Wild Reverence

04/01/2025

What if your emotions and the inner parts that carried them weren't something to fix or fight – but a doorway to deep inner wisdom?

Some years ago I embarked on a somatic journey that changed me forever.

Growing up in suburban London in a traumatic family of origin, I fled to Australia in my late 20s, carrying feelings of severance and disconnection deep inside of me. I didn’t feel like I belonged—to a family, a community, or even to myself. Quarantined in the mind, I safely distanced myself from my body and its many unspoken stories.

At a crossroads, I encountered Somatic Focusing, and it altered the course of my life. With deep gratitude I am excited to open the door here for you today.

Focusing is a gateway into the deep wisdom of the body, offering tools for self-healing, radical creativity and profound insight. It is embodied alchemy in an age of anxiety, disconnection and despair, giving us a compass to do our own medicine walk inwards; healing, hearing and calling home the family of inner wounded ones.

In a world saturated with mindfulness, Focusing offers the deep bounty of what Christine Caldwell calls ‘bodyfulness’, affording new ways to know ourselves, each other and the natural world. More than personal healing, Focusing also offers a doorway into a felt relationship with the more than human world and even into sacred dimensions of being.

It is my great pleasure to share this path with you.

In Presence,

Rob

Discover the power of Inner Focusing to access somatic wisdom, heal emotional wounds, and cultivate self-awareness. Join a live online course today

02/01/2025

Mindfulness is powerful, but is it enough?

At the dawn of 2025, I want to share something super close to my heart. After over 15 years on the meditation cushion—unconsciously seeking to escape the suffering and wounded places in my body—I’ve come to understand that mindfulness alone often isn’t enough on the growth journey.

And I say this with deep reverence for mindfulness, both as a lifelong practitioner and as a certified teacher of meditation and mindfulness.

So, in this reel, I share 3 common mistakes people make when using mindfulness as a healing tool—and why Somatic Focusing can offer a deeper, more transformative path:

🌿 It connects you with the deep intelligence of the body. �🌿 It builds compassionate relationships with your inner wounded parts.�🌿 It opens a doorway to an alchemical path of self-healing.

In this light, I’m so excited to offer you my 10-week Somatic Focusing training, starting this January.

This course is an opportunity to explore this life changing practice in a supportive small group setting.

Together, we’ll dive into the art of Somatic Focusing and learn how to use it to transform from the inside out.

📅 Start 2025 with a new path to healing

🔗 Click the link in bio to enroll or learn more about my 10-week Somatic Focusing course.

I can’t wait to guide you on this journey.

25/12/2024

This Christmas I’m feeling the absence of my kids ❤️ and so this morning I did what I always do when my heart is hurting and went to find a quiet place to turn inwards.

If you’re navigating difficult feelings this Christmas, you’re not alone. 💛

In this video I share how Somatic Focusing can help you gently work with the tender places in you, offering presence and connection to the parts that need your care, presence and compassion.

If this way of being with yourself resonates, join me this January for my 10-week course in Somatic Focusing. In a small group format, you’ll learn how to turn toward the parts of yourself that feel stuck, unseen, or in pain with kindness and curiosity. Through guided practices, you’ll discover how to bring presence and healing to these inner experiences, fostering deeper self-understanding and a sense of wholeness.

Spaces are limited, so if this feels like the right next step for you, I’d love to have you join us. Learn more and sign up by clicking the Somatic Focusing link in my bio.

Much love 🎄

12/12/2024

This January, I’d love to invite you to join me on a 10 week journey to learn an exquisite tool for inner healing and self-awareness called somatic focusing.

In this course, you will:
- Discover the fundamentals of somatic, focusing, and how to use it in your own life, no matter what is coming up for you
- Learn how to cultivate self presence, the deep ground of somatic work
- Access the dynamic wisdom contained within the bodily felt sense as a tool for healing and growth
- Explore fresh approach to working through areas in your life
- Build deep, listening skills to hold your inner parts together with other people in your life
- Develop focusing partnerships to practice and refine your skills
- Gain tools for emotional regulation, self-awareness, and seeing life challenges from new perspectives
- Connect with a small cohort of like-minded individuals on a path of growth and discovery

This course is deliberately designed for a small, committed group to ensure a container for learning and connection. Don’t miss your chance to join us on this profound journey.

To learn more and to enroll, visit my somatic, focusing training page found in the link tree in the bio

* 📅 Online Start Date: January 14 2025
* ⏱ Duration: 10 weekly classes, each 2.5 hours long
* 📔 Support Materials: Weekly exercise cards to help you deepen your Focusing practice between sessions
* 👥 Learning Format: Small group setting to foster personalized guidance and a supportive learning environment
* Investment: $850 early bird expires Dec 25. Full rate $950

Feel free to reach out if you’ve any questions.

