Saturday, May 20th, 2023 10 AM - 12 PM at Kerncliff Park in Burlington, ON

Mindfulness In Nature And The Art of Peak Experiences

Come learn how to use mindful walking and the art of peak experiences to experience more joy, fulfillment and enchantment in your life.

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The Nature of Peak Experiences

Step Into The World With Awe And Wonder

Have you ever had an experience in nature when you felt a profound sense of unity and connectedness with something that was much bigger than yourself and impossible to put into words?

The Ancient Greeks referred to this experience as Ecstasis, which means to stand outside yourself and experience yourself as a larger whole connected to everything else.

In this live Mindfulness In Nature walk, we’re going to explore the nature of these peak experiences and how they can transform our lives through rare macro-experiences and regular micro-experiences that help us hit the reset button on our worries and stresses.

We will be exploring and practicing ways to integrate each of these 7 powerful triggers for peak experiences into our lives for better health and well-being.

Learn 7 Key Triggers For Peak Experiences:

Flow In Nature

1. Flow

Flow happens when you’re completely immersed in a meaningful and challenging activity.

To experience flow, we’ll do a plant and mushroom identification activity to see how many different local species you can identify in 10 minutes using an optical image recognition app.

2. Mindfulness

Mindfulness happens when you tune into your senses rather than your thoughts.

To experience mindfulness, we’ll do foundational mindful walking practice to let go of the labelling, judgement and analysis of your mind and tune into your embodied sensory experience.

Mindfulness
Mindfulness

3. Gratitude

Gratitude happens when you recognize and appreciate all the ways your life is a gift.

We’ll do a fun gratitude exercise to recognize our interconnectedness with the air we breathe, the earth we walk upon, the water that nourishes us and the fire of the sun that gives us life.

4. Love

Love happens through joyfulness, loving kindness and opening your heart.

To deepen our sensory connection, we’ll do a mindful walking practice offering loving kindness, gratitude and appreciation to all the other sentient beings that make our life possible.

Love
Awe

5. Awe

Awe happens when you open your senses to the vastness and mysteriousness of life.

To experience an expansive sense of awe, we’ll do a practice of letting go of preconceptions and pausing to admire beautiful things with our full attention for brief micro-experiences of awe.

6. Wonder

Wonder happens when you follow your curiosity, contemplate life and ask bigger questions.

To better understand what sparks wonder in your life, you’ll be guided with some questions about the most important peak experiences in your life so far and what fascinates you most about life.

Wonder
Awe

7. Nonduality

Nonduality refers to a primordial, natural awareness without subject or object.

When you strip away the dogma and doctrines, at the heart of nearly every religious tradition you will find nonduality, a belief in the oneness of being and a great spirit or creator that creates and interconnects everything.

We will end with a contemplation of how life’s most profound peak experiences involve brief glimpses of nondual awareness and incorporate aspects of all of these peak experiences.

In addition, all participants will get these 3 bonuses for continued lifelong learning.

Finally, you’ll learn how to build a simple daily mindful walking habit to get more joy, fulfilment and enchantment in your life.

Everyone who attends will also get also access to our online 30-day Ecological Mindfulness Challenge to build a mindful walking habit and learn to identify local species of plants, mushrooms and birds with your smartphone.

1. Guided Mindful Walking Audio Practice

To continue practicing after the workshop, you will receive a guided eco-mindfulness session for practicing awe while walking outside.

Mindful Walker

2. Plant And Mushrooms Guides

Learn some of the most common edible and medicinal plants and mushrooms that grow in Canada.

Shaggy Mane

3. Mindful Birdwatching Guide

Learn to use the sounds of the birds for practicing mindfulness with our mindful birdwatching guide.

Birds

About The Instructor

Kyle Pearce is a certified instructor in mindfulness, somatic breathwork and flow state psychology.

He has a B.A. in History from the University of Victoria with a specialization in ancient civilizations, animism and the history of the modern world.

He began teaching forest meditation and eco-mindfulness workshops in 2016 in Stanley Park in his home of Vancouver, Canada and since then has lead mindful nature immersion experiences all over the world.

He got into foraging for edible and medicinal mushrooms with the Vancouver Mycology Society and he has previously lead over 15 mushroom identification workshops in Canada, Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia.

Animist Ecology grew out of his passion for how experiential learning, group storytelling and transformative nature experiences can be a catalyst for boosting curiosity, ecological awareness and fostering the long-term motivation necessary to create sustainable change.

He also runs an online education community called DIY Genius.

Kyle

Mindfulness In Nature And The Art of Peak Experiences

We have limited spots for this in-person workshop, make sure you purchase your tickets early.

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About The Location

Kerncliff Park 2198 Kerns Road Burlington, ON L7P 1P8

What Previous Workshop Participants Have Said

“I signed up for the Mindfulness In Nature workshop last January 30th, and it was an awesome experience. I always love walking in nature, and due to my busy schedule, I mostly go alone and sometimes with family and friends. Nature brings clarity and wholeness that many of us miss with indoor-oriented lives.

The walking meditation experience was beautiful and powerful, and it helped me realign and reconnect to the natural rhythms of our earth.

Kyle was a fantastic guide, and I appreciated his insights and gentle way of sharing his knowledge with the group.

I highly recommend it and look forward to future walking meditation events.”

F. SandovalBurlington, Ontario

“My experience at the mushroom ecology workshop with Kyle was a great introduction into a vast new world of connections. The workshop was ideal for every level, as Kyle catered to the unique interests of all individuals that day. Kyle has a depth of knowledge that spans beyond pure mushroom ecology which creates a very dynamic experience. We were able to find many different species of mushrooms and identify them with Kyle's expertise. Kyle also provided a dense list of references and review from the session so there was no pressure to take notes and tons of resources to consult after the session! The forest meditation was an awesome experience and one that I have added to my meditation practices and can practice on my own. Kyle did a fantastic job making a connection with everyone and ensuring all questions were answered. He is so knowledgable on so many topics that he is able to add context to the geographic location, the ecology of the forest and even some anthropologic history. All around a fantastic experience that I would recommend to everyone regardless of their level of mushroom knowledge/interest.”

Brittany B.London, Ontario

“I had a really great experience with the edible and medicinal mushroom workshop with Kyle. He was very knowledgeable and shared a lot of information with us. I would definitely be interested in more sessions!”

Aaron K.Toronto, Ontario

“I went on one of Kyle's meditation and foraging workshops in a local forest last fall and I was immediately hooked. Kyle not only chose a beautiful place to learn and meet like minded people, but has the education and charisma that left me more curious and has peaked my interest in mushrooms not only as a chef but for their amazing medicinal properties and their pivotal part in food sustainability. Kyle is engaged, entertaining and open minded. I could go on and on about going to this workshop I don't know what I expected but it was a great way to spend a Sunday morning and would recommend participating in anything Kyle has to offer because his passion about mushrooms is magnetic!”

Dana M.Hamilton, Ontairo

“I loved every minute of the workshop. I found Kyle to be very informative and engaging, especially when it came to your knowledge of history. The workshop further piqued my interest in mycology and I really appreciated how you hung around afterwards to answer questions and share more stories. You can really tell how passionate you are about your work, which made the workshop even more rewarding. I highly recommend it to anyone. 10/10!”

Christina N.Burlington, Ontairo