Module 3 – North: Autumn to Winter (adulthood) 6-10 October 2025 

In the long journey of adulthood, we take up the challenging responsibility of developing the ‘delivery systems’ and the collaborative relationships that allow us to bring forth our unique gifts and offer our lives to our people and to this world. In an eco-centric model of development adulthood is about service to both human and natural communities, and in this module we explore what our lives are most deeply committed to, what the ‘centre of gravity’ is that our lives revolve around, what we most deeply care for and take responsibility for. Through our work together on the land we explore the role of community and nature-based practice in nourishing our resilience to engage with the magnitude of the challenges we are living through. The love of the North is the love of the ‘give away’ and what we find is that in giving our lives away, we ourselves are nourished.

Module 4 – East: From Winter to Spring (elderhood) 25-29 March 2026

The long Winter must at length give way to the freshness of Spring once again. In the cycle of the human journey this last stage is elderhood. Elderhood in this model is defined by an expanded sense of identity, and a deepening trust and surrender to the process of life or the mystery that holds us. An elder here is not just defined by years, but by the depth of their character and the quality of presence of who they are – others are inspired to live more fully through knowing them. In an eco-centric wheel, the elder’s identity and sense of spirituality is bound up with the wider natural world, and thus is an ecological identity and an ecological spirituality. The East is the love of ‘Spirit’ or ‘Mystery’, that which invites a surrender, trust and identification with the larger processes of life that carry us all.

Module 5 – the Vision Fast Ceremony 5-16 June 2026

“We do not go into the desert to escape people but to learn how to find them: we do not leave them in order to have nothing more to do with them, but to find out the way to do them the most good.” – Thomas Merton

The wider natural world has long been respected as a necessary partner in initiatory journeys or rites of passage. The land offers itself as mirror, as ally, as fertile container in which to draw close to the roots of our life, to what is important and what so easily can be forgotten in the fullness of contemporary life.

This final component of the training brings all of our previous work together through holding a contemporary wilderness rite of passage marking a particular life transition. The liminal experience of this passage rite will be a four day and night vision fast adhering to the traditional taboos: no company, no food and no enclosing shelter. This ceremony is offered as an opportunity to honour the gift of one’s life and will be divided into the three classic phases of a passage rite: Preparation, Threshold and Incorporation.

The first four days serve as our preparation as we come together as a community to clarify our intent. Here we listen to each other’s stories of where we find ourselves in life, what is needing to die, what is seeking to be born, what is the dream we hold for our life, the particular gift of our life? Specifically, we explore in some depth our intention for this passage rite, what is it in our life that is asking to be honoured or marked through this initiatory journey?

The threshold phase will be a traditional four day and night fast. Each person goes alone into the wilderness (with the support of guides at base camp), without food and minimal external trappings. The threshold time allows for one’s intent to be revealed and to be unfolded in the mirror of Nature. It is a time for self-generated ceremony, for becoming intimately receptive to one’s life and for experiencing both the challenge and the beauty of living for these days and nights with just one’s own human company, yet in relationship to the land and all it’s non-human inhabitants – our relations.

The final four days are devoted to incorporation. Here we share the stories of our threshold time and explore its gifts and implications for the life we return to. We sit in ‘story council’, sharing our stories and having them mirrored back to us by the community, offering the opportunity to see our individual narrative in a wider context. This can be one of the most touching and heartening parts of this ceremony: being witnessed and affirmed by those who have come to participate in and create this ceremony together.

The work we have explored in the previous four modules will have prepared trainees for the opportunity to work alongside the guides in taking responsibility for co-guiding principal components of this ceremony including preparatory work with ‘intent’ and the ‘mirroring’ of stories in the incorporation phase, as well as understanding issues relating to physical and emotional safety and assessment of participants. This final module offers trainees the opportunity to gain an experiential understanding of the principles and practices of a contemporary vision fast ceremony as a liminal experience within a modern-day rite of passage. Trainees will have the opportunity to fully immerse themselves in this ceremony as participants, whilst also exploring how it feels to sit in the guide’s seat and to take a measure of responsibility for holding this ceremony.

This whole training is offered as an initial meeting with threshold crossings and initiatory practices for those who are called to offer this work. In the tradition of this work, it marks a beginning, if one is so called, towards an extended relationship and apprenticeship to this ceremony.