Embodied Ecology

A hands-on Food Forest Immersion | Northern Rivers | 4-8th Nov 2026

Reserve your spot
Reserve your spot

An exploration of land-based reconnection and renewal

Join us for five immersive days of hands-on learning, reflection, and land-based practice in the Byron Hinterland. Embodied Ecology is a regenerative agroforestry immersion designed to reconnect people to land, lineage, and living systems - bridging inner ecology with outer stewardship.

This course weaves together advancements in agroforestry, biodynamic land management, and traditional ecological knowledge through a combination of inspiring lectures, storytelling, and immersive hands-on activities, while also creating stillness through Tea Ceremony, observation, sit-spots, creative writing, and somatic practices. Together, we explore how tending land can also be a practice of tending self, community, and future generations.

What if tending the soil was also a way of tending the soul?

What you’ll receive

Participants will learn advanced principles of agroforestry design, including innovative techniques for soil health, planting, propagation, and forest management, while actively implementing a living agroforestry system and community medicine garden. Guest teachers will guide immersive hands-on sessions, grounding ecological regeneration in both science and ritual. The immersion also creates space for you to explore your inner ecology with practices that allow learning to be integrated through the body as much as the mind.

Outer Ecology

    • Core principles of regenerative agroforestry and food forest design

    • How forest systems function: layers, succession, relationships, and resilience

    • Designing perennial polycultures that support both people and ecosystems

    • Developing observational awareness and “reading the land”

    • Applying biomimicry and nature-based design to real landscapes

    • Learning how to work with natural patterns rather than against them

    • Foundational soil preparation and regeneration techniques

    • Hands-on experience with biodynamic preparations and compost teas

    • Understanding soil as a living ecosystem and relational partner

    • Reviving ancestral land-tending practices and ethics

    • Honouring Indigenous wisdom, including Bundjalung and Quechua perspectives

    • Exploring how traditional knowledge informs modern regenerative design

    • Basics of propagating perennial and medicinal plants

    • Establishing and caring for a community medicine garden

    • Long-term stewardship and maintenance of regenerative systems

    • Understanding abundance, seasonality, and sharing harvests

    • Experiencing land-based nourishment through local and ancestral foodways

    • Exploring food sovereignty and community resilience through design

    • Seeing land stewardship as a lifelong practice

    • Understanding how agroforestry supports biodiversity, water cycles, and climate resilience

    • Co-creating a living blueprint for beauty, justice, abundance, and regeneration

Inner Ecology

    • An invitation to sit with the medicine of Tea each morning in a 60-min silent ceremony. Awaken your senses, harmonise your spirit and a space of self reflection and connection.

    • A time to attune to the inner and outer landscapes through journalling.

    • Creative writing as a tool for ecological reflection and visioning

    • Dance, somatic and nervous system practices to integrate learning through the body

    • Deep tissue bodywork, rooted in presence, nervous system regulation and deep release.

    • Immerse in the natural surroundings on beautiful Bundjalung land.

    • There will be times throughout the immersion to create space and be in silence, to hear nothing but the bird song.

    • This is a time to deeply replenish your system from soil to soul.

The Guides

  • Timo Granzotti, lead teacher is wearing a beige wide-brim hat, sunglasses, a striped shirt, and light-coloured pants stands outdoors against a peach-colored wall near potted plants.

    Timo Granzotti

    Timoteo Granzotti is an ethnoecologist with over 20 years of experience in native botany, whole-systems design, agroforestry, and TEK (Traditional Ecological Knowledge). He is a Senior Designer and Instructor at the renowned Occidental Arts & Ecology Center, and is the co-founder of People of the Forest, an international impact organization supporting Indigenous food sovereignty and reforestation in the Amazon. His work helps weave communities with place, purpose, and the living systems that hold us.

  • Image of Nat Kelley

    Nathalie Kelley

    Nathalie Kelley is a Quechua-descended actress and storyteller working at the intersection of entertainment and education. Through film, television, and advocacy, she weaves ancient wisdom and living Indigenous technologies into modern narratives—using story as a tool for ecological remembrance, justice, and reconnection with the living world.

  • Brooke serving tea

    Brooke Brash

    Brooke Brash is the Co-Founder and Director of Imaginal, an online learning platform that focuses on the balance between nature and human healing. With 10 years in digital creative development, she assists groups and organisations with digital curation and online community spaces. She facilitates retreats, immersions, and gatherings rooted in presence, creativity and shared experience. Her work is centered with intention, in creating space to slow down, to listen and return to right relationship with the living world. Guided by Tea as a plant ally, she holds awareness and inner reflection through ceremony as an embodied practice.

  • Nina Karnikowski is one of our teachers at the immersion. A woman with curly blonde hair holding a pink lotus flower while sitting in a boat on a river, with blurred greenery and buildings in the background.

