In Conversation with Nicole Bosky

   

We got in touch with Nicole founder of Primal Gathering, over the summer months to find out more about her initiative; 'an environmentally, socially and psychologically regenerative culture design studio that restores people, forests and ecosystems all over the world'.

As one of the runner up for this year's Kindred Spirit Awards for the Community Initiative category, we dive into the story behind this brilliant community that has been created, and the relationship between land and us and how we can heal each other.     Grace Cummins: What is Primal Gathering's story? Nicole Bosky: Primal Gathering was born out of an ecological and empathy crisis that I experienced first - hand with my own struggles with being in the world, as we know it. Like many, my childhood in some ways inspired this journey, as I grew up with little to no healthy structures in place. I lacked the support or guidance on how to ground myself, eat well, establish discipline, be creative, commune with nature, or what it meant to grow up in a healthy, compassionate environment, where you are loved regardless of how you show up. This led to an adolescence of confusion and unconscious self-harm, where after encountering a burnout in 2015 I sought wisdom to self - teach myself many of the principles we share during our events today that I collected through my travels. As I explored different cultures and traditions it became apparent to me, that changing my own behaviour came with much more ease when done in community. So when I eventually landed in Portugal to turn a new page, I began to organise community gatherings bringing people together to learn tools to support self and community empowerment through nutrition, yoga, and other quirky modalities. These gatherings laid the foundation for what became Primal Gathering, a project to support people in reconnecting with their 'Primal Nature'. Then, on the 17th of June 2017, Portugal, one of the largest producers and exporters of eucalyptus pulp, experienced 156 different wildfires that burnt down hundreds of thousands of hectares of eucalyptus monocultures, killing 115 people. The sentiment in the country was one of absolute devastation, a loss of trust in the government to safeguard their ecological needs in the face of capitalistic incentives, and a deep sense of helplessness. I too struggled with what felt like a hopeless and devastating context. Perplexed on what I, as an individual could contribute to shaping a new reality I sat with my feelings of helplessness, exasperation, and immense discomfort, and it eventually led to a spark of hope amid the prevailing despair. I eventually came to an important question that would shape the future of Primal: 'What might happen if we could create the right conditions to support a deeper sense of health, belonging, and care while exposing people to nature-based activities, as to create a transference of empathy with the natural world'? From that point on, what had begun as ‘Primal’ supporting people to return to their Primal Nature, became ‘Primal Gathering’, with a mission to leave both people and places better than how they were found through land regeneration actions. It would achieve this through writing a new narrative around climate. One of communion, hope, reverence, and care, where through collectively practicing self-care, community care, and environmental restoration and regeneration, in rhythm and ritual, people depart with a newfound love for nature. The projects evolution came and continues to grow as a consequence of deep listening. Listening to what is emergent, following the pace of nature, observing where it wishes to grow, repeatedly asking what is in service to support life? This way of working feeds into how we operate as a team, and the health and adaptivity we embed in how we work is inspired by how nature orients. As a team we actively embody resilience to support the flexibility and social security that beech trees offer to the forest through the sharing of our resources and energy. We embrace empowered participation to inform our next steps the way various points of a mycelium network feeds information back into the system, and we trust each other to deliver key elements of the gathering while leaving space for our own creative expression through mirroring the way ants work autonomously when building their structures. While I may have initiated the project, Primal Gathering has become an entity of its own. A living, breathing organism that constantly teaches us how to be better guardians of nature, as much as we guide its evolution. As a team, we are forever students of what the project desires from us, our participants, and the natural world.     GC:  Why is Primal Gathering's mission so important? NB: Our mission is to co-create spaces globally, where people feel truly nourished, safe, secure, and loved as they interact with the natural world. Through learning nature-based skills, and feeling held in community, a powerful sense of empathy and love often surfaces that then transfers toward the environment, and plants a seed of commitment towards protecting it. The planting of this seed, is why Primal Gathering’s mission is especially important. In practice our work addresses two critical issues: a lack of awareness of tools to support wellbeing and land regeneration, and the under - resource landowners who struggle to restore their land. Our growing disconnection and paralysis in relationship with nature, is often exacerbated by feelings, such as sadness, fear, anxiety, and powerlessness, being interwoven with the reality of climate change with 60% of respondents extremely worried about the future. This reality irrefutably suggests that we require a seismic shift toward regeneration as a culture. That said, in a society that 'increases the motivation for self-preservation which further promotes individualist ideals' (John, T Cacioppo, 2017) we often lack the care, thoughtfulness and conscientiousness needed to nurture our environmental surroundings.Primal Gathering solves for this by providing a context for cultural transformation.     