THE CRAFT OF COUNCIL AS CEREMONY: A Training for Facilitators, Guides and Space Holders
Schedule
Thu, 27 Mar, 2025 at 06:00 pm to Sun, 30 Mar, 2025 at 03:00 pm
UTC-04:00Location
Spirit Hollow | Bennington, VT
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GUIDES: Tracey Forest (KeyTurner) and Kimber Wattendorf (Northstar)For budding or blossoming holders of sacred spaces, soul-centric leaders and guides, this long weekend will give you a basket of resources you can begin to use immediately in your own communities.
In these unprecedented days on Earth, we need leaders who are focused, dedicated, and well-resourced to create beautiful, ceremonial containers for safety, deep listening, soulful sharing and powerful mirroring, where each participant’s voice is truly heard and supported.
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More than just a process of passing a talking piece, council is a ceremonial offering of reverence and communion.
Ceremony alone is a potent way of being in stirring conversation with Mystery and nature, of invoking the Sacred, of gifting our ecological selves in a rapturous participatory dance with all that is. When council is consciously conducted as ceremony, participants enter into this dance, surrendering to the magic of being alive and to being shaped by the depths. Voicing and moving from that source are exquisite and consciousness-shifting.
Ceremonial council invites us to put aside the strategic mind, to step outside of our daily lives, to drop into our own depths, to be worked by forces beyond our human minds, and to say yes to being surprised and changed in sacred reciprocity.
As much as it is a practice of speaking from the heart, ceremonial council is also a practice of listening from our roots, of tracking each other, of beholding each being as truly holy.
Council allows us – as guides and facilitators – to hold deep and non-hierarchical spaces, where profound communication happens, where everyone is equal, valued, seen as a sacred being, and where all the other-than-humans are cherished, invited and listened to.
We will spend the weekend weaving a gorgeous basket of ceremony and council. We will also spend time together and solo out on the land, listening and offering.
You'll not find a training like this anywhere, as it has grown out of our own decades-long experience of weaving council and ceremony.
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“I did this last year and it was amazing! It crystallized so much of what I already knew but made it feel so clear! And also expanded my range with so many options to really hone this skill of holding space! Not to mention Spirit Hollow is such an epic place!! ”
— ~Katherine A, participant 2023
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Guiding ceremonial council is constellation of practices and approaches, guidelines and skills.
You will learn to:
Set gorgeous, evocative spaces that feel alluring and timeless
Invoke the sacred others (using your own language) to be present
Create safe containers that drop people in and allow them to be authentic
Understand the guidelines for council
Attune to nuances of reading and responding to the field (and including the other-than-humans in that field)
Seed a council in a ceremonial way
Rescue a council that is spinning out
Track participants for themes or patterns
Attune to the signs and synchronicities happening in the greater field around us
Offer different forms of council to use with different groups and for particular purposes, such as:
Embodiment and Image councils
Deep Time Councils (ancestors and future ones)
Deep Imagination journey councils
Participation in councils with other-than-humans in the forest
Question councils
Reflection Councils (where you offer mirroring of participants)
As a culmination to our training, participants will design their own ceremonial council based on the community that they serve. Feedback will be given afterwards from both the guides and the circle.
REGISTER EARLY-- this training WILL fill quickly!
www.spirithollow.org/offerings/p/craft-of-council
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Where is it happening?
Spirit Hollow, Bennington, United StatesEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
