International Community & Programs
The School of Lost Borders holds the intent that one day meaningful rites of passage will be available to communities worldwide. With the present state of our planet and the incredible challenges people are facing, it is very heartening to witness this ancient rite re-emerging globally. We are committed to supporting the continuation of this movement and to empowering guides and colleagues around the world.
- We support international guides to offer wilderness rites of passage in their countries through training and mentorship.
- We are available to attend and/or speak at various conferences, trainings, and gatherings around the world.
- We attend and are a sponsor of the International Wilderness Guides Council Gathering that our co-founder Steven Foster began in 2001.
- If folks from our international communities would like to join one of our School programs in the United States we offer various scholarship opportunities.
Some Lost Borders guides are offering vision fasts and trainings in other countries in partnership with local guides and organizations to cultivate the growth of wilderness rites of passage.
These programs are offered with the full support of the School of Lost Borders but are not offered through the School.
CONTACT INFORMATION: For inquiries about international programs please send a message to [email protected].
International Programs
Rites of Passage Guide Training - Australia (Full with a wait list)
Date: Apr 15th, 2023- Apr 28th, 2023
Instructors: Ruth Wharton, Pedro McMillian
Contact: Ruth Wharton at [email protected]
Location: Goorham, Victoria, Australia
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 practices support the many transitions we face throughout our lives.
This experiential training will support you in learning the bare bones of this ancient and yet modern ceremony. You will learn how to prepare and support people in creating meaningful and powerful wilderness rites of passage and incorporate the experience back into the community.
In the Death Lodge: Forgiveness, Apology, and Reconciliation
Date: Apr 26th, 2023- May 1st, 2023
Instructors: Meredith Little
Contact: Shambhala Institute and Claudia at [email protected], with Susann Belz at Women and Earth [email protected]
Location: Shamabhala and Women and Earth, Austria (near Vienna)
For millennia indigenous people everywhere have known "how to die." Their teacher was
the natural world and, over many years and many generations, they learned their lessons well. Cycles of dying and rebirth were seen everywhere: the setting and rising of the sun, the turning of the seasons, the death of the elderly alongside the birth of a new generation.
In this particular program we will explore how to move through the dying process—be it a symbolic dying or a physical dying. Our aim is both educational and therapeutic.
Dying as a Rite of Passage
Date: May 8th, 2023- May 13th, 2023
Instructors: Meredith Little
Contact: Carine Roth at [email protected]
Location: Ceuxdici, southern Switzerland
In this particular program we will explore how to move through the dying process—be it a symbolic dying or a physical dying. Our aim is both educational and therapeutic. We will see how the growing wisdom of the modern hospice movement and the ancient, pan-cultural wisdom of indigenous ways and the 4 shields can be interwoven.
Storytelling, ListENING & MIRRORING
Date: Jul 24th, 2023- Jul 29th, 2023
Instructors: Petra Lentz-Snow
Contact: Helen Cat Beckers at [email protected]
Location: Wildnesschule Weltenwanderer, in Taunus, near Wiesbaden/Bad Schwalbach (Germany)
Registration Link: https://www.weltenwandler-wildnis.de/spiegeln-storytelling-kurs/
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.
Join us for a week-long immersion of teaching circles, solo time in nature, and story council.
In the Death Lodge: Forgiveness, Apology, and Reconciliation
Date: Sept 5th, 2023- Sept 10th, 2023
Instructors: Meredith Little
Contact: Holger at [email protected]
Location: Eschwege Institute, Germany
As our modern culture has grown ever more sophisticated, we have also become ever more
divorced from our natural surroundings and from ancient wisdom about living and dying.
We have pushed Death away from Life, the dying away from the living—all in order to
impose the illusion of control on the uncertainty of change.
In this particular program, we will explore how to move through the dying process—be it a symbolic dying or a physical dying. Our aim is both educational and therapeutic.
Inanna, the descent to the mysteries of death and rebirth
Date: Sept 15th - Sept 20th, 2023
Instructors: Meredith Little
Contact: Susann Belz at [email protected]
Location: Women and Earth, Germany (near Lake Constance)
For the ancients, initiation rites were the technique by which the individual could descend into the underworld to reveal the great mystery of death and rebirth. The ancient gods and goddesses who initiated humanity into the rites of transformation have not left us. We have internalized their presence in our lives as the archetypal forces in our personalities that inhabit the hidden parts of the psyche.
During these five days we will deal with the universal laws that live in the millennia-old Inanna myth. This journey is an initiation to rediscover our roots and our primordial feminine intuition in order to live them more deeply.