Intensives are designed for those who seek training and inspiration in the ever-widening subject matter of wilderness-oriented experience/therapy. They involve the whole person: body, soul, mind, and spirit, and are not for the faint-of-heart. Each course requires a unique commitment. Four Shields and Mirroring courses have been practical training at Lost Borders for many years.

• Two Week Training
• Month-Long Training
• Mirroring the Four Shields of Human Nature
• The Four Shields -The Seasons of Human Nature
  

Two Week Training

Training specific to the wilderness passage rite known as the vision fast. Full participation in the severance, threshold and incorporation phases while maintaining a training perspective. Recommended: that trainees have already fasted alone for at least three days in a wilderness place. An intense training exercise, punctuated by four days and nights of integration under the wind and stars.

When Raccoon, the eco-therapist, reaches down into his or her bag of “medicine,” is the vision fast there? The therapeutic power of a four day and night fast (or a one day and night fast), should be at the fingertips of every teacher, professional, or guide who has personally experienced the therapeutic power inherent in the wilderness passage. The two-week vision fast training is an introduction to a classic modern rite of transition.

Usually, the training involves the personal experience of a four-day and night fast in a wilderness place. Throughout the preparation, threshold, and incorporation phases of the training, the trainee must wear two hats: apprentice to the initiatory process and the one who is being initiated. Warning: It is not always easy to be subject and subjectee.

Though the training itself does not constitute credentials to immediately become a vision fast guide, it does give the student an understanding of how the principles of the vision fast can be applied to a profession, community, or client. Trainees are encouraged to learn the form, the process, and then to give it their own unique expression within life and work.The first five days are given over to preparation (severance) in Big Pine. Morning and afternoon meetings are the norm.

Instruction includes: the mirroring dynamics of elder’s councils; screening and preparation of candidates in four areas: physical, psychological, mental, and spiritual; the four shields of human-nature; the sacred and the profane; the dynamics of fasting; self-generated ceremony; the power of taboos; the “death lodge,” the “purpose circle,” the mirror of nature; and the shaping and confirmation of intent.

On the sixth day, we move to a wilderness basecamp. Trainees go out looking for a place to fast and set up communication stone piles with their “buddies.” On the six, seventh, eighth, and ninth days, the “trainee” lives alone and fasts in a wilderness place (Threshold). Sometimes, trainees will choose to remain in basecamp as support persons during the fast. On the morning of the eleventh day, the fasters return to basecamp (Incorporation). The group returns to Big Pine and a celebratory feast in Bishop. On the twelfth and thirteenth days, each story is told in the council of elders. The elders witness, mirror meaning, and empower intent. On the fourteenth day, we look at the process that has just unfolded from a training perspective.

Prerequisite: at least one vision fast.

reparing ahead of time: Every trainee must ask: “What am I going out to mark, celebrate, or confirm? What is my intent? Who will benefit from my training (Who are my people)? To whom do I pray?” (See the Handbook for suggestions.) The trainee must also decide whether to fast for four days, or one day, or to stay in basecamp. 

Month-Long Training

The old ways of passing between the worlds are not mastered in a day. Curiosity must be satisfied by study. Study must result in experience. In the doing comes the experience. There is no other way. Every day the apprentice must go around the wheel of human nature: from the physical to the psychological; from the psychological to the rational; from the rational to the spiritual. The child must be willing to undertake the dark passage so that the adult can be enlightened. Even so, elders are born, and initiatory midwives take their place in the communities of the world.

Every day there is exposure to the natural world, to the interface between natural and human. Every day there is a kind of passage rite, a severance, a passing through, and an incorporation. The apprentice must play two roles: that of initiate and that of field therapist, naive participant and knowing professional. Whatever is experienced during daily initiatory activity in the wilderness forms much of the subject matter of the teaching.

Students can very well expect to lose their borders on a daily basis.

