302 Cara Wilde + Holly ~ How to Increase the Joy in Your Life by Connecting with Nature

Today’s Guest

Table of Contents

Cara Wilde is back on the podcast, and she’s joining me for a co-hosted episode! Cara has been a guest on the show twice before, on episodes 13 and 116, but you’ve probably heard me talk about her many times, as I tend to bring up her name whenever I mention channeling. Today, we talk about how to increase the joy in our lives through connecting with Nature.

More About Cara Wilde

Cara supports professional women who want to make a difference in the world but are feeling stalled in their authentic work and want to reclaim their Soul purpose with confidence. She helps healers, coaches and therapists at any stage of their professional lives who are looking to deepen their spiritual and professional development. Cara left her counselling and more mainstream work behind her when she couldn’t use her psychic abilities or work with guides and began to feel as though she was working blind.

She set up her own business as an EFT practitioner, started to use her channeling and intuitive abilities and felt like she’d got the team on board and helped her clients in making more significant and longer lasting changes in their lives. As part of her work Cara channels a collective called The Ancients and offers practical guidance and support specific to the needs and concerns of those of us who are deeply sensitive and passionate about creating real change in the world.

Cara passionately believes that those of us considered misfits are truly here to create a new way in the world and are part of the Divine’s blueprint for a Heaven on Earth. Cara lives in Cornwall, surrounded by the ocean and stone circles. She home educates her two children and when life gets too hectic, you can find her running the trails or curled up under a heavy blanket with a good book. You can find her at her website, on Facebook, or her YouTube channel.

Listen to this episode

What You’ll Learn

What is re-wilding or un-taming and why might you want to do this?
How being in the wild can help you untame
How Nature can help you to get to know yourself
What we’ve learned from Nature about re-wilding
Getting lost in the outdoors and what that’s taught us
How wild nature speaks to us
What we can learn from building relationships with Nature
How to work with stone circles in a different way
What we’ve learned about resilience and trust from our experiences in Nature
What we’ve done when things went wrong – and what we might do differently next time
How you can connect with Nature to work with Spirit
How to work with portals to connect with other dimensions, energies, etc.
How Nature can also serve as a pathway to Oneness
How to reconnect to Oneness by building our relationship with Nature

Connect with Cara

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Transcript

The transcript for this episode can also be downloaded here (no opt-in required).

Hello and welcome to the Into The Woods podcast episode 302, this is your host Holly Worton and I have got something new for you, I have got a co-hosted episode with the fabulous Cara Wilde. You may know Cara from all the times I have mentioned her and linked to her on this podcast and in the show notes. She has also been a guest on this show, episode 13, way back in the beginning day: How to Find Bliss in Life and Business. She was also a guest kind of slightly more recently on episode 116, How Channeling Your Guide Can Transform Your Business. She has also been a guest on the episode that I did with the four woo experts and that was again slightly more recently, episode 201. That was actually 101 episodes ago, so not fairly recently, but I am really excited to have Cara on the show, again this is not an interview, it is a co-hosted episode where we are having a conversation about a topic. And this topic is: How to Find Joy in Your Life Through Nature. Cara is a very dear friend of mine; she is someone I have learned a lot about in terms of connecting with nature spirits and connecting with spirit guides and connecting with unseen things in the outdoors and I am really excited to share this conversation with you.

Let me tell you a little bit about Cara Wilde, if you don’t know who I am talking about, Cara supports professional women who want to make a difference in the world but are feeling stalled in their authentic work and want to reclaim their soul purpose with confidence. She helps healers, coaches and therapists at any stage of their professional lives who are looking to deepen their spirit and professional development. Cara left her counselling and more mainstream work behind her when she couldn’t use her psychic abilities or work with guides and began to feel as though she was working blind. She set up her own business as an EFT practitioner, started to use her channeling and intuitive abilities and felt like she got the team on board and helped her clients making more significant and longer-lasting changes in their lives. As part of her work Cara channels a collective called the Ancients and offers practical guidance and support specific to the needs and concerns of us who are deeply sensitive and passionate about creating real change in the world. Cara passionately believes that those of us considered misfits are truly here to create a new way in the world and are part of the divine’s blueprint for a heaven on earth.

Cara lives in Cornwall surrounded by the ocean and stone circles, she home-educates her two children and when life gets too hectic you can find her running the trails or curled up under a heavy blanket with a good book.

So, I will link to her website, her Facebook page and her YouTube Channel in the show notes so you can learn more about her.

What are we going to talk about today? We are going to talk about re-wilding or un-taming and why you might want to do this, you may have heard the term re-wilding before and thought: mm sounds kind of interesting, what the heck is that? We talk about that. We also talk about how being in the wild can help you un-tame yourself. We talk about how nature can help you get to know yourself. We talk about what we have learned from nature about re-wilding. How getting lost in the outdoors has taught us certain things and how it has actually been a useful experience. We discuss how wild nature speaks to us, sometimes quite literally. We discuss how sometimes we can learn from building relationships with nature. How to work with stone circles in a different way. What we have learned about resilience and trust from our experiences with nature. What we have done when things went wrong and what we might do differently next time. We discuss how you can connect with nature to work with spirit. We also discuss how to work with portals to connect with other dimensions and and energies. How nature can serve as a pathway to oneness and finally we discuss how to reconnect to oneness by building our relationship with nature.

