Rewild yourself - (re)calibrate your senses for contemporary survival
Dates
25-30 August 2025
Plusa virtual preparatory meeting before.
Places
MonViso Institute campus, Serre Lamboi, Ostana, Valle Po, Italy
Content
Rewild yourself - recalibrate and sharpen your senses to form essential resilience skills - for contemporary survival: This immersive program is designed in an outdoor mountain setting and emphasizes an embodied exploration of all our five senses in relation with personal resilience. It invites participants to reflect on living with nature (as nature) while drawing lessons relevant to contemporary survival. The program balances experiential activities, group reflections, and personal journaling to foster deep sensory integration, practically applicable skills, and systems awareness.
This course is a conscious journey into our inner nature in connection with our outer nature and the ecological, non-human nature. We are living systems, cell-based biology, we are part of nature - yet we face a “human-nature gap” where we generally don’t act as nature would by creating conditions conducive to life. What have we lost from what we knew in the past, and what do we need to learn a new for being resilient in tomorrow’s times?
In “modern” societies, we have forgotten the essential skills of sensing our inner self, our body, and nature around us. We lost the feeling for physical and mental health signals of our body especially in times with higher complexity. We forgot the sensation for oscillating with nature’s micro-seasonality in our own daily patterns. We grew apart from nurturing healthy ecosystems, and from understanding ourselves as integrative part of nature.
Immanence is the idea that the essence of nature, life, or even a spiritual quality is not external or transcendent but is deeply embedded within and around us. In this course, immanence can be a guiding principle that encourages participants to see themselves as an integral part of nature—not separate or apart from it.
Permeability is about managing boundaries between self and the environment. It refers to the degree to which we allow the environment to influence us—absorbing its sensations, energies, and messages—and, conversely, how we project our own energies into nature.
Impermeance as a skill: in some contexts, cultivating a certain "impermeance" (or protective boundary) can be valuable, especially when considering the overstimulation or toxic influences of modern urban life. This doesn’t mean isolating oneself completely but rather learning when to be open and when to hold one’s center.
In this course, we will consciously explore our inner and outer senses, and use various types of technical sensors, of embodied practices, to re-calibrate our own senses.
For example, a carbon dioxide sensor in a room indicates the threshold from a healthy to an unhealthy concentration, with direct effects on cell respiration and possible virus vectors. By using at a CO2 sensor in a room for a while, we develop a new sensing of air quality and when to ventilate.
A pulse measure device tells us about how in our sleep we react to stresses or alcohol, or how we perform during high physical activity. After some use, we gain a better feeling for daily health and our bodily reactions.
By practicing photography, either with a macro or tele lens, we begin to see and embrace details around us, and toggle from details to the bigger picture by zooming out. By flying a drone, we sharpen our senses for zooming out and seeing life from a distance, in relation, and gain transferable insights for dealing with complexity and stress.
By analysing the cell structure of wood with a microscope, by working with types of wood through carving, by sanding and oiling types of wood, we gain a new sensation of something so ordinary yet so rich as wood - accompanied by knowing tree species, by sensing communication with trees, by feeling when wood for a fire is dry enough through touch and smell. We learn to professionally sharpen our tools such as a carving knife, and through this embody to mindfully use “things”, such as knives, in ways to serve us better e.g. in wood carving or food preparation, and to stay sharp longer.
By measuring water parameters such as electric conductivity or pH, by assessing biological indicator species in a river, we build a new relation with water.
Repairing a furniture, by understanding the skills and time it takes to create a “simple” daily use furniture, we grow our technical handcrafting skills to be able to repair, and our mindfull use of “things” for objects to last long.
