What is Tending the Relationship Garden?
Tending the Relationship Garden is an experiential relationship course that helps couples understand their relationship as a living ecosystem rather than a problem to solve.
Many relationship courses focus on teaching communication skills or conflict strategies. While those are valuable, they can be difficult to remember or apply when emotions are running high. This course takes a different approach. By learning through nature-informed principles, you'll begin seeing familiar relationship patterns in new ways—often softening the grip of shame, blame, and defensiveness, and making space for greater curiosity, compassion, and understanding.
Rather than simply learning concepts, you'll experience them through guided imagination and visualization, mindfulness, somatic practices, reflective conversations, and nature invitations that help you embody new ways of relating over time. Research consistently shows that we remember and integrate what we experience far more deeply than what we simply read or hear.
The course unfolds across six guided relationship journeys, each offering practical exercises, reflections, and opportunities to bring what you're learning into everyday life. Like returning to a cozy cabin after a day of exploring, the course becomes a place to return to whenever you need grounding or perspective. Over time, the forest itself becomes another kind of teacher, helping you continue discovering relationship wisdom in the living world long after the course has ended.
Who is it for?
This course is for couples who find themselves returning to the same tensions, misunderstandings, or patterns and long for a different way of understanding what's happening between them.
Rather than asking "Who's right?" or "Who's wrong?", we'll practice seeing your relationship as a living ecosystem—one shaped by patterns, needs, histories, stories and conditions that can be understood, tended, and transformed together.
This course is a great fit if you:
find yourselves having the same conversations or conflicts over and over again
want to move beyond shame, blame, and defensiveness toward greater curiosity and compassion
are open to slowing down, reflecting, and experimenting with new ways of relating
enjoy learning through experience, imagination, creativity, and nature—not just information alone
want practical tools that can be integrated into everyday life
believe healthy relationships, like healthy ecosystems, are cultivated through care, attention, and practice rather than perfection
You don't need prior experience with mindfulness, coaching, creativity, or personal development. All that's needed is a willingness to be curious, to practice together, and to explore your relationship with fresh eyes.
Meet Your Guide
This course grew from a lifelong curiosity about relationships—why humans long so deeply for connection, and yet so often find themselves caught in patterns of conflict, misunderstanding, and disconnection.
Over the past decade, that curiosity has taken me through many landscapes. As a counsellor, I found myself returning again and again to practices rooted in mindfulness, somatic awareness, communication, and imagination. These approaches transformed the way I understood healing and relationships, and they continue to shape my work today. At the same time, the questions I was asking kept growing.
During a season of burnout, immigration, and learning to share life with my partner, I found myself spending more and more time outdoors. My relationship with Kirien has deeply shaped this part of my work—not only through what we have learned together about love, difference, conflict, and repair, but through his ecological and land-based orientation. Through him, I began to question the way much of my earlier somatic training stopped at the boundary of the individual body, and to become more attentive to the ways people are continually shaped by place, land, culture, community, and the wider living world.
Living in Europe—and eventually settling in Norway—gave that learning a landscape of its own. Long walks through forests, mountains, parks, and changing seasons became more than a way to clear my mind. They became places of quiet observation, reflection, and unexpected learning. I started noticing that many of the patterns I was trying to understand in relationships were already present in the living systems around me.
What surprised me most wasn't that nature had new answers. It was that nature invited different questions. When we see a struggling tree, we rarely ask what's wrong with it. We become curious about the conditions surrounding it—the soil, the light, the water, the seasons, and the relationships that sustain it. I found that this same shift softened the grip of shame and blame in human relationships, replacing judgment with curiosity and opening space for something new to emerge.
Tending the Relationship Garden is the result of those threads being woven together. It brings together years of personal and professional experience with what I have learned through relationship, migration, and countless hours spent walking, wondering, and listening to the more-than-human world here in Norway.
That same evolution has also led Kirien and me to begin offering co-facilitated relationship counselling together, bringing two practitioners into the room with couples and multi-partner relationships to create more space for presence, attention, and curiosity about what is unfolding between people in the moment.
My hope is that this work becomes something like a cozy cabin for your relationship—a place to return to whenever you need to slow down, reconnect, or find your footing again. From there, the forests, parks, coastlines, and changing seasons around you gradually become companions, offering fresh perspectives, gentle reminders, and new ways of understanding your relationship long after you've stepped back outside.
What the course includes
Across six guided journeys, you'll explore your relationship through an engaging blend of teaching, practice, reflection, and nature connection. Together, they create a learning experience designed to stay with you long after the course is over.
Inside you'll find:
6 guided relationship journeys that explore connection, curiosity, communication, cultivation, and your relationship with the outdoor environment around you.
36 guided practices that weave together imagination, mindfulness, somatic awareness, reflective conversations, and creative exercises to help new ways of relating emerge through direct experience.
7 Nature invitations with guided audio downloads that encourage you to continue the learning outdoors, discovering relationship wisdom through forests, parks, changing seasons, and the living world around you.
A beautifully designed 145-page Field Journal filled with guided reflections, journaling prompts, conversation practices, worksheets, and space to record your own discoveries.
190+ reflection questions designed to spark meaningful conversations and transform everyday experiences into deeper understanding.
A carefully curated collection of practices drawn from years of supporting couples, adapted into an ecological framework that helps soften shame and blame while cultivating curiosity and compassion.
Personalized support to help you settle into the course, stay engaged, and navigate any difficult terrain that arises along the way.
The Cabin Cupboard, a growing collection of additional resources, communication tools, and practical guides you can return to whenever your relationship needs a little extra support.
Journeying Beyond the Cabin, helping you continue noticing relationship wisdom in the world around you so the learning doesn't end when the final lesson is complete.