I think this is a really, really, great episode, a great conversation, and I hope you find it interesting and useful. Cara and I already have a date in the calendar to do another episode we don’t know yet what we are going to talk about so if there are any topics that you would like the two of us to specifically have a conversation on and share it with you, please let me know. As always you can email me at: [email protected] or get in touch online. I would love to know what you think. And, in this episode, we also answer a question that one of my readers and listeners had from the book, something that came up that I experienced in my book, in the chapter on King of Limbs, where I encountered some kind of energy that scared the crap out of me and this person asked me to ask Cara what she thought of this, so this is something that we also explore in this episode, so I hope you find this interesting and useful.

But before we get into today’s episode, I also wanted to mention a podcast I was recently a guest on, Nancy Mensah, has a fantastic podcast called Diary of a Female Entrepreneur, and we discussed how to shift gears in business and how to know specially when to shift gears in business, so I talk a lot about pivoting and changes I have made over the years and why and how. We have a really, really, great conversation, so you might have heard me tell some of these stories before, perhaps in a different format, but I think the way Nancy guided me through this conversation in this interview was really, really, interesting. We had a great rapport from the start, I really loved her, if you want to listen to the episode you can do so by going to the link: http://HollyWorton.com/Nancy and that will redirect you to her website and her podcast feed. A great episode and I think you will find it useful if you have ever felt like you needed to shift, or pivot, or switch things up in your business or life. We also talk about life changes in there, so that is a great episode and I really, really, recommend it.

Again, before we get into today’s episode I would also love for you to join me on Patreon, if you get value from this podcast, I would love to have you go over to Patreon and support me there to make sure that this podcast can continue production. If you head over to: http://Patreon.com/HollyWorton you can join me there. Membership starts at just $1 a month and you will get exclusive access to content that I don’t share anywhere else including a monthly Q and A and done-for-you mindset work. Finally, I wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone on my Facebook, on my online networks, listeners of this podcast, everyone who has supported me by purchasing my book. The book has been a great success so far and I continue to promote the book to keep it out there and up on the Amazon charts and in front of new people’s eyes. If you have purchased the book, I am so grateful, thank you so much. If you have reviewed the book, the same. If you have read the book but not yet reviewed, I would love to have a very quick review on Amazon if you enjoyed the book. Reviews are so, so, important and they help me take on certain people to help promote the book who require a certain number of reviews. So, my next goal is to get up to 10 reviews on Amazon.com and from there I am going to try to go to 20 reviews because there are certain people that I can hire to help me promote the book but they need that number of reviews. So, if you haven’t reviewed I would so appreciate it if you could pop a review on Amazon.com. Thank you, thank you, thank you, I really, really appreciate it.

The book, as you may know, I hired a book launch manager and she helped me get the book up to no. 1 in 16 categories on Amazon, I am just so absolutely thrilled and super, super, excited about how this book is getting out into the world so thank you for being a part of that and thank you for all your help.

So, that was a rather lengthy introduction and without further ado I will now hand you over to today’s episode where we talk about how spending time in nature can help you find joy in your life. Thank you for listening.

Holly: Hello, Hello, Cara Wilde and I are here talking about nature and talking about how to connect with nature to re-wild and un-tame yourself and what does that mean and why you might want to do that? So, I am super-excited about this conversation, this was your idea originally and I thought it was perfect the second you sent it in. So, what is this whole concept of re-wilding and un-taming and why do you think someone might want to do that?

Cara: Okay, that is a really good question. So I guess people might want to do it because I needed to do it and I kind of know what happened to me. So, I lived the majority of my life in a town, big town/small city kind of thing and my exposure to nature was tarmac parks that’s it. I have always had a connection to willow trees and I found out why later on, I might come back to that. So, when I moved to Cornwall I moved down for the ocean, this was about 11 years ago, we moved down to Cornwall and there is Bodmin Moor, for people who don’t live in the UK, they are completely wild moors, you do not mess with them. I nearly lost a child down a sinkhole (I don’t know what they are called!), but you have to be really careful, the weather pattern changes and all that kind of thing. We lived not far from there and the first day I went, I used to be terrified of bulls and I went and I used to park the car and leave the doors open in case a bull chased me and I would be able to dive into the car. Then I would be walking around and just like: there is no signpost, nobody is telling me where to go, where it is safe to go, where is the tarmac? Oh my God, this is nature!

And it was such a mirror for me about how I had lived my life according to internal rules that had been given to me by society, or by helpful people that I had grown up with, that I had kind of outgrown but not known, or not even known that I could just leave and start to live like – what’s the book called? – the road less travelled. So it is like leaving the tarmac and finding your own pathway and nature, working with wild nature, getting lost in nature, has really helped me. There is something, I don’t know if you have this, there is something that happens, like an untangling process within you when you start working with wild nature, the wilder the better. Does that make sense?

Holly: Yes, absolutely.

Cara: I guess that’s what I mean by not following just society tarmac, you know, the path and the roads, and trying to find your own way through life, it has been such a gift for me that.

Holly: Yeah, and I think that is such a huge part of my last year’s process, connecting with the trees and spending more time out in nature but more time being still in nature rather than walking through nature, and that was a huge lesson for me last year, because I really like walking and so for the last few years I have been walking, walking, walking. Which is nice and it is getting me connected to nature, but not as much as last year when I was last year when I was stopping, sitting and being still and opening up more to being connected to nature in that way. So that, it has been a massive shift for me.

