Into the Woods with Giles Hutchins at Springwood Farm

I answered a call to go into the woods in May 2024.

It was a Regenerative Leadership Immersion over two days, including a 14-hour overnight solo. Our facilitator and land steward, Giles Hutchins, prepared eight of us and held space with profound conversations and experiences that allowed us to cross a threshold within ourselves and leave renewed as business leaders.

A wilderness solo is one of life’s very special experiences. It is a practice of silence and solitude that allows a deeper connection with ourselves and the more-than-human world. It breathes a new way of sensing and being with all life.

The experience began the moment I committed to attending. I noticed weeks earlier that I got quieter, went for more walks in silence, ate lighter, had no alcohol, drank less coffee and slept deeply. Imagining in the woodland and anticipating what was to come allowed me to sense what was to come.
When the day came, my phone was left in the car a few miles away. I had a journal that I lightly used, and time took on a new dimension.

Arrival at Springwood Farm: A Sacred Space

After gathering at the welcome hall on Springwood Farm that first morning, we watched Giles wheelbarrow our backpacks into the woods. As consummate host he was the concierge, chef, and facilitator. It is a deliberate choice and a way he protects the sacred space he creates for us, building trust and nurturing the unseen in our time together.

Springwood Farm is a special place that is best experienced rather than described. It was spring when I visited, so the pink Rhodendrums were in full bloom, and the lake mirrored their charm with a perfectly still reflection. A Scots Pine stood guardian to the woods, one of many grand trees that marked our walk. There was an overwhelming moment soon into our journey with a huge Cedar tree. It’s spectacular wisdom reaching into my cells with healing. We all stood around its trunk in awe of its beauty.

During the day, I felt a calling from a Yew Tree. Later that evening, I found that a small ring of Yews surrounded by Rhodendrums, not far from the wise Cedar. It was here that I chose to set up silent camp for 14 hours. I saw the last light dim in the evening and heard the first bird in the morning. The light played tricks, revealing colours and flowers that were not there in the morning, and the earth swayed beneath me at times with a gentle, barely detectable rhythm.

The dawn brought a new day and a little sadness that my silent time was soon ending. Luscious food grounded us as we stepped into a learning day. Our achiever mind and awakened mind now in balance to receive new insights regarding our regenerative leadership.

We walked through an adaptive cycle experience on that second day, a conceptual model that helps us integrate the complex systems between ourselves and nature. And together we explored leadership models and dabbled in the U process. We mapped our ecosystems and wrote in our journals.

The balance of cognitive and heart-based practices over our two days together aided our conscious connection with nature as our wise guide.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Henry David Thoreau

Since I was young, I have always known that stepping into the silence in nature is rewarded with a deepening of self. The surprise in the last decade is how it wisely fueled my regenerative leadership. As a business coach and regenerative business mentor, this practice remains a priority in my professional development. I have accreditations for biomimicry, behavioural sciences, forest bathing and leadership coaching but they are an island without the wilderness immersions.

If you want to embody regenerative leadership, conscious time in nature is a foundational practice. I’m not a walk with the dog or building a shelter in the woods with kids. I’m referring to solitude, sensing your environment, and deepening a connection so that when you return to the computer and the boardroom, your decisions and designs come from a different place—an inherent knowing of interconnection and a desire to care for more than your bottom line.

It’s the profound shift we need in these times.

Value that comes from beyond money and time. A regenerative pathway and a Kincentric worldview.

Not long ago, I was considered an outsider or a hippy for embarking on a nature quest. My first experience was in 1988 in Tasmania, Australia. I have been deepening my practice ever since. . Last November, I was called to the Findhorn Sandunes in Scotland.

The Wilderness Solo: Embracing Silence and Solitude

If I listen, I can always hear the next place calling me. Scientific and psychological disciplines embrace this wisdom-based practice of nature immersion, particularly The Wilderness Solo, describing it as important for the healthy development of humans. Fundamental to healthy neurobiology, psychology, physiology, and spirituality.

Of course, the true wisdom holders and originators of this experience are the indigenous elders across multiple continents who have generously shared and initiated us to help us embody our inherent connection with nature. It’s easy to colonise these practices as our own, but there is a reverence and respect to honour the practice’s origins.

I create time and schedule my wilderness solos every year. They take me across Australia, New Zealand, Norway, England, and Scotland. In all these times, sometimes challenging and sometimes profound, usually both, I’ve found all my courage, wisdom, and best leadership qualities during these experiences. They led to creating The Nature’s Boardroom experiences, which I lead across the UK, which are day retreats into nature for leaders. They have also informed the creation of The Growth Experience, the digital version I lead globally. Quite frankly, some of my best creating is done in nature. My work is only possible because of my nature immersion.

Board members and CEOs find their way to me through a whispering network, seeking something more purposeful and deeper as part of legacy-level leadership.

Learning from nature as an idea will always leave a gap until you go into the woods. So why don’t you get out your diary now and schedule a day in silence. Can you feel the desire to say yet or the resistance of no to that invitation?

You can follow Giles Blog here if you would like to know more about his leadership immersions.

If you would like to join me in Nature’s Boardroom, you can explore and contact me here.