Training
“This training has totally changed my life! I was seen in my totality and held in a wonderful and fun community. Being on the land has given me a true purpose and helped me live life more awake, more fully, more truly.”
- Mara, 2018
For more than 40 years, the School of Lost Borders has offered trainings for students, therapists, teachers, caregivers, and guides around the world. Our trainings are for those interested in deepening their understanding of rites of passage, self-generated ceremonies, and initiatory eco-therapies. They are highly experiential and provide the skills needed to support people in transition through nature-based initiatory practices. These trainings are transformative both personally and professionally and involve a profound immersion in the natural world.
TWO WEEK TRAINING
This training is specific to facilitating a wilderness rite of passage, known as a vision fast. This training focuses on council, physical and emotional preparation, intention setting, supporting self generated ceremony, mirroring, incorporation, and applying rites of passage to diverse settings.
MONTH LONG TRAINING
Our most comprehensive training which weaves together a collection of multiple trainers throughout the month. This training includes in depth foundations of rites of passage work, council, mirroring training, practice of living and dying, vision fast facilitation, and incorporation.
MIRRORING TRAINING
An experiential and interactive training that involves daily intentional walks on the land followed by community reflection. Learn how to deeply listen to and respond to peoples stories through the practice of mirroring. This practice is applicable in diverse settings.
FOUR SHIELDS OF HUMAN NATURE
An in-depth exploration of the four seasons of human nature through daily intentional time on the land and storytelling. Exploring human nature in relationship with the earth provides a profound understanding of how to support others in deepening connections with themselves, one another, and the land.
Ceremonial Immersion
A community-based plunge into what it means to be wholly alive human beings. Across 2 years of land-based and zoom gatherings, we create a rare kind of human container that both nourishes the communal ceremonial spirit in each of us and feeds the Ceremony itself. We sit with holy earth and listen to the whisperings of the wild world around us.
Upcoming Training Programs
CA Mirroring the Four Shields of Human Nature: The Art of Storytelling and Listening
Sep 25 - Sep 30, 2023 Big Pine, CA Betsy Perluss, Gretchen (Grae) Gerlach
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 ...
Four Shields of human nature: remembering our place, our belonging, and our connection to all creation
Apr 1 - Apr 7, 2024 Catalina State Park - Tucson, Arizona Silvia Talavera, Gretchen (Grae) Gerlach
“The Great Summons of our time is to find our way home to our true nature in the living body of earth.” Joanna ...
The Nature of Council
May 3 - May 11, 2024 Big Pine, California Sam DeBoskey, Yamin Chehin
“There is a world behind the world we see that is the same world but more open, more transparent, without blocks. Like inside a big mind, the animals and humans all can talk, and those who pass ...
CA Month-Long Training
Jun 12 - Jul 14, 2024 Inyo Mountains - Big Pine, California Betsy Perluss, Angelo Joseph Lazenka, Petra Lentz-Snow, Meredith Little, Kim Belair
*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 ...
Ceremonial Immersion (across 2 years 2024-2025)
Jun 17 - Oct 19, 2025 Various Locations Emerald North, Scot Deily
The Rites of Passage Ceremonial Immersion is a community-based plunge into what it means to be whole human beings: alive to our wildest fury, our erotic and blessing power, our grief, our joyful ...
CO Mirroring the Four Shields of Human Nature: The Art of Story Telling and Listening
Aug 19 - Aug 23, 2024 Dragonback Springs Ranch, Colorado Emerald North, Scot Deily
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 ...
CA Mirroring the Four Shields of Human Nature: The Art of Storytelling and Listening
Sep 8 - Sep 13, 2024 Big Pine, CA Betsy Perluss, Angelo Joseph Lazenka
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 ...
CA Two Week Training
Sep 21 - Oct 5, 2024 Big Pine & Eureka Valley, California Ruth “Roo” Wharton, Angelo Joseph Lazenka
In these times of change and uncertainty, it is crucial that we show up for our community in ways that truly serve. The world is calling us to listen in new and old ways to connect with the land and ...
Becoming Human: The Four Shields Model of Nature-Based Therapeutics
Sep 29 - Oct 4, 2024 Big Pine, California Betsy Perluss, Gretchen (Grae) Gerlach
“If there were a measure of ‘mental health’, it would involve the ability of individuals to grow into the fullness of each season – that is, the ability to fully become, or enact, the ...