Teacher Training
Becoming a Spiritual Facilitator Level I:
The Essentials
An Eighteen-Month Professional Training and Initiation from April 2025 to October 2026
A note from Julie
Dear beloved 3Y Graduates,
Launching the first cohort of the teacher training in 2024 was the natural next step for me as a teacher and for us as a community. The inaugural cohort of TA‘s have been nimble, dedicated, and gracious. We’ve navigated our – respective! – growth edges with mutual respect, goodwill, and compassion towards ourselves and one another. I feel immensely privileged to be playing a role in supporting the current TAs in becoming the teachers they are called to be.
As I cast the circle for the second cohort, I do so with eyes and heart wide open. The 2025 – 2026 cohort feels less like clearing a path than
following an established one. However, there are always unexpected twists, and turns – especially when a program is still nascent. So while I know this cohort will benefit from the template that has been formed, it will still be a process of inner, outer, and secret discovery.
We now have a map, but every cohort charts its own course. If you feel called to help shape the course of this cohort with me, I wholeheartedly invite you to join me. I so look forward to following the star of this cohort’s evolutionary trajectory with you!
With love,
Overview
Being a spiritual teacher is a great privilege and a great responsibility. There is a fine balance between maintaining a sense of ground for yourself and your students while opening to expansive spiritual experiences, which can feel inherently groundless. This subtle dance requires the ability to track multiple dimensions simultaneously; determine the direction of the circle in a heartbeat; titrate the depth and intensity of the proceedings according to what the circle needs and can tolerate; and work in intimate partnership with your helping spirits, perhaps to an unprecedented degree.
To help you cultivate these myriad skills, this teacher training program is simultracked with Becoming a Spiritual Healing Practitioner Level I: The Essentials. This intentional design is aimed to provide you with two concurrent learning pathways: the opportunity to support, hold space for, track, and bear witness to a cohort of practitioners-in-training in real time, while simultaneously enabling you to follow a dedicated teacher training curriculum within an intimate cohort of trusted colleagues.
The learning arc within the teacher training cohort
Here are the required components within the teacher-training cohort:
- The training will begin with a two-day virtual gathering on Saturday, April 12 and Sunday, April 13, 2025 from 9am – 5pm Pacific Time both days.
- Your participation in one rendition of Partnering with Compassionate Spirits: Activating Your Medicine Council (this includes the introductory workshop in Niwot, CO from March 7th – 9th, even though it takes place prior to the start of the training). You are encouraged to attend one in-person workshop and one virtual workshop if you’re able to, although only one is required. Please note that you’re responsible for your travel expenses as well as your lodging if you choose to attend one of the residential retreats. Those costs are not included in the program tuition.
- Eighteen monthly virtual practice days (VPDs). These will take place on Saturdays from May to October 2025, and on Sundays from November 2025 to October 2026 from 9am – 5pm Pacific Time each day.
- Every other week evening Zoom gatherings. These will take place on Thursdays from April to September 2025 and on Wednesdays from October 2025 to October 2026 from 5pm – 7:30pm Pacific Time.
- Monthly self-guided pod meetings.
- A private, dedicated online forum in Circle.
- Three individual teaching practicums.
- Zoom facilitation training and self-led Zoom facilitation within the cohort on a rotating schedule to give you the chance to hone your skills.
- The training will culminate with a three-day virtual introductory workshop that the cohort will co-lead in October 2026, followed by a graduation ritual.
The learning arc within the practitioner training cohort
Here are the required components within the spirtual healer cohort:
- Two six-night residential retreats at Hollyhock on Cortes Island, B.C., Canada, which will take place at the beginning and conclusion of the Becoming a Spiritual Healer training. Please note that you’re responsible for your travel and lodging related expenses at Hollyhock. Those costs are not included in the program tuition.
- Six monthly Becoming a Spiritual Healer VPDs on Sundays from 9am – 5pm Pacific Time. This will be on a rotating schedule.
- One monthly Becoming a Spiritual Healer Wednesday evening Zoom gathering from 5pm – 7:30pm Pacific Time. This will be on a rotating schedule.
- Two Becoming a Spiritual Healer pod meetings.
- Providing support in the Becoming a Spiritual Healer discussion forum in Circle. This will be on a rotating schedule.
