Become intimate with the immanence and transparent to the transcendent
A Vision Quest is a multi-day nature immersion in which you spend at least three nights alone in a wild place, usually while fasting. This solo time allows deep, intimate contact with the wild within and all around us — a chance to gain perspective on our conditioned identities and social masks, and a felt sense of who we truly are. Held in a psychologically safe yet undomesticated environment, a vision quest is a sacred technology for death-rebirth: a profound reset, renewal, and return to our authentic place in the world.
We gain perspective on our ego-personas, conditioned identities and social masks — and a felt sense of who we truly are, as a soul-centred adult finding our authentic place in the world.
The whole quest is a liminal twilight zone for allowing an intimacy with the immanent and transparency to the transcendent. Two movements of one awakening: dropping fully into the lived, sensed texture of life, while becoming porous to the spiritual depth running through it. To dwell in this twilight zone is to work with Nature's Wisdom.
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My vision quest experience at Springwood was deeply transformative. From the beginning, Giles prepared for and cared for me with extraordinary attentiveness. He created a gently held and masterfully crafted container in which I felt safe enough to surrender to the experience and to meet what was waiting for me there. The forest itself is magical - alive with intelligence, mystery and possibility - and Giles is the perfect guide into its depths. I emerged from the vision quest with greater clarity, a deeper connection to myself and the living world, and a renewed commitment to the change that is mine to serve. Mostly I emerged with an embodied sense of joy moving through my veins.
Alessandra Marazzi
Executive Coach & Co-founder, MYCO
Working with Giles has taken me deeper than I knew it was possible to go. I came to him at a turning point in my life — standing at the threshold of my second half, asking what truly matters — in my work, and in my life. For much of my life, I had kept two worlds carefully separate: the immanent and the transcendent, the rational and the sacred. Without quite realizing it, I had sealed a door within myself. Giles—gently, precisely, and within a space of complete safety—has helped me re-open it. I had touched this depth before—in moments, in glimpses. But those openings were fleeting. What Giles offers is something rarer: the ability to live from that depth, not just visit it. I now understand that the capacity to work consciously with the living field—the imaginal, the energetic, the wisdom that nature carries—is not mystical indulgence; it is what the leaders of our time genuinely need. To sense what is emerging, to bring it into form, to act from a deeper intelligence—this is what Giles helps you embody. Recently, at Springwood, I undertook a vision quest—spending several days alone in the forest, with nothing but myself. As the days passed, something in my body began to shift and settle. The boundary between myself and the forest slowly dissolved — not in a moment, but through the alchemy of simply being that has stayed with me since.
Makiko Sugishita
Founder, KaleidoForest