Notes on Rewilding Self – November 2025 When Belonging Lives in Your Bones
🎧 Listen to this month’s reflection:
Have you ever returned to a place that shaped you and felt, all at once, deeply rooted and impossibly far away?
If so, you’re not alone.
Welcome to Wild Wisdom Guide: Notes on Rewilding Self.
Each month, I share a personal story, a gentle practice, and reflections on rewilding—in body, in soul, and in community—for spirit-rooted, growth-oriented humans like you.
This month’s promise:
You’ll explore why longing for belonging isn’t something to fix, and you’ll receive a practice to befriend the parts of you that ache for home.
When Belonging Lives in Your Bones
In early September, I spent a week visiting friends and my old haunts in Big Sur, California, where I lived for 15 years while working at the Esalen Institute.
Tucked into a twin bed with lots of cozy blankets, I slept outside beneath a moonless sky on an old wooden deck high on a ridge. The smell of California sagebrush drifted through the air. The ocean moved in the distance. Above me, the stars pulsed with a kind of wordless communication.
In that silence, I felt a download of presence—a reminder of my own soul and Self-energy. Yet right alongside that connection was a part of me that ached: a nostalgic, almost childlike longing to belong more fully to this wild place and to the community I’ve known there.
Big Sur taught me who I am:
how to endure wildfires and evacuations
how to haul wood and cut kindling
how to trust myself when the road washed out and I was cut off again from the long drive to town for groceries
Living there wasn’t easy. But it rooted me within myself.
Now, years later, I can feel that belonging hasn’t vanished just because I left. It lives in my body, in the communities I’ve woven, in memory, and in the willingness to return—on the land or inside myself.
If you’ve ever felt caught between worlds—between an old home and a new one, between a community you miss and the life you’re in now—this is for the part of you that longs.
A Practice: Meet the Part That Longs
I’d like to offer you a small, somatic IFS practice to meet that longing part with companionship instead of criticism.
If it’s accessible and safe, step outside under the night sky for a few intentional minutes. Feel the night around you—whether you can see them or not, the moon and the stars are still there.
Give yourself a little space. Ask a question. Listen.
You don’t need to fix or solve anything. Just listen. Just tend.
Try this:
Arrive in your body
Place a hand on your heart. Exhale slowly.
Let your body settle—jaw, shoulders, belly.
Ask the question
Gently ask inside:
“Which part of me is longing for belonging right now?”Notice what arrives
Sensations, images, phrases, a memory, a quiet ache.
Nothing to force. Nothing to rush.
Stay near, like you would with a dear friend
You don’t have to fix or solve.
Just be near. Be with. Breathe together.
Offer a simple reassurance
If it feels right, say inwardly:
“I’m here with you.”Ask this part what it wants you to know, or how it would like you to be with it.
Close with gratitude
When it feels complete for now, thank the part for showing itself.
Take one more slow breath. Notice your feet or your seat before you move on.
Why it matters
In IFS terms, your Self Energy—your calm, curious, compassionate presence—is the healing agent. Befriending the parts that long (instead of pushing them away or trying to “get over it”) is the tending.
Even a few minutes of inward listening nourishes your whole inner ecosystem:
your longing parts feel less alone
your protectors don’t have to work quite as hard
your system begins to trust that there is an inner “someone” who can stay
Optional: jot a sentence or sketch what you noticed.
You might return to this practice under tomorrow’s sky and notice what’s shifted by even 5%.
From My Wild Wisdom World
A few threads from my own work and teaching right now:
Integrating Somatic Techniques in Therapy (LifeArchitect) – I’m honored to return as an Experiential Practice Facilitator for LifeArchitect’s 3rd edition of this powerful 3-month online training (September 16–December 9, 2025). The program features some of the foremost voices in Somatic Trauma Therapy—including Peter Levine, Bessel van der Kolk, Frank Anderson, Deb Dana, Linda Thai, and Alexia Rothman—and offers an immersive opportunity to deepen both skill and embodiment in therapeutic practice. In my experiential circles, I support therapists in bringing more somatic Self-energy into the room.
Listening to the Wild Within: Movement & Meditation for Inner Connection – This fall I taught at the in-person 2025 IFS Annual Conference at the Q Center in St. Charles, Illinois, where more than 70 workshops were offered by IFS trainers, practitioners, and community members from around the globe. My non-clinical session, Listening to the Wild Within, created a restorative space to reconnect with Self through gentle Qi Gong–inspired movement and nature-based guided meditation. These experiential offerings enrich the conference by inviting embodiment, reflection, creativity, and inner connection—and I was delighted to contribute to this vibrant gathering of the IFS community.
If a part of you is already wondering, “Could there be a container for what I’m carrying?” you can explore more below.
Ways to Deepen This Work
If this month’s practice resonates, here are a few ways to continue rewilding your inner world:
🌙 Podcast – IFS Enlightenment Snacks
Launching January 2026: weekly 15-minute episodes to nurture your daily IFS and somatic practice.
Coming soon:🌿 Retreat – Nature & IFS, Oregon Coast (June & July 2026)
Choose one or t wo weekends of somatic practice, IFS work, and nature-based ritual on the coast. Time to listen with land, body, and Spirit.
✨ 1:1 Work – Sacred Journeys & IFS Consultations
Openings are available for my 3-Month Sacred Journey series and for IFS Consultations for therapists and practitioners.
A Closing Invitation
Belonging doesn’t vanish when we leave a place.
It lives in our bodies, in community, and in the willingness to return—outwardly and inwardly.
My hope is that this practice helps you befriend the parts that long, rather than pushing them away or trying to logic them into silence.
If you try this month’s practice, I’d love to hear what you notice—just hit reply and share. Being in community with your brave, beautiful parts is a gift.
May your parts feel seen and loved,
and may your Self lead the way,
Wild Wisdom Guide™
IFS Practitioner | Somatic Coach | Shamanic Parts Work™
