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Sacred Circle Certification Training
Restoring the ancestral and sacred ways of circle tending, ritual, and facilitation
This is a professional training for anyone who facilitates circles, group activities or journey work. It's for anyone who facilitates programs, teaches, or leads groups.
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How deep a group is willing and able to go as well as the success of what you're facilitating is less to do with your content and more to do with how you craft the learning container and facilitate a safe space for people to arrive into and move through together.
A sacred circle or program can be one of the most healing and empowering experiences or it can be traumatic and resurface deep wounds.
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There are many women circles, men's groups, and healing circles that are doing more harm than good despite their good intentions.
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When you know how to read a group, integrate movement, games, drumming, or activities to engage or shift the energy, you gain a masterful ability to not just pass on information but provide the kind of experience that offers lasting results.
This is a three month experience based training where you learn the ancestral and sacred forms of:
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Crafting safe & sacred space
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Leading groups through profound experiences
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Facilitating learning and healing circles
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Structuring powerful rituals for healing, initiation and transformation
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Storytelling
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Cultivating community and nourishing belonging
This training happens outdoors within our sacred hut. We gather around the fire and share and model the more traditional skills, mindsets and understandings of facilitating sacred work.
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What you learn can be applied indoors and outdoors
Upon completion, you may be invited in our summer apprenticeship where you gain direct experience helping to facilitate circles, sweat lodges, vision quest, and wilderness rites with local elders, educators and skilled mentors. ​
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Those who complete the apprenticeship may be invited on as paid facilitators.
Indigenous vs Colonial Psychology
Colonial ways of facilitating and teaching further disconnects people. They focus on sharing information that creates hierarchal roles of power and systems of dependency on those who hold “information.”
Indigenous ways focus on crafting the experiences, stories, rituals, and ways of engaging that there’s a felt experience of what’s being shared awaken inside them and become their own.
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The indigenous psychology weaves us into relationship, connection, and a deeper understanding of the movements of life, our unique paths and our own minds and hearts.
Way of Council
The Way of Council is a universal indigenous understanding, etiquette and way of being in circle with others. It crafts a solid container, offers a felt sense of safety and inclusion, and opens people for deeper shares, reflections and healing.
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The Way of Council is paramount in any kind of healing work, circle, or facilitation.
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You’ll learn how to facilitate individually and as a team. You’ll learn who are the key archetypal roles each circle should have to be effective.
Techniques & Structure for Depth
You’ll learn the methods of getting a group of complete strangers to come into a deeper authentic level of sharing. There are key stages to guide a group through via activities, rituals, welcoming procedures, and how you hold space for the group.
Shadow Work
In doing circle and journey work, you must be skilled in navigating your own shadows, grief, stories and triggers. Then you'll be able to hold space for others.
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Facilitating circles, rituals and journey stirs up the trauma, grief and shadows people carry. Knowing how to hold space and guide them through the experience within a group setting is paramount for the safety of the group and powerful healing that can occur.
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Through carefully crafted wilderness rites, you’ll gain direct experience with working with your own triggers and helping others.
We break down the mechanics of triggers, stories and beliefs so you can clearly identify where you or others are in their experience and know the questions, activities and ways of helping other through them and holding space for a group when a group member is triggered.
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The Structure of Ritual
Guiding others in Ritual is one of the most powerful healing and transformative activities you can do. There are many kinds of rituals from initiation, grief tending, breaking spells, healing, and for making profound shifts.
You’ll learn what “activates” a ritual. The specific essential actions and parts necessary. How to frame the ritual with story and context to invite people into a deeper felt experience that engages their whole being.
Sacred Activities to Deepen & Enrich
You’ll learn how to weave together drumming, ritual, movement, breath, games, song, and storytelling to help shift the energy, bring people deeper in or to help bring them out of the depths and have a sense of completion.
The Art & Power of Storytelling
Storytelling is one of the most powerful mediums. It’s said before the old myth-stories and fairy tales were stories, they were originally rituals people enacted. You’ll learn how tell a story. You’ll learn how to court the stories that are wanting to come into your circle… how to ritualize and use story for multiple purposes.
We’ll explore big stories and short tales. Explore reflective storytelling techniques and other ways to use story for healing, grief tending, and powerful change.
Details
Enrollment Full ~ New Dates TBA
Locations
Carson, WA
Welsches, OR
Dates:
10am to 4pm
March
25th
April
15th & 16th
29th & 30th
May
27th, 28th & 29th
Investment:
$1,500
Options
3 installments of $500
4 Installments of $375
Some Partial Scholarships may be available.
How To Enroll
Email us at Learning@TreeOfTotems.com and share why this resonates and what you hope to gain from the training. Please share your present experience with facilitating.
We'll then schedule a free 15-30 minute call to connect further, answer questions and share more details to ensure this is a good fit. To craft a safe and power container, we're intentional with who we invite into the circle. If it all feels good, you'll be invited in.
Your Facilitators
Katrina Nilsson-Gorman
Katrina has been facilitating circles, deep inner journeys and Nature Therapy for many years. She's owner and facilitator of Wild Soul Guidance and is passionate in facilitating journeys for groups and individuals
Ute Christine Jarlik
Ute is one of beloved Elders in Tree of Totems Community. She's skilled in Coyote Mentoring, an incredible herbalists, and co-teaches nature classes for youth. She helps facilitate our Vision Quest, Awaken The Sage and other deep rites of passage work.
And she embodies the Coyote Trickster Spirit for sure! Get ready for some play and fun with Ute!
TESTIMONIALS
"There is expression vs words that are deeply felt when being guided by Chivito Cowa. I have come home to my remembering in such an intimate way that no other guide has been able to offer, until I met Chivito. I've experienced many programs (journey's rather) under his guidance and each one has unlocked doorways within my soul that I never thought possible. He truly shares from a well of wisdom and celebrates you every step of the way. Anyone looking to explore their inner and outer landscape would benefit grateful from Chivito's guidance and teachings. There is so much more I can share, but trust that you are in good hands and will be deeply grateful for the work you experience with him."
Delia Spirit Bear
"I whole-heartedly and soulfully recommend working with Chivito Cowa. He is a true gem and a living embodiment of spirit. He has a powerful, unique gift of intuiting what people are missing and deeply yearning for in today's society and is magically (I can think of no other word to describe his process) able to provide a path to reclaiming that in the form of horizontal guidance. It's a totally empowering, inspiring "we're in this together but each have our unique journey" vibe. His ability to cultivate a sangha while also providing concrete suggestions for moving through all that comes up in the soul-spelunking deep dives that you are in for when you sign up for this ride is truly saving the world by helping souls reconnect with their essence- the ultimate calling. I'm so glad I answered and got Chivito on the other end"
Laura Tousaint