The Earthbody Institute’s origin story…
15 years ago, a grove of redwood trees in Joaquin Miller Park called me to bring people outside to do meditation, movement and healing. At the time, I had never heard of Ecotherapy nor had experiences in groups doing healing work outside. I really loved my alone time outdoors (with two young kids at home), and couldn’t imagine sharing that time with others. But the forest was insistent, so I listened and followed.
In the beginning, we explored moving with the wind and waters and dancing with tree branches, bringing Dance/Movement Therapy and Expressive Arts techniques outside. 
When I met Craig Chalquist, (who was synchronistically in the same university department as I), his book, Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind was fresh off the presses. I devoured it and became passionate about the field. I brought nature connection to all I did, incorporating Ecotherapy into my clinical and non-clinical courses at John F. Kennedy University; trying out ideas in my therapy office and bringing clients outside for sessions. I was deeply moved by the transformative experiences people had in communication with ancient oaks; with developing supportive nature allies and feeling the profoundness of sharing in earth-honoring communities. Inspired by the power of working with nature, I left the university in 2012 to practice Ecotherapy full time and to develop workshops and trainings.
Our name, “The Earthbody Institute” came to me on an inspired walk and it was born in 2013. EBI has always been a co-created endeavor, guided by listening to the call of the land and supported by enthusiastic, wise collaborators! Andrea Livingston, helped me create our first on-the-land, Year-long Certification Program. Adriel McCluer developed our beginning business structures and helped design our Online Level One Training. Miranda Emanuel supported and enhanced the program to become our Professional Ecotherapy Training and Certification. I am deeply grateful to each of them for their visions, ideas and trust in our organically developing process.
Many other colleagues, Linda Buzzell, Pinar Sinopoulos-Lloyd and Joanna Macy have offered interviews, consultation and inspiration along the way. My dear friend, Kai Siedenburg has been a consistent support, consultant, editor, program developer, and co-teacher and has generously offered her nature poems throughout our programs. Ryan Van Lenning has been my indispensable advisor on all Earthbody matters for the last four years, as well as our student liaison, newsletter co-creator, resident poet and driving force for creating our embodied, activism-inspired Level 3 Certification.
We have continued to grow and expand our offerings over the years, responding to the Black Lives Matter movement by bringing in DEI support for the institute. Around that time, our soulful, progressive, teacher, Musenge Luchembe Hayslett, offered the idea and initiated a BIPOC class to better serve our students. Niralli D’Costa, contributed her University teaching expertise and visionary energy to complete the BIPOC Ecotherapy curriculum. She taught our first classes and was later joined by Musenge, Johnette Walser and Yvonne McGaughey.
Our deeply earth-connected and highly skilled teaching team also include: Amanda Morrison, Lili Nakita Kroutilina, Adrián Villasenor Garlaza and Connie Habash. Our newest teacher, Kellum Lewis, is developing a growing edge LGBTQ+ curriculum which he will teach this spring. Jess Sala-Bonin has been an essential foundation of EBI for almost 10 years, streamlining and completing many aspects of our administrative work. For over a year we’ve been gifted by the dynamic outreach work of Olivia Chapman Goss, who creates our colorful, vitalizing, Instagram presence and offers insightful ideas for our programs. I feel very grateful to be joined by so many phenomenal people on our Earthbody Team.
The Earthbody Institute has been an inspirational haven for hundreds of students all over the world for the last 10 years. People have brought Ecotherapy and its principles into clinical settings, hospitals, universities and schools, coaching, doula work, spiritual direction, and much more. We have deeply appreciated all of your questions, thoughts, sharing and experiences. Your involvement touches us and keeps us motivated.
We offer heartfelt gratitude to all the lands and ancestors we have practiced with: Santa Cruz Mountains, Oakland Hills, Sevenoaks Retreat Center in Virginia, Oahu, the Northern Californian coast and the numerous lands of our students, from Australia, China, India, South Africa, Mexico, Russia, Romania, Europe and Canada and more.
