Posts by Andrea Palframan
Spring 2020 – Threshold
Returning from ceremonies in Death Valley in March, a few of our guides walked back into the strange new world of the novel pandemic, all too familiar to us now, six weeks in. Within days the school had to cancel the April Vision Fast, and inform the brave folks, who’s compelling letters of intent had already…
Read MoreCA Women’s Vision Fast
One of a woman’s greatest longings is to be seen and known in her most wild and authentic self – a self that is intimately intertwined…
Read MoreLet Go into the Mystery: The East Shield of Living and Dying
Throughout time and cultures, people have crossed borders of their ordinary lives seeking contact with the Mystery. An experience of Oneness, it is beyond any fixed identity. Called by many names, known in a myriad of ways, yet it is ungraspable. In the wide-open view of this Mystery, living and dying are fundamentally interdependent. So…
Read MoreNM Fall Vision Fast
In your bones you hear the singing of your sacred ancestors. You follow in their footsteps. You go alone, with an empty belly and a bare minimum of equipment, into the heart of the wilderness, for four days and nights. There you live with yourself in solitude. You surrender to the mirror of your wild…
Read MoreCA Mirroring the Four Shields of Human Nature: The Art of Story Telling and Listening
Telling one’s own story is an ancient art. Nowadays, we have forgotten how to listen and how to tell. Yet the very survival of our species depends on our ability to communicate with each other in such ways as to be mutually enriched by the telling and the listening. If we cannot tell with expression,…
Read MoreThe Elder’s Journey: Four Shields of Eldering for Women
Throughout the ages, elder women have enjoyed sitting in circle to weave the rich tapestries of their stories, stories that continued to warm and inspire people across time and culture. What about us, now, in our time? As women in all stages of growing into our greater years, there is a growing passion and a…
Read MoreThe Nature of Illness, Loss and Death
The pandemic has recently brought the nature of illness, loss and death sharply into our collective consciousness reminding us that no human, no matter how healthy or resourced, is immune to drastic and traumatic change. Some of us are cracked open in sudden ways, through a life threatening illness, an accident or the loss of…
Read MoreCO Three Week Training
Wilderness Rites of Passage have been practiced in cultures around the world as a way to celebrate and transition from one phase of life to the next – to leave behind what no longer serves and step into life as it is now. These can be developmental phases of life, like moving from adolescence to…
Read MoreCO Mirroring the Four Shields of Human Nature: The Art of Story Telling and Listening
The shields of human nature turn with the experiences of life, from the smallest cell to the great seamless whole of the biosphere called earth. It begins with the body (summer), turns into psyche (fall), becomes activated form (winter), which dissolves into spirit (spring) — which is born again in the body (summer). The four…
Read MoreCA Summer Vision Fast
The modern day vision quest is a border crossing practice, an opportunity to reclaim our true place in the natural world. When one steps across the threshold and into the unknown wilderness, boundaries begin to dissolve and our vision begins to expand. The threshold place is a dreamscape, where we can hear, again, the voices…
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