Workshops and Retreats
Crossing the Threshold:
A four-month sacred journey culminating
in a wilderness rite-of-passage ceremony
CALLING ALL WOMEN & NONBINARY INDIVIDUALS
“What happens when you open to the biggest conversation you can have with the world and your self?”
DATES: On-the-Land Ceremony, August 25-31
Online Gatherings: June, July, August, September (see below for more detail)
Cost/Energy Exhange: $1500 (with some sliding scale spots with priority given to BIPOC and LGBTQIA2S+/payment plans available)
LOCATION: Trinity County, Northern California and Zoom
Overview:
There comes a time when you are called to set aside sacred time and space to touch back into the layers of connection with your heart, spirit, and body. The voice of your true self does not give up easily. You heard the call and answered. You are choosing intentionally to cross the threshold into the next layer of your deepening life. Congratulations!
Join us on a four-month sacred journey combining elements of ecotherapy and expressive arts and culminating in a wilderness rite-of-passage ceremony.
Beginning in June, we will gather online to connect, deepen our intentions, explore the 4 elements, and attune to our inner and outer wilderness landscapes. The program culminates in a 5-day renewal rite-of-passage ceremony on the land, where you will have two-nights out solo on the land and 3 days connecting in community, holding space for others and allowing yourself to be witnessed in your authentic story. (witnessing and being witnessed)
Because integration and incorporation are core parts of bringing our vision and gifts into the world, we will hold a post-ceremony council over Zoom in mid-September.
Each online gathering includes:
Ecotherapy and expressive arts components, centered around the four elements
Invitations for the in-between to practice and deepen connection with our other-than-human kin and our most authentic selves
Council Circle and Mirroring
Poetry
(See this doc for more detail about our gatherings leading up to the on-the-land Immersion)
Once you answer the call and register, you will receive an invitation email with links to the 5 zoom classes, along with registration forms, a packing list and more details about our time together on the land.
We hold this journey as sacred…
We will be with you every step of the way.
About our Location:
We will be in the gorgeous and diverse conifer forest of Shasta-Trinity National Forest, in Trinity County in Northern California. Our base camp at Hobo Gulch is nestled amidst the Douglas firs, pines, and madrones along the beautiful North Fork of the Trinity River, which tumbles from the highest point in the Trinity Alps. There is a camp pit toilet and picnic tables. You will find your sacred solo spot (or it will find you), within a half mile of basecamp.
Meet Your Guides
Ryan Van Lenning and Jillynn Garcia
Ryan Van Lenning - composting, co-liberating, belonging-ing
My name is Ryan Van Lenning, Founder of Wild Nature Heart, and I am an earth-lover with a deep desire to be of service in the work of re-connection and re-membering during this Great Turning/Great Composting. I started Wild Nature Heart to support people to re-connect with the wisdom of both inner and outer wild nature, to live their soul callings into the world, and to assist in the work of repairing broken belonging. I believe each of us has unique gifts that the world needs as we birth new imaginations and ways of being, and I love mirroring people’s stories as they deepen into their wholeness and next aligned steps.
I am an inner/outer wilderness guide and poet (author of Re-Membering: Poems of Earth & Soul) and High-Cooing Through the Seasons: Haiku From the Forest. I am certified as an Ecotherapist through The Earthbody Institute, at which I teach the Level 1 and 3 Ecotherapy courses. I am trained as a rite-of-passage/wilderness vision fast guide through the School of Lost Borders, and am a Certified Wilderness First Responder through Foster Calm. Prior to moving to California 13 years ago, I taught Comparative Religion, Philosophy, and Environmental Ethics at Sinclair College in Ohio. I live among the forest and rivers in northern California, ancestral Wiyot and Yurok land.
Jillynn Garcia – Weaving, Unwinding, Metamorphosing
Jillynn Garcia is a creative healer and explorer of the deep within and great beyond. Jillynn draws on ritual, plant medicine and the guidance of her Tainos ancestors and animal kin as she makes her way through this lifetime; paintbrush in her hand, riverstone in her pocket and birdsong in her heart. She believes that our authentic selves emerge from the juiciness of leaning into liminal spaces and ecotones.
As an Art Therapist, Marriage and Family Therapist, Ecotherapist and Ketamine Assisted Psychotherapy practitioner, Jillynn brings her deep care, compassion and creativity to supporting the unfolding of one’s own innate inner wisdom. Through creativity and connection with the more than human world, Jillynn specializes in supporting individuals from the LGBTQIA2S+ populations, neurodivergent individuals and those unwinding individual and multigenerational trauma. Jillynn also runs expressive arts ecotherapy retreats for individuals navigating various life transitions. Jillynn is a highly relational therapist and holds a core belief that growth and healing happen best in connection. As such, she is a weaver who brings people together so that we can hold one another’s pain and mirror back our beauty.
MORE ABOUT WILDERNESS CEREMONY
“Doing a vision fast or wilderness rite-of-passage will not make your life easier, but it will make it more authentic.”
—Scott Eberle, School Of Lost Borders guide
Cultures across the globe and from time immemorial have incorporated rites-of-passage ceremony as meaningful ways to mark stages of life and to become fully human. We believe wilderness rites-of-passage ceremonies or vision fasts are a missing component of our modern culture.
