Year-Long Facilitator Training in Earth-Based Ritual and Ceremony
April 2019 - March 2020
LEARN
Enter into a field of sacred mystery, revelation and community healing.
EMBODY
Through experience and practice, feel the ancient truths remembered in your bones.
GUIDE
With the support of the Ancestors, create and hold sacred space for transformation.
Thank you so much [Maria] for holding such a safe ceremonial space. I realized during the ceremony how much this ritual work has changed my life.
-Kelsey Gustafson
What Our Graduates Are Doing Now With Their Certification:
One woman who is a licensed Marriage & Family Therapist (MFT) and a sculptor has created art therapy group experiences in nature.
Two graduates from Israel are now leading Grief Ritual work every other month for their communities.
A gym owner and personal trainer is implementing earth-based ritual into her monthly women’s empowerment group.
An EMDR psychotherapist specializing in trauma is returning for apprenticeship to further develop a program for those struggling with wounds of feeling exiled. She has Jewish ancestry.
One student who works as an engineer at GE, is now launching a Grief Ritual support group in Salt Lake City.
Another woman who also apprenticed for a year, is creating a Rites of Passage vision quest adventures for young women in Grass Valley.
What You'll Learn
This Is In Your Bones
Connect with your own indigeneity and deep ancestral knowing around healing through community ritual and nature connection.
Universal Templates
Receive, experience and practice variations of earth-based ritual for community, grief tending, purification, reclamation, honoring life transitions, peacekeeping, and gratitude.
Ritual For One And All
Earth-based ritual is not an exclusive club. Experience the power of community ritual yourself, then collaborate with peers to design and implement transformative processes that can translate to any community or situation.
Collaboration With The Seen And Unseen
Explore communion with the Ancestors, spirits of place, elementals, and other spiritual allies to fortify the ritual container and hold your back as a ritual leader. As well, how to call in healthy leadership and assisting teams for larger ritual work.
Tracking The Shadow
Learn how to track, yourself and participants, to perceive the unspoken, hold all wounds as sacred, and invite the shadow to heal in a community ritual setting.
Carry The Light With Integrity
Participate in discussion on ritual leader ethics, responsibilities and accountability, and design your own processes for self and group post-ritual care and integretion.
This Training Is For...
Therapists, Social Workers, Coaches, Wilderness Guides, Nature Therapists, Healers, Group Leaders, and anyone desiring to serve their communities through earth-based ritual work.
Don't miss this unique experience!
ALSO OPEN to those who only want to participate in one or more retreats
Let us hold you through your Leadership Initiation, as you step into your calling as a Community Ritual Guide.
Ongoing Training Modules
These training modules will continue throughout the duration of the four retreats.
Medicine Wheel
Building Altars and Shrines
The Importance of Singing and Dancing in Ritual
Ethics, Accountability and Integrity as a Ritual Leader / Guide / Mentor
Council Work
The Meaning of Community
Tracking the Shadow in Ritual Space
The Fine Line Between Transformational Stress vs. Re-Traumatization. Participants Pushing themselves to gain approval of Leaders / Peers
How to Hold Cultural Appropriation Fears
Nature Connection -- Embodiment -- Grounding into Relationship with Earth/Nature
Sharing On Past Experiences with Ritual/Ceremony -- Healing Wounds of Poor Facilitation
How to Hold Severe Trauma Energy
Adapting For Your Demographic
Receiving Compensation For Ritual Work or Volunteering Services; Not Judging Either Way
INTERNATIONAL RITUAL FACILITATORS
Maria Christina Owl is an international transformational leader, healer and full-body channel. She has worked with over 15 different indigenous elders around the world, and is deeply rooted in her own indigenous identity. Maria credits her healing from post-traumatic stress to earth-based ritual work, which she launched into at age 19. She has held hundreds of people around the world through deep transformation through wilderness quests, grief rituals, women’s initiation, and many other forms of ritual and ceremony.
In 2016 Maria offered a Community Grief Ritual in Tel Aviv, Israel, and trained 12 facilitators in this powerful modality. She has led grief ritual at Joanna Macy’s facilitator training in The Work that Reconnects. She holds her own Master’s degree in Integral Counseling Psychology, and has taught Indigenous Wisdom at many institutions of higher learning, including the Ecopsychology Program at Naropa University. In 2012 Maria founded Sacred Future, an organization devoted to re-integrating human culture back into harmony with Nature and Cosmos through the development of intuitive and authentic leadership.
