A 9-month training to deepen your transformative work with others
do you want guidance or support to
confidently develop and enact personally meaningful,
culturally relevant, Ceremony and Rites of Passage
for yourself and/or your community?
Calling all Therapists, Coaches, Facilitators, Mentors,
Healers, Wisdom keepers, Spiritual leaders,

Ceremony holders, Rites of Passage doulas...
Global Training
Register for 2024
Are you looking for
impactful, effective tools to
respectfully and authentically engage in ceremony as a support in moving through big life transitions?

Are you wanting leadership skills
and expanded practice
in deep listening and powerful mirroring to illuminate meaning for your people?

Are you longing to confidently create
personally meaningful, culturally relevant Ceremony and Rites of Passage for yourself and your community?

Are you seeking the embodied capacity to powerfully and safely create sacred space and containers for
deep transformation?

The Calling
This is for you if you:
  • Seek to guide people through the gates of life
    • Love ceremony, ritual or value rites of passage and feel the need in your community.
  • Want a culturally relevant and respectful approach
    • Are looking to support communities to create ceremonies that are culturally relevant for them, without appropriating other groups cultures, ceremonies, rites, or practices.
  • Long to create containment for deep transformation
    • Are ready to deepen the practice of holding strong witness and neutral presence.
    • See ceremony as a tool to move through big experiences as opposed to spiritual bypass.
  • Are here to bring more of the intentional and sacred forward
    • Are looking to deepen your understanding of how to create meaningful ceremonies with clients or groups.
    • See the need for conscious ceremonial transition in your community.
  • Desire structure, forms, and personally relevant maps
    • Are wanting to deeply listen, ask important questions, mirror, extrapolate the aliveness, meaning, symbols, into personally relevant ceremony and marking change.
    • Yearn for a relevant structure to ground this work in.
  • Wonder ...
    • Am I doing enough? What's my role? How do I make a difference?
    • Are ready to reclaim what is important to you, your values, and with those you love.
Rites of Passage
The ceremonial process that marks the transition from one phase of life to another. They are turning points in our life when we go through key changes where our identity, behaviors, choices, and roles change.

The Rite of Passage ceremony is instrumental in
how we accept growth, challenge, and change.
9-month International Training Components
20 Core Sessions
A deep dive into theory and practice
of creating Ceremony & Rites of Passage
Ongoing Personalized Ceremonial Design & Practice
A multitude of opportunities to design and enact personal Ceremony throughout the course duration
2.5 Hours of Homeplay
per module
Experiential exercises and readings to engage between meetings to deepen the learning experience
Day-Walk or Night Quest
An intensive, Ceremonial, nature-based, day-long solo quest mid-course
Personal Relevance and Cultural Appropriateness
Support and understanding to create personally meaningful, culturally relevant Rites of Passage experiences for you and your communities
Localized
Project Development
Guidance to develop a meaningful offering for some aspect of your community throughout the course
Register
Complete the application below to apply for 2024.
(When we receive your application, we will respond to schedule a 20 - 30 minute interview to ensure it's a fit!)
Our Teaching Team
  • Katie Asmus, MA, LPC, BMP
    The Somatic Wilderness Therapy Institute
    Therapist, Coach, Educator, Mentor, Workshop Facilitator, and Rite of Passage Guide.
    Katie incorporates present-moment awareness, creative arts, relationship to the natural world, and body-mind connection to support people in more deeply and compassionately connecting to themselves, others, and the earth. She has a long history of creating, facilitating, and practicing personally meaningful ceremony and ritual, and she believes strongly in the power of spending time in nature as a way to listen deeply inward. Currently, she manages, directs, teaches and sees private practice clients through The Somatic Wilderness Therapy Institute (SWTI), a multi-dimensional therapeutic and educationally-based organization that incorporates Wilderness and Body-Centered Psychotherapies in Boulder, Colorado.
    www.wildernesstherapyinstitute.com
  • Haaweatea Holly Bryson, MA
    Nature Knows
    Psychotherapist and Nature Based Therapist, Kaitohutohu and Kairomiromi (Māori Healing Practitioner), Rite of Passage Guide, and Trainer.
    Haaweatea is committed to the resurgence of rites of passage. For the past 15 years she's supported this with various communities across Australia, Aotearoa (NZ), Hawai'i, China and the USA. As a psychotherapist she specialises in trauma, transition and transformation, with individuals, couples and families. She is a somatic therapist and bodyworker trained in traditional Māori practices (Ngāi Tahu and Waitaha are her tribes). She facilitates and guides rites of passage and quests with families, veterans, women, young people, parents and teens. She holds a MA Transpersonal Counselling and Wilderness Therapy from Naropa University (2009), trained with The School of Lost Borders, and acknowledges her Waitaha elders for their steady influence, challenge and support. www.natureknows.co
9-month global training
Calling all Leaders, Healers, Change-makers, and Those stepping up to support others in this time of unknown.

As we navigate these uncertain and rapidly changing times, we are calling together those who want support and community in taking a stand for Resilience and Resource during this time of change.

We invite you to turn toward ceremony, ritual and rites of passage as tools to help us navigate these times as they have across the history of humankind.
We welcome you to:

  • Access your personal pathway to meaning, spiritual connection, and guidance

  • Excavate and illuminate your personal relationship with ceremony and rites of passage.

  • Grow your capacity for deep listening and trusting your way of responding to what each experience is crying out to have honored and enacted.

  • Gain vision, clarity, and confidence to create the ceremony you and/or your community are seeking.