As we celebrate our 10 years at EBI in the same forest as it all started, we are continuing to respond to the needs of our students and our times. A major change is transitioning to a shared leadership business model so we can center more perspectives. We will also be offering more community gatherings and programs as well as our professional training. We invite your energy, ideas, support and hopes. We are here to inspire your listening and following the call of the land and bringing your gifts to your communities. We hope to see you in earth-loving community in our upcoming offerings.
PROFESSIONAL RESOURCES
Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Anxiety
“The question now is, what New World are we going to whip up together from here?” —Britt Wray
Super important book, not only for normalizing our natural emotional responses to the devastation modernity has unleashed upon the world and ourselves. It is also full of roadmaps to navigating the sometimes tricky terrain of despair, hope, eco-grief, and the energy and possibilities that doing so together can unleash. Find more HERE.
HOPEFUL NEWS & ACTIVISM
Adrienne Maree Brown and Morgan Bassichis of Jewish Voice for Peace
“Action is the only antidote to despair. Let action be the practice that organizes and transforms our grief and our rage and our terror.”
This powerful, grounding, and heart-opening conversation Adrienne Maree Brown and Morgan Bassichis of Jewish Voice for Peace highlights guidance on moving big emotion into peaceful action, cutting through colonial confusion and countering the fear and isolation by tying into powerful actions. Watch HERE.
What If We Have Rights to Nature? – From What if to What Next Podcast with Rob Hopkins
Recorded live at the wonderful Timber Festival, this episode takes on the big question of rights of nature movement and dives deep. One of the guests, Lucy Neal, explores how the near future will be transformed by the introduction of a Rights of Nature Act. The second guest Paul Powlesland, has done a lot of work on what legislation designed to protect the rights of nature might look like in practice. How would such legislation transform our relationship to the natural world, and how would it accelerate and support efforts to protect it? Listen HERE.
POETRY AND INSPIRATION
Adrift
by Mark Nepo
From Inside the Miracle: Enduring Suffering, Approaching Wholeness
Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.
This is how the heart makes a duet of
wonder and grief.
The light spraying through the lace of the fern is as delicate
as the fibers of memory forming their web
around the knot in my throat.
The breeze makes the birds move from branch to branch
as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost
in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh
of the next stranger.
In the very center, under
it all, what we have that no one can take
away and all that we’ve lost face each other.
It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured
by a holiness that exists inside everything.
I am so sad and everything is beautiful.
Well-Rooted Trees of Remembrance
by Martin Prechtel
“For if our human bodies are
actually the Earth itself,
then somewhere inside this earth-body
our homelands still await our return;
inner homelands in whose soil our
indigenous souls lie ready like seeds;
seeds whose DNA are the Big culturally
intact Stories; seeds that have waited
for thousands of years for the spiritual climate
to shift enough to where the tears
of our human grief about the day
we finally remember the overwhelming
magnitude of our diverse,
earth-oriented cultural losses could moisten
the seeds of our Big Stories,
causing our indigenous memories
to sprout again into well-rooted trees
of remembrance upon whose branches
a never-before-seen-fruit,
a new possibility for humans on Earth
might come into sight, remembered
beyond its own recollecting into a time
beyond the already known and limited
imagination of the age”
V’ahavta
by Aurora Levins Morales
Say these words when you lie down
and when you rise up,
when you go out and when you return.
In times of mourningand in times of joy.
Inscribe them on your doorposts,
embroider them on your garments,
tattoo them on your shoulders,
teach them to your children,
your neighbors, your enemies,
recite them in your sleep,
here in the cruel shadow of empire:
Another world is possible.
See full poem here.
Thank you for reading! We welcome your comments and questions. Contact EBI: earthbodyinstitute@gmail.com.
We acknowledge that The Earthbody Institute is located in Huchiun, in unceded Lisjan territory, now known as Oakland. We honor and support the ancestors and present Lisjan people. We encourage you to learn more and make a donation to support the return of their land and culture.