CA Month-Long Training
*Pre-requite for this program is having completed a guided 3 or 4-day/night vision fast. Need not have been with the School of Lost Borders. For forty years the School of Lost Borders has offered a unique training for students, therapists, activists, teachers, community workers, and guides interested in deepening their understanding and experience in the…
Read MoreCA Mirroring the Four Shields of Human Nature: The Art of Storytelling 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 Four Shields of Wholeness for Women
Patrilinear hierarchical systems have pushed life on earth to the raw edge of social and ecological sustainability. Many of us feel the global crisis reverberating acutely in our own bodies, in the rawness of our personal lives, and in the torn fabric of our communities. And, at the same time, the ancient evolutionary imperative to re-member…
Read MoreCO Two Week Training
This training gives students an immersion in a rite of passage ceremony, including the skills involved in leading the vision fast and an understanding of how the principles of rites of passage can be applied to a profession, community, or client. Trainees are encouraged to learn the form, the process, and then to give it their own…
Read MoreCA Month-Long Training
The month-long intensive is designed for those who seek to explore and develop their vocation as wilderness guides within the tradition of the School of Lost Borders. Participants are given the opportunity and mentorship to fully immerse themselves in the ceremonial and practical aspects of modern day wilderness rites of passage that have evolved throughout…
Read MoreCO Mirroring the Four Shields of Human Nature: The Art of Story Telling and Listening
Who is this miracle speaking to me? And who is this miracle listening? What amazingness are we creating? Out of gray matter a star spark of thought leaps between synapses into the air, and pours through gray matter, into my heart: how can I not listen generously? ~Marilyn Nelson The shields of human nature turn…
Read MoreBecoming Human: The Four Shields Model of Nature-Based Therapeutics
The Four Shields model offers us a compass to help us find our way back to our origins on this living planet. This wheel of human nature was handed down to Steven and Meredith in the early days of Lost Borders and has become essential teaching for regaining our human wholeness within the wholeness of…
Read MoreThe Four Shields of Wholeness for Women
Patrilinear hierarchical systems have pushed life on earth to the raw edge of social and ecological sustainability. Many of us feel the global crisis reverberating acutely in our own bodies, in the rawness of our personal lives, and in the torn fabric of our communities. At the same time, the ancient evolutionary imperative to re-member wholeness,…
Read More18-Month Rite of Passage Ceremonial Immersion
No matter our ancestry, we are all a part of the lineage upon this living planet. And because of this it is in our bones to be called again and again to the land and into ceremony to “re-member” ourselves and be emboldened by the entreaties of our earthen communities. To play in discovery, to…
Read MoreDark Nature: Matrix of Initiatory Growth
Of all the shields of human nature, the dark or fall shield can be at once the most compelling and the most frightening. It calls on us continually to risk everything, to let go of what has come before, to step over the edge, to go where life is lived inwardly in the mansions of…
Read More