Language Carries the Heartbeat

In this workshop, move beyond writing about nature and into writing with it. Through guided practices of deep listening, sensory awareness, poetic inquiry, and imaginative dialogue, the living world becomes a creative partner—shaping voice, metaphor, and insight. As you attune to the more-than-human world, you will begin to notice how nature reflects, reveals, and at times challenges your inner landscape, offering unexpected clarity, honesty, and guidance.

Poetry and generative writing prompts are central to this work. As you are freed from rigid rules and expectations, language itself begins to rewild—becoming more embodied, intuitive, and alive. Words are no longer extracted from experience, but arise from within an ecology of relationship, where inner life and outer world meet and inform one another.

Participants are guided to cultivate “wild language”: language that carries the heartbeat of a living world. This approach helps bypass inner censors, restore trust in creative instinct, and open pathways to writing that feels alive, rooted, and meaningful.

You will leave with:

• A set of writing practices grounded in deep attention, poetry, and ecological awareness
• Tools for listening creatively to the more-than-human world and to yourself
• Greater confidence in your own voice and creative rhythms
• Practical ways to adapt and use these practices in your work with others—as teachers, therapists, facilitators, or group leaders
• A renewed sense of connection—to nature, imagination, and inner truth

Mary Reynolds Thompson’s teaching draws on decades of facilitation experience, poetry and journal therapy, and her ongoing role teaching with the Tariki Trust’s ecotherapy training program. These influences bring both depth and care to the creative process. At heart, this retreat is an invitation to reconnect with the Earth as a source of creativity, wisdom, and renewal, and to listen for the stories that want to be told through us in this time.

Writers of all levels are welcome, as well as therapists, facilitators, artists, and seekers who feel called to restore their creative relationship with the living world.