Welcome to "On Guiding Forest Therapy" with Nadine Mazzola - v1i1

Greetings and welcome to "On Guiding Forest Therapy". My "why" for this blog is to be in touch with fellow guides, friends and colleagues, in a way that is not through social media, and share what I'm up to and some guiding nuggets. Check out the guiding videos below and my story of the stick in this photo in the AmongtheTrees What's New section below.

In This Issue

• Videos on guiding: Short videos answering questions from guides
• "Tails" from the Trail: Forest bathing with your dog moments🐾🐾
• Programs I'm offering: Where you can find me
• Amongthetrees.net website for guides: What's New? (Create an account here)
• Guiding stories: Short stories of funny or poignant moments and lessons learned 

Guiding Videos

Video 1) Invitations that can incorporate movement (4:44)

Video 2) Keeping warm in cold weather during sharing circle (2:20)

"Tails" from the Trail: Forest bathing with your dog moments (1:21)

I made this video this past summer. As often happens, the moment just spoke to me. I was also testing out my budding video-editing skills. You can buy my book, "Forest Bathing with Your Dog" anywhere you buy books online.

AmongtheTrees.net - What's New?

My website for guides, amongthetrees.net, has relaunched on a new platform which I am super excited about. I'm also getting clearer on the vision I want to lean into for amongthetrees.net. You could say, I'm also allowing my vision to flex and grow towards the sunlight which is mostly about bringing ease to my processes, and operating in a way that nurtures me rather than stresses me out. Yay, I'm feeling really proud about this! There is new content that I have created and interviews with other guides to watch. Login and check it out or create your free account here. I've been letting the forest support me in this project and bringing my many questions to the land and asking for support. Doing the nature connection wander series from my business and practice development course has also been very supportive. I included this picture of a stick I found last year in April. It's zig zag spoke to me, mirroring my creative journey with the amongthetrees website. Allowing myself to adjust my direction as the website grows has been it's own journey. Thank you forest! (I'm holding this same stick in the cover photo for this blog.) So what I'm still chewing on is what combination of learning and networking I want to foster and what that looks like. Stay tuned.

Programs I'm currently running

• Business and Practice Development for Guides - $800 (Starting Feb. 1st or Sept. 2022)
  Led by myself and Tam Willey, a three month, nature-based approach to marketing, uniquely designed for trained guides who are interested in building their guiding practice, via instructor-led live group-mentoring sessions and lifetime access to an extensive online course. I'm really proud of this offering. For new guides or older guides wanting to reconnect with your existing guiding practice. Read more here.
  
  
• Somatics and Forest Therapy - $98 (registration open, self-paced)
  I just launched this new self-paced, online offering in January. Over the past two years I have been studying somatics and somatics and leadership. Being a guide, I was naturally also integrating somatic methodology with forest therapy methodology. This course is my synthesis of these two practices, somatics and forest therapy. Read more here.

Guiding stories: "Encounters with a Dog Walker While Scouting for a Walk"

Hopefully you have NOT had this experience before. On my last walk of 2021, I was checking a new trail before guiding the walk. I was obsessing about the best place to guide POP and finally settled on a the spot I wanted to use. Here's where it gets messy! As I was walking back down the trail to wait for my participants in the parking lot I passed a dog-walker with no less than 10 dogs on leashes. I paused and looked back up the trail and watched as the dog-walker stopped in my POP spot and let all the dogs off their leashes. The dogs all immediately proceeded to relieve themselves (#1 and #2) before continuing on their walk. Aye yi yi! Thank goodness I happen to pause and look back up the trail after the dog-walker. I shudder to imagine if I had brought the group here for POP. Lesson reinforced: Keep your sense of humor and be ready to switch it up and move to a new spot. 🙂🐾🐾

Here in the Northeastern US, I'm noticing the low winter sunlight and how it's more yellow (my favorite color!) and how the shadows are full of blues and purples.

Best,
Nadine 🍃🌳🙂🌲