Cara: What was the difference for you do you think? What did you notice the differences between experiencing going through nature and being really present with nature is what it sounds like?

Holly: Being present with nature gave me more of a connection whereas when I was just walking, I was seeing, I was hearing, I wasn’t connecting as much, I didn’t develop as much of a relationship with nature as I did once I slowed down and I think that connection started the re-wilding or un-taming process, because I spent a lot of time outdoors but I wasn’t really plugged into nature, I was still plugged into my normal world.

Cara: For me, that speaks of the difference of just staying in your mind and being in your body. {Holly: yes, yes} I guess that is a really good way of describing what I was trying to say really, it helped me get back into my body. Sometimes I didn’t want to be in there, it didn’t feel very nice, you know? How does it do that, how does it help you be in your body eo you think? I don’t know if that is an easy thing to…?

Holly: That’s a really good question and I think that being in my body is something that I have struggled with for years. I would do alternative therapies and things and people would say: oh you need to be more in your body. And I would be like: what the heck does that mean? I think it is feeling rather than thinking more than anything, because I tend to be very much in my head, so I think by slowing down and connecting with nature and being still in nature and getting into my body, it made me feel nature rather than thinking about nature. Or thinking: oh, there is a bird; oh, there is a tree. It was more like feeling the rhythms of nature, feeling the breeze, feeling the soil, the leaves, the trees. Feeling not just tactile feeling, but what was going on inside my body as I was experiencing this, so more like an inner feeling.

Cara: So, there are key moments in my life where I have really experienced that deeply and it doesn’t happen all the time, but I remember, it sounds like a cliché, but I remember being in a really good space and sat on the cliffs watching this bird fly, and it moved so I didn’t have to, because I could feel its movement within me. And then I have had moments of just being, feeling like I was the bird’s wings, that real strong connectedness. I can probably count on my hands how many times that has happened but then you get that, you do get a deep understanding of how interconnected we all are and how deeply dependent we are on nature. And also how resourceful it is and that helps you feel you can build more faith and trust in something bigger than yourself to take care of you and the amount of times I have run to stone circles and I have been having a paddy – that’s a Yorkshire saying, it is like stomping my feet and not very happy with life and wanting it to be different or just very frightened – and then laid down on the earth and have heard the earth say: let me take care of you, let me hold you, I am the source of your abundance. My head can’t figure out what that means, necessarily, I don’t know how to action that much in my life, but, in that moment, it has felt like a real cradling.

Holly: And your body knows, your body understands.

Cara: Yes. So tell me sometimes when it has not worked, when it has not gone right in nature or when nature has startled you or something?

Holly: Well we have a question that one of the readers of my book asked me to ask you, so this is perfect timing for this. So in the book, I communicate with this tree called King of Limbs and it is this tree in a fairly large forest and I had walked the furthest point from the car park to get to this tree. It was on the map, I knew where it was, I was getting to it, I was really out in the middle of nowhere, I hadn’t seen another person for an hour or so, or more. So, I was very much alone in the woods and finally came across this tree. As I walked across the clearing as I approached the tree I felt kind of a weird feeling but then when I got right next to the tree that feeling disappeared. It was a really ancient oak that had a hollowed-out trunk and so I went and sat inside its trunk and there’s was this beautiful energy, just an energy bubble of goodness inside this tree, it was so gorgeous. So I sat for a while and got his story and when I was done I stood up and the second I stepped out of the inside of his trunk I felt this really awful feeling. It was like the feeling that I felt when I first stepped into the clearing but worse and I just got really scared and I actually stepped, I walked a full circle around the tree, but I couldn’t see anything. I was so scared, I picked up my phone to find the fastest way out of there and my phone battery went from 40% to 0 like that. That’s never happened to me before and I just thought: I am going to get out of here. I get chills as I tell you this story and I hightailed it back and just got out of there. I talk about this in my book and I say: I don’t know what happened, I don’t know if it was just because I felt a very clear energy, it wasn’t necessarily good or bad, but I couldn’t see anything and I got scared, or was it a dark energy? I don’t know what it was, but it scared the crap out of me. Then the thing with the phone battery also scared me because that has never happened before. So, one of the readers of my book said: ask Cara what she thinks, so I would really love to hear: what’s your take on that?

Cara: Listening to you, what was coming up for me was that that might have been a very human kind of energy too. So I have an example that is similar, I went out for a walk late at night years ago, just where I live locally and was on the edge of a cliff and just felt this really horrible feeling that somebody had been pushed off. And I think we can, I know it is not nice. Then there is a story about a pagan friend of mine who was a witch, it was well known that if you went through this particular point on this road journey if you were sensitive you would feel something because there had been quite a traumatic accident. So I think that could have been something, something could you have happened there, you were already open, your senses were already amplified and tuned, and you were already starting to open, so you could have quite easily have picked up on something that had happened there. Or, a thought form, I have had experiences of being in houses where there is a lot of suppressed anger and so thought-forms pop up because that energy has got to go somewhere. And then I have also had experience of something happening to me in church that felt like it was a non-beneficial energy but that happened to me because I was kind of saying: come on if you think you are hard enough, and I wouldn’t necessarily do that again. So my take on that is that I am really glad that you trusted your instincts, I think that is the most important thing. What I always teach is, meeting a guide or an energy is like if you go to a party and you just don’t like a particular person, you won’t engage with them. It is exactly the same with energies, you are a sovereign being and call in the divine or source if you want to, trust your instincts and then ask questions later. So it could have been that if us two were there we might have been curious about what that was, and is it a human? I have been involved in helping spirits to pass to the other side, so I think nobody knows for sure, we will know better when we are on the other side, but I think there are various things that it could be, but you are in charge of your energy system and I am glad you got out there.

