Boyd Varty
Host of Track Your Life with Boyd Varty
Having spent his life in apprenticeship to the natural world, he now works to bring what he’s learned to a wide audience. Boyd’s unique combination of wisdom, humour and spirituality makes him a captivating speaker. He keeps diverse audiences in rapt attention and gales of laughter and leaves them moved.
The wildlife and literacy activist Boyd Varty, author of the memoir Cathedral of the Wild, had an unconventional upbringing. Born to a family of conservationists, Boyd grew up on Londolozi Game Reserve in the South African wilderness, a place where man and nature strive for balance, where perils exist alongside wonders. Founded more than 90 years ago as a hunting ground, Londolozi was transformed into a nature reserve beginning in 1973 by Varty’s father and uncle, visionaries of the restoration movement. But it wasn’t just a sanctuary for the animals; it was also a place for ravaged land to flourish again and for the human spirit to be restored. When Nelson Mandela was released after 27 years of imprisonment, he came to the reserve to recover.
Since childhood, Boyd shared his home with lions, leopards, snakes, and elephants and has spent his life in apprenticeship to the wisdom of nature. Boyd survived a harrowing black mamba encounter, a debilitating bout with malaria, even a vicious crocodile attack, but his biggest challenge was a personal crisis of purpose. As a university student, he studied psychology and ecology, supplementing his education by learning martial arts in Thailand, hiking through the jungles of the Amazon, and apprenticing to a renowned tracker from the Shangaan tribe deepening his intimate knowledge of the natural world. Boyd grew up speaking the local language and learning the true meaning of coexistence between people and with nature.
Boyd Varty has hosted 61 Episodes.
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Day 23 - Spirit of Spirit
April 24th, 2020 | Season 1 | 12 mins 35 secs
africa, caprivi, chief seattle, chobe, innocent ngwenya, kruger, lions, mana, okovango, serengeti, spirit, tracker academy, tracking, ubuntu
How do we get back to the spirit of life?
Ubuntu - I am because of you, you are because of me.
Your presence helps me be a person.
It seems to run deeper than that. Deeper than people, the animals, plants, rivers.Get quiet enough to really hear the voice inside you. Follow that and I suspect it will take you back instantly to the spirit of life.
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Day 22 - Trauma Healed is Medicine
April 23rd, 2020 | Season 1 | 10 mins 47 secs
alone, boarding school, boy, compassion, dysfunction, intimacy, loneliness, solitude
If you would like to understand your own darkness ask yourself how you have hurt people in the past. If you want to understand trauma look for where you feel helpless, frozen and isolated.
If you want to understand shame ask what you are afraid to share.
If you want to understand how to truly heal find out what your gifts are and share them. -
Day 21 - Mystical Visitation
April 22nd, 2020 | Season 1 | 10 mins 28 secs
lazy, leopard, monkey, mystical, running
Waking up I felt no motivation to get out of bed. So I just lay there.
I thought of all the years I suffered from depression when I woke with the dreaded weight on me. -
Day 20 - Centered
April 21st, 2020 | Season 1 | 11 mins 8 secs
attention, elephant, elephant bulls, felt experience, firelight, goshawk, meaening, spurfowl, termites
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Day 19 - Track Awareness
April 20th, 2020 | Season 1 | 11 mins 19 secs
ant bear, body compass, career, david rattray, david whyte, martha beck, shaman, track awareness, tracking, wet
There are worlds are information in our worlds that we don’t even know about. As I was walking past the ant bear hole a miraculous thing happened. A honeyguide came and invited me on an adventure. The bird hovered near me chattering with intense excitement. I was deeply moved by the collaboration between man and nature. I stood alone really feeling it, my own ties to the hunter gatherers. Unfortunately it was late and I could not go with the bird.
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Day 18 - Golden
April 19th, 2020 | Season 1 | 12 mins 55 secs
buffalo, comparison, judgement, leopard, life, lion, psyche, purpose, tracking
I’m also aware of how I have objectified myself. We think of ourselves as an object on a scale. We should be much further ahead or I’m not where I should be. I’m talking about a continuous comparative dynamic that is structured into a culture where everything is automated and commodities until your own psyche makes you a thing and judges that thing comparatively. Just think about how you drive yourself when you are exhausted. Just watch what you do to yourself when you start duding yourself. Inside that mind all the dimension of person gives way to something terribly binary. Good bad, failing winning or losing.
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Day 17 - On the Trail of the Wild Man
April 18th, 2020 | Season 1 | 15 mins 38 secs
emily lamb, horizon, imagine, intention, masculinity, men, porcupine, simon bannister, wild man
What does it mean to be a man? It was often a question that seemed to be asked out of profound sense of something that had not been attained or out of the question is this it? That question is only ever asked in modern culture where all our definitions are from outside of us. Society makes us but what does it make if society is flawed.
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Day 16 - Glimpses
April 17th, 2020 | Season 1 | 11 mins 35 secs
david whyte, lion tracks, miraculous, ordinary, raymond, roshi, storm, zen
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Day 15 - Storming
April 16th, 2020 | Season 1 | 19 mins 29 secs
byron katie, chris rice, death, fear, how great thou art, life, lightning, lions, londolozi, rhino, scared, storm, the work, thunder
Then the world fell on my head. At 11pm I sat bolt upright and smelt the storm on the breeze and felt it in my body. It was windy instinctual but I got up and erected the tarp. I’ve watched myself learn fast how to handle the rain. My body had a current of energy running through it, it was like I could feel the future. Then came the mother and father of a thunderstorm. The volume was turned up to holy shit!
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Day 14 - Compass Not Culture
April 15th, 2020 | Season 1 | 13 mins 18 secs
baboons, braiding sweet grass, carl jung, harmony, inner work, leopard
Harmony is when, by being yourself, you form part of the greater whole. A Shaman once told me that what we are trying to do as we live is balance our harmony with the intelligence of life. We stop trying to live well and we are lived. Our path and purpose comes through us by being who we most naturally are. And to look at any of the animals it just takes you there. I am in this tree to find my harmony.
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Day 13 - Define Progress
April 14th, 2020 | Season 1 | 12 mins 15 secs
cultivate satisfaction, harry kirkman, ian player, luddite, premembering, renias, snakes, stars, technology
Have you ever had a memory of your future? Preremebering is an art form. It’s imagining out of a deep knowing what your life ought to be.
I’m interested what the future of human life could be and how we can create it.
We are poised for a great premembering. -
Day 12 - Learning To See
April 13th, 2020 | Season 1 | 11 mins 53 secs
ceremony, giraffes, ken tinley, leopards mating, pride of lions, shaman, tracking, transformation, tree, truth
The trick to transformational processes is how to interrupt and shape patterns, in order to do this you must look at the spaces between things. How everything is touching everything else in relation.
A many called Ken Tinley once tuaght my father how to see a tree. There is a difference between how something works and what it means.