Wandering and Dreaming
Hilltending is to wander and dream in natural areas while experiencing the world through all of the ways of knowing. Hilltending practices guide us into a fuller dialogue with psyche and nature, leading to healing and transformation of the way we are in the world. This fuller existence brings benefits to both humans and earth.
Walking the Land
Hilltending can be described as “walking the land,” both in the outer landscapes of nature and the inner landscapes of experience. Soul and psyche are rooted in the earth, so when we walk the land, we are journeying with soul into the depths of the earth’s wisdom. Hilltending is a movement into an otherworldly space in which the soul of the world can be experienced. Hilltending is not only physical wandering, it is also a metaphor for working with and integrating the inner process provoked by the experience. The integration works archetypally with the images presented to us by the inner and outer worlds, and opens up to allow that to nurture a transformation of how we are in the world.
In this way, Hilltending is an embodied archetypal process that relies on and honors both the inner and outer world as sources of knowing. It works with sensory knowing of nature but also with inner processes of imagination, intuition, thinking, and feeling. Engaging the world through all of these ways of knowing strengthens and broadens our presence to soul and earth, empowering us to better choose how to engage our relationship with the natural world. Walking the land is a means of dialogue with the world, with soul, and with the deep psyche. Hilltending goes into the natural world as if entering a dream and consciously joins the conversation between soul and nature. By tapping into the deep wisdom of the world soul, or anima mundi, we better align ourselves with the movements of psyche and world.
Integration
Whether in individualized guidance or retreats/workshops, Hilltending is about integrating soul and world into a new, larger whole and living life from a deeper and broader relationship to Self. It is a means to heal and tend to relationships between soul and world in way that is beneficial to human and earth health. Walking the land is the first step into this process. In the integration, we work deeply with the experience, exploring the meaning it carries to us from soul, and the meaning soul carries to the world.
Sometimes walking the land and integration happen separately, sometimes together. Everyone is different – together we determine which practices, method(s), and processes resonate the most with you. Typically, a blend of practices is found that resonates the most, and each session can be different. Hilltending is a dance!
Hilltending combines the experience of earth-based practices while walking the land with various methods of archetypal integration such as:
- Dream Work and Analysis
- Archetypal Earth Story and Alchemical Econarrative
- Archetypal Function Stack (deep personality type)
- Archetypal Cosmology
- Archetypal Ecosomatics and Bodywork
More about specific practices can be found here, and here are some thoughts on the the liminality and sacred vulnerability of Hilltending practice.
Practice and integration sometimes moves slowly and sometimes quickly. Hilltending does not force anything but provides a facilitation of the discovery and awareness of resonance with soul. This facilitation occurs throughout the Hilltending sessions in different levels and in all of the practices. It is about learning to see differently, like trees perhaps, so we can find our way back “home” in the dialogue between soul and world, coming to live in harmony as a part of the relationship rather than directing or controlling.