Kayla has been devoted to the study of Deep Nature Connection and Sensory Awareness for 13 years. She is passionate about cultivating the senses to awaken intuition grounded in each person's indigenous make-up. Through the scope of Tracking, Bird Language, Survival and Earth Living Skills, Kayla guides others through the journey of rooting in ancestral lineage to center in resilience. She loves working with individuals and families, and is committed to nature connection in the home for youth. She is a mother of two beautiful and very nature connected children.
Kayla has had the privilege of studying with many mentors with a broad spectrum of earth based practices. In 2009, she attended a 9 month nature awareness Immersion At the Regenerative Design Institute. She continues to study Bird Language and the Art of Mentoring with the 8 Shields Institute. In 2013 She enrolled at Sacred Future School in a Rights of Passage and Ancestral Wisdom course with Maria Owl, and went on to spend two years in apprenticeship with the school in Transformational Leadership. Most Recently she has studied with Tom Brown Jr, and Rick Berry in Lenape Apache lineage of earth living skills. Kayla is weaving the wisdom of the past to find modern day presence, and heal future generations.
Jose is an engineer, poet, dancer and seeker of spirit and soul. He brings a gentle presence and deep respect for the interior journey as expressed through ritual and art. Jose is a skilled group facilitator who is committed to the spiritual and psychological growth of those around him. He trained under Francis Weller to lead men’s initiation groups doing deep soul work. Jose is devoted to the emergence of divine feminine wisdom, supporting women and men claiming their voice and power, and rediscovering the soul of masculinity. He is currently working on multiple projects including a book which seeks to encourage everyone to write their own poetry as a discovery of their own soul's truth. Jose’s day job is being a senior director of hardware engineering leading a bunch of engineers at a telecommunications equipment manufacturer. He received his masters in electrical engineering from Stanford back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
FACILITATOR TRAINING
RETREAT SCHEDULE
April 25 - 28, 2019
Purification & Ancestor Rituals
Sonoma County, CA
Aug 1 - 4, 2019
Community Grief Tending & Ritual
Sonoma County, CA
December 5-8, 2019
Community Reclamation Rituals & Soul Retrieval
Sonoma County, CA
March 19 - 22, 2020
Community Gratitude Ritual & Integration Processes
Sonoma County, CA
YEAR-LONG PROGRAM
April 2019 - March 2020
4 TOTAL RETREATS IN PROGRAM
$500 Registration Fee Due Upon Enrollment
ONE FACILITATOR TRAINING RETREAT
UPCOMING
AUGUST 1ST - 4TH
$333 Deposit Due Upon Enrollment
Features Include:
Tuition:
$888 per retreat
FULL PAY: $3500
6-MONTH PAYMENT PLAN: $592/mo
12-MONTH PAYMENT PLAN: $296/mo
Features Include:
Tuition:
$1111 per retreat
DEPOSIT: $333
BALANCE DUE: FULL-PAY OR
2 MONTHLY PAYMENTS OF $389
TESTIMONIALS
What Our Clients Are Saying About Us
"I am incredibly grateful for the embodied presence of Maria Owl's facilitation skills to create such a safe and sacred container for the rawness human emotions. She has a natural ability to weave the individual into the fabric of the collective that not many teachers have."
Heather K.
Grief Ritual Participant
"Jose has a great capacity to listen to the uniqueness of the group; honoring it and inviting it into a new place of letting go. It was pure pleasure watching a master."
Donna M. Fyffe, Ed. S
President of CommunityWorks, Inc.
"[Maria] you transmitted some powerful and important wisdom that spoke to each one of us, especially tapping into our ancestors and honoring and working with them. Thank you for being your beautiful confident self, a true wisdom keeper. I always think of you as 'She Who Brings the Light.'"
Linda Braga
Society for the Study of Shamanism
Board of Directors
[Jose,] people appreciated your sensitivity, gentleness and sincerity. I wish you many blessings as you continue to help people grieve and open their hearts to the light."
D.
Grief Ritual Participant
Join this life-changing training to serve your community from a grounded, awake and courageous center of being.