Holly: It was also a couple of days before Samhain so theoretically the veils would have been thin anyway, I think I was just hypersensitive to whatever it was that was there. I haven’t been back, I want to go back, I would prefer to go back with someone else, but I want to go back and see if I feel anything there again and see what happens next time.

Cara: Yes, and I would do the, make sure that you are in a space of love, feeling connected to source, calling source to be with you. I went on a walk recently, I went on a hike, and I followed public footpaths apart from when I got lost, I still got lost, but I followed public footpaths and there was a shoot being advertised nearby – we have shoots down here – and it was so close to the public footpath I was starting to get really nervous, that somebody might miss or something. And so, that could have been my panic, I could have been picking up on something that was about to happen, and I just asked source to put this bubble of safety around me, either from my own panicked thoughts, or from something that might have happened and obviously it was fine. I think we have to take care of ourselves and do what we think is okay.

Holly: I wish I had thought in the moment to call in source, to call in the Angels, to call in my spirit guides, to call in help but I just didn’t, I walked out of there as fast as I could because that’s the best I could do, but now, upon reflection, I think I would deal with it differently if that happened to me.

Cara: Well, yeah, and you didn’t have all the information you needed in that moment I guess.

Holly: So, you have talked a couple of times about getting lost. I have gotten lost too many times, what have you learned from getting lost when you are out in nature?

Cara: That I don’t pay attention enough! {laughing} And that might translate to how I live my life sometimes as well. I am not as present and grounded as much as I want to be so a few things, the first first thing is: nature is always in charge, the paths are not going to run out, they are not going to appear because I need them to be, weather systems change really quickly and she is going to do her own thing regardless of what I want and that’s been really important for me to take notice of. It has also taught me that I am more resourceful than I thought, that I am okay with risks more than I thought, that I can find my way through when I don’t think that I can. So, two examples come into mind: one is I got lost, not far from home, but it is on an old mining, tin mines and we have to be really careful because there are open mine shafts and we can fall through and most of them are fenced off but if you veer off the public footpath you need to be really careful, because you don’t know if the ground is going to give way. And I got off the path, where Poldark is filmed, so it is where all the old tin mines are, and I just thought: this is not safe and so I said to the Ancients: just show me where I need to be because I can’t figure this out, and I felt my body physically moved and I went and followed this particular path and when I got around the top, I could see if I had kept going I would have got somewhere where I really wanted to be, it could have got a bit dangerous. So knowing that I am always guided, really practically, I can call on them.

Then, the other time was I didn’t prep well enough when I went out for a run and I didn’t, and sometimes my idea of time and distance can… me and physical reality need to get to know each other still but… So, I had gone out on a run but I hadn’t timed the sunset properly and so I had misjudged when it was going to be dark. So thankfully I had a head torch, but I was three miles from my car when it was dark, and I had never run a coastal path in the dark before. And, I was, it was safe, but I was scared, and I was cold — it had got colder quicker than I thought — and I had got a coat with me, a running coat, so I was kind of all right, but my hands were stating to go numb and it was starting to rain. So I had my torch on and I was like: okay, I have to watch where my feet are because I don’t want to trip. Two things happened: first of all I now know that green eyes floating in the middle of nowhere, it is not aliens it is what happened to cows. Because I am running, and I could see these green eyes…and it was a heard of cows and they had calves with them and oh God…and I am walking and thinking: I really shouldn’t eat cows I feel like right now I shouldn’t eat meat so I could say: I don’t mean you any harm. They had calves with them, and I was right near the cliff edge, the path was, and if they had startled I did need to be careful and so I borrowed an old trick from a friend of mine and sang to them as I walked through and that was fine. And that, my legs were going to give way and I thought: oh my God the only way is through and I don’t know what to do, so that was a good lesson at surviving going through stuff. When I got to the other end and I was starting to get cold and I knew I was only a mile and a half away but I had already done about 8-10 miles and at that time that was quite a long run for me and what I learned about myself was that my inner critic was: oh my God you are going to have to put people out if you have to call emergency, if you can’t remember the way to get back because I had never run it in the dark. So, I knew the path really well, but I didn’t know it in the dark and my inner critic was all about how my stupidity was going to cause other people problems and that was a really, that’s what I do in life, that’s where my inner critic goes. So when you make mistakes, or get things wrong, it is really helpful to see what your process is because you can apply that to lots of different areas.

Holly: Yeah, that’s exactly where I would go too, because you always hear stories of people doing something stupid and calling mountain rescue and mountain rescue being like: if you are not injured you need to get down on your own, we can’t come out just because…and part of me has that fear of being the person who makes a mistake or makes a bad decision and ends up doing something stupid and then: do I call for help, do I not? And then having to put myself in that position. And nature, as you said, it is wild you don’t know what is going to happen, you can miscalculate the sunset, winds change, hail happens, snow might come unexpectedly. You never know what is going to happen, you can plan, you have to have a contingency plan for if it gets too hot and if it gets too cold and have extra stuff. And, yeah, it is part of connecting with nature and part of getting in touch with that wildness is being prepared for all the different, unexpected, wildness that may occur. {laughing}

Cara: I haven’t done extreme sports.

