Nature Exploration

In June 2016, my then 7 year old son and I embarked on a National Park exploration.

We didn’t know at the time that we would continue for 4 years, exploring and homeschooling in the U. S. National Parks.

Contrary to my traditional Asian American upbringing, from my late teen years to my 20’s, I found a way to get outside. I started rowing crew, which evolved to racing marathon canoes in miles and miles of wilderness, sprint kayaking in the U.S. and Canadian’s waterways, and taking outdoor orientation classes. With like minds meeting like minds, I met and stayed friends with people that loved to camp and be outdoors. With them, I started to spend more and more time outside.

For over a decade before starting this trip, I was hiking and already doing healing work with others in the forest. There were “wise women” performing native traditions and ceremony from Central and South America and native elders from the United States. I learned in my 30’s that I am a descendant of healers and shamans from the Philippines.

Subsequent studies in the esoteric worlds of Reiki, Energy Medicine, Vipassana meditation, Buddhism, Yoga and Mystic Christianity led me to greater and greater vividness of visions and dreams coupled with greater and greater empathic awareness. To find balance, I naturally went to the woods. Reading the work of Robin Wall Kimmerer, Black Elk, Rachel Carson, Muir, the poetry of natural philosophers and current poets brought me to the realization that many sought solace in the woods and nature. I was being led deeper and deeper into the “Woods” with every passing year.

On this trip, I started working with women and families especially people of color, realizing that there was much in the healing power of nature that we all needed. People started asking me to teach what I learned and knew of healing, and I realized that I could not teaching healing, without touching on the very balance that we all must have, a connection with nature. In our immersion in the National Parks over the last several years, I realized that much of the healing power had to do with not only being in nature but creating a safe space inside and out, as well as to allow our minds and bodies to wander without focus or goal.

In general, there are 5 components to the NAOMI Nature Exploration classes I teach:

Beginning:
offering a method to embody. For me this usually means some type of mindful movement and connection with the senses. The senses are the gateway to our reality and a way to perceive what is real and what is not.

Connection:
establishing a connection within ourselves and with community. Again with sensation, with the breath, but also with each other.

Teaching:
Here I teach the “anatomy” or structure of a healing practice such as mindfulness or meditation.

Wandering:
a time to journal, a time to observe, a time to integrate.

Ending:
as in everything in life, there is also an end. We end with a ritual, a brief ceremony to give closure.

My Mission: To create safe spaces for healing so that a person can be immersed in nature, especially for people of color.

I teach this modality to families and to differently abled groups including families, military veterans and their families, women’s health.

To sign up, go here.

Please contact me if you have questions or would like to experience a class near you.