Meet Robyn
Creator and Owner of Sacred Earth Grove
With a keen interest and connection to nature and spirituality, I have been on a journey of deepening my animistic and ancestral traditions in my spiritual practice for 25+ years. As an English person now living in Canada, with Scottish Gaelic roots, I am always seeking to deepen my connection to English and Gaelic cosmology.
These studies have taken me (and continue to take me) through the fields of Restorative Justice, Eco-therapy, Nature Connection, Counselling, Social Work, Herbalism, Forest School education, and Celtic/Gaelic spiritual traditions.
My offerings to the world combine witnessing and building community through circle-keeping, relating to the consciousness of nature, and helping others raised in industrial culture create an earth-based spiritual practice.
My spiritual practice is most easily defined as Gaelic Polytheist/Animist, which encompasses my devotion to ancestry and ancestral cosmology (Gaelic and English), and the necessity of relating to nature.
I practice by spending deep, reflective time in nature, dream-work, ritual, revering deities and ancestors, celebrating seasonal festivals, adhering to natural cycles/moon phases, learning about the history of my people and the ecology of the various lands I have lived upon (across the UK and Canada).
I am also a Forest School instructor, and mother to 3 sweet daughters, who are always teaching me more about living in balance!
Areas of Study
BA: Environmental Studies and Women's Studies, University of Victoria, 2011
Chartered Herbalist, Dominion College, 2014
Youth and Family Support Worker Certificate, Vancouver College of Counsellor Training, 2015
Ecotherapy Level 1, The Earthbody Institute, 2015
Wild Woman Project Circle Keeper, Wild Woman Project, 2019
Social Service Worker Diploma, Northern College, 2021
Circle-Keeper, The Restorative Center, 2021
Other areas of study:
HeartMath Facilitation, HearthMath Institute, 2019-2021
Scottish Highlander/Gaelic culture with Hidden Glen Folk School, Michael Newton
Ogham and other Irish spiritual traditions with the Irish Pagan School
Ancestral Medicine and Animism with Ancestral Medicine, Daniel Foor
Nature Connection with Project Nature Connect, Michael J. Cohen
Other areas of training that were influential, but that I no longer practice:
Celtic Shamanism
Druidry (Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids)
Reiki Master level
Shamanism (Institute of Shamanic Medicine)
About Sacred Earth Grove
Sacred Earth Grove offers classes, programs, monthly circles, and one-on-one support focusing on earth-based animist practices, which are all are founded upon these core principles:
1. Practical Frameworks and Skillsets that really work
Sacred Earth Grove's classes and programs teach skills that really work and make a difference in people's lives. These skills are most often grounded in science and/or ancestral wisdom traditions, plus years of personal and professional experience. We understand that spirituality is practical, and involves on-the-ground techniques and tangible change.
2. Empowerment and Competency
We seek to empower people with skills that increase proficiency in spiritual development. So many of us in industrial culture feel disconnected and unsure of our own abilities in this area, and we want to normalize a basic level of competency around earth-based spiritual practice.
3. Ancestral Wellness and Lifeways
We seek to reclaim our own complex and multilayered lineages in coming back to earth-based relationships. Situating ourselves within ancestral identities contextualizes our work and is powerfully healing.
4. Animistic, Earth-Honouring Worldview
We ground our work in an animistic cosmology that sees all things as sentient and intelligent, and we seek to come into deep kinship with the natural world.
5. Holistic Wellness Focused
Our work promotes natural principles of balance and wellness in all areas of life, and sees health as a a full spectrum of well-being, not just absence of disease.
6. Creativity
The work we do is highly creative. We realize that the language of spirituality and nature is creative, mythic and symbolically meaning-laden, and we seek to relearn this language to build relationship.
7. Spiritual and Energetic Scope of Practice
Our scope of practice is in the area of spirituality and energetic work. We do not diagnose mental or physical health conditions or practice in these fields, even though we recognize that they are all interrelated.
8. Community-Based Practice Promoting Socio-Ecological Justice
We recognize the necessity of community-based practice and the overwhelming need to incorporate social and ecological justice work into spiritual practice. Our work is culturally sensitive, anti-racist, and intersectional. It also promotes ecological integrity and tending to our local environments. We value ecological literacy, encouraging people to know the land and other inhabitants of where they live.