The modern day wilderness rite-of-passage is a new/old practice of setting time aside in sacred ceremony to be in/with/as wild nature in order to leave behind the voices of the consumer society, cross over into a liminal space where your senses re-awaken, you reclaim your belonging, and you re-member your place as a part of and a-kin to the other-than-human world.
It is an opportunity to claim what is alive, to mark a transition, to clarify your vision and meaningful action, to step into your power.
In wilderness ceremony, we cross a threshold and what we find there is a world alive with sentience and with meaning and we come into a conversation with animals, trees, rocks, sky, and our own true natures. From this conversation we may come away with treasure; inspired and imbued with pieces of our truest voice and wild purpose.
One way to hold rites-of-passage is through the three stages of Severance Threshold, and Incorporation:
1)Severance: You sever ties to the old life, the old habits, the old ways of thinking and doing-those no longer serve you or your people. Preparation for the threshold involves forming and refining your intentions and saying goodbye temporarily to friends and family. An inner circle will help hold your journey. There is a dying to the old, to make space for the new that is emerging and already alive in you. On the land, you will be given earth-based tools and toys to support you psychically and physically for your time solo on the land.
2)Threshold: After preparation and deepening with your cohort and guides, you are blessed as you step across the threshold with intention into a liminal state to fast solo on the land for a period of time. Here you will have the largest conversation you can have with the world. You will have a buddy and your guides will always be at basecamp, holding your intentions.
3)Incorporation: You cross back across the threshold and return to Council Circle. nourish your body and re-join community. The Circle will hear the stories that your journeys into wild nature and your psyche have gifted. Your guides and cohort will listen, and then mirror your story back to you as medicine for yourself and for the group. Celebration night with dance, fire, and song affirms what has been undertaken. Finally, Incorporation Council is held to support carrying the vision and new understandings back into the world and your community and find ever-deepening ways to embody that experience.
It is important to remember that the point of going out (on the mountain, as we say) is to come back in our wholeness as medicine for the people and Earth, to serve Life and Liberation. For more, Read “The Purpose of Going Out is to Come Back” on Medium.
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Connect.
Come connect with others in the human and more-than-human world and allow yourself to be seen, supported and understood. At our core, we are relational beings. Each of us craves to belong. Group workshops and retreats offer a way for you to explore beyond your day to day relationships and be deeply witnessed by others also on a path of self-discovery.
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Create.
Step outside traditional talk therapy and give yourself the gift of knowing through a creative lens. Each workshop or retreat holds artistic expression as a key component in the growth process. Being able to process our thoughts, emotions and physical sensations through creative expression allows us the opportunity to know ourselves beyond our habitual patterning.
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Integrate
A workshop or retreat offers you an opening, a portal, into a new way of seeing, feeling and being in the world. The real gift of these experiences unfolds in the integration and incorporation process. Come find ways to carry yourself anew as you return home to family, friends and systems of modernity.
Past Offerings:
Leaning into Transitions: An Immersive Expressive Arts Ecotherapy Workshop for Women
AUGUST 11 - 13, 2023
Offered by Ecotherapists: Jillynn Garcia, Rachel Mullis, Alison Vooris and Agnieszka Wiosna
Immersing oneself in the natural world can teach us so much about ourselves and our inner strength, especially during times of transition. This workshop is geared towards all female identifying individuals who have or are experiencing a life transition.
Transitions happen throughout our lives, (be it the beginning or end of a significant relationship, the birth of a child, the loss of a loved one, the start of a new job, moving into retirement or embracing a new way of showing up for yourself). Some transitions are expected and gradual and others are abrupt and dysregulating. Whatever the transition is that you are experiencing, you are invited to join a circle of women to explore your thoughts, feelings, strengths and needs during this time.
As a collective we will engage in ecotherapy, art therapy and somatic practices as a means of developing strength, expanding perspective and gleaning insight from this time of transition all while steeped in the lovely natural surroundings of the Christine Center, located in Willard, WI.
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Dreaming the Ecological Self: an International Ecotherapy & Expressive Arts event exploring the ancient practice of “Dreaming Ourselves into Being.”
Often, in the seasonally darkest times of the year, we find ourselves seeking renewal, community,
and direction. This January 8th, come celebrate the changing of the calendar in an experiential,
Ecotherapy & Expressive Arts workshop inspired by the ancient Germanic tradition of
Rauchnächte.
● Connect to & reflect on our dreaming landscapes;
● Tap into our soul’s intentions for this upcoming year;
● Learn basic ecotherapy and expressive arts practices that will support, uplift and provide for us in the year(s) to come;
● Build creative community, leaving renewed and revitalized, with direction and purpose for the coming year.
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Adolescent Social Justice/Community Building Art Therapy Group:
This weekly art therapy group will explore the foundations for building and sustaining connections within a community setting using the modality of Art Therapy as a means to collaborate, connect with and understand one’s impact on others. This group will occasionally take place in local urban and green spaces and use an experiential learning method to cultivate a deeper understanding of one’s role in and impact on a variety of communities. Additionally, each art offering will engage participants in self-reflection and foster skill building in communication, collaboration, and conflict resolution. The art making process will build executive functioning skills in initiation, planning, organizing, time management, emotional regulation and distress tolerance.