GC:  Why do you believe that the path to changing the world comes from our capacity to change our behaviours? NB: This cultural transformation is rooted in a belief, that the changes that are required from us, are deeply entrenched cultural ones, and begins with us. Our choices are directly connected with who we believe ourselves to be, and where our motivations and intentions stem from. If a large proportion of people don’t feel worthy and unsafe, they are more likely to respond to the world from a place of fear, and safeguarding tendencies, rather than plentitude and care. The ‘not enoughness’ disease that permeates our advertising airwaves increase our grasping for ‘moreness’ at the cost of what we already have. Instead of being here, now, present and grateful for the air we breathe, the water we drink or the food we grow, many of us are convinced that the next hit of dopamine we summon from our next purchase will ‘fix’ what we internalise as broken or not enough within ourselves. Immersed in a highly transactional landscape also influences the way we show up in our relationships, reducing the way we navigate them through the lens of give and take, and resentment when we don’t feel ‘equally met’. En masse, we believe the way we treat our environmental landscape is a reflection of our lack of regard, care, generosity and respect for ourselves. Acknowledging deep-seated change is what is required from our generation, this means we need to actively create the right conditions to re - wire the neuroplasticity in our brains and practice new habits together to shift a collective pattern away from transactionalism, and individualism. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to change, shift its mental models, and adapt to new experiences - which can happen at any time in life. That said changing patterns, according to Andrew Hubberman, and his extensive scientific research come either through fear, or appreciation and love. I won’t be the first person to tell you that fear is a mechanism of control we have come to know incredibly well, with a vast majority of people becoming increasingly desensitised and numb in its presence. This is why at Primal we choose appreciation and love, as it offers softness through compassion that many of our ‘inner children’ deeply need more of, but may have been starved of in their childhoods. At Primal we believe everyone, and every one’s inner child deserves the kindness, thoughtfulness, attention and care nature offers us, to be internalised and truly experienced. If we can offer ourselves the comfort, care and love that we ache for, our ‘not enoughness’ becomes satiated with 'enoughness’. Transforming our hunger to dominate, take, fix or purchase at a transactional level, into spaciousness for reciprocity, and a more unconditional way of giving, selflessly. Real change, begins with us, and then reverberates into our landscape by how we hold ourselves and respond to the world. If we are able to offer ourselves the same grace a tree offers a rotting apple on it’s branch, we will respond similarly to our environment, and actively feel drawn to protect and care for it. 'Primal Gathering is so much more than any other retreat or festival I have attended, it felt more like a way of life, putting community at the forefront. It taught me so much about the joy and satisfaction of providing a service for the greater good'. - Nick, 2024 Primal Guardian. Our project also addresses local landowners' and farmers' challenges of being under - resourced with people to make their larger regenerative projects materialise. Matthia, Permalab’s landowner we worked with shared 'a big piece of land needs a lot of care and it’s amazing to have the fire of support, especially from young people'. Primal gathering helps local landowners by providing concentrated human power to achieve results within a short time frame for their bespoke needs. Some examples of Primal’s impact is the successful planting of 5,000 trees and 1000 vegetables and fruit trees, naturally building raised beds where as a consequence of our work €3,000 of revenue continues to be made as the food grown is now sold to members of their community among others. Our goal is to act as a bridge, that inspires a movement of people to act the way bees do when they pollinate flowers in spring. This work inspires curiosity and care that emboldens guardianship of our collective environment, where we actively share our resources (energy, time, money) with local 'flower' regenerative projects as an act of service to the collective. Our future lies in training local ambassadors in other parts of the world to impart our cultural values, through locally interpreting the regenerative needs. Our role is to catalyse a local movement where knowing our land neighbours, and offering a compassionate helping hand becomes second nature.   