Holly: Me neither.

Cara: I have gone coastal running you know? Even that, in that kind of tamed, not extreme sports, even then it is like: I don’t make those mistakes anymore. I still get lost, but I am okay, I go out knowing that I am probably going to get lost and I know this area really well so that is okay. And then, there are going to be risks in life, you are going to be prepared and speaking to other runners that run trails in say the US on Facebook groups that I belong to, they go out knowing they are probably going to come across a rattlesnake and things like that, you know? It is like, stuff is going to happen, and you never know…you can be prepared as you want.

Holly: Yeah, you have got to educate yourself about what’s in your area, because I remember growing up in California as well and going back to visit my parents, going for a run and reminding myself: you need to look for the rattlesnakes, because they would like to send themselves on the pavement, on the asphalt, and so you know you have got to keep an eye out for those which you don’t have to worry about here.

Cara: We get adders, that’s about the most.

Holly: I have never even seen one of those.

Cara: I don’t think they come out very often.

Holly: It is about learning what is in your area and learning what your particular flavour of nature in your area is like and what you have got to look out for but also not being afraid of that, because if you let yourself be afraid of those things you are never going to get out there and do it. Like, you run by yourself, I do a lot of walking by myself and I have women saying to me: how do you feel safe walking by yourself, in South East England, you know I don’t feel like I have anything to be worried about, but a lot of people do.

Cara: I suppose I am lucky where I run and walk, it is such a safe area where I live really, there is not much crime so if I lived in a city that would make me nervous, I don’t know that terrain, that’s not. I feel like, I don’t know if this is arrogant, but I have always had this thing like no that nature is mine I don’t mean it like that, but I have a right to be here. And when I was working quite intensely with some patients they would go up onto the moors, and you have to be careful when you light fires on the moors, there is peat isn’t that? I didn’t know this at the time but if an ember goes, it can just go underground, and it can cause a fire somewhere else.

Holly: Oh wow.

Cara: So, me and fire you belong to somebody else. But there was somebody there who had worked for it for years, worked on the wood for years, worked on the land for years, knew what they were doing. So, we would go out and we do circles and they would light fires and then they would want to protect themselves from farmers that don’t own the land, but they want to gun the land, kind of thing. I remember this is just coming to me, it was the first time I went onto the moors and they were casting a circle and my friend went out with his wand, which was a lump of tree, and this was eleven years ago, and I was quite cynical about witchcraft and casting circles. So, he went to cast a circle out of time and space and took this a massive wand and I was like: alright, that’s a nice thing to do and then saw this blue flame coming off the top. I could see it physically he didn’t light it; it was just this blue flame and I am like: okay, there maybe something to this. I have later found out that that is called a witches flame, I didn’t know, when I told another friend of mine she said: oh you saw the witches’ flame and a farmer went past on his tractor and just never saw us or encountered us or anything. I can’t remember why I started telling that story now…

Holly: That’s interesting, because when you and I did some work in Avebury, at the time that you went there, you did the same thing so that we wouldn’t be bothered by other people who were walking around the circle that night.

Cara: So, it is about opening and ownership and that’s what they taught me, that so much of our land has has been taken over by human beings and tamed and tarmacked and claimed and owned in this real compartmentalised picket fences. You know in the UK we are kind like: your castle, boundaries, and nobody is going to come over and this is mine in that kind of ownership way.

Holly: However much less so than in other countries like the United States, because at least we have public rights of way here, we have public footpaths, we have public bridleways, you don’t have those in other countries, so we do have, it is better here than it is in other parts, but I absolutely know what you mean. {laughing}

Cara: Yeah and I guess what they were teaching me is that it is not about ownership, but I have got a right to a relationship, and so I know one of the things that you said to me about casting a circle in the middle of a roundabout in Avebury, and really didn’t care what anybody thought, because it was between me and the spirit and me and the spirit of the land and that tops anything. Unless it is like people’s safety, that tops whether I am going to look daft or anything, so it has put me in the right relationship with nature, which is a deep, respectful place.

Holly: It is, and I still haven’t reached that so when I connect with the stones at Avebury or when I go to West Kennet Long Barrow and meditate, I still feel like the crazy woman doing stuff with the stones. I still haven’t gotten part that point and sometimes I will be standing next to a stone and I can hear people saying things about me, like I am daft, something like “oh, she is connecting with the stones” or you know?

Cara: They do actually say stuff?

Holly: One time I was sitting with the stones in a little hollow you can sit in and I was sitting with my eyes closed and I could hear these two men walking and one of them said something like: oh she is communing with the stones… or something like that. And I just thought: okay.

Cara: So, my response to that would be: I know, don’t you?! Like you are missing out. You are missing out on something so incredible and amazing. I mean, the experiences that stone circles have given me, I wouldn’t swap that for a ticket at the cinema or, it is just incredible, so I suppose my response is: you are missing out, I am not the crazy lady, this is one of the most sane things ever, you are missing out.

Holly: And you are really good at reframing that kind of stuff, so all of my insecurities I feel like you have an answer for them. {laughing} So since you have brought up stone circles, you have got a lot of stone circles in your area where you are, so how has working with stone circles helped you re-wild, or un-tame, or connect with nature and spirit?

