Whether they know it or not, they’re magically gifted in some way - maybe they can easily enter non-ordinary states of consciousness and journey to other realms, see or feel energy, foretell the future or know other information they “shouldn’t” know, or heal others in ways not yet understood by science. It’s important to say that their magical gifts will often have been repressed through wounding and conditioning so they either might not know they even have them or will have experienced them in unwelcome ways.

A profoundly deep healing shamanic experience such as a soul retrieval or a ceremony with a teacher plant can be the equivalent of years, decades or even a lifetime of other modalities, and yet, it’s not a panacea or a magic bullet, or even a replacement for those other modalities.

I cried seeing this rose this morning… talk about death and rebirth (as I did in my last post).

This rose had to be uprooted when the old summer house came down in April.

“Though children obviously require the security archetypal projections create, adults cannot continue to submit to that authority without undermining their own psychic growth. At their worst, infantile projections onto parents, if not withdrawn, become the foundation upon which any dictatorial system depends, particularly when the tyranny of that system is never fully experienced because the security it provides outweighs the cost of submission.

I met a successful entrepreneur at a party last week, and we got talking about what we do.

Attempting to capture what I do in a few short sentences is foolhardy, so I said something that met the dear man and the precious moment about how Waking The Wild helps people to find and live their purpose.

Today, I walked to the crest of a windswept hill to make offerings to my oak tree in celebration and gratitude of its vital role in me beginning and then completing a commitment - a commitment to a three-year period of intense shamanic initiations.

We’ve become so used to having answers on tap… from other people, books, Google and AI… and sometimes for some questions and some people, this is fine - at one level anyway.

It’s not so fine when we learn to always look in those places for answers and it’s not even close to fine at the level of the soul.

Jonathan and I did not begin the year intending to create Wild Sovereign… we had other plans 😀… and then suddenly a couple of months ago, it became clear what we were meant to do, so we shelved our plans, and did what Spirit asked.

"I believe that to enable us as a society to move into a far more evolved and sovereign state we need to start with that question ‘who am I?’. And I think this work is a really amazing step forward in understanding that on an individual level, and then that having an impact on an organisation and societal level." - Elke Edwards

When many of our clients and students come to Waking The Wild, they come with a wealth of gifts and skills… some naturally given, some long-earned and some hard-won. Those gifts and skills often mean that they’ve created lives that are deemed successful by many standards, certainly those of this modern world.

One of the first and most powerful practice I invite the women in Waking The Wild Feminine into is some form of body-led dance or movement.

I’d go as far to say that without that... I’m not sure much wild reclamation of our bodies (and therefore our lives and souls) is possible.

Now and then I get unassailable evidence that one of my Waking The Feminine women has got that wild embodied feeling that I’m guiding them into.

Hearing these evocative words read aloud in Circle was one of those times... It’s a poem written by one of my WTWF wild sisters about the body-led movement practice I invited them into... 🐺🔥♥️

This weekend in the woods, two people at different times told me my singing was beautiful. Hearing them say that felt healing beyond words, so much so, I couldn’t express it to either of them at the time. But it wasn’t healing because I needed reassurance about my voice itself, it was because it meant I had finally been able to move beyond my fear of singing fully and freely in front of others.

Sovereignty is one of those words that comes with so much glitz, baggage, and rot, it’s hard to look at it straight.

In truth, we *can’t* look at it straight.

We look at it through the wounded eyes of the Child.

“If the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their own experience, that alone would change the world.”

-Syd Banks

Ironically, I notice that the majority of the people who come to work with us after they’ve been travelling that path for many years are still stuck in the search to more effectively escape their feelings (i.e. their experience).

Many years ago, long before I consciously began on the shamanic path, Jonathan gifted me a smudge fan - knowing before I did what was to come. He foresaw the twists and turns my path would take from non-dual spirituality into rewilding, embodiment and shadow work and then shamanism.

“It’s hard being friends with you… you’re always so WELL!”

This was what a loved one told me recently.

I understood where she was coming from, I am exceptionally blessed, but it also called to mind the decades in which wellness wasn’t an enviable quality of my life.

I had a huge smile on my face and joy in my heart as I settled in my purple tent of wonder in the woods last week. I can’t say I ever imagined I would feel sad for my nights in it to come to an end…. But now I can count how many are left on almost one hand, I do.

The last few years, and especially the last couple of months, have been an initiation into slowing down to my true nature.

We modern humans have sped up. Magical, creative beings that we are, we have created all kinds of technologies that allow us to step out of the natural patterns of life… A slow trot beginning with farming, lighting and heating, and then hurtling into computers and AI.

From as early as I can remember, I’ve done what I can to help our non-human friends, even the smallest… from moving worms from the pavement to physically fighting with the boys in the playground to decide the fate of the crane flies (known then as daddy long legs) they enjoyed pulling the legs and wings off.