My name is Lilia Kapsali Grant. I have an undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences, and a Master’s in Outdoor Environmental Education from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. I briefly worked in the field of nature conservation in my home country of Cyprus before getting married and moving to Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
I am a certified Nature-Connected Coach, helping highly sensitive, gifted women find their vision and craft a meaninful life within the greater whole we call Nature.
My own vision is to help people hone their emotional intelligence, awareness and intuitive capacities. Developing these skills enables one to gain more freedom to respond from a loving, empowered place, free from the limitations of conditioning and unconscious neural pathways.
My biggest dream is to help transform culture towards integrating various ways of knowing, including knowing with the body, heart and soul, and honoring and developing multiple intelligences in humans and other than humans.
PRESENCING NATURE, FORMERLY KNOWN AS VENUS DE LOUISIANE
The name Venus de Louisiane came to me when I was awakening to my own gifts, realizing all the ways in which society and culture told me that my sensitivity and intuition were not valuable, and needed to be hidden away and denied. The rich symbolism of the Venus statuettes was very meaningful at the time, symbolizing ‘divine feminine’ principles that modern society has suppressed, as well as the abundance, fecundity and beauty of nature, reflected in the female body. I was also called to research the goddess of my own home country Cyprus, Aphrodite, a paradoxical goddess of love, beauty, war and sexuality. For me she represents the seeming contradictions and creative tensions in our inner and outer nature such as: creation and destruction, agency and constraints within complex systems, spiritual timeless transcendence and earthy sensual immanence. Venus de Louisiane is a play on all these ideas, and an homage to both my country of birth and my beloved adopted place, Louisiana.
Presencing Nature is a play on the words Presence and Sensing. I have found that something magical happens when we are fully immersed in the present moment using all our senses. Possibilities seem to open up to us, we feel lighter and become inspired to think and act in fresh ways that previously seemed unavailable. Apparently, the term ‘Presencing’ has been used in different contexts, including in philosophy by Martin Heidegger to describe a dynamic, emerging process by which beings come into view or reveal themselves, as well as by MIT professor Otto Scharmer to define the ability to connect with and act from one’s highest future possibility rather than re-enacting patterns from the past.
NATURE CONNECTION
(not just knowing ‘how nature works’, but knowing as loving)
Through an aesthetic appeal I am investigating my own process of falling (back) in love with reality and the world around me. This re-enchantment is relevant for me personally as a human being in relationship with other humans and the more-than-human world, but also professionally as an educator and coach constantly trying to find ways to promote a more loving, sustainable relationship with nature than the one our society at large seems to currently have.
I am particularly interested in developing an imaginal and somatic-based practice of engaging with the natural world, which enables us not only to talk about life, but to come alive and learn by privileging not only the dominant or accepted ways of knowing such as our logical, linear mind or visual sense, but also touch/taste/hearing/proprioception, emotions, imagination and relational capacities (deep listening, care, empathy and compassion).
WRITING
(connecting with ‘inner’ & ‘outer’ nature; it is one movement)
While nature connection and attunement help me in my attempt to root myself more deeply in my adopted home, by focusing my attention on local weather patterns, birds, plants and other human and more-than-human creatures, I am also coming back to myself, or becoming endemic to my soul, often through the deliberate use of a symbolic, dreamlike, mythopoetic language. This is a simultaneous, integrative process, whose premises I explored in my Master’s thesis titled ‘Mother-Nature-Self: An exploration of self-in-relation through writing as inquiry’. Check out my blog for a sample of my writing, read my article in Unpsychology, or receive a digital copy of a collection of poetry and prose I co-authored in 2020.
I AND THOU
(You and I in relation)
Precisely because I believe the process of becoming a more mature human and better educator is significant, I have chosen to make my writing-as-inquiry process public, with the hope that it inspires you in your own undertaking of the vulnerable, difficult and beautiful journey to a more vibrant, soulful perception of the world. I hope you enjoy exploring my website, and if you have any thoughts please feel free to visit my contact page and drop me a line.
IMPACT
(to act on that flight of inspiration)
Finally, I believe my writing and nature attuning process is really only complete with with the (co)creation and implementation of ideas in the real, tangible world. If you have an idea you would like to discuss or if would like to collaborate on a project, don’t hesitate to reach out. If you are interested in my nature-connected coaching services, please contact me and let me know a bit about yourself.