body, tracking its golden thread into dimensions of being where inner orphaned parts are called home, and where body and earth are felt as one.
This is a deeply practical training, where you’ll be invited to bring the tools you learn into your daily life—into your local park, garden, and the wild corners of your nervous system—where transformation can take root slowly, with reverence, held by the land.
What’s included:
This path is for you if you long for renewal, but don’t feel called to guide others on the land. Start here if you’re called to reconnect with the wild places within, held by the inimitable wisdom of the more than human world.
For those called to be somatic ecotherapy guides, holding transformational space for people to be unfolded on, with, and as the earth.
Begin here if you feel drawn to the frontline of deep cultural repair, using tools that invite people into the healing of body and mind in partnership with the more than human world. This pathway is designed for therapists, coaches, space-holders, and facilitators, who’ll first learn and embody the tools themselves, before inviting others to benefit from them. Ravens will cultivate an embodied relationship with the living world, becoming guides at the vanguard of sacred service.
You’ll receive not only a potent training in somatic ecotherapy—but also mentorship in how to hold space with integrity, trauma sensitivity, and ecological reverence. The guiding assignments and Q&A sessions provide real-world practice and feedback, helping you embody this work in service to others.
What’s included:
This path is for you if you’re called to be of service in this turning of the wheel; to offer crucibles of healing, growth and reconnection on the land in partnership with more than human kin.
The course follows the Five Terrains Framework, a poetic and developmental sequence that offers tools for somatic regulation, imaginal healing, and deep ecological belonging. Over the course of the 5 months, students explore and embody the practices contained within each terrain, moving in a narrative arc from the art of wild ceremony to the art of embodied conversation with place.
Trailhead – The beginning of the journey. Here, we cross thresholds through ceremony, intention-setting, and sacred orientation. This terrain invites you to slow down, open to mystery, and begin listening with the whole body.
Meadow – The terrain of gentle arrival. Through sensory grounding and body-based presence, we soothe the nervous system and learn to attune to the subtle language of the senses. This is where breath deepens and the resonance of the field of life returns.
Forest – The inner wilderness. In sacred partnership with the land, we meet our inner parts—those hidden, wounded, or orphaned ones that roam the silent avenues of the body. Through myth, imagination, and embodied listening, we enter sacred space to call them home.
Mountain – The place of belonging and ecological identity. This terrain offers deep Earth-based listening and an invitation to remember – through the body – our place within the great web of life. Here, the normative sense of who we are softens, and we awaken into a more connected, reverent, and wildly relational way of being.
Sky-Cave – A glimpse into the Mystery. Though lightly touched in this training, this composite terrain gestures toward deeper transpersonal ground: imaginal soul-work, sacred unknowing, and the liminal space where divine facets of Being are palpably embodied.
Together, these terrains offer a living map for embodied healing, deep listening, and sacred reconnection. Each terrain illuminates a successive obstacle on the path to wholeness, while offering somatic and nature-based tools to tend the divide and support your return to deeper integration with self, land, and life.
Please Note: Both Raven and Echidna Cohorts will be run through Metavision, the links to these cohorts in this video are obsolete and you can find all the information for both options on this current course page.
All participants are warmly invited to gather in a 4-day wilderness retreat on sacred land in Ganbenang, NSW.
This retreat offers a powerful opportunity to come together in person—feet on the earth, hearts gathered in council around the fire. For past participants, the retreat became the soul of the journey: a visceral, embodied culmination where the teachings deepen through lived experience, shared presence, and the holding of wild land and community.
Themed “Coming Home,” this retreat is a spacious, off-grid immersion in nature where the Five Terrains come to life through land-based ceremony, somatic practice, wild council, and deep rest. Practices include Earth-Based Listening, inner parts walks, intuitive movement, dreamwork, and time to simply be—swimming, wandering, and reweaving connection with more-than-human kin. Whether you’re walking the professional or personal path, the retreat offers a spacious, soul-nourishing container to drop deeper into your connection with the land, each other, and the sacred mystery at the heart of this work.
Participants bring their own camping gear and food, with the option to share meals in a communal spirit for those who wish to.
Please note: this retreat is independently facilitated by Rob Engels and is not part of the formal course delivery by Metavision Institute. Details, including dates and logistics, will be shared directly with enrolled students.
Echidnas (Personal Development)
Ravens (Professional Certification)
| 2026 | Start Date |
|---|---|
| Course | Wednesday 29th April 2026 |
| Weekly Zoom Class | Wednesdays 6pm – 8.15pm AEST |
| Student Practicum (Ravens Only) | Dates TBC |
Whether you’re feeling the call or simply curious, we invite you to take the next step toward the Wild Reverence: Somatic Ecotherapy.
Let’s walk this path together.
This program is facilitated by Rob Engels—a PACFA-certified somatic psychotherapist, ecotherapist, meditation teacher, and nature and forest therapy guide. In 2024, he founded the School of Awareness, which has a mission to teach pathways of self-healing, insight, and earth-based connection. Rooted in somatic wisdom, nature-based ritual, and mythopoetic inquiry, the School supports those seeking to live in deeper alignment with the body, the land, and the sacred unfolding of life.
His calling as a guide to the inner wilderness began in childhood and was forged through early family-of-origin traumas that left him with a deep and gnawing sense of being alone in the world. As a young adult, he wandered aimlessly, seemingly without purpose, before Mystery called him to turn inwards—to inquire into the deeper truth of who he was.
His journey has spanned decades of deep inquiry, nature immersion, and soul encounter. With Animas Valley Institute, he undertook a long program of nature-based work that culminated in a four-day wilderness solo and water fast in the wilds of Wollemi, where he experienced a mythopoetic initiation with soul—an encounter that restructured his entire way of being and opened him into a path of service in partnership with the more-than-human world.
In addition to his psychotherapy and ecotherapy work, Rob is a trained rites of passage guide and vision fast protector (School of Lost Borders), a certified Kiloby Somatic Inquiry Facilitator, and co-founder of the Blue Mountains Men’s Group. He facilitates nature-based programs that support personal transformation and ecological belonging – spaces where the body’s wisdom, the land’s voice, and the soul’s longing can meet in service of all life. His work weaves trauma sensitivity with wildness, stillness, and a deep trust in the profound intelligence of the body and the alchemical power of the more-than-human world.
| Type | Fee |
|---|---|
| Full Price | $5,520.00 |
| Early Bird Price (10% discount) | $4,968.00 |
| Alumni Price (15% discount) | $4,692.00 |
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.
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Metavision Institute is deeply grateful to the traditional custodians for their continuous custodianship and care of this unceded land and, specifically, Turrbal Country on which we live and work.
Read more about our Reconciliation Action Plan
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Provider Number: PRV14327
CRICOS Provider: 04454D
Our higher education courses are not offered to international students studying in Australia on a student visa.
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