Two Week Training for Women
Jul 26th, 2025 - Aug 9th, 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 WOMEN?
While everyone is impacted by the patrilinear extractive hierarchies that are threatening life on Earth, 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 and the realities of rape, assault, murder, enslavement and dispossession, if not endured in our own bodies, are imprinted in most of our ancestral lineages.
Other “side effects” of living in patriarchal systems as female are harder to name. With bodies that are moving in cyclical, seasonal, reproductive and regenerative ways, the infinite production mode of our time, financial inequities, the lack of village and family, and the demands of caregiving and single parenthood leave women depleted and at risk.
Restoring a nurturing relationship to the wholeness of our nature (body, psyche, mind and spirit) is as essential for ourselves as it is for life on Earth and women’s access to these types of ceremonies is essential.
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.
TOPICS AND THEMES:
This program is offering an experimental immersion in a women’s vision fast ceremony, while also transmitting the bare bones practices and skills involved in guiding modern rite of passage ceremonies, such as:
- The Practice of Council and “safe” containers
- The Four Shields of Human Nature
- Working with Intention in ROP ceremonies
- Self-Generated ceremony
- Threshold crossings and skills of threshold holding
- Beholding (mirroring) Threshold Stories
- Incorporations and applications to life and work
As we explore these topics we will consistently center women rites and ceremonies A few select themes we will intersect with are listed below. Others will arise in the process
- Primary female life stage initiations (adolescence, adulthood, elderhood)
- Reproductive health related transitions (conception, infertility, abortion, childbirth)
- Female body needs, dis-ease, and trauma
- Gender expansion/dissolution in modern day ROP
- The history of patrilinear dominance, colonial roots and cultural appropriation in modern ROP models
- De-centering the myth of Individuation: Rites of connection, Belonging and Rematriation
- The role of community in women’s rites
- Guiding and the power of care
- Midwifing rituals of birth and death
PROGRAM OVERVIEW:
During the two weeks, personal time on the land will weave with time in 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 co-create ceremonies for the four days set aside for your own threshold (liminal time) experience. Beyond the classic modern ROP 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.
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 perhaps as necessary for ourselves as it is for life on Earth.
OUR COHORT:
While we honor the unique positionality of the female body, we will not be confined by a binary gender narrative that has reduced women to the narrows of biology; nor do we intend to let ourselves be trapped by gender stereotypes that have long been too small for the diverse range of our human experience.
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 we are:
As guides of European descent – Petra, a German immigrant and Kim, with mixed heritage ancestry, – we honor the gifts and cultural influences of our ancestors while recognizing the limitations of holding the identities we do in 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 aspire to create cross-cultural ceremonial containers that hold increased diversity of cultural experience and offer a safe(r), brave(r) space to welcome participants from all backgrounds.
Participation Prerequisites:
The willingness to engage fully and authentically in your own cermony 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. 🙏
Scholarships are available upon request. 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 support racial diversity in future leadership.
Program Questions Contact: [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
The Two-Week Training for Women is held as a 15-day immersion program in the wide open expanse of the Inyo Mountains where we will hold camp among piñon pine, juniper and sage brush. We will meet at 9 AM on Jul 26 in Big Pine, CA and then drive out to our base-camp as a group. We will conclude by 4pm on Aug 9. ADDITIONAL FEES: Camping Fee of $75 will be collected 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. 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.