    Nina Karnikowski

    Nina Karnikowski is a writer exploring how travel can help solve social and environmental problems. With over 13 years’ experience reporting from some of the world’s most ecologically and culturally rich regions, her work weaves together storytelling, systems thinking and a deep respect for place. She is the author of The Mindful Traveller, Go Lightly and Make a Living Living, and contributes regularly to The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian Financial Review, Condé Nast Traveller and more. Nina also mentors purpose-driven creatives and leads writing retreats designed to cultivate clarity and connection.

  • Peter Windrim

    Peter is a nationally recognised biodynamic farmer, winemaker, and entrepreneur, and a former spokesperson for Australian Organics. As custodian of his family’s biodynamic farm and vineyard, Krinklewood, he has spent years blending creativity with ecological practice, working across organics, biodynamics, quantum agriculture, and regenerative farming systems. He now owns and runs Natural Order Wine (NOW), putting these principles into practice every day.

  • James Barrie

    James is an Ecological Storyteller dedicated to supporting everyday people to play a real role in the conservation and repair of Nature. Ecology is everybody’s business - it is our physical life-support system and the biggest mental health resource on Earth. The more alive and in harmony it is, the more faithfully that transfers to us as wellbeing. Our ecosystems are also intricately linked wth home-grown food productivity, providing beneficial organisms and wildlife through all layers of the food web. James is invested in empowering you to feel confident in your capacity to protect our ecosystems and plant good trees that will live for generations ahead. On this course, we will cover rainforest tree planting techniques, organic weed removal skills, revegetation design, and expand our understanding of local ecosystems and how we go about re-building an ancient rainforest fragment by fragment.

  • Richie Miller

    Richie Miller is a bodyworker and movement practitioner with a lifelong relationship to the body through dance, beginning at the age of seven. His work is shaped by years of physical practice and lived experience. Richie offers a balanced, client-centred approach to deep tissue bodywork, rooted in presence, nervous system regulation, and deep release. His sessions create space for emotional expression and embodied awareness, supporting clients to listen inward and reconnect with the intelligence of the body.

Where | Beloved Forest

Federal, New South Wales

For the first time, you’re invited to sleep on the land itself, inaugurating the newly named Beloved Forest - 41 acres of biodiverse country in the beautiful Federal.

Rest in our stunning Lotus Belle tents, where canvas and open air bring you into intimate communion with the land and its wild creatures. Wake to a chorus of birdsong. And when the day folds into dusk, lie back beneath a full blanket of stars — held in complete privacy, enveloped by the beauty of Bundjalung Country .

Composting toilets and outdoor showers will be available as well as indoor facilities for guests.

Designing a resilient future.

Thought-provoking TEDx presentation by Timo Granzotti, that offers a profound way to understand adaptation in the natural world, and how we too can adapt.

Immersion Details

Location: Beloved Forest, Federal

Date: 4-8th November 2026

Investment: Course only $2,000, Bring your own tent $2,500, Glamping Tent shared accommodation $3,000.

You’ll receive:

Extensive hands-on knowledge in Agroforestry, whole-food meals for the duration of the immersion, take-home course guide, certificate of completion, access to wellness activities: Tea Ceremony, Movement, Nature Walks, journalling and creative writing.

Reserve your spot

  • "Timo’s knowledge and ability to share information in a practical yet artistic way made this experience truly unique."

    Having the space to connect with like-minded humans at the Embodied Ecology Immersion was one of the most heart-warming experiences I’ve had in a long time. Being surrounded by people who care deeply — about nature, about each other, and about how we live — was incredibly nourishing. It reminded me that nature and community are what life is all about, and that taking care of the land and each other along the way is what gives life real meaning. Timo’s knowledge and ability to share information in a practical yet artistic way made this experience truly unique. Thank you.

    — Alexandra

  • "We need more spaces like this that blend hands-on, land based learning with deep ecological insight, indigenous wisdom, ritual and somatic practice."

    I really enjoyed being a part of the Embodied Ecology immersion. We need more spaces like this that blend hands-on, land based learning with deep ecological insight, indigenous wisdom, ritual and somatic practice. I've walked away feeling inspired about how tending the land becomes a path to tending myself, my community and connection to place.

    — Sunnie

  • "I left feeling hopeful and lots of inspiration to continue exploring this work."

    The Embodied Ecology immersion was a deeply nourishing and eye-opening experience for me. Learning with the land in community felt so healing. Sharing tea every morning, the powerful journal practices, amazing guest teachers, and not to forget the amazing food throughout all made it an incredible week that will stay with me for a long long time. The facilitators shared their knowledge with so much passion and care and the group quickly became a beautiful community to learn with. There was a lot of depth, but also so much joy and fun along the way. I left feeling hopeful and lots of inspiration to continue exploring this work.

    — Romy

  • “The revolution was irresistible!”

