One on One Nature Based
Guiding into Wholeness
"Jaime is reliable, motivated, honest, humble, and inspired."
~ Bill Plotkin, PhD, founder, Animas Valley Institute, author of Soulcraft
Walking Together
A Guide to Wholeness
What is life asking of you now?
What is ending?
What is beginning?
This is not an offer of counselling or therapy or coach.
Nor am I interested in helping people become better adapted to a culture that is lost and depleting both people and the living Earth.
My work is about something much older. It begins with a simple trust: that every human being carries an innate intelligence that knows something about the life they are here to live. This intelligence cannot be manufactured or taught. It belongs to the psyche, to the body, and to our ancient relationship with the living world.
Most of us have simply forgotten how to listen.
My role is not to give answers.
It is to help create the conditions in which this deeper knowing can become audible.
Together we listen for the questions beneath the questions.
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What is trying to happen here?
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What is life asking of you now?
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What is ending?
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What is beginning?
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What have you not yet grieved?
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What keeps returning?
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What does your body already know?
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What in nature is trying to teach you?
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What would become possible if you stopped protecting the person you think you are?
These are questions to live with.
Modern culture teaches us to become successful, productive, confident and endlessly self-improving. It rewards certainty, speed and control.
This way of working is an apprenticeship to an nature based understanding that we humans move through life stages.
Contrary to the dominate stories of progress these life stages at different times as us to attend to an inner teacher. It may ask us to;
To slow down.
To grieve.
To relinquish an identity that has carried us for years.
To spend time in uncertainty.
To become more honest.
To remember that we belong to something much larger than ourselves.
One of the deepest practices of our work together is learning to recognise the difference between the voices we have inherited from culture and the quieter movements of our own deeper nature.
Nature is a guide.
Across cultures, rites of passage recognised a truth. They understood that becoming more fully human requires us, at times, to let something die so that something truer can emerge.
This understanding sits at the heart of how I work.
Together we create enough safety that you no longer need to defend yourself.
Together we cultivate enough honesty that life itself can begin to show you the next step.
I trust that the intelligence of your own psyche, held within the larger intelligence of the living Earth, already knows.
Our work is simply to learn how to listen.
Perhaps this is what all genuine guidance has always been.
This integration of spirit, self, and soul is not abstract. It is practical, grounded, and urgently needed in our time. Through this work, we begin to reclaim what it means to be fully human—capable of living with purpose, integrity, and in service to something greater than ourselves.
TESTIMONIALS
"ReWilding, apprentice to the Soul was not just a container for exploration, it was a remembering.A remembering of what it means to be human, to be held, to be undone. It was a space held by skilled faciliatators, where one was invited to play with the ideas of psyche, human development, archetypes, poetry, story, dance, lodge, and Soul. Jaime wove together a space and place for deep exploration.
It was, at times, confronting, as all the best and necessary journeys are. So much aroha for the Vision of Jamie and his team toward more whole humans, community, and world.
-Ben Clark, Outward Bound Instructor May 2025
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The ReWild Weekend for Men was a dynamic and engaging experience that initiated a deep dive into my inner fire, truth, ancient wisdom and my connection to nature. Jamie is a very experienced professional who embodies this work. He is an energetic facilitator who is able to bring his personal insight, reverence, and a lot of fun to empowerment, growth and connection.
September 2025
Ngā mihi
Stephen Evans
Principal - Hōhepa Hawkes Bay
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The kaupapa that Jaime has created is a very unique offering in an Aotearoa context. Jaime offers with humility a profoundly decolonial space. In the activist spaces that I spend a lot of time in, we often talk about the need for tauiwi (and especially Pākehā) New Zealanders to deal with our own inherited trauma and prejudice, but there are few examples of what this work might look like on a deep level. Jaime's mahi takes seriously questions of tauiwi identity, and relation to place, which are often trivialised - but which are necessary to deal with if we want any kind of just and ecologically reconnected future in Aotearoa.
Healing our relationship to earth, to spirit, to our own ancestry, to our bodies - re-embodying ourselves - is not easy mahi to facilitate. I was very impressed with the way Jaime facilitated the group. His mix of poetry, song, and humour kept our group of very different personalities grounded and open, even through experiences which were very challenging for some of us. It was also very important to have Bill and Lois present as our elders for the week. They brought a different wairua to the space and I'm very grateful for their openness and generosity of spirit.
I'm looking forward to seeing the Centre grow over the years, and to join you all on future kaupapa.
Ngā mihi,
James Tremlett
Who is Walking Beside You?
Jaime’s journey is one of resilience, deep listening, and a lifelong commitment to personal
transformation. Born in 1973 into a bewildered and often challenging family environment,
Jaime grew up in the midst of industrial growth, consumerism, and societal pressures to
conform. Like many, he carries both gratitude for what was given and wounds from what was
missing. As a teenager, he felt lost—confused by his changing body and the powerful forces
of nature rising within him. His father, carrying unspoken wounds of his own, struggled to
express love and manage anger. Their home was a mix of love, arguments, and
misunderstanding—a reflection of so many families navigating their own unspoken histories.
Yet, something inside Jaime kept him moving forward. He found solace in nature—climbing,
walking, and seeking refuge in wild places. It was in the mountains, surrounded by the
wisdom of the land, that a seed of healing began to grow.
A Lifelong Learner and Guide
Jaime graduated with a degree in Social Work and moved to Aotearoa (New Zealand), where
he trained with Dr. Gillian Tasker to teach Holistic Health and Outdoor Education. His
passion for authentic growth led him to the New Zealand Rites of Passage Foundation, where
he has volunteered for over 20 years. Through this work, Jaime has witnessed the power of
life transitions—rites of passage not just for teenagers but for people of all ages. As he says,
“Rites of passage don’t create the journey—they mark it. Mystery is what carries us forward,
and to meet that mystery, we must do the inner work.”
A Path of Inner Work
Jaime’s own inner work took him through years of Vipassana meditation, and later, deep
study with Tarchin Hearn at the Wangapeka Retreat Centre. He became the Resident
Practitioner at a monastery for three years, completing over a year of guided retreats and
seven months of solitary retreat. These experiences were far from easy—they demanded
honesty, courage, and the willingness to face his wounds. They also revealed to him a path
toward wholeness.
Along the way, Jaime earned a Master’s Degree in Education, focusing on transformative
learning practices. He spent six years training in Open Floor movement, learning how to truly
inhabit his body after years of living “top-heavy” in his mind. He discovered the importance
of embodiment, playfulness, and joy—elements that now flow through the retreats and
programs he leads.
Teaching, Guiding, Creating
Since 2010, Jaime has been leading retreats and long-term learning programs, combining
movement, ritual, creativity, and deep psychological work. He co-founded the School of
Immeasurable Wisdom and Compassion and Bodhi Seeds, offering residential retreats in both
Aotearoa and Brazil—some lasting up to three months. He has also collaborated extensively
with teachers like Geordie Jahner, diving into the creative arts as a path of meaning-making
and empowerment.
In 2018, Jaime’s journey led him to the work of Bill Plotkin and the Animas Valley Institute.
What began as curiosity became a deep exploration of nature-based soul work. Jaime now
hosts Animas Valley retreats in New Zealand and continues to study and train in these
profound, earth-centered practices.
Nature as Teacher
Jaime believes that true personal growth is not just about meditation or self-
improvement—it’s about finding our wildness, reconnecting with the earth, and remembering
how to live as mature, authentic humans in right relationship with all life. Nature, he says,
knows how to grow us into who we are meant to be—if we pause long enough to listen.