Mirroring Training – April, 2024

The application deadline for this immersion has passed and the program is full. If you would like to still apply, please do so, and the guides will review your application if a cancellation occurs.

This program is designed for and primarily intended for trainees in Animas’ SAIP program (Soulcraft Apprenticeship and Initiation Process), but other guides and human development facilitators are warmly invited to apply. The Way of Council and the Art of Mirroring Intensive is a recommended prerequisite to the Mirroring Training.

During this training, we practice detecting the greater story that pulses beneath the events of a person’s life. When our story is compassionately reflected through the skilled mirroring of another, we feel fully heard and able to experience ourselves in a larger and more meaningful context; we’re enabled to catch up to ourselves and perhaps leap into the next phase of our journey of individuation. An alchemical exchange occurs between the teller and the listener, an exchange that is magical and priceless.

We will practice immersing ourselves in deep listening, a way of attending that enables us to mirror well and to uncover the archetypal themes that might frame another’s experience within the arc of their destiny. We work with themes such as the underworld journey (the descent to soul), mythopoetic identity, sacred tasks, Self-healing, psychospiritual death and rebirth, courting the Beloved, romancing the world, fear personas, subpersonalities, anima and animus, the four facets of the Self, the eco-soulcentric stages of development, other-than-human allies, underworld encounters, and archetypal symbols and themes.

We will study several principles and their application, including how mirroring is different from projection, transference, and interpretation; how analysis is different from loving; how to recognize the gestalt of people’s life stories; pattern recognition; framing; and talking the storyteller into his/her feelings.

We will work in dyads, triads, and full group, honing our skills by serving as guides for each other, and through discussion, feedback, and suggestions.

In addition to SAIP trainees, this training is appropriate for psychotherapists, coaches, counselors, educators, clergy, and wilderness and ceremonial guides.  Please note that those enrolled in the SAIP program are not required to complete an application and may request a registration link by emailing [email protected].

TEMPLE OF THE HOLY EARTH, WASHINGTON

We will be camped in northcentral Washington on private land at an altitude of 1700 feet beside a wild river in a deep canyon in the foothills of the North Cascade Mountains. With the help of dedicated human beings, salmon are returning to this river. In July, it’s likely the mock orange will be blossoming and wafting their seductive scent. Perhaps osprey will startle us as they dive for fish. Or maybe we’ll hear the song of the Varied Thrush. We’ll wander through the riparian zone of aspens, cottonwoods, and ponderosas, and up through whimsical rock formations on the dry shrub-steppe south-facing slopes of the canyon. We’ll be in the company of bald and golden eagles, black bears, salmon, and deer, and many others not often seen but known to be in the neighborhood, including mountain lions, wolves, and moose.