Emmett Phil – My Story

My name is Emmett Phil Coriat and I became a victim of this Nature dis-connection epidemic.

Based in Boston, as Partner for a leading Healthcare Advisory firm, I was closing 9-figure deals in the field of healthcare technologies and increasingly successful at it. Following a traditional dis-connected business mindset, I was focused on performance. Like a fish trying to live without water, and without knowing how to see water, I ignored the calling from my true home, Nature, allowing stress and burnout to build under the surface of my inner self. I had forgotten that time is a thief and that we are finite beings. Life reminded me brutally of that fact. I had to grieve both my parents in the span of 9 months (a truly symbolic time period in hindsight). 

The tipping point came with the abrupt end of the toxic relationship I was in. The trick was done. My heart was broken and my brain felt fried.
I had gone from thrive to survive in less than a year.

And truthfully, I did not see it coming ! 

I crashed.

Reluctantly, I had no choice but to get off the treadmill.

Like a mother supercharged with unconditional love, Nature was patiently waiting with the deepest secret to my health, both physical and mental. After withdrawing far from all the aggression of the city on Land at the Quebec-Vermont border, I slowly realized that She, Nature, had answers. So many of them.
As a fish jumping back into the water, I jumped back into Nature, and She saved my life. 

I spent a while in the Ecuadorian Amazon, where Kichwa people taught me about their concept of “health”, Sumak Kawsay, where relationship with Nature and Land is an integral part of true health.

I had focused my 30-year career on innovative medical technologies to improve human health, but had forgotten the Foundation of health that our colonized world is either ignoring or jeopardizing. Nature? Really ?

So through unbearable pain came an unimaginable letting go of old ways. 

Deeply inspired by Nature, I was trained and certified by the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy* as a Forest Bathing guide. I began to discover that restoring our connection with Nature allows us not only to reconnect to health, purpose and self, but also to others. Over an intensive training period of close to a year, I immersed myself in various types of Landscapes: from the Spanish Pyrenees to South East Asian jungles to land back home at the Quebec-Vermont border. 

In China, from Taoist masters I learnt techniques to “merge” with Nature and feel through senses that I had never used before. This taught me to ask Nature for information and channel it through intuition. I became a certified Zhineng Qigong teacher.

In Heiltsuk Land in B.C., I got trained in tracking wild sea wolves. I realized that in tracking wild animals, we get a glimpse of the wild within us humans, and have an opportunity to learn in yet another way.

“Going slow to go fast”. 

I finally experienced what it meant. Not only to respect and care for my physical and mental health, but equally importantly, to access the most powerful part of myself as a human and business leader: the Intuition springing forth from my true “nature”.

As my Nature immersion experiences unlocked my Intuition more and more reliably, I noticed impacts to my Creativity, Decision-making skills, and Adaptability in unexpected ways. 

As if a new wellspring of intelligence accompanies me everywhere, my Leadership style has evolved, shifting the way i hold space with my Teams and Clients, to allow more co-creation to emerge, working through tense team dynamics. A new level of depth in listening and commitment permeates and shines through. And I was in humbling company: Steve Jobs, Richard Branson amongst others had spoken about the role of nature in their life.

And the beauty of these unexpected impacts was the spontaneous, effortless way they showed up. I committed myself to Nature’s deepest secret, and She provided me with the rest.

Now, after my crash, burn, and reconnection with Nature, I can no longer imagine the possibility of trying to make a decision alone, without Her, this very special advisor.

~ Albert Einstein

But as a Healthcare Technology expert, I had to understand what was happening to me !

I wasn’t going to just swallow this Native Hocus Pocus, now was I ?

I needed clinical data !!

So I decided to read every book and publication on the topic of Nature and Health.

And this is what I discovered.

Scientific research has now demonstrated what Indigenous people have known for millennia about the role of Mother Nature to achieve health and our full potential as Humans.

Health, Creativity, Leadership, happen through us when we open our senses. By slowing down and letting our eyes, nose, ears, hands, skin, mouth do what they have been designed to do: reciprocate and communicate with Nature, her deepest secrets spontaneously open up!

Science has explained how and why in a Forest Bath, everything falls into place, effortlessly, through our senses. In other words, it is by focusing on our body and our senses and allowing them to interact with Nature in specific ways, that we not only maximize our health, but also the potential of our brain !

And it is because Forest Bathing shifts our brains from beta wave into alpha wave mode, which means problem-solving at 20,000,000 bits/second instead of 40 bits/second. That’s almost a million times different! No wonder !

But actually that’s consistent with a recent finding that by focusing on our intellect or rational mind, we are only using 20% of our gray matter. When our brain kicks into alpha wave mode, we access more of our brain, which means the ability to retrieve more information, albeit subconsciously. This process is also called Intuition.

As I witnessed the power of Forest Bathing and Multisensorial Nature immersions with many of my friends and clients, I was drawn to go further and build a suite of programs that would allow Business Leaders to reliably use the evidence-based practice i had experienced and perfected…

So in late 2018, I put on hold my Healthcare Technological innovation business practice (http://aec-partners.com/team.html#PhilippeCoriat) to co-create with Nature Natural Leadership, an Experiential Learning Process to lead in the 21st century.  

When I took this break in 2018, I was fortunate enough to have the trust and patience of my clients. 

But also, throughout my journey, I had the steadfast support of an international Circle of entrepreneurs I was a member of. 

Many members of this Circle, all successful entrepreneurs, turned out to be real sisters and brothers. They gave me the opportunity to test what was going to become The Natural Leadership Circle, one of the programs I am honored to propose today.

My gratitude to these fellow business leaders who kept alive and nourished my dream.

As I write these words in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, there is a crying need of a new breed of leaders to face this VUCA (Vulnerability, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) world we have entered in the 21st century.
Without knowing it, the tools that were co-created at Natural Leadership now seem a perfect match to facilitate this leadership mindset transition for a VUCA world.