    The immersion was a magical and soulful experience. 🌺🌞🩷 I had recently arrived in the Northern Rivers, and the course was a beautiful welcome into a deeper relationship with land — and a meeting of kindred spirits. It felt like a true cross-pollination of wisdom, led by a diverse range of practitioners, weaving something deeply special and alive. 🐝🦋✨ I felt immediately at home in the group, held by a real sense of conviviality, warmth and connection. It was a rewilding of the senses, nourishing in so many dimensions… ~ Mind: talks from incredible ecological and systems thinkers ~ Senses: vibrant locally sourced food, massage, sauna and somatic movement ~ Soul: morning tea ceremony to awaken us each day, and a sacred fire ceremony ~ Soil: agroforestry and rewilding teachings, alongside meaningful teachings around Bundjalung foodways ~ Imagination: story, poetry and creative expression ~ And of course… style: dressing up, getting muddy, planting, dancing around! 🌸☺️ “The revolution was irresistible!” In this rapidly changing world, and in these liminal times, it feels especially important to come together — to feel, learn, love and inspire one another. 🙏🏼 We ate together, sang together, shared beautiful conversations, and lived very fully. It reminded me that ecological living is not separate from joy, creativity, nourishment and relationship; it can be deeply embodied, relational and alive. It was, in every sense, a true experience of embodied ecology. 🌿✨🌸🦋🌺🌊🌹🩷🐴

    — Florrie

  • "I made incredibly dear connections and departed feeling refreshed, deeply nourished and honoured to be a part of something so special."

    I don’t often write testimonials but I felt a special calling to acknowledge Embodied Ecology’s workshop. For me, this one was truly life changing. Embodied ecology’s incredible facilitators created the most inviting space that felt less like a classroom and more like a sensory and interactive playground! The offer to lead with the body or mind (or both) was always available, often ending in beautiful human expression and creative thought. Emphasis on the somatic! This was an important part for me, think saunas tea ceremonies and movement 🧡 I made incredibly dear connections and departed feeling refreshed, deeply nourished and honoured to be a part of something so special. Signing up was one thing, but I wasn’t prepared for how life would flow from that point. My felt experience set a life course that beautifully connected some of life’s puzzle pieces. I feel more knowledgeable and have a stronger sense of self in this ever changing world. If you are curious and want to learn more about our world, I could not recommend embodied ecology more!

    — Sarah

  • "I did the course at the beginning of the year, and I genuinely feel it helped set the tone for what has become one of the best years of my life."

    Embodying Ecology was such a beautiful experience, filled with interesting lovely people, incredible food and a really special energy. Their deep knowledge of nature and rituals allowed them to create a beautiful rhythm throughout each day. It felt almost like an album, moving from quiet, humming melodies into moments of joyful, celebratory energy, before softening again in the afternoon. So much love and care was poured into every detail, from the food to the spaces and the way each moment was held. I did the course at the beginning of the year, and I genuinely feel it helped set the tone for what has become one of the best years of my life. I came away feeling deeply nourished, but not through the usual things we associate with retreats and wellbeing. It was an internal nourishment that came through learning how to care for and nourish the environment. I found myself naturally becoming more attuned to the impact of my own consumption, even though that wasn’t something the course pushed or focused on. That awareness has helped free me from some of its pull. I feel more present, more appreciative of what is already here and less inclined to seek fulfilment through having more. The course also introduced me to entirely new ways of thinking about how we work with nature, including the idea of creating forests rather than pasture. The tea ceremonies were my favourite part. They had a profound effect on me, and I completely fell in love with them. I’m deeply grateful that I was part of this experience

    — Katie

  • This immersion is for anyone interested in learning how to tend land and grow food, whether you are already doing this, or feel you may one day. It is open to all levels of experience and welcomes those curious about agroforestry, regenerative living, and deepening their relationship with the natural world. Whether you are a landholder, gardener, grower, student, facilitator, creative, or simply feeling a pull toward more grounded, earth-connected living - you are welcome.

  • No prior experience is necessary, only an openness to learn, participate, and engage respectfully with the land and the group.

  • Yes. This immersion is a welcoming space for people of all cultures, ethnicities, and backgrounds. We honour diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive, respectful environment for everyone.

  • Registrations close on 28th October so we can prepare for the immersion.

  • Yes, you can start a payment plan at checkout.

  • Yes. Three organic, catered meals per day are included for the duration of the immersion. We will contact all registered participants in advance to accommodate dietary needs.

  • We will send a detailed packing list to all registered guests prior to the immersion.

  • Ballina (Byron Gateway) or Gold Coast (Coolangatta) airports for domestic travel. Brisbane Airport if travelling internationally.

  • You will need motor transport to travel from the airport to The Beloved Forest.

    • Ballina Airport: approx. 40 minutes by car

    • Coolangatta Airport: approx. 1 hour 15 minutes

    • Brisbane Airport: approx. 2 hours

    We suggest car pooling which we can arrange for you.

  • All prices are listed in Australian Dollars (AUD). If you are booking from overseas, your bank or payment provider will automatically convert the amount to your local currency.

Frequently Asked Questions