Join us for five immersive days of hands-on learning, reflection, and land-based practice in Puglia, Italy. Embodied Ecology is a regenerative agroforestry immersion designed to reconnect people to land, lineage, and living systems - bridging inner ecology with outer stewardship.
This course weaves together advancements in agroforestry, biodynamic land management, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge through a combination of inspiring lectures, storytelling, and hands-on activities, while also creating stillness through Tea Ceremony, observation, sit-spots, creative writing, and somatic practices. Together, we explore how tending land can also be a practice of tending self, community, and future generations.
What you’ll receive
Participants will learn advanced principles of agroforestry design, including innovative techniques for soil health, planting, propagation, and forest management, while actively implementing a living agroforestry system. Guest teachers will guide hands-on sessions, grounding ecological regeneration in both science and ritual. The immersion also creates space for you to explore your inner ecology with practices that allow learning to be integrated through the body as much as the mind.
Outer Ecology
Agroforestry & Food Forest Foundations
Core principles of regenerative agroforestry and food forest design
How forest systems function: layers, succession, relationships, and resilience
Designing perennial polycultures that support both people and ecosystems
Observation & Biomimicry
Developing observational awareness and “reading the land”
Applying biomimicry and nature-based design to real landscapes
Learning how to work with natural patterns rather than against them
Soil Health
Foundational soil preparation and regeneration techniques
Hands-on experience with compost teas
Understanding soil as a living ecosystem and relational partner
Traditional Ecological Knowledge
Reviving ancestral land-tending practices and ethics
Exploring how traditional knowledge informs modern regenerative design
Plant Propagation & Stewardship
Basics of propagating perennial and medicinal plants
Long-term stewardship and maintenance of regenerative systems
Harvest, Food & Community
Understanding abundance, seasonality, and sharing harvests
Experiencing land-based nourishment through local and ancestral foodways
Exploring food sovereignty and community resilience through design
Designing for the Future
Seeing land stewardship as a lifelong practice
Understanding how agroforestry supports biodiversity, water cycles, and climate resilience
Co-creating a living blueprint for beauty, justice, abundance, and regeneration
Inner Ecology
Tea Ceremony
An invitation to sit with the medicine of Tea each morning in a 60-min silent ceremony. Awaken your senses, harmonise your spirit and a space of self reflection and connection.
Sit-Spot Practice & Creative Writing
A time to attune to the inner and outer landscapes through journalling.
Creative writing as a tool for ecological reflection and visioning
Movement
Dance, somatic and nervous system practices to integrate learning through the body
Bodywork
Deep tissue bodywork, rooted in presence, nervous system regulation and deep release.
Nature Walks & Salt Water Pool
Immerse in the natural surroundings on Terra Elaya land.
Space & Silence
There will be times throughout the immersion to create space and be in silence, to hear nothing but the bird song.
Organic Whole food Meals
This is a time to deeply replenish your system from soil to soul.
The Guides
Scott Gallant
Scott is a relational ecologist and permaculture designer who holds the land of Elaya in his heart and hands, everyday planting, pruning, and walking carefully. He brings nearly two decades of land care experience to the project, believing strongly in the ethos of “carry water, chop firewood.” He spends half the year in Costa Rica, and works globally designing regenerative farms through his company Porvenir Design.
Emilia Cianci
Emilia is a transformative guide, healing arts practitioner, ritualist, writer and educator, whose work weaves together the world of inner transformation, spirituality, embodiment, deep ecology and the imagination. She holds 1:1 spaces, guides immersions, courses and pilgrimages that support the work of re-ensoulment, healing and reconnection to the subtle, the land and our own sense of belonging. She is the founder of The Way of the Soul and co-founder of Terra Elaya, a sanctuary where people can reconnect to the sacred and where the future is stewarded.
Timo Granzotti
Timo is an ethnoecologist with over 20 years of experience in native botany, whole-systems design, agroforestry, and TEK (Traditional Ecological Knowledge). He is a Senior Designer and Instructor at the renowned Arts & Ecology Center and is the co-founder of People of the Forest, an international impact organization supporting Indigenous food sovereignty and reforestation in the Amazon. His work helps weave communities with place, purpose, and the living systems that hold us.
Brooke Brash
Brooke is the co-founder of Embodied Ecology and Imaginal - an online learning platform that focuses on the balance between nature and human healing. She facilitates retreats, immersions, and gatherings rooted in presence, creativity and shared experience. Her work is centered with intention, in creating space to slow down, to listen and return to right relationship with the living world. Guided by Tea as a plant ally, she holds awareness and inner reflection through ceremony as an embodied practice.
Cosimo Terlizzi
Cosimo is an Italian artist. After completing his civil service in the nature reserves of Torre Guaceto and Le Cesine in Puglia, he began experimenting in Bologna from the mid-1990s with various media, from photography to performance, installation, and the moving image. Over time, his work came to encompass an interest in the landscape, fauna, and flora. He has exhibited in national and international museums and festivals. He returned to Puglia in 2015, where he co-founded Lamia Santolina together with Damien Modolo. Lamia Santolina is a research space that investigates the ecosystemic relationships of the environment. It is situated between Ostuni and Carovigno, in Puglia, within a contemporary rural setting that brings together creative research and traditional farming culture.
Terra Elaya
Puglia, Italy
Situated on three hectares of land in southern Italy, among old olive and pomegranate trees and just a few kilometers from the Mediterranean Sea - Elaya offers a space for deep inquiry and practice of new and old ways of living that are animistic and in devotion to the sacred. Elaya is a 17th century home that was recently renovated with all the modern needs while keeping the essence of the past alive. There are five bedrooms, all with ensuite bathrooms and two bell tents for accommodation.
Bridging inner ecology with outer stewardship
Immersion Details
Location: Terra Elaya, Puglia, Italy
Date: 19th-23rd May 2027
Investment: Information coming soon.
You’ll receive:
Extensive hands-on knowledge in Agroforestry, whole-food meals for the duration of the immersion, take-home course guide, certificate of completion, access to wellness activities: Tea Ceremony, Movement, Nature Walks, journalling and creative writing.