We had the good fortune of connecting with Rebecca Wildbear and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Rebecca, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
I love the natural world and listening to dreams, and I want to share this love with others. I care about the world and the Earth’s well-being and want to offer my creative gifts to the planet and future generations. I love yoga asana and other practices of listening deeply to the body. I live soul and experience heart and soul as the most beautiful aspects of humans that I love helping to serve and bring more alive.

Wild Yoga is the name of my business, and it marries the healing practice of yoga with reverence for nature while cultivating curiosity to explore dreams and the mysteries of life and to grow our capacity to live in reciprocity with the Earth. Today, asana is synonymous with yoga but is only one component. Moving our bodies and bringing them into the shape of particular poses is valuable. Yet, the more profound purpose of yoga has always been to become more fully ourselves, deepen our awareness of and relationship to the world, and inspire our actions.

By starting my own business, I can create and offer the ideas and experiences in the world I value and believe in most.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?

I am the author of Wild Yoga: A Practice of Initiation, Veneration, & Advocacy for the Earth. I created Wild Yoga to connect people with the Earth and their souls by encouraging them to explore their dreams, listen to their bodies, and relate to rivers, trees, and animals as conscious beings. Through nature-centered, soul-inspired practices, I help people deepen their imaginative listening, stretch their awareness, and offer their creativity to the world. I have been leading Wild Yoga programs since 2007 and also with Animas Valley Institute. You can learn more about me online at www.rebeccawildbear.com.

I’m proud to have created a set of practices that meld health and well-being with spiritual insight, Earth stewardship, and cultural transformation. These practices help people connect to the natural world and live from their souls while addressing environmental activism. I’m also excited to have completed a book that includes many of these practices so they are available to everyone.

I enjoy helping people live in a sacred relationship with the Earth and discover the mythic elements of their life stories. I love to offer soul-guiding sessions, allowing people to track what arises in their body, heart, and imagination and at the edge of their consciousness.

One of the hardest things has been witnessing injustice and power imbalances in my life and the world. When I see what is happening to forests, oceans, animals, and ecosystems worldwide, I feel sad and often re-evaluate what is most important for me to do. I wonder if I am offering enough. Some people dismiss my work and invitation to see the natural as alive and animate as woo-woo, and it is challenging to respond. I’m afraid my perspective will be belittled. I struggle to speak about what is most important in a way that will be heard and taken seriously.

The practices of Wild Yoga and my life’s work are a prayer for the healing and restoration of forests, mountains, oceans, and rivers through awakening and nurturing our inherent wild nature. They are all about listening to forces we usually don’t hear, what I sometimes call the archetypically feminine aspects of our psyche and the world: nature connection, creativity, ferocity, mystery, and vision. They invite us to expand our perception and cultivate our capacity to perceive animals and plants, soils and rivers, as alive and conscious beings with whom we can relate. To listen to our body, the more-than-human world, and dreams. To connect with our soul’s purpose. By enhancing our ability to receive the messages of our body, nature, soul, and dreams, they can guide us to become vital members of the Earth community.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I rarely hang out in the city. If my friends were to visit, let’s spend the day or weekend in nature. We could hike in the desert canyons or high in the mountains, depending on the season and the weather. We’d go rafting on the Animas River, hike around Jackson Lake or in a nearby forest or canyon, or take our backpacks into the backcountry. There’s so much wilderness around me in southwest Colorado.

I like eating at Turtle Lake Refuge Cafe, Durango Natural Foods Co-op in Durango, and Zuma’s Natural Foods in Mancos, Colorado. When I’m in town, I enjoy yoga classes at Yoga Durango. I once was a raft guide on the Animas River with Mountain Waters Rafting and never tired of going down the river.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
To Don and Amba Stapleton, who taught me to create my yoga and showed me what love that endures looks and feels like. To Animas Valley Institute, whose training and guiding opportunities helped me to deepen my connection to nature and become a soul guide. To my friends who helped me become a better writer, to the New World Library, who helped me publish a book, to all those who fight to protect wild lands and species, and most of all, for the planet’ to my muse, dream-maker, and the holy Earth.

Website: www.rebeccawildbear.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wildbearyoga

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccawildbear

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RWildbear1

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rebecca.wildbear/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@rebeccawildbear4994

Other: Watch my TEDx talk – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWp9LiZwdMQ Join my Substack Newsletter – https://rebeccawildbear.substack.com/p/in-the-land-of-the-gods Buy my book – https://www.newworldlibrary.com/Yoga/WILD-YOGA Check out my Wild Yoga programs – https://www.rebeccawildbear.com/programs I’m also a guide with Animas Valley Institute – www.animas.org

Image Credits
The photographers were Chelsey Chapman, Allison Ragsdale, and Kelly Miranda MacNiven. Doug VanHouten created the collage I posted.

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