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?
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...
Healers, Wisdom keepers, Spiritual leaders,
Ceremony holders, Rites of Passage doulas...
Global Training
Register for 2025
Register for 2025
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?
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?
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.
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
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
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
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 2025.
(When we receive your application, we will respond to schedule a 20 - 30 minute interview to ensure it's a fit!)
(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
Founder of The Somatic Nature Therapy InstituteSomatic and Nature-based Psychotherapist, Ceremonialist, Coach, Mentor, Teacher, Rite of Passage Guide, Educator.Katie is a pioneer and expert in the fields of wilderness therapy, ecotherapy, and adventure therapy. She has been working with people outdoors for 30 years, training therapists and healers for 25, and teaching graduate students in this arena for 20.
She has been the US Representative of the International Adventure Therapy Community since 2015 and has received an exceptional practitioner award in her field. She brings warmth, precision and embodied integrity in her teaching.
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 believes strongly in the power of spending time in nature as a way to listen deeply inward and is in awe of the strength and resiliency of the human spirit.
www.somaticnaturetherapy.com - Hāweatea Holly Bryson, MA (Ngāi Tahu, Waitaha)
Founder of Nature KnowsPsychotherapist (Individual, Couples), Kaimirimiri (Māori Healing), Nature/Family Quest Guide, Facilitator, Rite of Passage Guide, Trainer.Hāweatea is deeply committed to the resurgence of rites of passage as a vital cultural and therapeutic practice for our times. Her work spans Aotearoa (NZ), Hawai'i Australia, China and the USA where she has supported diverse communities in this over the past 17 years. Her psychotherapy practice is rooted in somatic and relational therapies, traditional Māori healing, and nature-connected life-ways.
Her highlight is the absolute honour of walking alongside individuals, couples and families through the evolving stages of life and relationship over spans of time.
She trains facilitators and therapists in experiential modalities; including nature-based therapy, ecopsychology, decolonising psychotherapy, and Indigenous approaches to listening and guiding. She belongs to the mountains Aoraki and Mauna ō Wakea.
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.
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
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, surface culture vs deep culture practices.
- 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
- Role Power
- 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?
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
2025 TRAINING CALENDAR begins
October 28, 2025 USA/October 29, 2025 AUS
2.5 hrs commitment per week
2.5 hrs of live sessions per fortnight
2025 TRAINING CALENDAR begins
October 28, 2025 USA/October 29, 2025 AUS
- Alternate Tuesdays 2.5hrs
Hawai'i, USA, Canada
(*note if you have a time change with daylight savings)
October 28th
HT 12:30pm/ PT 3:30pm/ MT 4:30pm
November 11th - March 3rd
HT 12:30pm/ PT 4:30pm/ MT 3:30pm
March 9th - Close
HT 12:30pm/ PT 3:30pm/ MT 4:30pm
United Kingdom
11:30pm (changes to 10:30pm during the daylight savings months of November - February) - Fortnightly Wednesdays 2.5hrs
Australia & Aotearoa/ NZ
(*note if you have a time change with daylight savings)
October - April 1st
NSW 9:30am/ QLD 8:30am/ NZ 11:30am
April 15th - Close
NSW 8:30am/ QLD 8:30am/ NZ 10:30am
India & Asia
India IST: 4am
China/ Hong Kong ICT: 6:30am - Core Class Schedule (for Northern Hemisphere)2025
Oct 28th
Nov 11th, 18th
Dec 2nd, 16th
Jan 6th, 20th
Feb 3rd, 17th
March 3rd, 17th, 31st
April 14th, 28th
May 12th, 26th
June 9th, 23rd
July 7th, 21st
Plus 2 x *90minute Q&A Sessions, Optional. (tbd) - Core Class Schedule (for Southern Hemisphere, India & Asia)2025
Oct 29th
Nov 12th, 19th
Dec 3rd, 17th
Jan 7th, 21st
Feb 4th, 18th
March 4th, 18th
April 1st, 15th, 29th
May 13th, 27th
June 10th, 24th
July 8th, 22nd
Plus 2 x 90minute Q&A Sessions, Optional. (tbd)
Training Prices
Limited spaces for each annual training
APPLY FOR 2025
Prices are in USD
APPLY FOR 2025
Prices are in USD
$3590
Standard Pay-in-Full Rate
*Deposit: $950
payment in full must be completed prior to course start date
*Deposit: $950
payment in full must be completed prior to course start date
$3790
Standard Payment Plan
(includes monthly fee)
Deposit: $950
Six monthly payments of ~$475/month
(includes monthly fee)
Deposit: $950
Six monthly payments of ~$475/month
$3250
Early-bird Pay-in-Full Rate
Early bird rate ends
7/1/25
*Deposit: $950 to reserve your seat, payment in full must be completed prior to 7/1/25
Early bird rate ends
7/1/25
*Deposit: $950 to reserve your seat, payment in full must be completed prior to 7/1/25
$3450
Early-bird Payment Plan
(includes monthly fee)
Early bird rate ends
7/1/25
Deposit: $950
Six monthly payments of ~$418/month
(includes monthly fee)
Early bird rate ends
7/1/25
Deposit: $950
Six monthly payments of ~$418/month
BIPOC Scholarships
Our Commitment to Multicultural Equity & Accessibility
We honour the richness of lived experience and are committed to fostering equity and accessibility across diverse cultural landscapes. These BIPOC-specific scholarships (for Black, Indigenous, and/or People of Color) are offered in deep appreciation for the experiences, values and insight,that is alive across our diverse communities.
In restoring community-based models, we acknowledge:
- The global need for broader, more inclusive containers for collective growth - ones that honour lived experience and cultural diversity.
- That Western education systems have historically been inaccessible or misaligned for many communities due to colonial structures and conflicting values.
- The essential role of multicultural - not mono-cultural - environments in practitoner training and community healing.
This is a personal and professional training space grounded in safety, personal inquiry and responsibility. Together, we explore how to enter this work with integrity - without appropriating the cultures, practices, ceremonies or rites of others.
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.
and to perpetuate their healing ways.
CONTACT
A partnership between: Nature Knows &
The Somatic Nature Therapy Institute
IG: @ritesofpassagetraining
@nature_knows
@somaticnaturetherapy
The Somatic Nature Therapy Institute
IG: @ritesofpassagetraining
@nature_knows
@somaticnaturetherapy
All photo and video materials belong to their owners and are used for demonstration purposes only. Please do not use them in commercial projects.
©2020,Nature Knows and The Somatic Wilderness Therapy Institute.
All rights reserved.
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©2020,Nature Knows and The Somatic Wilderness Therapy Institute.
All rights reserved.
Copy
