Reconnect to Your Wild Essence at the (Virtual) ReWild Festival
Welcome back beautiful being!
Today I am sharing a very special interview with one of my wonderful friends Christina Schooler.
She's been on the podcast before but this time we are talking about her wonderful live virtual event, the Rewild Festival.
I'm going to be a part of the Rewild Festival this year and I'm so excited and so honored that she asked me to stand as a facilitator.
The two topics I'm going to speak on are Feminine Form Manifestation and Shadow Work.
We will dive into the limiting beliefs, the fears and the doubts that might hold us back from living our best lives and manifesting with grace and ease.
We are going to dive into the intentions behind the Rewild Festival, how she's taking what used to be an in person event and making it a really authentic and transformative container online, given COVID and all things going on in 2020.
Christina is a really inspiring person to me and I'm really excited to for you guys to learn more about how this festival can really help you to shift into a place of feeling more authentic, true and seen as the woman you were designed to be in this lifetime.
Katie: So this is a festival that is your baby. Right? This is your project. Can you tell us more about how rewild festival got started and what the intentions are behind it?
Cristina: So it started when I was leading a retreat in West Texas, and I lead a lot of retreats in West Texas. And we were all dancing in small groups under the stars. And I kind of had this drop in my heart that was - what if I brought this to the city? Like what if I brought this to like a closer city landscape where it was accessible for people on a weekend or a day and it was bigger and more orgasmically magical. It started as an idea and it went from there. I just kept following that nudge in my heart even though there were obstacles and people like what the fuck are you doing? I don't understand what is this rewilding, and this is also three years ago when people were just kind of starting to catch on to what rewilding is. And so it started from there. The last two years I did it in person in Austin, TX. So it was a weekend event but this year, I'm transitioning to moving it online.
Katie: And for those who don’t know, what does rewilding mean?
Cristina: I express rewilding, especially as the work that I do, and its relation to women, is coming back to our true inner nature and a more cyclical way of doing business of connecting to our bodies of connecting to community and connecting to our emotions.
Katie: I think a lot of people hear the world the word “wild”, and they think out of control. It's almost a negative context. But we're kind of flipping that back into, No, this is just our true nature. Is that right?
Cristina: Absolutely. I think that rewilding is kind of the core of so many, secrets that have been hidden from us as a collective because the power of women and when we're connected to that archetype of wildness, it lends itself to a lot of potential.
Katie: Gotcha. Can you tell us more about your background, and how you how that fueled you into or funneled you into rewilding and the work that you do?
Cristina: For sure. So I started out working in corporate wellness, and did the whole traditional corporate wellness thing like many of us did. I had that pain in my heart like this was not for me. At the time, I was also in the midst of quitting alcohol. That's a big part of my journey of really connecting to my body. So I quit alcohol, quit corporate wellness job, and I booked a ticket to Alaska. I had no plans I just had to go. So long story short, I went there for two weeks by myself and backpacked around and had an awakening. Like a true spiritual experience, and realized that for the rest of my life, I was going to try to help connect women to their natural power. The most powerful I've ever felt in my life was being primal and raw and connected to nature.
Katie: Wow, that actually kind of made me a little emotional. It brought chills to the skin on my face. Did you book a one way ticket? Or did you just go with no plan and said, I'm gonna figure it out?
Cristina: No, I booked a ticket to get back. But I had no plans. Like I had very rough outlines - I booked a permit in Denali National Parks. I went backpacking, naked in the wilderness by myself. I had some experience, I grew up in a family that loved nature and really prioritized it but like many people, I lost it in my early 20s. I was committed to that corporate ladder and didn't have time for nature adventures.
Katie: It's so cool that you had access to that at an early age, and then got to rediscover it on your own. So who do you feel like the Rewild Festival is meant for?