The first two weeks concentrate on initiatory-style eco-therapies no more than a few hours in length. After morning meetings, afternoons are taken up with various assignments in the natural world: finding a place of solitude, engaging the “psychosphere,” walking alone at night, tracking the self through volcanic labyrinths, seeking spirit in the natural world. (Trainees will have the first two weekends off.)

The vision fast ceremony occupies the last 11 days of the regimen. Four days of preparation (severance), four days of fasting in a wilderness place (threshold), and three days of story telling and mirroring (incorporation) form the core experience. Subject matter includes the screening and preparation of candidates, the four shields of human nature, the sacred and the profane, the dynamics of fasting, self-generated ceremony, the power of taboo, the “death lodge,” “purpose circle,” and other pan-cultural symbols, the teachings of nature, “mirroring” and empowerment of the elder’s council, and the shaping and confirmation of intent. On the final day, we examine the month-long process from a training perspective.

Preparing ahead of time: Every trainee must ask: “ Who will benefit from my taking this training? What is my intent?” (See Handbook for suggestions.) The trainee must also decide whether to fast for four days, or one day, or to stay in base camp while the others fast.

Prerequisite: Two week training or its equivalent.

Mirroring the Four Shields of Human Nature

The shields of human nature turn with the experiences of life, from the smallest cell to the great seamless whole of the biosphere called earth. It begins with the body (summer), turns into psyche (fall), becomes activated form (winter), which dissolves into spirit (spring) -- which is born again in the body (summer). The four seasonal directions of human nature, in their complex, yet simple, interaction, form the basis of an ecopsychology which redefines traditional psychologies based on human alone, apart from nature.

Telling one’s own story is an ancient art. Nowadays, we have forgotten how to listen and how to tell. Yet the very survival of our species depends on our ability to communicate with each other in such ways as to be mutually enriched by the telling and the listening. If we cannot tell with expression, our life is mute. If we cannot listen like a mirror, we cannot reflect back the wholeness of the four shields -- the body, soul, mind and spirit of the teller. The best stories are about human nature -- that is, the human of us which is, after all, nature in her basic manifestations as physical, psychical, rational, and spiritual. One of the best ways to create a four shields story, if not the best, is to put people in contact with nature in the raw.

What comes forth in the story is the stuff of self-transformation. Even as we “myth” ourselves into experience, so we express ourselves into existence. Our stories about our natural selves, and our means of expressing them, lead us to courage, determination, commitment, hope, wisdom, and the will to survive, to transcend the difficulty, to go beyond ourselves. Those of us who work with people must know how to listen and respond to the stories our people tell, so that we can help them create a life that is deeper, richer, and of greater benefit to our community and the earth.

We will meet together in outdoor settings. Mornings will be taken up with meetings, afternoons with solitary excursions into the surrounding wilderness that evoke the four personas. Trainees will forgo companionship, food, and shelter during these times. In the evenings, we will tell and listen to stories that empower. The objectives of the seminar are to experience human-nature deeply; to elicit personal “mythos” through the expression of the story; to acquire knowledge of how to listen and respond to the four personas of human nature (to “mirror”), and to utilize a powerful incorporation tool of self and group empowerment -- the “elder’s council.”

The Four Shields -The Seasons of Human Nature

The Four Shields is an ancient/modern medicine wheel teaching of human nature. The essence of these teachings is the simple truth that we are nature in human form.

Four Shields trainings are open to all who wish to find the way home, back to the true nature of self in the living body of earth. It will offer the participants an awareness of moving simultaneously through the inner and outer landscape one mirroring the other.

Each day we will spend time in circle speaking of the four shields, these teachings will prepare the participant for time alone in wild nature. Each day you will cross a threshold and go out onto the land, empty bellied and alone, to evoke the cycles and seasons of your nature. There will also be time each day to sit in council, as our ancestors did, and share the stories that you return with.

For specific offerings, visit our Calendar or Course List.