New: Four Shield Training for Women
Sep 13th, 2025 - Sep 20th, 2025 | Big Pine and Eureka Valley | Petra Lentz-Snow, Taos Malaya, Gretchen (Grae) Gerlach
For the first time, we are offering an 8-day training centered exclusively on women rites and earth-based ceremonies in the modern day wilderness Rites of Passage context.
Using a ceremonial immersion in the Four Shields module, this course will focus on transmitting and deepening the bare bone practices and skills involved in guiding earth-based women ceremonies.
Why a training for women?
While everyone is impacted by the patrilinear extractive hierarchies that have pushed life on earth to the raw edge of social and ecological collapse, women suffer disproportionately in a culture where the feminine has been largely exiled. The disdain for the Earth is not separate from the disdain for the female body. The realities of rape, enslavement and dispossession, if not endured in our own bodies, are imprinted in most of our ancestral lineages, and are shaping us in more ways than we can consciously grasp.
By necessity, we have learned to ‘man up’, to survive and perform as best we know how in a dominance driven culture. And yet, as beings of cyclical, seasonal, reproductive and/or regenerative natures, women are particularly (and inequitably) affected by the infinite production mode of our time, especially when combined with financial inequity, the lack of village and family, or the demands of caregiving and single parenthood that are realities for so many of us.
Restoring women’s relationship to the wholeness of our nature (body, psyche, mind and spirit) is as important for ourselves as it is for life on Earth and women’s access to these types of ceremonies is essential.
Is this training for me?
Whether you already work with women in some capacity, or have the dream to do so in the future, you are welcome here. Be prepared for the training to work you as a participant as well, to invite you to leave behind outgrown, limiting identities and release old stories, and to catch and celebrate new songlines to walk you home and towards what wants to happen now – that we may go forth with our best offerings in service of life and all that is yet to be born.
This offering, both as a training and as a personal ceremony, is a walking prayer to inspire, strengthen, and create rites of passage containers and ceremonies for women today.
TOPICS AND THEMES:
The bare bone practices and skills related to earth-based ROP work that we will explore together are listed below:
- The Practice of Council and “safe” containers
- The Four Shields of Human Nature for Women
- Working with Intention in women’s ROP ceremonies
- Self-Generated ceremony
- Threshold crossings and skills of threshold holding
- Beholding (mirroring) Threshold Stories
- The role of guide and community in women’s rites
Special topics we will bring into focus throughout our journey include:
- Gender expansion/dissolution in modern day ROP
- Primary female life transitions (childhood, adolescence, adulthood, elderhood)
- Female body needs, dis-ease, and trauma
- Reproductive health related transitions
- Gender affirming transitions
- The Four Shields of Sexuality
PROGRAM OVERVIEW:
During our time together, intentional solo time on the land will weave with time in community council. Teachings of ROP guiding skills will alternate with practices that can be applied in a variety of settings, professions or in private practice.
As part of the training, we will work with different types of threshold invitations, including solo time in the front and backcountry, a night walk as well as a 24 hour solo.
Throughout our time together, we will evoke intentional community and adhere to the practice of council to create safe, inclusive and respectful containers that honor the spectrum of our unique individual experiences and feed the wellbeing of the collective.
Venue: Big Pine is nestled in the wide embrace of Payahünadüü (Owen’s Valley) on the homelands of the Nuumü Shoshone. A private walk-in section of the campground, surrounded by flowing water, will be our base for the first half of the program while most of our days are find us out in various wild places around the valley. The second half will be spent in the vastness of the Eureka Valley, where the 24 hour solo will take place.
OUR COHORT:
This cohort is intentionally inclusive –welcoming cis, queer, and trans women equally, and expansive – inviting the magical, unique mix of masculine, feminine, and queer traits we each bring to the holy whole of our nature. Whether you identify as ‘she’ or ‘they’, if you hear the call to join, you belong here.
Who your guides are: As a guiding trio of varied heritage – Petra (she/her), a German immigrant, Taós Malaya (she/siya), an islander raised between the Philippines and the Pacific Northwest and Grae, a queer being, with European ancestors, raised in the Blackfoot watershed in Montana – we are grateful for the range of cultural ancestral influences among us while recognizing the limitations of holding the specific identities we do in the wide arc of multi-racial, multi-cultural contexts.
As we do the fierce, ongoing work of creating spaces for dialogue, healing and re-patterning of harmful dynamics in white-led spaces, we are committed to build more cross-cultural ceremonial containers that hold increased diversity of cultural experience and offer a safe(r), brave(r) space to welcome women from all backgrounds.
PARTICIPATION PREREQUISITS:
The willingness to engage fully and authentically in your own ceremony as well as deepening your training, whether that may be as a guide and space holder, applying it in your profession or in your personal life. Prior experience with earth-based ceremony and/or Wilderness Rite of Passage work is recommended/encouraged.
Scholarships are available through the school. For this program, two near full scholarships are available (covering up to 70-80% of total tuition, based on need). BIWOC will receive primary consideration as we strive to create more access to this work and grow toward multi-racial, multi-cultural leadership.
HOW TO APPLY:
It is our intention to offer a diverse, multi-cultural and intergenerational learning container for this training. Before you enroll, please write a short introduction of yourself, and why you are drawn to this offering and send it through this form.
Program Questions Contact: Petra Lentz-Snow at [email protected]
Submit Waitlist form
This program is full; however, you may add your name to the Waitlist by clicking the Waitlist button below.
Submit enrollment form
Please fill out and submit the enrollment form and then pay the program deposit below. Before you pay the deposit, please read deposit section below, all deposits are non-refundable and non-transferable. After your enrollment form is complete, please submit all health and liability forms.
Pay program deposit
Deposits: This deposit signifies your commitment to the program and is deducted from the tuition balance. All deposits are non-refundable and non-transferable. They cover the work of the specific course you signed up for, including all communication involved as well as the fee that guides pay to the school administration for the course accounting.
Additional Deposit: Some programs require a second deposit to help us affirm commitments. Last minute cancellations make it hard to fill openings and incur a loss of income to the School and the guides.
Tuition Balance: Balance of tuition can be paid before or upon arrival. Simply deduct any deposits made from the amount you’ve chosen on the sliding scale.
Additional course details & Materials
Note: We recommend you arrive on the afternoon of Sept 12 (anytime after 3pm) to settle into our group camp, set up tent and partake in a light dinner provided by the guides. If you arrive in the morning of program begin (Sep 13) be there by 9:30am at the latest as we will start promptly at 10am. We will complete our ceremony mid-afternoon on Sept 20. ADDITIONAL FEES: Camping Fees $60. Please bring cash for camping, we will collect it at the time of the program. You will be responsible for bringing your own food and equipment, though we can provide some gear if needed. We ask everyone to come prepared to live self-sufficiently, as much as possible. You will need to bring shelter and clothing suitable for a full range of inclement weather.
You will be responsible for bringing your own food and equipment, though we can provide some gear if needed. We ask everyone to come prepared to live self-sufficiently. You will need to bring shelter and clothing suitable for a full range of inclement weather.
All participants must submit the required health questionnaire and liability form.
If you have questions about the enrollment process contact us at [email protected] or call 760-938-3333.
We will gather in the eastern mountains of Payahuunadü (also known as the Inyo Mountains outside of Big Pine, California). These are the ancestral and contemporary lands of the Nüümü and Newe people. To learn more about our commitment to regenerative relationships please visit Cultural Relations: https://schooloflostborders.org/about/cultural-relations/
To learn more about our commitment to regenerative relationships please visit Cultural Relations.