Cara: It has helped me trust my instincts, so when I first moved here there was a pagan man who introduced me to the stone circles and this one, we parked up and you kind of have to walk to get to it, and I just ran, because I could feel it and I don’t know why, I could feel it. Then I questioned myself and turned round and he went: you know where you are going, just trust your instincts and follow it. And I didn’t, I just found it and so now I know what that feeling is like, and how it feels in my body, what the sensations are like, you can transfer that then into your life, trusting your instincts. For me, I have to feel it in my body, it is fine to trust your instincts, and know whether you are just in your ego, or in your instincts or if you are in your trauma and things like that. So, it has helped with that. That was seven years ago. And then, when I have had challenges in my life, I have got in the car, and you know when you are on autopilot driving, something was happening in my life and it had thrown me, and I was just trying to stay in my body and my anxiety was wanting me to go outside of my body, and just driving on autopilot, I pulled up somewhere and I looked up and thought: oh my God I am at the stone circle, and my body had taken me, and I just went in and laid down. I feel asleep for about an hour in it and kind of got replenished. Then, this weird thing happened, I had been working with a local stone circle and I had never experienced it before, but it called me before I went to sleep, I think some interesting things happened to me, I was like: really, Cara? Really? You are getting a call from a stone circle? SOS! {Holly: laughing} It was like: we want activating, we need activating, so when I went down to the stone circle, I got in touch with some of the people who, I was kind of like: why would a stone circle need activating? It doesn’t need human beings.

Holly: It has been abandoned.

Cara: It was, it said: we have been been used as a tourist attraction, we are not being used, were are not being used. So, I have been in there and worked with the energies and then just felt incredible bliss, incredible bliss, incredible bliss, got connected with the best I can say is I think the energies of the earth, and the template, not the energetic template but whatever it is that is going on at that level, I felt like the stone circle connected with my energy and then connected with the earth’s energies and just this replenishment kind of happened as well. I don’t know, I don’t know exactly what it is. I am not sure I have answered your question there.

Holly: I think you have, because if people have visited a stone circle before, they have done it the tourist way, probably, most people haven’t connected with it in the way that you have, and I think that is a very different relationship, so talking about a relationship with nature that is a very different relationship with a stone circle. It is working with it, or connecting with it, or using it for energy purposes rather than just tourist purposes.

Cara: Yes, and portals, portals of information, helping it connect with, there are all sorts of stories about pyramids and their alignment and I don’t profess to understand all of that and know how it works, but I know how to trust my instincts and follow guidance on how to hook a portal like that to these energetic and they all feel different, a lot of the circles down here are very, there is granite, there is earth, people come down here, and they sort their shit out, because the ground is really anchoring. You go to Avebury and it is like, obviously a portal for different kinds of communication, it is not from the earth, it is from star-beings, so I suppose in my work as a channel, I see part of my role as listening to guidance like that and acting on it and serving in that way. Serving the earth by helping her with these portals, with these sacred things, sacred points on the earth, that people who are more knowledgable than us, have obviously done something in the past.

Holly: So, you talk about portals, for people who might not know what that is, or heard of portals but probably in the context of science fiction, what are portals in our reality?

Cara: I knew I shouldn’t have used that word?

Holly: Put it is a word that people come across there was one of the trees in my book, it confirmed it was a portal, it said: some day you will experience this aspect of me, you are not ready yet. So I don’t even know what to expect, is this a portal to other dimensions, a portal to other realities, other energies, systems, thought forms, all of that?

Cara: I have got friends who could answer this a lot better than I can, but I suppose for me I it is about portals to dimensions, and that sounds really lofty and I guess they just connect into a spiritual dimension if you like, so maybe some stone circles are helping you connect to some xx energy, or tree sprites, and work at that level, which is what I think these are about, I certainly encountered these down here. Whereas, Avebury stone circles, help you connect into the dimension of stars and aliens and other beings from dimensions that are not of this earth and that is how I see portals, it is a focus of energy.

Holly: Okay.

Cara: So, I did this solo passing of a circle, on Bodmin moors, in fog, in the middle of the night.

Holly: Beautiful!

Cara: It was, it was one of the most powerful and scariest things I have done, so I was walking with the goddess Lilith at the time and she asked me to cast a circle, I won’t go into the details, but it is different from how I normally do it and I was standing in the middle of two circles. So if you think of a venn diagram, you know where they over cross, I was working in the over cross and I don’t know why but I trusted this guidance and some not very helpful pagan friends of mine at the time said: how dare you do something that is different? Who do you think you are and you are breaking rules, but I did it anyway, and it was fog and I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face and my friend was working somewhere else in the stone, she said: I am not getting involved int what you are doing but you follow your own guidance and trust what you are doing. I called on all of my ancestors and the beings that had been there before me and followed this guidance that I believe I had got from Lilith and saw just hundreds of thousands of women join me with my eyes closed. It felt like this magical, we would call it sisterhood, it felt like reclaiming feminine ways of working with the land and the magic and the real shamanic, I guess, power. And then, felt this incredibly strong energy move through me and the words: how dare you, came up. Then afterwards this friend of mine said: look what you have done. And when we looked back, there was fire light, it was light, on it. He said: well, I don’t know what is going to happen to you now. He was a bit of a doom and gloom-er, nothing happened.

Holly: A bit dramatic.

