Working with the pathways of the senses and emotion. Understand how to apply the ‘Five pathways to nature connectedness’ in your work
Module 3 – Branching out
3.1 Branching out
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10 responses to “3.1 Branching out”
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I love the Breathing in Waves meditation James. I’ve just done it. I got lost in watching how each wave was totally unique. I didn’t find it easy to time my breaths with them but it didn’t matter. I noticed that my breathing slowed down, and I felt stiller and calmer by the end. Thank you.
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How lovely. Thanks for the comment. I did it with as a grounding exercise at a conference for ADHD Coaches yesterday and they seemed to love it too! The stillest they’d been all day…
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It was useful to through the questions, especially as now on second session with Laetitia. Becoming very clear that I really need to focus on more senses for myself and the client rather than just sight.
It is interesting to learn more about felt sense as it is something I am aware of but didn’t know the phrase.
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Glad it was useful Liz
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It was useful to through the questions, especially as now on second session with Laetitia. Becoming very clear that I really need to focus on more senses for myself and the client rather than just sight.
It is interesting to learn more about felt sense as it is something I am aware of but didn’t know the phrase.
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This module opened up a deeper appreciation for embodied awareness and the role of our full sensory experience in coaching. I was particularly drawn to the idea of attunement — to nature, to ourselves, and to our clients — and how practices like whole body listening, movement, and breathwork can invite a richer, more grounded presence. The ecosomatic lens felt especially powerful, reminding me that transformation often begins not in the mind, but through the body and its connection with the wider living world.
I also appreciated the exploration of the 54 natural senses, which stretched my understanding of perception far beyond the traditional five. The reference to the Koyukon belief in nature’s consciousness resonated with memories of my time in the Atacama, where reverence for the land was part of daily life. This module left me inspired to deepen my own sit spot practice, explore movement-based preparation before coaching sessions, and possibly use tools like the PANAS scale to track emotional shifts in my clients. It’s a compelling reminder of the unique value nature-based coaching offers in a world that often appears to prioritise thinking over sensing.
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Thank you for these thoughtful reflections Paul. If you liked the Koyukon ref, there are good chapters on Native American cultures in The Biophilia Hypothesis (Kellert & Wilson Eds), which is a great and important book as a whole!
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I have explored since Module 1, where you mentioned the work of Cohen, the 54 senses – setting myself an intention to see how I experience one on a given day, and also after a walk, looking at the list and see what I feel I resonated with. I was interested in Cohen’s attempts to describe the sense of the relationship between space and time – this is something I feel I am experiencing at times. The first time was in Orkney, where I had a strong feeling of not being only in a different place, but also being in another time, or have a really strong feeling of another time being present. I was sharing with Liz that I had a similar experience 10 days ago on a hike I do now and then in Rutland which includes and old iron age fort site. Cohen plays with space and time in sense 47 and 31.
I’d like to dig more the Focusing practice, and try to sense how different it is from other practices. Few coaching clients I can bring this with at the moment, so will try to practice differently, maybe on the Soulwalks I lead.
The section on emotions resonated – the few times I’ve been out I have also practiced naming the emotions when engaging physically with the natural world. I feel that the vocabulary I used is much richer when I am outside than when I try to lable my daily emotions ‘indoors’. Something about necessarily being ‘in relationship with’ when outdoors, because nature is there, vs indoors, where we can be ‘on our own’. There is also something about nature being non-judgemental, which might enable us to access feelings we do not access with others?
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Lovely reflections. How interesting to notice the space-time relationship! And the lack of judgement in nature. There has been some interesting research on this with young people e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135382921931158X
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The 54 natural senses from Michael Cohen are interesting, but also a lot to take in at once. I need to go through the list again, more slowly, and figure out which ones actually make sense to me, or which ones I’ve experienced without realizing it. Some of the senses seem obvious because they’re part of daily experience, while others are unfamiliar.
The radiation senses, in particular, are new to me. I find it hard to imagine how I would even notice or feel them. I’m aware of heat or light, but the idea of detecting radiation in other forms feels abstract. It makes me think that my relationship with nature has been shaped by what I was taught to pay attention to, rather than what my body is actually capable of sensing.
I think I’ll need to revisit this list with more patience, pay attention differently when I’m in nature, and discuss it with people who are also interested in exploring. That might help me make more sense of the ones that feel less familiar.
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