Wishing you all a beautiful festive season,

Love,

Rob

12/12/2024

Hey everyone! This January, I’d love to invite you to join me on a 10-week journey to learn an exquisite tool for inner healing and self awareness called Somatic Focusing.

Focusing is a profound gateway to reconnecting with your body and its innate intelligence. In a world saturated with mindfulness practices, it cultivates what Christine Caldwell calls ‘bodyfulness’, offering a profound path to regulate your nervous system, reconnect more deeply with your family of inner parts, and find creative solutions through the stuck places in your life.

In this course, you will:

• Discover the fundamentals of Somatic Focusing and how to use it in your own life, no matter what is coming up for you.
• Learn how to cultivate Self in Presence, the deep ground of somatic work.
• Access the dynamic wisdom contained within the bodily Felt Sense as a tool for healing and growth.
• Explore a fresh approach to working through stuck areas in your life.
• Build deep listening skills to hold space for your inner parts together with the people in your life.
• Develop Focusing partnerships to practice and refine your skills.
• Gain tools for emotional regulation, self-awareness, and seeing life challenges from new perspectives.
• Connect with a small cohort of like-minded individuals on a path of growth and discovery.

This course is deliberately designed for a small, committed group to ensure a deep container for learning and connection. Don’t miss your chance to join us on this profound journey.

To learn more and to enroll, visit my Somatic Focusing training page:
https://www.wildreverence.com.au/learn-inner-focusing

📅 In-Person (Blackheath) Course Start Date: January 13th
⏱ Duration: 10 weekly classes, each 2.5 hours long
📔 Support Materials: Weekly exercise cards to help you deepen your Focusing practice between sessions
👥 Learning Format: Small group setting to foster personalized guidance and a supportive learning environment
Investment: $850 early bird expires Dec 25. Full rate $950

An online training is also available for those unable to make it to the in-person training, starting Jan 14. Details also on my website.

Feel free to reach out if you've any questions. I'd be happy to chat on the phone to tell you more about the program too.
Wishing you all a beautiful festive season.
Warmly,
Rob

01/12/2024

Unlock the Power of Somatic Self-Healing and learn the Foundations of Somatic Focusing with me this January 2025

Discover how to gently reconnect with the body, release stuck emotions, and find clarity through the transformative practice of Somatic Focusing.

💡 Learn this simple, life changing practise to:
✨ Heal emotional wounds
✨ Deepen self-awareness
✨ Enhance relationships
✨ Connect to the body and its inimitable wisdom
✨ Cultivate Self in Presence, the ground of somatic work
✨ Learn how to do your own Somatic Healing

This is your invitation to learn a life changing tool for inner growth and development 🌿

📅 Enroll now for Focusing 1: Foundations
✨ 10 week online training in a supportive small group format
💲Early bird discount before December 25th

🔗 link in bio for more info and to enroll

28/12/2023

Could emotional repression be behind your depression, anxiety, addiction or chronic pain?

From grief, anger, and fear to joy and shame, almost all of us have some degree of emotional repression. This typically stems from early childhood experiences in which we learned one or more emotions were unsafe or unacceptable. Perhaps dad’s anger was frightening or mum couldn’t handle it when you were sad. Perhaps you learned you got love when you showed up as the good girl/boy and didn’t express your own anger. But that which lies buried ultimately festers and seeks release. The problem is that repressed emotion is unconscious. We just aren’t aware we are repressing it.

Fortunately somatic repression therapy offers powerful tools to identify the extent to which emotional repression is behind your suffering. More than this, it offers powerful pathways to access, work with and ultimately liberate what lies buried, often yielding profound shifts in mental and physical wellbeing.

Liberating repressed anger can - for instance - alleviate decades-old chronic pain. And bouts of depression - seemingly impervious to standard talk therapy - can be healed through the liberation of buried grief or sadness.

If you’d like to explore your own emotional repression, get in touch. I offer tools to map what repression may be in place in your life, with tailored pathways to heal and find wholeness

08/08/2023

Beautiful session this morning tutoring current Metavision psychotherapy students on the practice of somatic inquiry. It’s a head-over-heels kind of love I have for inquiry and it’s my medicine to offer, gleaned from years of turning inwards, into the heart of my own addictive tendencies, shame, depression and trauma.

Inquiry is the way and the fruit - the path into the centre, through the doorway of direct experience, descending deeper into the truth and the wholeness and the facets of the divine that are our birthright.

