Your Body is a Doorway.
Somatic & Nature-Based Pathways into Healing, Wholeness & the Mystery of Being
Welcome, Traveller
At the School of Awareness, we believe the power to transform lies within you. Our mission is to reconnect people with the profound potential of the human awareness through depth psychology, somatic inquiry, and nature-based practices that bring body, earth, soul, and spirit back into relationship. Through courses, retreats, and trainings, we offer pathways of self-healing, personal growth, and spiritual ecology in service of life and the more-than-human world. In an era of white noise, we believe the deepest transformations begin with deep listening: to the wisdom of the body and the vast intelligence of the earth; to the rumblings of soul and the sacred dimensions of Being.
Our Approach
The School of Awareness weaves together multiple embodied pathways into a whole-of-person approach to healing and wholeness. Each offers courses and retreats that empower individuals to find the kind of reconnection they are seeking. Together, these pathways form a living curriculum that meets the whole person—psyche, soma, soul, and spirit—in service of healing, wholeness, and belonging.
Mind-Body Path
Programs that bridge the mind-body divide, dissolving deficiency stories and emotional repression through somatic inquiry, Focusing, and Kiloby Repression work.
Earth Path
Programs that deepen our sense of belonging and intimacy with the living world through ecotherapy, Earth-Based Listening, and sacred activism.
Soul Path
Programs that support a remembering of life purpose and soul gifts, or a marking of major life transitions through rites of passage, dreamwork, and wilderness fasts.
Spirit Path
Programs that cultivate an awakening to the Mystery, the non-dual, and sacred dimensions of Being, through meditation, earth-based prayer, nature connection and embodied spirituality.
The spirit of the school begins and ends in deep listening — to body, earth, soul, and spirit — and unfolds into action that serves life.
What we offer
We create spaces — online, in person and on the land — where you can slow down, listen deeply, and remember the truth of who you are. Our work weaves together somatic healing, deep nature connection, spiritual transformation & tools to remember our place and purpose in the web of life. Here you’ll find some of the different strands that you can learn for yourself. Also check out the Courses tab at the top of this page to dive deeper.
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Reconnect with land, body, and soul through the Five Terrains framework — Trailhead, Meadow, Forest, Mountain, and Sky-Cave. This five-month program, offered in partnership with the Metavision Institute, weaves somatic inquiry, Earth-Based Listening, and nature-based practice. Choose between a professional pathway, training to guide others in ecotherapy, or a personal renewal pathway to deepen wholeness, intimacy with the living world, and spiritual ecology.
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Item A five-day immersion into the ancient map of the Four Shields — South, West, North, and East. Through land-based practice, circle, and guided ritual, participants explore childlike wonder, emotional depth, soulful imagination, and mature responsibility. Offered in partnership with our sister organisation, Ancient Ground, this program is a profound journey of balance, healing, and renewal.
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A two-part training in the practice of Focusing, taught over two 10-week modules for beginners and advanced students. Developed by Eugene Gendlin, Focusing is a powerful method of inner listening that helps us connect with the body’s felt sense — a vast treasury of wisdom, creativity, and healing. Learn how to pause, sense inwardly, and open to the body’s subtle knowing as a doorway into lasting change.
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A focused six-week journey into the body’s hidden mechanics of emotional repression. Based on the Kiloby Emotional Repression Method, this training helps uncover and dissolve unconscious patterns that underlie addiction, anxiety, depression, and chronic pain. Through somatic inquiry, reclaim the clarity, freedom, and resilience that is your birthright.
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Seasonal immersions into the ancient art of deep listening. These retreats invite us into embodied communion with the living world, where listening becomes both prayer and sacred activism. A practice of presence, intimacy, and belonging at a time when our relationship with the earth has never been more vital.
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In partnership with our sister organisation, Wild Passage, these nature-based programs guide children, teens, and young adults through the thresholds of becoming. Over a multi-year journey, participants are held in council, ceremony, and earth-based practice — growing resilience, belonging, and self-knowledge, and culminating in a wilderness solo that marks the passage into young adulthood. These programs offer a rare container where young people are deeply seen, honoured, and supported to carry their gifts into the world.
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A ten-day initiatory journey culminating in a four-day solo fast on the land. Supported by council, ceremony, and skilled guides, the vision fast marks profound thresholds — endings, beginnings, and soul callings. Stepping alone into the wild, participants meet the mystery of who they are beyond roles and expectations, returning with stories and gifts to be witnessed by the circle.
Our Vision
The School of Awareness is a sanctuary amidst the madness of times such as these. We offer a still point where you can draw deep on the profound intelligence of your Being, connect to the native wisdom of the body, and the healing power of the natural world. These are life-enhancing tools for urgent times, fostering a more harmonious relationship with yourself, a deeper connection with the earth and an embodied bridge to the sacred.
The training at the School of Awareness embraces but also extends beyond the scope of traditional healing work. Its teachings are founded on a radically holistic, all-of-person model that spans not only mind and body, but also earth, soul and spirit.
The School offers both an intimately personal approach to healing and wholeness, but also one that is transpersonal. This recognises the deepest truth of you extends beyond psyche (mind) and soma (body, incorporating your intrinsic connection to the earth, as well as to the vaster, sacred elements from which you are wrought (soul and spirit)
Acknowledgement of Country
We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work, breathe and wander, the Dharug, Gundungurra and Wiradjuri people. We recognise their continued connection to the land and waters, and acknowledge that they never ceded sovereignty. We pay our respects to their elders past, present and emerging, to the lineage of nature-based wisdom they steward and to the dreaming they embody.