Kinship with Nature

A 6-week elemental journey into rewilding our hearts

Led by Sharifa Oppenheimer, beloved Waldorf educator and author of Heaven on Earth and A Litany of Wild Graces, Kinship with Nature draws from her newest book, Rewilding the Human Heart: A Journey of Reunion. Though not required for the course, the book is a powerful companion for those wanting to go deeper.

Rooted in decades of spiritual practice and inquiry—including Anthroposophy, Sufism, and a lifelong devotion to Nature—Sharifa invites you into an intimate, mythic journey of remembering who we are in relation to the Earth.

Together, we’ll explore the five elements—Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Ether—as living teachers and pathways to inner and outer harmony.

  This course is a sanctuary for anyone longing to restore a deep, loving connection with Nature.

2 live sessions

with facilitator Sharifa Oppenheimer

Awaken Connection.

Remember Belonging.

A 6-week elemental journey into rewilding our hearts

5 Recorded Modules

Released weekly, each exploring an element and realm

What You’ll Receive

  • 🌿 Live Welcome Class – October 15

  • 🔥 5 Pre-recorded Modules – Released weekly, each exploring an element and realm

  • 🌬 Live Closing Class & Community Conversation – November 20

  • 🌟 Engagement with Sharifa throughout the 6 weeks in shared space

  • 🌀 Lifetime access to all recordings and course materials

Is This for You?

This course is for you if you are:
✔️ Seeking peace, purpose, and presence through Nature connection
✔️ Longing for a spiritually grounded, heart-centered learning experience
✔️ Moved by Sharifa’s writing or Waldorf-inspired teachings
✔️ Curious about the wisdom of the elements as a guide to personal and planetary healing
✔️ Exploring ways to rewild your inner landscape in response to a changing world

What Participants Are Saying

“Sharifa's voice, her stories, her depth—it was like being bathed in warmth and wisdom. I feel renewed.”
— Kinship Participant

“This course reawakened a sense of sacredness I didn’t realize I had lost. I feel more alive and connected.”
— Course Alum

Course Overview

  • Course runs: October 15 – November 20

  • Live Welcome Class: October 15

  • Live Closing Class + Discussion: November 20

  • 5 Pre-recorded Modules released weekly

  • Watch at your own pace; recordings available for all sessions

  • Private online space for shared reflection and community

Meet Your Guide

Sharifa Oppenheimer is a lifelong educator, author, and spiritual guide known for weaving beauty, warmth, and depth into everything she offers. Her teachings emerge from decades of experience with Waldorf education, Anthroposophy, Sufism, and Nature reverence. Her most recent book, Rewilding the Human Heart: A Journey of Reunion, offers a profound call to return to our essential relationship with Earth—echoed in this course.

Join Us

This is more than a course.
It’s a remembering.
A reweaving of self and Earth.
A sacred step into kinship.

🔗 Register Now

In this course each week you will take a deep dive into one of the Elements and one of the Realms of Nature.  Through song, movement, story, breathwork, visualization, and deep internal inquiry, your innate connection to the natural world will flourish.  You will also explore the interplay of these very same beings within your own inner-sphere, within your heart, psyche, soul, and spirit. Weekly catalyzing activities will take you out into the green world where, in your own neighborhood and at your own pace, you can put into practice what is learned in class.  Weekly resources offer you links to videos, lectures, stories, and websites that will broaden and more profoundly inform your understanding of the class material.

When you participate in this online course you will learn about and experience:

  • Embodied relationship with the Elements and Realms of Nature

  • Song, movement, breath work, meditation, and guided imagery

  • Earth-Prayers

  • Honoring the foundation of minerals within our own bones and bloodstream as well as in kinship with our Stone relatives

  • Plants as integral participants in Earth’s water cycle and as the creators of the air we breathe ~ we will honor our fluid symbiotic relationship

  • Explore ways to live more closely into our “soft animal bodies”

  • Deepening into relationship with air, wind, and breath of Nature

  • Looking into the world of Nature with the eye of the heart recognizing the unseen beings that compose the ethereal web of life

THIS EXPERIENTIAL COURSE IS CENTERED AROUND
Five Modules


Live Introductory Circle

Get aquainted with the course and Deepening Practices. Listen and renew as we begin our journey together.

Earth Element and Mineral Realm

In this module, we explore the grounding, steadying influence of the Earth Element. We’ll discover ways to find earth as a touchstone in our daily lives, as well as ways to honor our Mother in the natural world. We also live-into the foundational nature of minerals ~ within our own bones and bloodstream, as well as in the world of the Stone relatives.


Water Element and Plant Realm

In this module we experience the essential nature of Water and her qualities of purification, revivification, accommodation, flow…the magic of water within the living systems of earth and within our own bodies and souls. We’ll inquire how to foster a balanced water element both within and without. We’ll also explore the Realm of Plants: recognizing plants as integral participants in Earth’s water cycle and as the creators of the air we breathe ~ we will honor our fluid symbiotic relationship. We will discover ways the plant world lives within our bodies and souls.


Fire Element and the Realm of Animals

In this module we will embrace our relationship with the Fire element, exploring fire’s qualities of purification, warmth, enthusiasm, creativity and more. We will learn how to create an inner “hearth” and “container” in order to work in dynamic, respectful relationship with fire, exploring ancient systems within the living Earth, that allow us to contain the intensity and creativity of fire. We’ll also step into the intelligence and agency of the animal realm, discovering how our furred, feathered & finned cousins live directly inside our brains and bodies, encouraging us to live more closely into our “soft animal bodies”

Session 4, April 18th
Air Element and the Realm of Human Beings

In this module we will breathe into the Air element, discovering vast spaciousness within our being and experiencing the “breath of Gaia” that moves through us. We will learn ways of using our breath to connect and listen to the wisdom that is carried on the wind and through the breath of Nature. We will breathe in symbiosis with all our plant mothers and our four-legged cousins. We will also look into the complex and often divergent capacities of the human being to move towards unity and harmony.