Cara: Yes, I was fine. But I feel like some people, maybe it is women, but I think some of us are called to work with the energies of the land to help heal all the stuff, and I remember just before we went to Avebury, reading a channeled piece by Lazarus, can you remember I shared it with you?

Holly: Yes, yes.

Cara: About how sacred stone circles are, but they have been used for non-beneficial things, they have been used for awful things and some of that energy does need cleaning up, it does need healing, the land needs help to heal. And I think that is part of what some of us are called to do as well. It is definitely what I am called to do.

Holly: Yes, and I think that is definitely a very different way of working, going out into nature, going out into stone circles, a lot of people haven’t experienced. So I think just hearing your stories will help give people an idea of other ways that they can connect.

Cara: Yes, so basically, a real straightforward way of doing it, you don’t even have to know how to cast a circle, if you do want to know I looked it up on the Internet and I had some guidance from my pagan friends as well. Go up to a stone circle, I always ask the energy of the circle and the ancestors for permission to join and to go into the circle and then I always just call in the ancestors and sit with them and be with them and say to the circle: is there anything you need from me? Can I support you? What do you want me to know, or would you like me to do anything? And some of it might be: can you pick up the litter?

Holly: Yes, that was one of the messages from one of my trees. {laughing}

Cara: Yeah, yeah, and the appreciation is really powerful as well.

Holly: I think that is perhaps the next phase of my work with nature, the next stage for me, is going out to nature and asking: what do you need from me? How can I help?

Cara: Yes.

Holly: Because my whole focus last year was trees: you have asked me to share your stories, what are your stories? Now it is just more connecting with the land and saying: what can I do for you?

Cara: And nature is slow, so when you channel information from rocks, it is a very different experience from channeling information from guides or something, it is like nature is, compared to us it is slow, and you do have to slow down to be with it, and it is so gentle and powerful. Flowers called to me for a short period of time, but I struggled to hear flowers, they are different realm, I struggle to hear.

Holly: That’s interesting! What about elementals? Because I have wanted to connect more with the fey, I have wanted to connect more with that whole realm, haven’t yet dedicated myself to doing so, or put the effort into doing so. So I would love to hear some of your stories about what it has been like for you connecting with that type of energy and life form?

Cara: So I guess that started when I went to a tree workshop and the guy that was leading it was helping us focus on a tree and listening to it and that’s when I discovered that weeping willow is probably my tree and could see how… he said, this will be interesting to see if anybody has had this experience, he said: there will be a tree that you have been drawn to since you were little and mine was weeping willow! Wherever I went that was always what I was drawn to, and they all have a particular meaning, that you will know more about than me. But I remember on this day, just feeling into the tree and I could feel myself disappear, I thought I was going to fall over. I had not experienced that before and that kind of blew my mind. Then I have seen fey, I feel fey, and I have had messages from fey, but I think they choose it, that has certainly not been anything that is beyond me. Some other people might be able to call them consciously but that is not my experience of the fey, they just turn up when they want to. They have given me messages and it is very apparent, when they are there, it is like the energy of the trees, or the flowers, or whatever it is, in whatever way they are trying to communicate, just shine. They are literally brighter and there is movement and they come alive and that is how I know they are talking to me, but that is not something that I have consciously cultivated.

Holly: Because many times being out in nature I have kind of spoken to them, or set the intention, or said: I would love to connect more with you and… silence. So I feel like either I am not ready yet, or I don’t know.

Cara: It will be interesting to see if anybody who is listening knows more about it than we do. I know, for me, definitely, that period of time when I worked intensely with the moon and I would go be called to pagan things, sorry, I would get invited to pagan sabbats, and I would think: I really feel like baking bread and then I would turn up and they would say: that’s what we offer during this. So, it felt like a kind of coming home to me, it wasn’t planned, I found those people, I had been saying to source: I am ready for my soul group of friends. But I think I have been really lucky, because I am just so arrogant, sometimes. I remember my friend introducing me to the idea of tree sprites, I think they are called, so I think they are very specific energies that work with the tree and keep them healthy and all that kind of stuff. I was thinking: yeah yeah and then I remember driving home and slamming my brakes on because I saw this little thing, like a gnome, hugging a tree, physically, with my eyes. I went back and obviously there was nothing there, and I remember saying to my friend: thee was this really ugly thing. He said: it has got far more important things to do then being concerned about what it looks like. I was cynical and I dismissed it, then it it there right in front of my eyes. I think it was like actually, you don’t know everything, we are going to prove to you that we are here. So, maybe if you go around going: I don’t believe in you!

Holly: {laughing} I will give that a try! Probably get knocked on my bum, they will trip me as I am walking through the forest.

Cara: Well isn’t that like another learning as well, when you work with the energies, it is just like we humans think we have conquered the earth, or the earth is ours to do…really know. You are going to get brought back down to earth with a bump. There are beings here that know a lot more than I do, that’s for sure.

Holly: Absolutely. So, what would be your recommendation for someone who wants to get started on this re-wilding journey or connecting with nature, where would you suggest someone start?

