All the following workshops take place in a wilderness setting or retreat center, offer richly loving and supportive community, and involve many other ceremonies such as sacred fire, sweat, story telling, shamanic journeying, counseling and dream work.There is much fun, joy, laughter, tears and dancing also. Crows Nest offers an ongoing series of workshops that can lead to certification, known as the Wounded Healer School. We have a special Wounded Healer Summer School Intensive on S. Manitou Island in August (see below). But all Wounded Healer School events are based on Mikkal’s vision: “That we all have the multiplex potentiality of shamans within us. Collectively I call this the “shaman within.” What is needed at this time is to ignite it–wake that potentiality up, to activate it and orchestrate it so that we can each together shape-shift our world in heart-open and earth-honoring and reverencing ways.Because you are very much needed in the world, we are giving each other some tremendously helpful resources and supportive love for stepping into our power to make a difference in the world.Come, join us at these Crows Nest intensive Wounded Healer School events.”
September 9-11, 2011 Introduction & Overview of Shamanism and the Sacred Breathwork Series
Review of Shamanic Journey work and the foundational aspect of indigenous heart psychology. Introduction and overview of each training module, and its relationship to heart psychology and shamanic journeying work as grounding theory and supportive practices for sacred breathwork. $250 pre-registration 30-days in advance
November 4-6 2011. Module I: Theory of the Sacred and Rites of Passage
This workshop will have discussions of readings (for certification people) and focus on the nature of Ritual Structure, Process and Leadership which runs through all Crows Nest sacred ceremonies, but in a very pronounced way in Sacred Breathwork, as in vision Quests and Sweat Lodges. This module is crucial to the entire program, the skeleton on which all the theory and procedures are hung. $250 pre-registration 30-days in advance
January 27-29th, 2012 Module II: PSYCHE & COSMOS (Cartographies)
This module explores the cartographies of the deep and archetypal psyche into transpersonal dimensions. Examines Grof’s Cartography and Jung’s Cartography, Correlates them with the cartography of the Shaman’s Cosmos and its three realms, and the energetic chakras systems, as they can manifest in sacred breathwork and dance. Some realms of the cartography will be experientially explored in shamanic journey work, as well as in sacred breathwork sessions. $250 pre-registration 30-days in advance
April 13-15 Module III PSYCHOPATHOLOGY & SPIRITUAL EMERGENCIES
This module explores psychopathological disturbances from the standpoint of a potential for response non-suppressive healing ceremonies such as sacred breath. Also psychiatric exclusions and medical problems are reviewed. Forms of crisis that have a spiritual or spontaneous healing intention are explored in terms of possibilities for sacred breathwork, and follow up care. This module is crucial for the safety of the practice. $250
May 18-20th, 2012: Module IV: SACRED BREATHWORK: Igniting the Shaman Within
Sacred Breathwork ™ is a powerful healing process employing intensive non-ordinary states of consciousness in a safe rite of passage context. It invites individuals to re-connect with their own life-forward, inner healing and wholeness-making force. The process is highly experiential, and the insight and healing of deep wounds gained arises from within each person’s interior experiencing. Sacred breathwork honors and synthesizes ancient shamanic wisdom with the insights of modern depth psychology inspired by C.G. Jung, Stanislav Grof, and the experiential focusing process developed by Eugene T. Gendlin. -Mikkal
• Heal Old Wounds,Dissolve Stubborn Limiting Patterns.
• Awaken, Activate and Express Your Potentiality.
• Step into your power to express your true self and be of service.
This workshop features presentation and discussion for those in the certification process on music selection to support entrainment with the space of Initiation, and will introduce how to build and structure your music files for sacred breathwork process. $250 Register here
Aug 3rd – 11th, 2012. Five Day Intensive Retreat I
This intensive 5-Day Retreat will take place on South Manitou Island coinciding with the wounded healer summer school and those who will be vision questing.We will assist and support those who are on the island to quest for a vision. The training intensive of the Wounded Healer Summer School this year is the 5-Day Intensive with morning and afternoon sessions. It will also offer two sacred breath sessions prior to departure for South Manitou Island, and it will involve individualized assessments of each participant for purposes of determining what additional instruction or experience they may need. On the Island we will share in presentations of topics, and experientially explore shamanic journeying and sacred dance (bring your drums).It will be good to come a day or two early for additional sacred breathwork sessions. A plan for co-facilitating breathwork sessions in your community with other students in the training program will also be developed for year II, which begins in the Fall, 2012. Extensive review and integration of material, combined with focus on professional development as a facilitator. $550 pre-registration 30-days in advance.Register early as we must pay Federal Park Fees and schedule and pay for your Ferryboat ride to early. Register here
August 3-11, 2012 – Wilderness Quest South Manitou Island. Each summer for 15 years we have run the South Manitou Island Wilderness Quest, in Northern Lake Michigan, and now run it concurrent with the Wounded Healer Summer School. We meet at and spend two days preparing and building community at Crows Nest, before trekking North by car to reach Leland, a fishing port town along the Lake Michigan shoreline. We ferry to the Island, where we spend five days. See read “What to bring on a Wilderness Quest” as well as “Medicine Wheel and Vision Quest” to help prepare. We keep costs as low and affordable as possible. This year’s costs are $550.00 plus approx. $150.00 out of pock expenses est. Register here.
The second year of workshops and final 5 day intensive in summer 2013 to be announced
About Mikkal (In his own words):
For more than three decades my field has been to study the psycho-spiritual genius of shamanism across cultures and historical periods, which is itself a goldmine of human potentiality, of how to alter consciousness to tap our unlimited wealthy of possibility which yearns to come on line, be accessed, downloaded, expressed. It can help us each to step into our power to make a difference in the world together–co-creatively. My disciplines as a Jungian psychologist and medical anthropologist have helped formed this knowledge and skill set, but my own initiations and direct experience have given it the deep substance and have most powerfully shaped what is now the vision of Crows Nest Wounded Healer Schools, in USA, France, Belgium, and S. Africa. In public schools we have learned about evolution as a external biological process. Visionaries like A.N. Whitehead and Teilhard de Chardin taught us to see the inner evolution that has begun a long time ago with our ancestors, and now becomes the major force of evolution in the future. Jung saw the shaman as a prototype of the individuation process—inward evolution on this planet has its probable origin there-in.The Shaman Within us all is our evolutionary – alchemical lab. Please consider joining us in this work that is so much needed as we face the planetary challenges and opportunities of 2012 and beyond.