Modern life draws us into relationships with ideas, screens, and abstractions while distancing us from the living world that sustains us. As our relationship with the more-than-human world diminishes, so too can our connection with the instinctive, creative, and untamed dimensions of ourselves. Ecopsychology suggests that these are not separate losses, but expressions of the same disconnection.

This workshop explores what it means to encounter the wild as both an ecological and inner reality. Drawing on Gestalt therapy, ecopsychology, Martin Buber's philosophy of I–Thou, and contemplative land-based practice, we explore relationship as something lived rather than merely understood. Rather than treating the natural world as a backdrop or resource, we approach the earth as a living presence capable of meeting us in dialogue.

Gestalt therapy offers a relational understanding of healing, recognizing that we are always participating in a larger field of relationships. Awareness unfolds not in isolation but through contact with our bodies, one another, and the world that surrounds us. Ecopsychology extends this understanding beyond the human sphere, inviting us to recognize that rivers, forests, weather, stones, birds, and landscapes participate in the field that shapes our experience. As David Abram and other ecological thinkers have suggested, the animate world is not simply around us but continually inviting our participation.

Throughout our time together, participants will engage in experiential Gestalt practices, embodied awareness, solo and shared encounters on the land, creative process, reflection, and dialogue. Together, these practices invite us to notice how the living world speaks to us and welcomes us into a fuller possibility of being human.

This workshop offers an opportunity to cultivate a more reciprocal, grounded, and intimate way of being, recognizing healing as emerging through relationship with both the human and more-than-human community.