Cara: What comes to me when you say that is find something as wild as you can, wherever you are, don’t think you have to go to the moors or anything, but spend time in nature, a bit outside your comfort zone but not too much. Not so much that it is terrifying and overwhelming. I never used to be able to walk through a herd of cows, I just was so scared, my legs would buckle. My partner who I was with at the time was so used to it and I felt like such an idiot: no, I am too scared and back off. There is no enjoyment in that, you have got to be in a relaxed space, so I would encourage people to get out in wild a place as possible and look at nature and with an eye of curiosity, you could even do this with plants in you own house, if you can’t get out in wild nature, and just what is it that I am seeing, what is it that I am sensing, what is it that I am feeling, and that, your feelings are the way in: what am I feeling here? Where is my curiosity taking me? And then slow down as much as you can and sometimes, if you relax your eyes a bit, you might start seeing the auric field around, as well, you can do that, it just shifts a bit. I think in terms of tuning into nature it would be feelings and I tell you a really powerful thing that happened to me, when I was learning to turn my empath skills on and off, instead of just being on all the time. One of the skills was to go out, I learned this technique from someone, it wasn’t mine, to go out in nature and just name things, with no judgement, not like: oh that’s lovely and that’s nice. But: that’s a tree, that’s a bush, that’s a flower, that’s a bee, literally, like that, and it helps you be really present, because when we judge something we are in our minds and it takes us away from now. So, even just doing that, if you did that for just a few minutes everyday for a while, that would be interesting to see what happens. What about you, what would you suggest?

Holly: Well, the trees, the whole book is full of ideas from the trees, but one of the things was making more contact with the trees and treating them more as we would treat people. So as you are walking through the woods, touch a tree, make physical contact with it, speak to them, even if it it is just: hi, oak, hi, holly, whatever. But, kind of acknowledging them as living beings whenever you go out in nature.

Cara: That’s a really good point.

Holly: Not just treating them like landscape, or scenery, they are alive, acknowledge them, touch them, they said they like it when we touch them, they like being touched, they like that kind of physical contact with us.

Cara: Ooh, that’s so gorgeous.

Holly: So treating them the same way we would a person.

Cara: So respect.

Holly: Yeah.

Cara: Respect and knowing that they are alive.

Holly: They said: obviously if you are walking through the forest, we don’t expect you to say hello to every single tree, but if you are walking right past a tree, just say: hey, touch it.

Cara: I am just imagining, there must be people listening that have got so many different ways they do it as well, it would be really good to hear from people about their experiences or questions around anything like this.

Holly: Good, so any last thoughts, before we wrap this up?

Cara: No, it is just I feel really so happy talking about this and that was one of the things I was going to mention, that’s what the happiness is about. One of the things that is so lovely about nature if you can be present and I wish I had come up with this, but it wasn’t me, nature never asks anything of you. So, you don’t walk through nature and it is like: you are too fat, you should have done your hair differently, oh my god you should have got a better job, look at the state of your bank balance, you know, all that shite that we have in our society. When you go into nature, you can lose all of that, lose all of that, I guess that is part of the un-taming, but any of that sense of having to be anything other than you are. And also the parallel to that is, you don’t try and improve nature, you don’t look at a tree and think: you would be so much better if your branch went a little bit down there, or if we could just trim a bit off your trunk, you know? You have got a few too many petals going on there! We need to get you…lets get you a makeover! There is none of that and I think without you even knowing it, the more you immerse yourself in it, the more and easier it is to just be in the joy of the moment and to just be present to what is wonderful and beautiful and not feel that you have to improve yourself, or life, or what you are surrounded by. I think the joy of nature is acceptance, just gorgeous.

Holly: And I feel like when we connect with nature we are connecting with, nature is connecting with our soul, with our higher self, not necessarily with who we are in this incarnation of physical reality. That just popped into my head. What do you think about that?

Cara: Say some more about that.

Holly: So when we are connecting with nature we are connecting with the core of ourselves, the deepest, inner sense of who we are, not just in this lifetime, but throughout all the dimensions and realities and lifetimes, like the core of us, our highest self. I don’t know, it just literally popped into my head and came out of my mouth…

Cara: It took, the language we quite often use is: nature touches our soul, and I think you have just articulated what I was trying to describe really in that it is not a personality thing, it goes deeper than that and it goes to a place of oneness. If you are really, really, lucky you get to experience the oneness in all the dimensions like we have just been talking about. And if you are really, really, lucky, you really get to feel the oneness of everything that we are all one and that goes back to that seagull moment that I kind of mentioned, you have just wrapped that up beautifully there.

Holly: You did but based on something else.

Cara: We did.

Holly: We did.

Cara: We wrapped it up.

Holly: I think that is absolutely it, we are one with nature, but yet in our daily lives we don’t feel that way usually, we feel very much disconnected especially if you live in a town, so it is getting back to that oneness with Mother Nature and the planet and everything that exists.

Cara: And it is beautiful, it is abundant, it is neverending and it can just and filling up because we can be reminded of that and then get filled up and go back to life. Thank you this has been a lovely conversation.

Holly: Thank you.

Cara: I’ve just had a blast!

Holly: If we enjoyed it I am sure someone else will. Well thank you

Cara: You too.

Holly: Thank you again for listening, please drop me a line and let me know what you thought of this week’s episode you can email me at [email protected] or find me on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and get in touch. I would love to give you a shout out on the show and I would l would love your input. Also, what would you like Cara and I to discuss on our next episode together, that would be great to know too. I am sure we won’t have problems coming up with a topic on our own, but my favourite topics are the ones that you send me. So, again, thanks so much for listening and next week’s episode will probably be a solo episode but I am not quite sure at this point. So, I will let you know next week when you tune in.

Thanks so much for listening and remember to visit: http://HollyWorton.com/302 for the show notes on this episode.