Connecting With Your Soul And Nature – Exclusive Interview With Jon Gottsegen
- Apr 18, 2023
- 7 min read
Updated: Apr 19, 2023
Jon Gottsegen is a Spiritual Director and Nature Connection/Forest Bathing Guide. He loves accompanying people as they explore the depths of their souls and their connections to Spirit and pointing out the places of Mystery and discernment in this process. You can see more about his work here.
Jon Gottsegen, Spiritual Coach/Nature Connection Guide
Introduce yourself! Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better.
At a dinner with some folks a while ago, we were asked to say what our passion is. For me, the answer was clear. My passion is holding people’s prayers. Strange? As a Spiritual Director/Companion and Nature Connection Guide, that is what I do. I create a space for people to connect with their soul, their yearnings, their prayers, and with Spirit in the world and in themselves.
I came to this work of Spiritual Direction over many years of developing my own spiritual path and voice. While winding down a long career in information systems, culminating with my last career position as the Chief Data Officer for the State of Colorado, I’ve pursued and refined this offering that resonates with my soul calling. It is how I can bring intentional relationship, sacredness and healing to others.
I bring all of my life experiences to my guiding and companioning work. For example, I can relate to with those who are in office environments and are yearning for greater spiritual discernment or mindfulness. I also bring in practices and wisdom I’ve been blessed with over the six decades of my life, a life that includes over 30 years of marriage and raising two sons, years of study and prayer leadership in my birth tradition, Judaism, as well as years of involvement in men’s work and men’s groups, along with earth-based spiritual practices. Other formal learning and training such as Forest Bathing Guide certification, Spiritual Director certification, training in guiding nature-based spirituality, and Wilderness First Responder certification are part of the package as well. As you might imagine, my earth-based practices and spiritual guidance comes out of a deep love of the more-than-human world. I’m fortunate to be able to experience the beauty that my home state of Colorado has to offer, and I try to avail myself of it through hiking, backpacking and other outdoor activities as much as possible.
What is your offering? How do you work with your clients?
I have two main offerings. The first is known as Spiritual Direction or Spiritual Companioning in some faith traditions. The second is Forest Bathing, or shinrin yoku, in Japanese. These are overlapping, and one often informs the other in my work, but they are slightly different.
Spiritual Direction is new to many people, although it has been around for a while. I describe it as guiding and accompanying people in discerning the Sacred in their lives and how they can be more attuned and attentive to it. I serve as a “holy mirror,” reflecting back the spark of Divinity in their words or actions. To put it in mytho-poetic terms, I like to say I point to the Mystery at the forks and turns in the trail of their life.
A session with me may include silence, contemplation, chanting if the mood arises, deep sharing by my client and deep listening by me, some visualization or guided journeying, prayer or just discussion. Typically, I open the session with some grounding and silence, so that we can tap into the wisdom of our souls. I’ll then ask the client to start sharing what is arising in their heart at that moment. I try to have my clients connect with the deep knowing and yearning that resides in their intuition and in connection to That Which Is Greater than us. If we’re outside, I’ll introduce nature connection practices. If we’re virtual, I offer nature-based activities but leave the client to pursue these between sessions. My sessions may likely include laughter or play as well. This work is rich, deep and sometimes hard, AND we should still laugh. Even in the difficult parts we should approach it with joy and love, and I believe, we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously. I do this work with groups as well as individuals. Group work can be particularly powerful as the members of the group support each other and help each other go deep into their spiritual process.
Forest Bathing isn’t a spiritual practice, per se. It’s a nature-based mindfulness practice to enhance emotional and physical well-being. On a Forest Bathing walk we slowly and intentionally to deliberately expand our sensory perception of nature. We engage in various practices to connect deeply to the land and ourselves. We can spend two hours in the woods and not walk more than a mile and still feel refreshed, full and more at peace. Research has shown the wellness benefits of this practice. It improves stress levels, heart rate variability, emotional states, cognitive function, and immune function among other things. It also promotes connection with oneself, the world and other people, which improves psychological states.
How does this work help people? Do they feel happier, more effective or more productive?
It’s important to mention that what I do is not counseling. Sessions can touch on vulnerable or intimate aspects of people’s lives, and I hold what is shared with me as precious and sacred and, of course, confidential. Although the spiritual work is called Spiritual Direction, I may not be very directive unless someone explicitly asks me for advice or suggestions. Rather I try to show people how they can do their own discernment.
If there is a single goal for my Spiritual Direction work with people, it’s that they feel more sacredness in themselves and their lives and that they present that to their world. I believe that my holding their sharing as holy offerings evokes that sense of sacredness and preciousness in themselves and empowers them to share it with others.
While my job is not to solve problems or overcome specific issues, such as anxiety or depression, with people, it can be a powerful supplement to or support for counseling. This work leads to greater self-awareness, more comfort in their own skin, more acknowledgement of themselves being in the image of the Holy, and then perhaps greater joy, freedom and devotion. People have felt a greater connection to themselves, others, the world and the Sacred and have deepened their own self-understanding in working with me.
My Forest Bathing work also enhances people’s sense of self and leads people to feel a greater sense of well-being. Forest Bathing has evidenced such benefits, and I have loved hearing from people how they feel calmer, happier, more connected and in more of a flow state after a Forest Bathing walk.
Tell us about a pivotal moment in your life that brought you to where you are today.
Like many people, there have been many moments in my life that have led me to this point. I could list the usual: marriage to a deep, loving, caring, thoughtful woman, two kids along with all the joys and trials of raising them (mostly joys), a career in information systems and subsequent pursuit of my soul's true calling of spiritual direction and nature connection. I could also enumerate the trainings and intensives or mentors, like my own spiritual directors, and even clients that have been transformative for my own spiritual and soul life.
That said, one event that ranks at the top for dramatic value, even if it wasn’t the most impactful in my life’s journey, was when my oldest son was attacked by a grizzly bear at the age of 17. He was backpacking in Alaska with an outdoor education group. Twelve years later he’s fine and doing well. Now I admit using this could be viewed as a shameless, sensationalist pull on the heartstrings, but this event was a source of so many lessons. A biggie was the nature of miracles in our lives. There are many rational, scientific reasons why my son is alive and healthy. These don’t make his survival any less miraculous though. How we view things is a choice, and I choose to view events like this with awe and wonder.
What continues to inspire you?
Many things inspire me. My clients inspire me. Seeing them digging deep into their souls’ yearnings, joys and heartaches as they obtain new understandings about their life is a great inspiration and joy for me and deepens my own spiritual practice. I’m in awe and feel incredibly blessed that they trust me in this process and with their vulnerability.
I love learning and trying new approaches to understanding and enhancing our life path. I pull them together in different ways to achieve new and greater awareness of our life’s journey, and I want to share these teachings with folks. My teachers and colleagues also inspire me with their wisdom and insightfulness. Of course, time with Mother Earth inspires me and fills me full of love and joy. Essentially, if I’m living the life that I aspire to live, my days would be or are filled with inspiration.
What kind of audience do you target your business towards?
While most of my spiritual direction work is for the spiritually inclined, I work with people who associate all faiths including people who don’t consider themselves at all religious. Perhaps a better way to put it is my work is geared for people who want to explore and deepen their appreciation of insight into their soul, Spirit, the Holy and how these all show up in the world.
My forest bathing work is good for anyone who enjoys time in nature and wants to enhance their sense of well-being through immersion in nature.
I look forward to contributing to Brainz Magazine with pieces that reflect what I have learned along my path and hopefully help, inform or inspire people in their own growth and self-exploration.
