"Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination.."
--Mary Oliver

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Everywhere we go the world is whispering its invitations. It offers pathways to deeper connection with self, with others, and with the more-than-human world. When we explore these connections they lead us on a path toward greater authenticity--what Carl Jung called "individuation."

The language of invitation is one of the core skills of forest therapy guiding. It has to do with how we use our voice and our spoken words to invite others to open their hearts, so the forest can offer its healing presence. The language of invitaiton helps to make possible relationships of reciprocity between humans and the more-than-human world. But more than a technique uses by guides, it is also a spoken--or whispered--offering from the land. Speaking directly to our hearts and our imaginations, forests and deserts, oceans and prairies, rivers and stones make infinite invitations. The birds and mammals and things of the soil and beings of the waters join in with voices, as the poet Mary Oliver says, "harsh and exciting, over and over announcing your place in the family of things." 

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