Senses, sensors, dimensions, topics and skills we will explore through multi-sensual practices, such as:
Orientation & the sensory landscape
- Maps and orientation with natural signs, with a classic compass, and with GPS
- Forests, tree species, communication, types of wood
- Water quality assessment with technical sensors and qualitatively
- Air quality assessment with technical sensors and qualitatively
Seeing & hearing – the visual and auditory realms
- Sounds of nature
- Wildlife observation
- The macro lense - cell-based biology through the magnifier
- Drone flying for the View from Above and analogies for dealing with complexity
- Finding fokus through photography
- Star gazing
- Silence
- A solo night out
Handcrafts & technical survival skills
- Tools and handcrafts - building with wood
- Repairing furniture or an electric plug
- Knots - essential survival
- Firewood and making a fire
- Sketching
- Composting, building healthy soils, growing food
Physical activity & meditative types of flow
- Endurance sport and heart rates
- Rock climbing with focus and trust
- Calisthenics in a natural outdoor parcours
- Yoga and stretching
Time & rhythmn
- Micro seasonality
- Daily and annual rhythms of nature
- Our adaptive capacity in oscillating with our environment
Touch & smell – the tactile and olfactory dimensions
- Smelling healthy soils and plant species after rain
- Foraging local edible plants and wild herbs
- Preparing food
- Preparing herbal teas
Taste & internal sensations – nourishment and inner compass
- Mindfully consuming food and tea
- Silence and nature observation
Integration – embodying nature in modern life
- Questioning habits
- Napping and sleep rhythms
- Dealing with stresses
Through many of these activities we will journal our experiences through writing, sketching, mapping, photographing, or voice recording. We will dialogue and reflect about how hands-on survival skills compare with modern reliance on processed, prepared, single use food, objects, services, life styles, habitual rhythms, and find pathways for our own contemporary resilience building and thriving.
What you learn
We explore meanings of “wild”, “wilderness”, and “rewilding”, with an ancient and contemporary angle. We meet our inner and outer nature through diverse practices, activities, expressions, sensors, senses, and reflections.
Eventually, we sharpen our senses and (re)calibrate them as inner and outer resilience tools. We embody “classic” and contemporary survival skills for building organic emergence - the inner capacity to befriend uncertainty.
We train embodied sensory awarenes by engaging all five senses through hands-on, mindful experiences in nature.
We integrate nature and modern life by reflecting on how ancient, nature-based wisdom can inform contemporary survival and well-being.
We practice mind-body-spirit connection by developing deeper self-awareness through reflective exercises, movement practices, and dialogue.
Some of our learning objectives are:
Sensory calibration: Heighten awareness of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell through direct contact with the mountain environment.
Embodied living: Cultivate practices that ground us in the rhythms and wisdom of nature.
Reflection & integration: Explore the intersections between “living with nature, as nature” and the demands of modern survival.
Resilience & adaptability: Develop practical skills and mental frameworks for thriving in both natural and urban settings.
Structure
We explore our inner and outer nature in daily varying activities, mostly physical, mostly outdoors, oscillating with weather and conditions. We practice to go with the flow, and detach from usually unquestioned “normal” day patterns, but listen more to outer and inner nature.
Recurring daily activities as the plannable structural part of an otherwise emergent flow of the day are a physical start in nature with a trail run, a yoga practice, a silent sunrise with a herbal tea, or calisthenics. We disperse for an individual breakfast with space for shared or individual time. There will be a main activity before and after midday, with a lunch packed en route for days out, or prepared individually/together onsite. We dialogue around a joint meal at dinner time in a local restaurant or at the open fire on campus, with shared reflection times. We may be out for a day of hiking and climbing and for a night’s solo, another day we spend on the MVI campus.
For whom?
This course is designed to foster an intimate, experiential relationship with inner and outer nature, encouraging participants to recalibrate their senses, draw insights from the wisdom of ancient practices, allow for technical sensors to calibrate our senses, and translate these into tangible skills and mindful practices for contemporary life. Participants need to be physically fit for moving a day outside in mountainous terrain, in any weather, and feel mentally ready to be challenged. We will enjoy our journey of rewilding!
DRRS elective?
Yes, counting for 2 ECTS if accompanied by a written-graphical report with a potential selection as a DRRS blog publication, plus your personal learning reflection, to be submitted after the course.
Preconditions
MOOC#1, MOOC#2.
Proof of accident insurance.
Costs
1450€ course participation fee, including day snacks and drinks while on campus, and two social dinners at the fire and the outdoor pizza oven. Accommodation and further food are to be added depending on your local choice. DRRS CAS alumni, students and those in need are eligible for a substituted course fee.
Accommodation and food
Option 1: Glamping on the MVI campus in a private tent.
Option 2: The Foresteria hostel in Ostana, 10min walking distance, with spacey, private bunk beds and two bathrooms for two sleeping rooms (8 people max per room). It has a kitchen where you can cook.
Option 3: A single or double room in the Agriturismo or Rifugio Galaberna.
Travel
By train or Flixbus to Turin, by train to Pinerolo, where we pick you up (at fixed times).
Application to participate
Please apply with a short statement of motivation, a short resume of your previous education and work experience, your age, proof of MOOC participation, and your expectations by email to apply@monviso-institute.org by 1 July 2025.