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 Month-Long Training
Jun 17 - Jul 19, 2026 Inyo Mountains - Big Pine, California Betsy Perluss, Meredith Little, Petra Lentz-Snow, Kim Belair, Angelo Joseph Lazenka
*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
Aug 7 - Aug 22, 2026 Inyo Mountains - Big Pine, California Petra Lentz-Snow, Kim Belair
This training offers the Two Week Training Curriculum offers in a gender expansive/inclusive women cohert and with a special focus on women's rites of passage. WHY A TRAINING FOR WOMEN? While ...
Becoming Human: The Four Shields Model of Nature-Based Therapeutics
Aug 11 - Aug 16, 2026 Inyo Mountains, Payahuunadü, 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 ...
NM Mirroring the Four Shields of Human Nature: The Art of Story Telling and Listening
Aug 19 - Aug 23, 2026 Northern New Mexico 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 11 - Sep 26, 2026 Wild Mountain, Colorado Bettina Straub, Pedro McMillan
An Invitation A rite of passage is, at its heart, about community. We may come to ceremony because of personal hardship or longing, but its real power is in how we bring that change back to our ...
CA Mirroring the Four Shields of Human Nature: The Art of Storytelling and Listening
Sep 21 - Sep 26, 2026 Big Pine, CA Kim Belair, Gretchen (Grae) Gerlach
The need to share and listen to stories lived deep in our bones. And yet, in today’s fast-paced world, many of us have forgotten how to truly speak from the heart—or how to listen in a way that ...
Becoming Human: The Four Shields Model of Nature-Based Therapeutics
Jan 18 - Jan 23, 2027 Palm Canyon Campground, Anza Borrego, CA 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 ...
CA Month-Long Training
Jun 16 - Jul 18, 2027 Inyo Mountains - Big Pine, California Betsy Perluss, Petra Lentz-Snow, Kim Belair, Meredith Little
*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 ...
NM Mirroring the Four Shields of Human Nature: The Art of Story Telling and Listening
Aug 18 - Aug 22, 2027 Northern New Mexico 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 20 - Sep 25, 2027 Big Pine, CA Kim Belair, Gretchen (Grae) Gerlach
We need new stories, new terms and conditions that are relevant to the love of land, a new narrative that would imagine another way, to learn the infinite mystery and movement at work in the ...