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Deepening Connection to Nature: Awakening Into Deep Connection to the Web Of Life by Learning In Nature

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Hominids have had a relationship with plants for more than 1 million years. The methods for processing plants have changed little in that time. Shredding, stripping, retting, carding, thrashing, winowing and grinding. The technology and plants have changed, but the process remains the same.  Learning with a few plants, their properties and the primitive forms of processing are the skills and knowledge which bring us into a closer relationship with nature, when this is learned as part of a cooperative learning group in nature on an overnight which includes food, campfire, observation skills and a walk in ancient an ancient landscape with commentary on the history of ancient woodlands, coppice, hedge laying and the history of coppicing in Britain and Europe, which dates back to the earliest stone-age farmers. From processed plant materials, we begin to understand that skills are not compartmentalised and learned in isolation from one another. Processing fibre ...

The Reality of Serotonin, The Gut & The Brain

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Hospicing Modernity Can We Really Positively Think Our Way Out Of The Mass Extinction? Sunday 28th December 2025 The notion of compassionately euthenising industrial capitalism is a fantasy which ignores the fundamental basics of class struggle. There is a tendancy among some thinkers to place indigenous people and their philosophy outside of capitalism and class struggle. This is a failure to understand the underclass. Indigenous people are the underclass. The underclass are the most exploitable people under Capitalism. Cultural exploitation and homogenisation goes hand-in-hand with colonnialism. Indigenous spirituality is not universal. Indigenous homogenisation ignores head hunting, cannibalism and other less desirable traits of the primal human. Something Indigenous people sometimes do is mistake their world view of biology as scientific biological reality. A capitalist trap they sometimes fall into is using the language that New Age Neo Shamans use which originates in Buddhism lik...

Neo-Shaman Healers, Potential Pitfalls & Missed Opportunity For Genuine Healing With Nature

Without Nature, We Are Nothing Are we really prepared to miss a genuine opportunity for healing from nature and build skills for the future which promote self reliance over psychobabble from influencers? "This chapter describes the pitfalls that can occur to those practicing Neo-shamanism and embracing its accompanying anomalous worldview. Neo-shamanic practice and its resultant awareness of the sacred aspects of the mundane world as well as the existence of a world beyond material consensual reality that is imperceptible with the physical senses tend to place practitioners in a state of chronic cultural dissonance. It is tempting for Neo-shamanic practitioners to turn to spiritual means of dealing with mundane and psychological issues and traumas rather than seeking more culturally sanctioned sources of assistance such as psychotherapy. This spiritual bypassing can result in a failure to adequately resolve the problems at hand. It can also lead to identity dysfunctions, including...

Survivalism: A Skills Based Initiation Culture Into A Deep Connection With Nature.

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First Published 23/12/2025 Survivalism or Bushcraft? Both terms are interchangeable, however there aee aspects of survivalism thar are not found in Bushcraft. Initiation Cultures in the Postmodern Collapse We don't really have coming-of-age ceremonies in the Industrialised world. These transitions seem more important to cultures that have either not been fully assimilated into capitalism or that have maintained their more ancient traditions. Some Sufi sects still practice an initiation rite that bestows responsibility and requires the initiate to lead a simple life of devotion, peace, and compassion. The Sufis are the peace and love hippies of Islam.  My Asian family are followers of Jalaluddin Rumi. But their Sufism is markedly different from Western Sufism. I do periodically hear Core Shamanism practitioners podcasting about initiation culture and trying to found one. Just to be clear, whatever they do in their initiation, it will be unlike anything I might suggest from a su...

XReadiness Start with Go Bags? BBC Are You Ready. "Do you have a Go Bag?" There's More to Survival Than Lists

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Go Bags? (UK specific) The 1st question I ask is where are you going with your Go Bag ? At the moment in the UK, primary risks to life are severe weather (heat, cold, and wind) flooding and sea level rise. Wild fires are increasingly becoming a risk. The location of your home will dictate your risks. Buildings and contents are at risk in certain conditions This article is a response to this XReadiness   High risk homes : Flooding and Sea Level Rise Homes on low lying coastal land 1-2m above sea level at the moment. Homes on river flood plains Wildfires Homes in woodlands with vegetation coming up close to the house.  Flooding and wildfire risks are often communicated via alerts to our phones. Advanced warning is a signal to leave your home, where you are planning to go will dictate what's in your Go Bag . My suggestion is to go to friends, a hotel or relatives. Your Go Bag only needs to contain clothes wash bag and towel and maybe take sleeping bags and camping mats. Ignorin...

What Do You Want Of Me?

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Sit Under a Tree & Ask it What it Wants of Me. This is the impossible question because humans don't speak tree, so any answer is a projection.  "Shamanic Practitioner" is a Modern New-Ager from the industrial Capitalist world who imagines or projects themselve to be a Shaman, without the trials and connection to nature that indigenous shaman go through or learn. Most shamanic practitioners reject the learning of any type of skills that indigenous shamans may have learned prior to being chosen by the tribes elders to go into the wilderness and be apprenticed to a shaman, because they don't think we are going to hunt & gather in the future. Anyone could be excused for believing that wilderness survival is just a case of reading a few manuals. Reality, however, is very different.  I don't think these LARPing shamanic types can be blamed for thinking survival skills are easy to just pick up. Connection To The Ancient Landacape   I have a degree in Sustainable ...

The Biology of Nature Connectuon

Connecting to Nature I write extensively about how we are connected to nature through the limbic system. This is based on actual psychological and medical research around stress and my own experience as a Nature Therapy project designer for an NHS psychiatric hospital. Nature is good for you. The Restoration of Cognition Theory coupled with at the very least gardening and at the very best prosocial wilderness survival skills training in nature. Paired with the Stress Recovery Theory. Nature slows us down to its pace, which is glacial. When we fully understand how we are already tuned into nature. The "Turn On" as Timothy Leary says, is not LSD, Ayahuaska or psylocibin, these give us glimpses but no route.  The Turn On is Nature connection activity, We are born tuned already. Dropping out is easy if you arent constrained by capitalism.  Fire making is the core starting skill, from which all others flow, becuase we start with plant based fibre tinders abundantly available i...