The invitation
There has never been a better moment to step outside.
Yes, the weight is real: economic pressure, ecological grief, a society that forgot how to be together, friends and family not always in vibrant health. Are we the most indoor generation in history? Our phones are engineered by thousands of intelligent people whose job is to keep us mesmerised and diverted from the present moment. That was never a personal failing. Your attention is valuable, that's exactly why so much has been spent capturing it.
The walking month is all about the art of carving out time to be in the present moment.
There are other nets than the internet out there.
Join the walking month!
The story
My name is Holly Gurling. I love walking, and walking for a month at a time is one of the best things I have ever done for my spirit.
I once walked from Canberra to Sydney along a coastal trail. It took about five weeks with rest days, and it changed my whole approach to life. I felt like my life was in black and white, and after a few weeks a sliver opened up in the monotony and I began to see technicolour through there. That feeling stayed with me.
It inspired me during the lockdowns, when I lived in Victoria in Australia, unable to walk far: I designed a month of walking I could do from my own front door. I could do four hours of walking a day, four days a week. In addition, I ate real food only, removing dairy, sugar and processed carbohydrates from my plate. I was so impressed by what happened to my body I was inspired to deeply learn about nutrient-dense foods, permaculture and eventually to be the project lead for the tropical food network in Far North Queensland. Where I worked with farmers and on tropical fruit farms.
With a group of friends around the world, I used a wonderful citizen science tool called iNaturalist to document the fauna, flora and funga I passed by. Weekly voice calls where a small group of us shared what we'd found in our own local places.
Something unexpected happened. The phone, the thing I was trying to escape, became a useful bridge. First we used it to notice nature together. Then, week by week, we needed it less. By the final week I was ending my walks with the phone off and my shoes off, walking barefoot, completely alone, and much more at ease. I also found I could dance more easily, as a meditation.
This feeling, safer in solitude and at home in the elements, is what this walking month aims to offer.
How it works
One month. Four walks a week. One live call a week. A group walking with you across the world.
Week 1
Out the door
You commit to your walking rhythm. Suggested 1–4 hours, four days a week, scaled to your life. The phone comes with you as a field tool and as a phone, so you can walk and talk just using headphones. Using iNaturalist, you start documenting the living things along your routes. Our first group call: meet your fellow walkers, share your neighbourhoods.
Week 2
Noticing
Your routes may get longer or wilder. The group's shared nature journal grows: mushrooms in Sweden, parrots in Australia, lichen in Scotland. We aim to include more whole foods, noticing what is processed in our diet. And talk about what we've experienced or learnt, without judgement or imposed rules.
Week 3
Loosening the grip
The phone starts staying in the bag, then in a pocket, then home sometimes. We practise being in conversation and we practise being in nature. Finding plants, animals, fungi, edible plants. More time outside, walking, gives more space for reflection. Habits may become more easy to observe and there is space for pondering and wondering.
Week 4
Solitude
Walks may end device-free. If your ground allows, shoes might come off for the last stretch. Our week four call: what you found, what you're keeping, how to carry this into winter. Or summer for southern walkers.
Between calls, I'm reachable by voice and text, often while I'm out walking myself.
The Walking Month as a descending helix labelled depth of practice: week one at the top, coiling downward and widening through the weeks to the closing event, ending on a level path at the bottom with a one-to-one coaching call and integration.
Week 1 · Out the door
Phone as field tool
Week 2 · Noticing
Shared nature journal grows
Week 3 · Loosening the grip
Walking opens space for reflection
Week 4 · Nature grounding
Barefoot, less screen-time, at ease
Closing event
1:1 coaching call
and integration
Depth of practice deepens week by week.
What's included
- Four live group voice calls, which you attend while walking, headphones in. Also includes an option to participate with the group of walkers flexibly across different time zones
- A full week by week walking and unplugging guidebook
- A shared iNaturalist group project, which is a citizen science app where real scientists help you identify plants, animals and fungi.
- A simple wholefoods eating invitation (non-prescriptive) informed by the Wahls Protocol, thinking of nutrition to support metabolic and mitochondria health. This is about supporting the internal and external conditions for human health, slowly building up nourishing patterns and letting go of autopilot.
- Includes a private 1-hour breathwork coaching call (€120 when booked separately). Available to book across September, October or November. Includes trauma-informed breathwork practices and a space to safely share and reflect on the walking month, and all aspects of your life (micro to macro).
- An integrative and celebratory closing event and ongoing opportunities for connection
Not included: Facebook, Instagram, streaks, badges, or anything else designed to keep you looking at a screen.
Who this is for
- You are seeking connection that regenerates energy and you are wishing to cultivate more vitality and vibrance of spirit!
- You might be gathering clarity and deepening your own abilities to ground and steady your nervous system - breathwork and walking outside can help substantially with this.
- You are needing space to reflect on what's unfolding in your life (to take stock of changes): A pivot point, beginning and endings, accepting challenges with an empowered and growth state-of-mind.
- You want more distance from social media, screens; and you want a deeper understanding of your local area. You want to be inspired with curiosity in nature exploration and can benefit from the social commitment to spur you onwards!
- You can carve out walking time for 3–7 days a week for one month. Remote workers, parents with school-age kids, semi-retired people and recovering screen and desk athletes are welcome
- You live anywhere. City pavement counts, so does countryside
- English speakers, worldwide, catering especially to Europe, Australia and New Zealand timezones. The group will decide the best times for overlapping calls and community conversations as we walk
Perhaps not for you if you're looking for a fitness bootcamp, a step-count competition, or standard wellness coaching. It's a practice, guided and communal.
