Reconnect to the Real: Vervaeke, Sengstock, and Koch on Nature, Circling, and Socratic Practice

And yeah, for me, This journey has been really illuminating since I found John's work in 2018.

And I started to apply these concepts and these ideas.

What does it mean to be in relationship? What is meaning? How does meaning come to be? And why is my relationship with nature so important to me? It's so important to me and I've been teaching nature connection for over a decade.

And I was experiencing this reoccurring theme is when people spend time in nature, their entire worldview shifts.

They become more relaxed and empathetic and aware and grounded and their quality of life increases.

And I didn't get it.

I didn't like get it.

I witnessed it for years happening.

And then as I came into John's work, I'm like, oh, he just gave me language for things I have been doing for a really long time.

And then I got to just really dive into his work and get to know John.

And what I like about John is we get to better systematically apply these principles.

Right.

So we all know that sitting around a fire is really connected, really enjoyable.

There's something about sitting around a fire where you can sit next to a person with a fire for hours.

And if that fire is not there, it's kind of awkward.

Right.

And you're like, I don't why is this so awkward? And then John started to kind of illuminate for me the neuroscience and the evolutionary history and the exactation and all the things that is actually happening.

So then me as a facilitator, now I get to have a choice when I'm facilitating an experience and I'm choosing whether to have a fire or not to have a fire.

I actually know, not just from my experience, but I have a whole plethora of scientific knowledge that supports the decision of actually having a fire is really important if I want to increase the probability of the impact that I'm having on people.

And we'll talk more about that in this conversation, but that's like one of hundreds of examples that I've gleaned from John over the years.

Like, yes, like Kyle, this thing is actually really important.

And like, this is not important.

You know, it has benefits, but if we have to choose, we can kind of use the evidence to keep stacking the experiences in our favor.

And then I ran into Guy and Guy's work.

I was on the periphery.