Cristina: I feel like it's for women who are starting to understand that there is a different way of being in their day to day. I look at rewilding as practices and embodiment that affects your every day, although it's great to go out in the wilderness. And I do that all the time. That's really not the core of what this festival is about. It is about coming back to a more raw way of being. It's for people who are feeling like they're trapped, they're trapped in their body, or they're trapped in their relationships and how they relate to other women. Maybe they're craving a sense of real intimacy that cuts the crap gets to the wise wisdom very quickly. That's the type of container that this is. And it's for women who know that the future is also in small networks. The building of friendships and relationships that are so beautiful, that are in different cities that we can create this, this new economy.
Katie: Ooh, let's talk more about that. What do you mean by new economy?
Cristina: If you look at rewilding in the business setting, it's the principle that our future economy for women and men, but as it relates to what rewilding for women, it's going to be in small networks. Even if you look at social media, and I've been following a lot of trends and listening to a lot how it's changing - it's moving into small networks, because it's more authentic. It's more real, we get to do this and have real conversations. A big trend I see for the future of business and relationships, is the small networks that we build in very intentional ways. Like not networks of 50,000 people, but networks of more, a couple hundred people.
Katie: I love that. And where, where do you see that taking us? How do you see that serving us as women?
Cristina: I think number one, especially in the mental health, emotional health, and food industry in general. I see so many women committed to bringing more sustainability and more authentic relating, even to corporate settings. I do some corporate trainings, I think you do too, bringing authentic relationships and heart centered practices, to the way that we relate in corporate settings. What if our whole corporate structure changed to where we worked 20 hours a week and the other 20 hours, we were doing yoga, breath work, playing in nature - that's coming. I think it's really coming and talking to other people in the corporate space. They're looking for it.
Katie: Oh, I love that so much. Because I feel like I noticed when I was in the corporate world that there's this eight hour work day, and you're expected to show up but you don't need to necessarily. So I read this book, The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, and that was kind of what what sparked my interest in entrepreneurship. Because prior I was like, I'm just working, working, working. And this is what everyone does. And then reading that book, and he was like, No, the tasks that you have will expand or compress, to fit into the amount of time that you give them. So if you give them eight hours, it will take you eight hours to complete that. If you give yourself two hours, you will stay focus and you will do it and you'll get it done. So I love the idea of the 20 hours situation because then the hours that you're not working, you're fueling yourself, you're fueling your energy and your body and your mind and your spirit so that when you do show up, you are more focused, you're more productive, and we don't need to waste all this time wasting time.
Cristina: I think it's a reframe of what connecting to our body is. I think our bodies need to be a part of our work. It's like body first, business second. I just don't think that we can create heart centered, sustainable, profitable businesses, if we're not really connecting to our body first.
Katie: Oh yeah, totally. Because that's the road to burnout right there. Like I gotta go, I gotta hustle, I gotta grind. It’s a whole new paradigm that we're stepping into. And I love that you're hosting this festival to help support women. I'm so excited to be a part of it and to meet the women who are in this container. I know that the other facilitators that you have are just incredible women who are on these wild journeys of authentic expression and self discovery and all that. What can people expect from the facilitators and from you when they show up in this festival?
Cristina: Great question. So all of the sessions are designed to meet everyone's learning styles. So there's going to be part education, part somatic body connection, part small group breakouts. It's meant to give you a whole sphere of really adopting these practices. And these ways of being in a very tangible way. The way I try to create my experiences is how can I get people talking about it? And how can I get people feeling it in their bodies? Those are the two primary ways that people will get to experience the work of these facilitators.
Katie: Hmm, what is somatic experiencing? What is what does that mean for those who don't know?
Cristina: Yes, so that means being in more subtle energetic realms in your body. If you think about connecting to our body, a lot of people think like, Okay, I'm gonna eat food, or I'm going to go run a marathon or hike a mountain, right? Those are ways of being in our body. But somatic experiencing is more about subtle energy. Using your breath, using your chakra system, using your voice, even using the way that you relate to your own self, talk with yourself, your own self touch as well. It's really feeds the need to calming our nervous system. That's the key part of it, and it's a big part of my work is getting people to be in a state of safety and their nervous system.
Katie: I love it. How do you pick your facilitators? And guest speakers?