Sleeping with Trees A Listening Journey with Tamara Colchester
The series encourages an embodied investigation of trees. We will look at the qualities, medicine and myth of a healing tree each month, with an invitation for people to solo sleep beneath that tree.
taught by Tamara Colchester
Audio 1Birch
The slender bodies of birch cover the northern world - a consistent companion in times of dark or light. As spring emerges, the birch begins to draw sap upwards from the cold earth, pulling life into its many unfurlings.
Audio 2Ivy
In this session we examine the agency and regenerative action of a plant that moves itself through many ecologies, partnering with trees with a force that can remain in equilibrium, or tip over into dominance.
Audio 3Pine
A tree of purification, transformation and fertilisation - we turn to the pine at the peak of seasonal fecundity, ready to draw on its teaching as we sit in its shade.
Audio 4Ash
Every branch of the upright ash curves up towards the heavens - leaves radiating in ceaseless, silent sound. To wonder in the presence of the ash is to dwell on precarity - the changing states of a world in flux.
Audio 5Heather
To understand heather’s presence among trees invites a change of perspective. The ecology of heather is an exploration of the maternal - the succession of a world that is always giving birth to itself.
Audio 6Elder
Elder is the very essence of summer with its fragrant flowers and soot-dark fruits. It was said that an elder planted by your house would keep the devil away.
Audio 7Oak
The mighty oak needs no introduction, this is an invitation to let yourself held by the earth as we spend time with the trees, turning our mind towards the open invitation of sleeping beneath them.
Audio 8Alder
A tree to be feared? Is there such a thing? In this session we are drawn into the swamp ecology of the alder, allowing ourselves to sink into those boggy places that store so much hidden life.
Audio 9Yew
A tree of life and a tree of death - the yew holds an effortless paradox, inviting us to relinquish easy categorisation and allow for mutability.
The sessions will be based around questions, leading us into deep spaces of asking and wonder-ing. Putting this word into its noun and verb form we slip into a stream of gentle contemplation, feeling our way into a humbled, awe-struck relationship with life.
Tamara Colchester leads donation-based walks and retreats with Plant Listening, a not-for-profit organisation that explores sensory connection and deep listening as a means of redeveloping a sense of being “at home” in the world. She has co-written a film - Tawai - A Voice from the Forest, that explores the wisdom held in the rapidly declining old-growth forests of the world and is currently writing her second book, a love letter to vermin and weeds - Edge Dwelling: Encounters with Life on the Margins.
- Embodied investigation of trees
- Active listening
- Mindfulness
- Tree specification
- Embodied investigation of trees
- Awe-struck relationship with life
- Medicine and myth of a healing tree each month