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
AZ Mirroring the Four Shields of Human Nature: The Art of Storytelling and Listening
Mar 17 - Mar 23, 2025 Catalina State Park - Tucson, Arizona Silvia Talavera, Gretchen (Grae) Gerlach
“Stories are a form of medicine that can operate at the deepest levels of self and soul.” Michael Meade Telling one’s own story is an ancient art. Nowadays, we ...
Ceremonial Immersion (across 2 years 2025-2026)
Jun 17 - Oct 19, 2026 Various Locations Emerald North, Scot Deily, Colleen Bishop, tbird (Thompson) Bishop
Hope is not a word in my vocabulary, I have to tell you. Faith is…There is beauty in erosion. And that has been evolving over time. So I think it takes us to our essence. It may take us to our ...
CA Month-Long Training
Jun 18 - Jul 20, 2025 Inyo Mountains - Big Pine, California Betsy Perluss, Angelo Joseph Lazenka, Meredith Little, Petra Lentz-Snow, Kim Belair
*Pre-requisite for this program is having completed a guided 3 or 4-day/night vision fast within the last five years. This need not have been with the School of Lost Borders. Please submit an ...
Two Week Training for Women
Jul 26 - Aug 9, 2025 Inyo Mountains - Big Pine, California Petra Lentz-Snow, Kim Belair
We are excited to offer the Two Week Training Curriculum in a gender expansive/inclusive women cohert and with a special focus on women's rites of passage for the first time. WHY A TRAINING FOR ...
CO Mirroring the Four Shields of Human Nature: The Art of Story Telling and Listening
Aug 20 - Aug 24, 2025 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 ...
CO Two Week Training
Sep 6 - Sep 21, 2025 Wild Mountain, Colorado Ruth “Roo” Wharton, Angelo Joseph Lazenka, Kelly McClelland
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 ...
The Four Shields of Wholeness for Women
Sep 13 - Sep 20, 2025 Big Pine and Eureka Valley Petra Lentz-Snow, Gretchen (Grae) Gerlach, Taos Malaya
Patrilinear hierarchical systems have pushed life on earth to the raw edge of social and ecological collapse. Many of us feel the global crisis reverberating acutely in our own bodies, in the ...
The Nature of Council
Sep 26 - Oct 3, 2025 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 Mirroring the Four Shields of Human Nature: The Art of Storytelling and Listening
Sep 28 - Oct 3, 2025 Big Pine, CA Betsy Perluss, Kim Belair
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 ...