Two Week Training for Women +

We are excited to offer the Two-Week Training for the first time as an inclusive, expansive, and integrative approach for women centered rites of passage.

While women’s rites of passage have always existed (and still do), modern Rites of Passage models were developed by male anthropologists in the early 20th century within the confines of a colonial, patriarchal, and masculine cultural context.  They focused heavily on the classic story of young men enduring intense trials to claim their place as adult members of their community, while very little was written about women’s ceremonies. To this day, female rites remain more obscure, less popular, and far less explored.

This training is an experimental immersion ceremony model that is designed to inspire, strengthen, and create rites of passage containers and ceremonies for women in the modern day.

What is different in Women's Rites?

Women's bodies!  Many of the changes we traverse in this life time are body-led. Women don't choose the timing of some of the most transformatory processes as much as we are chosen by them. Whether we navigate the mysteries of menstruation or menopause, conception or infertility, abortion or childbirth, or face autoimmune illnesses that disproportionately impact females, women's bodies are often leading the way into change.

There is little control in this type of body-led liminality.  And yet it is here where the primordial recipe of dying to what was and birthing into a new way to organize/identify is most deeply imprinted in our nature, long before humans thought to elevate it through ritual and ceremony.

This knowing, which is the blueprint for all ROP initiations, lives as deeply in womens’ bodies as it lives in the Earth. Remembering, reclaiming and integrating this wisdom into our lives and into the framework of modern rites of passage work is a root intention of our time together.

topics will include:

• Patrilineal dominance in ROP models and its intersection with cultural appropriation
• Gender expansion/dissolution in modern day ROP
• Primary female initiations/life transitions (adolescence, adulthood, elderhood)
• Female dis-ease, trauma and reproductive health
• The role of community in women's rites
• Bare bone practices of modern ROP applied to our theme:
  • The Four Shields of Human Nature for Women+
  • The tools of mirroring and working with intention in the female context
  • Threshold-crossings and self-generated ceremonies for women
  • The practice of Council and the centrality of nature in guiding
  • Incorporation - turning into return
• The role of guide and the power of care
• Patriarchy and the myth of Individuation
• Rites of connection and Belonging
• Rituals of birth and death: beginnings and endings in the hands of women

Program Overview

During the two weeks, personal time in the wild will weave with time in council, and teachings of ROP guiding skills will alternate with practices that can be applied in a variety of settings, professions or in private practice.  As a part of the training, we will co-create ceremonies for the four days set aside for your own threshold (liminal time) experience.  Beyond the classic taboos of no food, no shelter, no company, we will hold a flexible container for a wider span of body needs and intuitive knowing of what shape the ceremony needs to take for each individual.  Is fasting right for me?  Are four days alone what I need?  What role does community, so vital for women’s health, play in our inquiry into old and new forms of female initiation?

On the backend, we will witness and integrate the individual threshold experiences as well as work with the emergent wisdom and greater collective story that returns from the land to incorporate in the body of our lives.

The Intention

This offering is both a training as well as a personal ceremony at a time where unearthing, empowering and uplifting the feminine within us and around us is as necessary for ourselves as it is for life on Earth. Belonging, in the wholeness of our nature, is a primary need and women's access to these types of ceremonies is essential. We look forward to learn and unlearn together, and water the seeds of the greater dream of decolonized and re-matriated Rites of Passage, Belonging and Renewal.  Join us if you feel called!

Prerequisite: The willingness to engage fully and authentically in your own ceremony as well as deepening your training as a guide and space holder.  Participation in at least one prior vision fast or solo experience is required/strongly encouraged.

How to apply:  We are hoping to offer a diverse, international and intergenerational community 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. 🙏 Once we hear from you, we will reach out about next steps!

Scholarships are available upon request.

Program Questions Contact: [email protected]