  • Understand the relevance, necessity and application of the overarching key structures and mechanics of ceremony and rites of passage.
Bring people together

Impact and nourish your community

Honour life's transitions in rich ways
Training Content
  • Ceremony
    • Creating Sacred/ Intentional Space
    • Intentions and Purpose
    • Types of Ceremony
    • Introducing Ceremony
    • Ceremonial Stages and Intentional Acts
    • Meaningful, Symbolic Action
    • Witness, Resources, Place
    • Ceremonial Tools
    • Ritual
    • Sensory Experiences
    • The Elements
    • Meaningful, Symbolic Objects
    • Structure and Spontaneity
    1
  • Rites of Passage
    • Definition and Scope
    • The Stages Inherent to Rites of Passage
    • Rites of Passage Maps
    • Preparation
    • Populations
    • Nature-Based Ceremonial Practices
    • Life Change and Transformation
    • Death, Loss, Addiction, and Endings
    • Birth, Weddings, New Roles and Responsibilities
    • Embodiment and Integration
    • Maps Expanded: Hero/ines Journey, Stages of Change, Seasons, Directions, Natural Cycles
    2
  • Cultural Appropriateness
    • Culture and Diversity
    • Lineage and Connection
    • Meaning, Symbols, Metaphor
    • Questions to explore: intention, cultural/ spiritual belief
    • Personal, Family and Ancestral relationship with Ceremony and Ritual
    • Personal, Spiritual, Cultural Relevance
    • Eliciting Meaning and Metaphor

    3
  • Community and Family
    • Role of Community
    • Independence and Interdependence
    • Confirmation and Recognition
    • Witness
    • Deep Listening and Mirroring Practice
    • Holding a Container for Depth and Growth
    • Role of the Mentor

    4
  • Intervention and Change
    • Therapeutic Markers for Transformation/ Change
    • Role of Solitude
    • Crisis
    • Vision, Illumination, Epiphany
    • The Unknown and The Darkness
    • Risk and Safety
    • Facilitation Skills
    • Trails and Paths
    5
  • Other Topics
    • Initiation
    • Needs and Gaps
    • Eco-Reciprocity
    • Spiritual Bypass
    • Intimacy, Ecstacy and Power
    6
Is your heart beating and are your palms sweating?

Is something in you saying YES as you read this even if you are not sure why?
Schedule & Dates
A 9-Month Live Online Global Training
2.5 hrs commitment per week
2.5 hrs of live sessions per fortnight
2024 TRAINING CALENDAR

Alternate Tuesdays 2.5hrs

Hawai'i, USA, Canada
May 14 to October 29 (daylight savings)
HT 12:30pm/ PT 3:30pm/ MT 4:30pm

Nov through Feb 5th
HT 12:30pm/ PT 2:30 pm/ MT 3:30 pm

United Kingdom

11:30pm (changes to 10:30pm during the daylight savings months of November, December, January and February)

Fortnightly Wednesdays 2.5hrs

Australia & Aotearoa/ NZ
May - September
QLD 8:30am/ NSW 8:30am/ NZ 10:30am
October
QLD 8:30am/ NSW 9:30am/NZ 11:30am
November - February:
QLD 8:30am/ NSW 9:30am/ NZ 11:30am

India & Asia
India IST: 4am
China/ Hong Kong ICT: 6:30am

Core Class Schedule (for Northern Hemisphere)
2024
May 14th, 28th
June 11th, 25th
July 9th, 23rd
Aug 6th, 20th
Sept 3rd, 17th
Oct 1st, 15th, 29th
Nov 12th, 19th
Dec 3rd, 17th
Jan 7th, 21st
Feb 4th

*90 MINUTE Q&A OPTIONAL SESSIONS
on TBD
Core Class Schedule (for Southern Hemisphere, India & Asia)
2024
May 15th, 29th
June 12th, 26th
July 10th, 24th
Aug 7th, 21st
Sept 4th, 18th
Oct 2nd, 16th, 30th
Nov 13th, 20th
Dec 4th, 18th
Jan 8th, 22nd
Feb 5th

*90 MINUTE Q&A OPTIONAL SESSIONS
on TBD
Course Prices
Limited spaces for each annual training

APPLY FOR 2024

Prices are in USD
$3,375
Standard Pay-in-Full Rate




Deposit: $950 to confirm seat
$3620
Standard Payment Plan
(includes monthly fee)



Deposit: $950 followed by
6 monthly payments of $445 once course starts
$2,995
Early-bird Pay-in-Full Rate
Early bird rate ends
March 22, 2024



Deposit: $950 to confirm seat
$3320
Early-bird Payment Plan
(includes monthly fee)
Early bird rate ends
March 22, 2024

Deposit: $950 followed by
6 monthly payments of $395 once course starts
BIPOC Scholarships: We are committed to multi-cultural accessibility and equity.
These BIPOC-specific (Black, Indigenous and/or People of Color) scholarships are in deep appreciation for the experiences, values, and insight that is alive across our diverse communities.

Note: In restoring community models we acknowledge:

- The global need for a wider growth container and a recognition and respect toward lived experience and diversity. Historically, western education and institutions have been inaccessible due to a conflict in values for many communities and cultures, or colonial modes of access.
- The deep need for a multi-cultural not mono-cultural learning environment. As a practitioner training, we enter into personal inquiry and responsibility. This is a BIPOC safe community. We explore how we each engage this work without appropriating other's culture, practices, ceremonies or rites.

Please register your interest for 2024 Scholarships at the link.
Called to give to the Scholarship Fund?
Your generous gift increases accessibility for incredible people who are committed to ceremony and rites of passage in their homes and communities, and to perpetuate their healing ways.
Personal and Professional Development
Next 9-month Online Training 2024
Next Group: TBA
Receive Your Free Ceremony Guide
Give yourself the gift and guidance of ceremony with a
20-page Guide to Create Personally Meaningful &
Culturally Relevant Ceremony

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©2020,Nature Knows and The Somatic Wilderness Therapy Institute.
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