It was a joy to write the presentation and then to share it with a band of enthusiastic fellow travellers. Thank you .institute for the opportunity to share my passion. And thanks to all those who tuned in to stand in the river with me 💛

The image is of Milarepa, 11th century Tibetan yogi, meditation master, mystic and poet in his classic mudra of listening, one of the archetypes of deep inquiry

24/05/2023

Ahhhhhh…. I was invited to speak recently on podcast, Psych For Life, with fellow therapist . We talked about the healing power of nature, and the driving force behind our small group Wild Edges retreats. We discussed the radical medicine that is nature in these times of nature deficit disorder. Of the possibility of coming to ground on the land, of finding our center, of healing deep wounds and the possibility of rekindling our sense of awe and enchantment as participants in the web of life.

Something else happens out there too, on the land. Beneath a sky flooded with stars, gathered about a campfire, touched by the wind blown vastness of wild places… this possibility of entering into a space of not knowing, far beyond the narrow confines of who we take ourselves to be, the labels we apply to ourselves and the limiting stories that seem to define us. Far beyond the logic of prevailing culture which privileges the thinking mind in a way that can choke the heart and soul out of life, and the mystery out of who we really are. I also talked about the power of sitting in circle with people and my experiences hosting the Blue Mountains Men’s group.

You can find the Psych For Life podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Our episode is the latest one, “why being in nature is our fastest healer and brings us awe’”.

Thank you Dr Ferguson for your questions, your interest and the opportunity to speak on your podcast. 🌞🌲

23/04/2023

We are back, filled with firelight, starlight, community and song. Perfumed with wild stories and intimacy with kin. Watched over by the sandstone sentinel that the Budawang people call Byangee.

At dusk the village would gather around campfires in the longhouse, to listen to poets and storytellers weave the mythic imagination.

Rooted in the simple gravity of being human, together; slow conversations with no agenda to be elsewhere, collectively holding a safe container for the kids to wander and find wonder again away from screens; more than once a group of us - parents, mentors, teens and kids - congregating to float together down the Clyde river, disembarking at a river beach to huddle beside the blazing warmth of a bonfire; the felt sense of kinship blooming over the course of five long and meandering days, sharing adventures, remembering the possibility of cohabiting and the deep necessity of friendship in a world of isolated, atomized, nature disconnected families doing everything themselves.

Yes, it takes a village. Yes, somewhere we lost our way, but somehow we are finding it again, together. Human beings gathering around the fire to feast and to hold silence, to tell stories and to look up at a sky on fire with stars.

So much gratitude for the leaders and mentors at Bluegum bushcraft. And cognizant of my responsibility to pay the deep fruits of my own healing in nature forward. Healing that unfolded organically over the course of years.

And that’s why fellow eco therapist and I established the Wild Edges retreats at Little River on Dharug country. Healing programs in nature for adults to slow down, reconnect and find a deeper sense of wholeness. To hold space, to be seen and truly heard. Rekindling the depths of our own innate nature connected spirituality. Human to human, nature to nature. And the possibility of remembering our own innate wildness, knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that we each belong and are wildly indigenous to the earth.

The next Wild Edges gathering is May 12-14. DM to book or read more on my website

16/04/2023

Off to another family rewilding village, as it happens this times with Gina from Alone :) kids are stoked, I’m ecstatic. Screens left at home. 5 days of barefoot time and campfire, birdsong, starlight, and the jeweled crust of morning dew. Time enough for deep talk, the kind that’s slow, gathered in circle with other families in exhale and inhale and the slow seeping of city life out through pores and the wild laughter of kids running free ❤️

10/04/2023

This poem is dear to me. I wrote it about 8 years ago on a beautiful off-grid property in the Kangaroo Valley.

On one level, it speaks of a longing to slow down and deepen into a life pregnant with presence and meaning in an age of quick fixes and saccharine veneers. It speaks to the richness of nature connected families, the power of storytelling and the nourishment of gathering about a fire as community.

However it also conveys something deeper. I did not realise it at the time of writing but this poem also emerged from my unconscious as a deep expression of who I am, bearing an imprint of the work I was called to do in the world.

“I saw this place where moonlight made the fog a vestibule of prayer; where sleepers steeped in sacred signs unearthed quiet teachings from the holy other”

In a past life I worked as a Semiotician whose job it was to unearth the hidden meaning of things in pop culture: packaging, architecture, advertising… It was an ego-centric expression of a much deeper eco-centric calling to help people uncover the truth of who they are. As a psychotherapist, eco therapist, meditation facilitator and somatic inquiry teacher. This poem was an early portent of my work with people to liberate the meaning embedded in the felt sense in the body, in dream symbols, in chronic pain and in cycles of addiction. To help them discover the medicine that lies in the heart of their wounds: the possibility of freedom from shame, toxic anger, feelings of being unlovable and myriad other self beliefs that keep them imprisoned. Prior to labels and identity, to help them discover the truth of psychological, somatic and spiritual wholeness, and the deep sense of freedom and authenticity that is their birthright.

If you’d like to work with me 1:1 or to learn the art of somatic inquiry, get in touch

🌞🌲❤️