Pricing & dates
September 2026 cohort
7 September – 2 October 2026
Four weeks of guided practice, food systems informed wholefoods guidance and nature discovery, and ongoing opportunities for connection and a community of practice. A private coaching hour is included.
Early walker
€320
Until 20 August
Standard
€380
From 21 August
20 places. When they're gone, the next cohort is northern hemisphere spring 2027.
Can't join this season? put me on the list for April 2027
About
About Holly
I'm Holly Gurling, a systems strategist, food and walking guide. Since 2017 I've worked towards regenerative food, farming and forest systems change, as a social entrepreneur, alongside leading food networks and farming communities across Australia and, now, Scandinavia.
I once walked from Canberra to Sydney, taking just over five weeks. I've lived and worked in Australia's northern tropical rainforest, the Daintree - which is Australia's answer to the Amazon rainforest. Equipped with dinosaur footed birds, friendly pirates and the world's most longstanding legacy of life - human cultures, ferns, songbirds and flowering plants. I now live in Southern Sweden, near the Øresund Bridge between Sweden and Denmark, where I run the Walking Month every spring and autumn.
I fervently believe that we all need to take time out sometimes - and substantially at least once in our lifetime - to take stock of our experiences and to make conscious some of the subconscious baggage we end up carrying.
How can we be in the world - as it is right now - embracing beauty and contending with hardship - sometimes all at once?
With this walking practice, I offer my experience and loving presence within a community of practice. I bring an ecological and community-weaving perspective alongside a love of science and a curiosity for the more-than-human-centric world!
How can I help?
- Steadiness through transitions and initiations: career endings, relocations, new parenthood, the reshaping of a life
- Finding your footing, including questions of what to protect, release, revive, and make right - with space to discuss climate flux, social, economic and ecological pressures
- Breathwork for a settled nervous system, trauma-informed and grounded in the science of the breath
Training and background
Accredited Heart Centered Breathwork Coach with the Australian Breathwork College - A trauma-informed practice. There is a growing body of research links breath to a more regulated nervous system, improved sleep and vitality. With breathwork training and guidance, it is possible to find one's centre even under extreme external stresses and pressure.
Permaculture practitioner - Trained with David Holmgren, co-originator of permaculture, and Beck Lowe in Australia. Practically, this means thinking about the way human and ecological systems work: reading a piece of land, a household, or an organisation for its flows of energy, water, and nutrients, and arranging the parts so they feed each other - from food gardens and orchards to community food networks.
Art of Hosting practitioner - A method of participatory leadership for facilitating group processes, grounded in the belief that participatory ways of being together can help shape a world that values diversity, difference, and multiple perspectives. I design gatherings and group processes that help create the conditions for social change and seeing through to a wider context, asking the questions and having the conversations that really matter.
Masters in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability (BTH Sweden) - An internationally recognised programme that trains leaders to work with whole systems: how organisations, communities and economies can move strategically within the boundaries of the living world. My cohort came from across the globe, and the science-based framework behind it now guides my approach.
Experienced intrepid explorer and long-distance walker
Grounded in the sciences - Earth systems science, philosophy of science, tropical fruit farming, agroforestry and geography
Experienced in local food distribution, environmental communications, and campaign strategy - with the Open Food Network, Sustainable Table, and farming communities across two continents.
Shortlisted Leapfrog Social Entrepreneur at Lund University (2025) with Lukas Flynn - The Harvest Network
I first worked with Holly through the Open Food Network / Sustainable Table, over many years where she led work connecting farmers, food communities, and the people who eat. She understands the social/human infrastructure that is needed alongside physical and technical infrastructure. What struck me then, and still does, is her particular gift: she brings people who've never met into a shared purpose and makes it feel natural. Community-building is a word many people use; she's one of the few I've watched genuinely do it.
So when she told me about the Walking Month, my first thought was: this is a really cool idea. This is someone who walked from Canberra to Sydney over a month, interviewing strangers along the way - who has been hosting groups and networks for years, and who guided many through the walking and iNaturalist practice during the lockdowns - the same protocol this program grew from. She knows how to hold a group across distance and she's engaged with the organising in a way that lets everyone else simply relax and take part.
If you're considering joining her walking month, do. You'll be walking with someone who has spent her whole career helping people find their way to the ground beneath them - and who is exactly as trustworthy, warm, and capable as this program needs her to be.
Questions
- How much walking, really?
- The original protocol was 4 hours a day, 4 days a week. You'll set your own version in week one based on your schedule and preferences. The arc matters more than the hours.
- What if I live somewhere urban, flat or boring?
- That could be perfect. iNaturalist reveals that nowhere is boring. Street trees, gulls, moss on walls. It all counts, and it all changes how you see your local place and ecology.
- What is iNaturalist?
- iNaturalist is a free online social network and citizen science platform where people record, share, and identify flora, fauna and funga. With this tool, we create a shared project that lets the whole cohort pool and track our nature observations by place, taxon, or user list. (Funga has just become a new word in the dictionary, meaning all the fungi, to accompany flora and fauna)
- Do I need to be fit?
- If you can walk for an hour, start from there. Maybe you're an experienced hiker? Then this is also for you. Build from wherever you are in fitness and comfort.
- What timezone are the calls?
- One call time chosen to bridge Europe and Australia. Proposed 09:00 CET / 17:00 AEST.
- Is the food part strict?
- No. It's an invitation to notice your connection to food as part of your place. You might discover some edible plants on your walks and you might be inspired to include more unprocessed foods in your routine, for the month and notice what shifts. No tracking, no judgement.
- Refunds?
- Full refund until one week before the start date. No refunds after that.
Any more questions? You are welcome to email me directly at treeplantingwalk@gmail.com.
The doors close 30th of August. And then, so does your laptop.
Trailblazing ecologies of place. Join me for September!