GC:  What is the connect between connecting to nature and our psychological wellness? NB: Service, and the act of selfless service, is a tradition embedded in many Eastern practices and is a way of orienting towards each other, which in many parts of the world we’ve lost. Nature embodies this act, as everything works in symbiosis with one another, working together without the expectation of reward. A tree is a brilliant example of this whereby it provides shade from the sun, fruit from its branches, wood for the fire or to build your house. Whatever occurs, it continues to grow, is present, and is generous with its love. The love, and act of service that nature provides, informs how Primal Gathering builds its containers to support its participants in practicing these principles. We embody resilience and empowered participation through practicing deep uncomfortable honesty with ourselves and others, adapting our context to support emerging needs. We aim to be consistent with our word and actions to cultivate integrity as to rebuild trust into the field, and collectively seek ways to be in selfless service to each other and the natural world through land based activities. The practicing of these values inspire the embodiment of a regenerative culture we long for and desperately need. Primal Gathering in essence is an opportunity for people to rest when the conditions are set, with a predictable and safe container of rhythm and ritual, and permission to bring their full selves into a space. Instead of feeling alone in acquiring tools, establishing discipline through cadence and experimentation, Primal offers a space where tools (such as mindfulness, nutrition, and land regeneration) are accessible and presented through practical educational opportunities to learn how to implement them. It's also worth noting that Primal Gathering hits 8/9 Blue Zones (minus the alcohol), which has famously taken off as a recipe for centenarian living, so it looks like we might be onto something!   GC:  What is your view on the power of collective action? NB: But changing on our own, as we know, is not an easy endeavour. Behaviour change comes with much more ease when done in community. Especially when we are surrounded with people with whom we can practice behaviours that we with to emanate into our relationships and the world. Doing meaningful things for ourselves, and each other, together provides a deep sense of belonging, and offers us to be held accountable in a way that is encouraging and enriching. Suddenly the pain of waking up early to honour our mindfulness needs and incorporating a new discipline feels more easeful when you have a friend to join you. Information that once felt out of reach, around nutrition or how to plant vegetables in your garden might feel more accessible as you are surrounded by people who might hold wisdom that you don’t yet know, and can learn, grow and build with. Rooted in our tribal antecedence, building in community contexts with clarity of purpose, can inspire incredibly magical things to occur. Often the purpose itself doesn’t matter as much as the commitment to the journey of realising it as a collective, and who we become as we move towards it. At Primal Gathering our collective action is rooted in land regeneration. This collective mission enables us as a group to align on a focus, learn the tools necessary in order to materialise these needs, and work together, come rain, shine, tension or misunderstanding until we complete this action. What we’ve come to learn, is that with clear direction, the obstacles that might stand in the way are all ‘figure-out-a-ble’. Everything that could possibly stand in our way, get overcome as we sit more deeply in our collective why. A collective why and a shared value around a collective action is what strengthens movements when unavoidable obstacles surface. How we mitigate and navigate those obstacles in a compassionate ‘way’, is the root of what makes Primal Gathering, Primal Gathering. When we bind together, focus our efforts, we communicate that what our time and energy is spent on matters. Our voices, and actions can not be silenced if they ripple out into a strong movement that knows who it is, what it stands for and the direction of travel its moving towards. Isolated efforts are supportive of change, but when a catalyst of micro movements occur, we (as people) stand in our power and disrupt existing narratives by communicating that who we are, and how we use our time, is meaningful and worth paying attention to. Primal Gathering’s movement, although seemingly small is part of a greater holistic regenerative movement that works cross - collaboratively between our individual efforts to strengthen the network. This winter Primal Gathering will be launching it’s pilot Ambassador network programme, where we will train local ambassadors in new countries around the world to locally interpret our model to support their local ecosystems. Change, starts small. It begins with an isolated effort, strengthen’s in community and the power of community strengthens with clarity of purpose, and direction. You don’t have to look very far for widespread examples of this like with veganism. Primal Gathering’s purpose is to spread environments where people feel truly nourished, safe, secure, and loved while interacting with the natural world so that they might come to love and protect it. One day, we hope that the seeds planted in Portugal and UK to protect our natural world, can emanate and echo into other parts of the world. So that we, too, can make caring for our own nature synonymous with caring for our local environment - a mainstream phenomenon.   To read more In Conversation with ... articles click here.