As we crest the wave of the Great Transformation, we have choices: we can crash into chaos and extinction – or we can step into our birthright as fully conscious nodes in the Web of Life, offering the astonishing creativity of humanity in service to life.

We’ve said this on the podcast often, but it’s not often that we speak with someone whose entire life is given to helping people step into our birthright, to opening the doors of what we might call Nature Connection, but is so much deeper than this –  so that anyone, of any age or circumstance can step forward into whatever it is that our birthright becomes in the twenty-first century.

Our guest this week does just this. I’ve known of Jon Young for decades, heard of his 8 Shields practice and have friends who have trained in his Art of Mentoring, but it was only this last September that we met in person and I was struck by the deep inner stillness he brings to everything he does, the sense that his awareness stretches out across space and through time and he’s listening to layers upon layers of meaning.

Jon Young is a deep nature-people-self connection researcher, mentor, naturalist, wildlife tracker, author, consultant, and storyteller. Mentored by his grandmothers, Tom Brown, Jr., and a host of elders and experts, he has spent over 40 years leading the field of nature-based community building. His work explores the impact of nature on mentoring, human intelligence, spirituality, well-being, and development, influencing tens of thousands worldwide. He is the author and co-author of seminal works such as What the Robin Knows and Coyote’s Guide to Connecting to Nature, and has appeared in documentaries including The Animal Communicator. In 2016, he received the Champion of Environmental Education Award for his innovative and globally impactful contributions to the nature connection movement.

So, with all of this as our baseline, it was an honour and a delight to dive deep with Jon into the history and lineages of his learning, of his views of where we are now, and of how we can best navigate this moment of collapse and renewal.