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Begin by slowing down, reconnecting with your senses, and remembering the wonder that still lives within each of you. Through practices in presence, curiosity, and sharing what you notice, you’ll begin imagining what you hope to grow toward together. This journey includes…
Connection practice: Five senses
Curiosity practice: Remembering wonder
Communication practice: I notice...
Cultivation practice: A visit to the future
Nature invitation: Exploring the senses
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Explore the memories, values, needs, and ways of communicating that form the roots of your relationship. You’ll practice seeing beyond assumptions, expressing your experience with greater clarity and care, and becoming curious about where your deepest values align and differ. This journey includes…
Connection practice: Our cozy place
Curiosity practice: Describe without naming
Communication practice: Nonviolent communication
Cultivation practice: Values exploration
Nature invitation: Sensing below the surface
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Discover what helps each of you feel grounded, understood, cared for, and able to flourish. Through sensory connection, active listening, and ecosystem care, you’ll learn to tend your different rhythms, needs, limits, and seasons as part of one shared relationship ecosystem. This journey includes…
Connection practice: Grounding together
Curiosity practice: Waking up the hands
Communication practice: Reflective listening
Cultivation practice: Ecosystem care
Nature invitation: Reciprocity and care in nature
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Look beneath the surface of conflict to the stories, perspectives, histories, and hidden maps shaping what each of you experience. You’ll practice loosening certainty, revealing your interpretations with humility, and seeing difference as an invitation into deeper understanding. This journey includes…
Connection practice: Heart centering
Curiosity practice: Eyes of a tree
Communication practice: Revealing the story
Cultivation practice: Hidden maps
Nature invitation: Noticing the seen and unseen
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Relationships thrive because of the conditions that support reconnection, repair, and growth. In this journey, you’ll practice finding shared rhythm, learning from different perspectives, repairing after rupture, and turning your hopes and values into living agreements you can tend to together. This journey includes…
Connection practice: Breathing together
Curiosity practice: Different ways of knowing
Communication practice: Ecosystem repair
Cultivation practice: Creating the conditions
Nature invitation: Connecting with plants
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Notice the well-worn trails your relationship has followed, appreciate what is already nourishing you, and choose what you want to carry forward. You’ll create a sanctuary for continued practice and imagine the wider ecosystem your relationship might help shape - through the ways you love, repair, welcome, and care.
Connection practice: Our cozy sanctuary
Curiosity practice: Recognizing the trail
Communication practice: Sharing appreciation
Cultivation practice: Our thriving ecosystem
Nature invitation: Sensing nature across time
Tending the Relationship Garden Course
NOK 1 490 (~140 euros)
Learn together at your own pace
Move through the six journeys together in your own time, returning to the practices and reflections that feel most useful for your relationship.
Includes:
Lifetime access to the complete online course
Six guided relationship journeys
36 experiential practices with 4.5 hours of guided video and audio
Digital Field Journal with reflections and conversation prompts
Option to upgrade to include private support sessions later if needed
A little breathing room: If you try the course and it doesn’t feel right for your relationship, you can request a full refund within 14 days of purchase.
Best for couples who: enjoy self-paced learning and want the freedom to explore the course without scheduled coaching.
Want more support? The course is included at no additional cost when you work with me individually or with Kirien and me through Co-Facilitated Relationship Counselling.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Nature gives us a different language for understanding relationships. When we look at a struggling plant, we rarely ask, "What's wrong with it?" We become curious about the conditions surrounding it—the soil, the light, the water, and the wider ecosystem. This same shift can soften shame and blame in our relationships, helping us ask new questions and discover new possibilities. Over time, the forest becomes more than a metaphor—it becomes a companion that continues teaching long after the course is over.
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Altogether the course includes about 4½ hours of video and guided audio, but most of the experience happens away from the screen through conversations, reflections, and practices you explore together. There’s no set pace, so you can take as much time as you need with each journey. I recommend stretching the course out at least over 6 weeks at a minimum but it could theoretically be done as an intensive in a shorter amount of time, or stretched over several months if there is less time. This all really depends on your relationship, unique needs, and learning styles.
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Many relationship courses focus on teaching communication techniques or conflict strategies. Those can be incredibly valuable, but they can also be difficult to remember in emotionally charged moments.
Tending the Relationship Garden takes a different approach by helping you see your relationship through the lens of living ecosystems. Nature offers a language that often softens shame and blame, making it easier to approach recurring patterns with curiosity rather than defensiveness. Instead of simply learning new ideas, you'll practice experiencing your relationship in a different way.
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That's very common. Couples rarely begin with exactly the same level of excitement or readiness. You don't need to agree on everything before you begin—only to be willing to explore with curiosity and respect one another's pace. Many of the practices are designed to create safety rather than pressure.
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Absolutely. You don't need any experience with hiking, nature, mindfulness, or personal development. The natural world simply becomes a way of seeing relationships differently. Whether it's a walk through a forest, a house plant, a city park, or simply noticing the changing seasons, the invitations are designed to be accessible wherever you are.
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You'll have lifetime access to the online course and resources after the group has ended, allowing you to revisit practices whenever your relationship needs a little extra care.
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Every relationship is unique, so I can't promise a particular outcome. What I can promise is a thoughtful, well-supported process that helps you understand your relationship in new ways and develop practical capacities for navigating it together. Like tending a garden, healthy relationships grow through ongoing care, attention, and practice rather than quick fixes.
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Yes. In fact, many couples find the course most helpful before patterns become deeply entrenched. Just as we tend a garden before the plants begin struggling, relationships benefit from ongoing care, curiosity, and attention—not only during times of crisis.