Elemental Quest is a multi-disclipinary approach to mentoring teens towards healthy maturation.
We do this by guiding them in nature connection, Earth skills and ancestral arts, and practices that connect them to nature, their peers, and themselves. We mentor youth with attention to individual needs, while addressing the cultural context of present-day society.
VISION
Our vision is a future healthy and whole, where all forms of life can thrive. We can contribute to this reality everyday by choosing and seeking connection and making decisions as if all life matters.
Our vision is that of rejuvenating culture and nature – helping to restore health, vitality, and wellness for all life. From experiencing wild nature to tending land and plants, social connection and personal identity, to astronomy and consciousness, we use holistic frameworks to consider our opportunity and responsibility to engage with life.
In our vision of the future, all ages have healthy ways of ways of relating to this planet and understand their ecological role in it. With awareness and knowledge of their bioregion, and skills to tend one’s needs, we can also allow our lives to be of service to others. From social justice to environmental restoration, care for people is care for earth.
WHAT WE STAND FOR – values, programs, curriculum:
Community: Remembering our relations in the web of life
Identity: Reintegrating our sense of self in the cosmos
Vitality: Reactivating health and healing capacities
Sustainability: Regenerating life systems
Longevity: Rejuvenation of health
Sustainability: regeneration of our planet and people, for ourselves and for future generations of all life.
Guiding questions: How to grow food and medicine? How to heal biosphere and care for Earth? What are best possible systems for all life?
Community: remembering our place (kin) in the web of life.
Guiding questions: Who lives in my watershed/bioregion? How can I survive in the wilderness? What ancestral arts and hand crafts can I make?
Identity: reintegration of our sense of self, our purpose, and our place in the cosmos.
Guiding questions: Where am I in relation to culture and cosmos? How does this body-mind work? What are my gifts and how to use them?
Vitality: reactivating our capacity for self healing.
Guiding questions: What is healing and self healing? How can I cultivate this force? Where is qi – inside and out?
Longevity: rejuvenation for wellness in body, mind, and spirit.
Guiding questions: What is life? How to care for my body and others? Why… is my body the foundation for liberation?
MISSION
Elemental Nature is an educational organization, committed to guiding people into a greater sense of connection, authentic sense of self, wellness, life-affirming lifestyles, and whole body health.
We seek to support individuals, families, communities, and the wider world by training them how to attend to their needs and those of teens, supporting the next generation to step into the future as leaders – capable and confident, while deeply rooted in connection and appreciation for nature and culture’s reliance upon nature.
Sustainability: focus of Elemental Design: permaculture design and education
Community: focus of Elemental Connection: nature connection
Identity: focus of Elemental Quest: rites of passage and guide training
Vitality: focus of Elemental Energy: internal arts & music as medicine
Longevity: focus of Elemental Health: consultations & education
VALUES
We value life. We adhere to the foundational ethics of permaculture: Care for Earth, Care for People, Share the surplus. As an organization, we practice the Peacemaker Principles, as taught from Jake Swamp and the Tree of Peace Society to Jon Young (8 Shields Institute) and Jon Stokes (The Tracking Project).
We honor the traditional inhabitants of the lands we visit: primarily the Coast Miwok people in present day Marin County. Bigger trips to the Trinities or Sierra travel on many tribal lands.
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ELEMENTAL QUEST 