Rewilding is a coming home to our roots. It is a recognition that this planet and our local environments are priceless gifts from the forces of life in our universe. To rewild is to reach out and embrace the earth. The concept of wildness, like Tarzan, is the invention of a society at odds with nature. Rewilding is a return to our essential nature. It is an attempt to reclaim something of what we were before we used words like “civilized” to define ourselves.
We live in a time when technology dominates our lives. The internet and portable touch-screen devices have radically altered our interactions and our societies. Fewer and fewer people are connected to the source of their food or the land on which they live. This break in our relationship to nature alienates us from the generative forces of our living earth and may alienate future generations, with catastrophic consequences. Indeed, it seems apparent now that effects of this disconnection are already happening around the world.
We evolved in intimate contact with the land, the seasons, and what author David Abram calls “the more-than-human world,” a term I use for nature. Rewilding reacquaints us with our environment and ourselves. It draws us out to experience the comfort and joy of a sacred fire, the sweetness of a freshly picked wild berry, the interspecies connection we make when we come eye to eye with a wild creature, and the fellowship of friends sitting on the earth sharing stories of their day.
Rewilding calls us from our indoor environments and virtual worlds and asks us to adapt to the real world, the natural world. It helps us recover and enliven our senses, which may have been dulled by the monotony of indoor environments. By stepping outdoors, lifting our noses to the sky, smelling the wind, taking a long view, and becoming students of nature, we can learn to respond skillfully to the real-life conditions on our home planet — for the seasons on our planet and the relative equilibrium of our climate are rapidly changing, and in order to face this, we need our senses about us, we need to be aware and alert, and we need to know basic skills to help us discern the wisdom of nature and stay close to it.
As a child, I spent a lot of time outdoors. My parents and I lived off the grid for about a year while they built our house in the woods. We heated with wood, pumped water from a well, and used candles and kerosene lanterns for our evening illumination. That experience had a deep and lasting impact on me, and as I grew, getting outside and being close to the elements was of prime importance. Nature was my medicine and my solace and inspiration through trying times as a child, after my parents’ divorce, and during the turbulence of my adolescence and young adulthood. I feel very fortunate to have grown up close to the land, wandering through woods and fields unsupervised. Using my bow and arrows to shoot at cans and stumps, climbing trees, making fires, and building forts provided a sense of adventure and helped me grow in confidence. Growing up close to the land also led me to appreciate the simple beauty and profound mystery of the natural world.
Time outdoors nourishes both our contemplative and adventurous sides. As a kid, I moved between pretending that I was in The Lord of the Rings or Robin Hood to pausing in the woods and being totally swept up by the sound of the wind in the birches. I pondered the great questions: Who am I? What am I? How did we all get here? On a quiet afternoon, a small, crackling fire on top of the old “bear cave” in the forest behind my dad’s house was profoundly moving to my soul. It affected me more than any sermon I ever heard in church on Sunday morning. The smell of burning dry pine branches and the occasional pop of exploding sap guided me into a natural state of present-moment awareness and powerful communion with my senses and the living earth. Yet what was normal life in the woods for me, I realized many years later, was foreign and strange for other people who grew up with cable TV and video games. Outdoor pursuits made me feel alive and connected, and the skills I developed seemed to invite a natural state of mindful reverie.
As I grew up (slowly), I vacillated between feeding my hunger for the outdoors and following my interest in spirituality and mysticism, which led me to study religion and eventually to explore the worlds of yoga and meditation. I have been practicing yoga now for over twenty years, and guiding others outdoors for just as long. I’ve been a Kripalu Yoga teacher; a mindful volunteer dishwasher (a profound learning experience); a therapeutic wilderness counselor with at-risk teens; an outdoor educator for middle schoolers; a yoga retreat leader; a residential volunteer manager; a student of ancestral skills; a director of the Kripalu Schools of Yoga, Ayurveda, and Integrative Yoga Therapy; and most recently a founder and lead trainer of mindful outdoor guides in the Kripalu School of Mindful Outdoor Leadership. My work, which has evolved into supporting change agents through the many trainings and programs that we run at the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, our nation’s largest yoga-based retreat center, has allowed me to express and communicate my passion for mindfulness and rewilding practices in exciting ways.
I approach the practice of human rewilding through the lens of mindfulness, which I sometimes define as “nonjudgmental, present-moment awareness,” as well as through the philosophies, methodologies, and practices of yoga. In the pages ahead, I present meditations and other practices for rewilding that will usher you into a new — or renewed — relationship with nature and help you grow in self-understanding. Being outside and exploring the natural world support a calm and alert state of mind — and learning to deepen and stabilize that state through breathing practices, meditation, and other techniques that connect you with nature can make your experience even more rewarding.
As my own calling to pursue this path took shape, the need for this important work was building across the world. Disconnection from self, community, and nature is increasing, as are depression, anxiety, and other mental health challenges. Average Americans are now on screens for eleven hours a day, according to a Nielsen study, and spend 90 percent of their lives indoors, according to a study by the Environmental Protection Agency.1 The crises in our global environment, from climate change and species loss to plastic garbage gyres in the world’s oceans and conflicts over resources, are accelerating. Rewilding can’t solve all these issues quickly, but I believe it can help to support a reconnection between people and the living earth. Part of this reconnection is a remembering of what is important and essential: clean air and water, healthy ecosystems and healthful food, shelter and community.
Rewilding can help you to take a deep breath, walk with your feet on the ground, and sit by a fire as you listen to the wind in the trees. It can help you settle back into a wisdom that is older than language and written history, something foundational to who you are. It can help us all remember what we are, where we belong, and how much we have to be grateful for on this precious planet, for the seasons still turn and birds still sing in the trees. Anyone can take a few minutes to breathe, to learn who we share this land with, and to become a part of our forests and wild communities again. We just need to slow down and open our senses to the wonder that is all around us.