Session 5, April 25th
Ether Element and the Realm of the Unseen Beings

In this module, we will explore Ether as the integrative force that unites the Elements, Realms, and Beings into the coherent interdependent living being that we call Gaia. We’ll look into the world of Nature with the eye of the heart recognizing the unseen beings that compose the ethereal web of life and look internally to deepen our relationship with this integrative force within our body, heart, mind, and soul.

Live Closing Circle

Bring your questions, experiences, elemental nature dreams, and your cup of tea to this intimate Zoom hour with Sharifa and Kinship with Nature participants.

“As we journeyed through the elements and life forms, I found myself returning to childhood memories and uncovering new meaning. Kinship with Nature deepened my connection to the Earth and infused my spiritual path with wisdom and wonder.”

— Past Kinship with Nature Participant


COURSE INCLUDES 5 LIVE CLASSES and WEEKLY CATALYZING ACTIVITIES
1 BONUS OFFICE HOUR WITH SHARIFA
A PRIVATE GROUP SPACE TO SHARE AND BE INSPIRED

Weekly Classes are March 21st-April 25th
Class: 5pm-6:30pm Pacific Time/ 8pm-9:30pm Eastern time
Bonus Office Hour: April 11th,  9-10am pacific/ 12-1pm Eastern
Instructor: Sharifa Oppenheimer
Co-Facilitator: Elyshia Holliday

There will be a series of 5 live classes where you will receive instruction on connecting with Nature through the elements. Along with these sessions, there are weekly catalyzing activities that support the information and guide you in experiencing and expressing your unique connection with Nature.

  • The course consists of five complete sessions beginning March 21st. Each live class is an hour and a half in length.

  • Along with the live classes, each module will be recorded so you can watch it in your own time as well.

  • You can attend the live classes with Sharifa and Elyshia or stream the class recordings later from the course website and/or download audio files to your computer. It's very flexible and accessible for every lifestyle.

  • In addition to the 5 modules, you will also be invited to a more casual office hour with Sharifa so you can ask questions and share your experiences.

  • You will own the course and can access it at any time you wish. It is a powerful life asset that is yours forever.

  • The weekly catalyzing activities are what make the course experience particularly transformative.

  • If for any reason you decide the course is not for you, you have a full 60-day guarantee period to let us know and we'll send you a full refund.

After completing the course, you will have deepened your relationship with the Elements and Realms of Nature.

ENROLLMENT DETAILS

You can register here and we will send you an email with instructions and log-in details.

This program has a sliding scale with 3 payment options so you can choose the amount you want to contribute- $97, $147, or $197.

Proceeds benefit the programs and operation of ONE, a 501 C3 non-profit.
And of course, as we cultivate our connection with Nature, the Living Earth and all her beings benefit as well.

Ten percent of course revenue will also be shared with Lakota Waldorf School, an independent, non-sectarian, and tuition-free K-8 school. Lakota Waldorf School was founded in 1993 by parents from the Oglala Lakota Tribe.

MEET YOUR FACILITATOR

Sharifa Oppenheimer was the founding teacher of the Charlottesville Waldorf School and is the author of the best-selling book Heaven on Earth: A Handbook for Parents of Young Children and its companion workbook How To Create The Star of your Family Culture. She recently wrote With Stars in Their Eyes: Brain Science and Your Child’s Journey Toward the Self.

After writing extensively from her experience, wisdom, and love of young children, she has turned her hand toward writing about other aspects of profound connection. She has been a student of Sufism for many decades and has deep respect for other indigenous wisdom traditions which point humanity toward the sacred nature of the living earth. She offers Sacred Earth ~ Sacred Self gatherings that explore humanity’s biological and spiritual inter-being with our other-than-human relations. Her new book A Litany of Wild Graces: Meditations on Sacred Ecology (Red Elixir Press, April 2022) explores these themes through essays, poetry, and litany. The mother of three grown sons and grandmother to many grandchildren, she lives with her husband in an enchanted forest in Virginia.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Program Overview

  • What is Kinship with Nature?

    • Feeling and knowing that all living beings are our relatives and allowing this to inform our decisions and actions. Behaving like Nature is part of our family.

  • Where does the program take place?

    • Online, in your own home, and iin the Natural world you are part of

  • On what device can I access the content?

    • Computer, tablet and smartphone

  • How much time do I need to commit? 

    • 1 hour per week for the video sessions and 10 - 30 minutes per day for prompts

Who It’s Perfect For 💚

  •  Is Kinship with Nature right for you? Are you…

    • someone who loves Nature? 

    • a person who wants to feel more connected and joyful?

    • someone who wants to expand or deepen your relationship with Nature?

    • parent/grandparent/mentor who wants to share this experience with their children/students? 

    • a person who wants to get off the daily treadmill and remember the importance of creatively connecting with Nature?

If you answered yes to any of the questions above, then this course is for you!

 

Tuition and Guarantee

  • How much does it cost?

    • Sliding Scale tuition, see enrollment details above

  • How long will I have access to the course material?

    • You will have access to the course material for your lifetime.  

  • Do you offer a guarantee?

    • Yes!!  No-risk guarantee!!  We are so confident that this course is packed full of great content, that if for any reason you're unhappy, contact us within the first 60 days after your purchase and we will refund your full purchase price.

  • What kind of payments do you accept?

    • Credit card

    • PayPal

Last Little Details

  • How is this course different from free online resources?

    • This course goes into more depth and detail than our free online resources and provides individual guidance .

  • What if I have another question not listed here?