Programs & Possibilities

The programs offered through WisdomBridge are often extensive in length. It is our belief that to learn many of the skills necessary for a sustainable culture, we must immerse ourselves in the act of remembering.

To find out more about our teachers, visit our Teachers page.

Gratitude For All That Is:
Annual Thanksgiving Ritual

The great German mystic, Meister Eckhart said, If the only prayer you ever uttered was thank you, that would suffice. Gratitude is central to many traditional cultures, offering gestures to the earth, to the unseen others of the invisible worlds, and to the ancestors throughout the year. We are only beginning to remember the importance of this simple act and the profound significance it holds for healing our fragmented communities and culture. To hold with appreciation the multitude of gifts that flow our way daily is to truly live a soulful life

You are invited to gather with friends, family and our extended community for our annual Thanksgiving ritual. The ritual of gratitude that emerges is was breathtakingly beautiful. We are held within the beauty of the redwoods, we sing melodies to by the river, and feast on the nectar of poetry, music and community. Come join with others and participate in the great round of life where we return our thankfulness to the earth, to the green world, to our animal kin, to one another and to the unseen worlds for the abundance in our lives.

Read more about Gratitude.

Creation Continues:
Art, Ritual and the Restoration of the Soul

Art and ritual are among the oldest and most expressive forms of connection between the human and more-than-human world. The great Paleolithic cave paintings revealed a world rich in awe, beauty and wonder. Our lives too, need to participate in the ongoing creation of the cosmos. To be connected to the vitality of this energy is to experience oneself lifted along on the current of life affirming waters. Art and ritual are the primary means by which the soul experiences the radical sense of its aliveness.

These workshops meet for two and one-half days exploring in depth the ancient relationship between creativity and the soul. We begin with an immersion into the art practice where we work the edges of our creative life. From there we move into a ritual process that takes us into the communal expression of what emerged in our work together. Join us and recover your pathway into the creative moment.

Read more about Creation Continues.

Men of Spirit:
A Ten-Month Intensive Initiation Process

Many traditional cultures escorted their young men into the world of adulthood and the sacred through an elaborate series of rituals. These rituals occurred in space set apart from the rest of the community and took place over many weeks. Preparation for initiation was often extensive and included witnessing the ongoing life of the people, and observing the qualities displayed by men of spirit. Underneath and holding up this initiatory process was a deep and abiding relationship to nature and the spirits of the place. This passage was also rooted in a nearly endless succession of generations that had come to learn the necessity of such a transition. The awareness for this is essentially universal: a man’s soul must be shaped by a process of intense focus, communal reflection and immersion in the natural and supranatural worlds. In other words, to become a man, certain gateways needed to be crossed in order for that territory to be fully embedded within the man.

What we witness daily in the litany of injustices and unconscious exploitation of others and the world are the actions of uninitiated men. The failure to cross the gateway keeps an individual caught in a perpetual recycling of adolescent themes: Am I good enough? Do I belong? Questions of adequacy are often portrayed in gross exaggerations of power and force. As we glance out and view our culture we see an intense absorption in these concerns. Seldom do the questions arise that reflect a successful passage through the gate: How are the children doing, the salmon, rivers, trees and air? The near total absence of these questions reveals a near total failure on our part to adequately prepare and present our young men the opportunity to step through and find themselves in the world of adult men, carrying the responsibilities of men for the community. 

Read more about the Men of Spirit process.

Handprints of the Ancestors:
A Women's Path to Initiation Through Reclamation

The women come. They come one by one; they come in droves, reaching out their hands, striding through the grasses, up the long hills, over the paths worn smooth by those who came before them. They come with their joys and sorrows, their woundings and their healings, their questions, their wisdom. Young ones come and those who stand on the edge of elderhood and all the ones in between. They bring their stories, their children, their loves, their mothers and grandmothers, their fathers and grandfathers, their birthings and dyings, all these cached in the places around their hearts, in the warmth of their wombs. And all of them exude their longing; it glints from their eyes, rises like morning steam as they pass the trees of the valleys.

The longing is to know they belong: to the earth, to wildness, to their sisters, to their own bodies and selves, to those who came before them. Often these women have learned to be small and have lived with the smoldering outrage their psyches sing of in the darkness of the night when they are unable to sleep. In still, deep water, they have seen their largeness, recognized themselves and they march up the mountains to reclaim what is their birthright.

Read more about the Handprints of the Ancestors' process.

Ritual Village Training:
Gathering the Threads of Authentic Community

The longing for community runs deep in all of us. To have a place where we can feel in our bones that we belong and are known is one of the most essential needs of the soul.

The intentions of the Ritual Village Training are to develop the practices and forms that are necessary for sustaining our lives. Becoming familiar with the ways that have evolved in our long journey of becoming human reminds us of the fundamental ingredients required for healthy lives. This original matrix consisted of an experience of belonging through village life, an abiding connection with the wild edges of nature, an intimacy with the sacred and a knowledgeable awareness of one’s life purpose. This over-arching reality comprised a holding space large enough to draw out our most potent and holy selves. This expanded identity was capable, in turn, of participating in the widest possible range of relations with a living and animated cosmos.

The creation of a non-local village is a powerful and transformative response to our collective crisis of isolation and alienation. Living as we do in the belly of a soul eating culture, we face enormous pressures every day to adjust, accommodate and abandon our essential self. Coming into the shelter of village is one way to protect our intrinsic value and restore our indigenous soul.

Read more about the Village process.