Deep Nature Connection — Mentoring Foundation Training
Deep Nature Connection — Mentoring Foundation Training
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We are very happy to invite you to the 2nd Deep Nature Connection Mentoring Foundation Training!
🐦 Early Bird: 4 days for €270 until January 5th - Register by Feb 14th
After a really magical first course, we are opening our hearts and registration for this special journey. We invite you to join us in the beautiful landscape of Vale da Lua community for a one-of-a-kind journey! This is an invitation to an embodied experience—learning through the senses and awakening the deep connection to nature.
You do not need to have participated to the first edition to join!
What will we learn?
Rooted in the ancient cultural teachings of mentors like Tom Brown Jr. and Jon Young, this course allows you to dive deep into the world of deep nature connection.
🪺 Deepen your relationship with the land, build knowledge of place and sharpen your skills of awareness so you can create and lead the spaces you desire for others to evolve in.
🧒🏽 Get inspired with activities, games and cultural models that aim to support the development of the human’s innate relationship to the natural environement.
Together with 6 experienced guides, we will explore:
✨ Bushcraft & Fire making
✨ Survival skills
✨ The Language of the Birds
✨ Foraging and making primitive food
✨ Storytelling
✨ Forest Games
Who is this for?
This is a chance to grow as an educator, parent, mentor, or guide
● Educators
● Nature Guides & Instructors
● Parents
● Youth Mentors
● Homeschoolers
● Anyone who wants to open up to this world
The Details
⛺ Accommodation: Camping under the stars
👨👩👧 Family: A parallel Kids Camp will be available (based on demand)
🥗 Food: 3 healthy vegetarian meals with local products per day
👩🏽🍳Voluntering possibility:
If you would like to join this special course but your current budget does not allow it, we are happy to offer a Work-Exchange option.
This involves being part of our kitchen team for two days—helping out and cooking together with the team. In exchange, you will receive full participation in the course for the remaining two days, completely free of charge.
Please note: This opportunity is available only after a personal conversation to ensure a mutual fit.
To apply, please contact Yara.
🗓️ Registrations: Early bird until Jan 05 / registrations closing on Feb 14 !
Your Guides
I am Yara Shaham, I live in the peaceful Vale da Lua community of Alentejo, Portugal, a place surrounded by friends that I call home. In my early twenties I began my journey with The Garden Keepers organization, mastering the Deep Nature Connection approach (drawn from the lineage of Tom Brown Jr.) and completing Waldorf teacher training to deepen my work even further. For sixteen years I guided children in Israel, preserving ancient earth‑culture knowledge, hunter‑gatherer skills, and sharing my passion for foraging and herbal medicine—a craft I have taught for over a decade. Since moving to Portugal, I collaborate with my longtime friend Rei to lead the Guardiões da Florestachildren’s group and run adult foraging workshops, weaving together community, tradition, and hands‑on learning. Together we are also bringing our shared vision to life through the “Wild Ways” project. I believe that immersing oneself in the wild awakens a primal memory—a deep connection to the source and the ancient spirit of the medicine woman—guiding me to share the land’s gifts with anyone eager to listen.
I am Melina Feuvrier-Etevenard, a regenerative farmer and permaculture enthusiast who thrives on crafting, cooking, and the art of wilderness awareness. I have cultivated my skills in communities, youth camps and regenerative farms across Europe and wilderness shcools in the United States working with both youth and adults. In Portugal, I co-founded Kambium.Earth to desing and facilitates experiences for earth-based learning and the building deep relationship with the land, its inhabitants and deeper connection to Self. Driven by a passion for nurturing both ecosystems and cultures, I guide myself and others in aligning human lifestyles with life’s natural cycles with the inspiration of the 8 shields cultural mentoring model.
As one of my focus being intergral health, I love cooking and using wild‑foraged edible plants to create vitality‑rich, nutritionally balanced, and delicious meals and playing with primitive cooking methods.
I am Joshua Glass, a deep‑nature‑connection mentor working with adults, youth, and families. My training in Portugal and the United States focuses on wilderness survival and the 8‑Shields cultural mentoring model for nature connection. I guide students to build inspired, lasting relationships with the Earth through hands‑on survival and naturalist skills—fire making, shelter building, primitive cooking, wild foraging, awareness, animal tracking, and storytelling. I facilitate a variety of program types, including adult, family, and youth wilderness programs, earth‑based rites of passage for boys, and father‑son wilderness experiences. I’ve also served as the Land Steward for Traditional Dream Factory in Portugal. My purpose is to create conditions for modern people to experience deep, direct personal relationships with the natural world and to thrive by surviving within the ever‑changing rhythms of nature.
I am Rei Segali, I am 38 years young and for the past 8 years I have been living with my partner and our children in the “Vale da Lua” community in Alentejo, regenerating the forest, the gardens and the connections between members of this place. I am a foraging guide, I have learned from indigenous people in the middle east, and others along the way. I an also a keen birdwatcher and a nature guide. I have been holding the “Bird language Workshop” for a few years and guiding the young kids in the “Guardiões da Floresta” forest activities with Yara. Iam here to connect people back to the earth, back to the warm hug of mother nature.
I am Tom Kaltenbach, a forest engineer and landscaper with 20+ years of outdoor experience. I founded Woodland Survival School in 2016 and love to work with kids and adults equally.
I am Vanessa Aires, a psychologist, facilitator, and consultant in creativity, well‑being, and human development. I specialize in collaborative methodologies and regenerative approaches, designing and facilitating programs for organizations, communities, and educational contexts, integrating practices of creative attention, applied ecopsychology, and the development of socio‑emotional competencies. Based in Portugal and throughout Europe, I support individuals and teams in expanding consciousness, presence, and creative capacity.