- Zoom facilitation during the Becoming a Spiritual Healer Wednesday evening Zoom gatherings from 5pm – 7:30pm Pacific Time. This will be on a rotating schedule to give you the chance to hone your Zoom facilitation skills.
laying the groundwork for crafting your own unique offerings
When crafting an original offering, it’s helpful to follow a proven sequence of steps that are both intuitive and practical. By exploring the following topics throughout the training, you will learn a foundational template for cocreating bespoke offerings in partnership with your helping spirits that you can build upon following the training:
- Ethics
- Curriculum development
- Casting a circle
- Magnetizing students
- Balanced pricing
- Choosing a venue
- Crafting forms (such as releases of liability, etc.)
- Circle agreements
- Space tending
- Boundaries and accountability
- Creating, maintaining, and reestablishing safety
- Circle dynamics and tending
- Voluntary participant withdrawals
- Ascertaining when you need to ask a participant to step out of a circle
- How to support participants who are struggling
- Building confidence as a facilitator
- Maintaining your seat as a facilitator
- Participant projections
- Partnering with your helping spirits while wearing the mantle of the teacher
- Cultivating your medicine as a facilitator
Leadership and facilitation within the teacher training cohort
You will have the opportunity to practice teaching your colleagues in the following ways:
- Presenting during teacher training Zoom gatherings, VPDs, and pod meetings
- Taking a leadership role when it comes to specific aspects of the teacher training program infrastructure, such as circle agreements, ethics, the online platform, resources, helping resolve interpersonal dynamics, etc.
- Crafting the content for your individual teaching practicums
mentorship within the practitioner training cohort
You will have the opportunity to step into leadership roles within the practitioner training in the following ways:
- Providing mentorship during the residential retreats at Hollyhock, including guiding the pods in tending to various aspects of the container
- Offering mentorship during VPDs and Zoom gatherings
- Supporting the pods in between the gatherings
our shared aspiration
By successfully completing the training, the goal is for you to be qualified to facilitate skills- and process-based circles, workshops, and trainings for participants on the following topics:
- Establishing and collaborating with a Medicine Council
- Gate Keepers
- Body Protectors
- Spirit Gates
- Merging
- Transfiguration
- Cord Cutting
- Divination
- Altar creation and tending
- Healing journeys
- Dismemberment and Rememberment
- Guided journeys
- Standing-in journeys
- Power animal retrieval
- Introductory journeying
- Mediumship
- Ritual creation and execution, both inside and outside of journey space
Residential retreat schedule
The two residential retreats at Hollyhock on Cortes Island, B.C., Canada will follow this approximate schedule:
Arrival Day
Check-in: 2pm–5pm
Dinner: 6:30pm
Opening Session: 8pm–9:30pm
Full Session Days
Breakfast: 8am
Morning Session: 9:30am–12:15pm
Lunch: 12:30pm
Afternoon Session: 2pm–6:15pm
Dinner: 6:30pm
Evening Session: 7:45pm–9:15pm
Departure Day
Breakfast: 8am
Closing Session: 9:30am–12:15pm
Lunch: 12:30pm
Please be advised that you must vacate your room prior to joining the morning session on the departure day.
Prerequisite for the Teacher Training
Currently, graduates of the first three cohorts of the Art and Practice of Shamanic Healing: A Three-Year Professional Training and Initiation are invited to apply to this training. Moving forward, this training will be the natural next step for those who have completed Becoming a Spiritual Healing Practitioner Level I and II.
Application and registration process
This training is open to graduates of the three cohorts of of The Art and Practice of Shamanic Healing: A Three-Year Professional Training and Initiation that took place from 2012–2015; 2017–2019; and 2019–2022. Moving forward, this training will be the natural next step for those who have completed Becoming a Spiritual Healing Practitioner Level I and II.
Step One: Complete the application by Friday, February 28, 2025.
Step Two: Applicants who are being considered for the training will be invited to schedule a dialogue with Julie via Zoom.
Step Three: Successful applicants will be welcomed into the training and provided with a full training schedule.
Step Four: Contact Hollyhock directly to reserve your choice of room for the first retreat.
Step Five: Your full tuition payment or your first of two annual tuition payments will be due on April 1, 2025. You will be invited to join Circle, our online portal, and make your tuition payment on April 1.
Step Six: The training will begin with a two-day virtual gathering on Saturday, April 12 and Sunday, April 13, 2025.
Program Tuition
Here are the two payment plan options and corresponding tuition tiers:
Payment in Full
$4,495.00 USD
One payment of $4,495 on April 1, 2025.
Annual Payment Plan
$2,445.00 USD annually
Two annual payments of $2445 on April 1, 2025 and April 1, 2026.
FAQs:
Of course. If you would like to apply for a tuition scholarship, please email Julie to inquire further.
No. If you withdraw from the training and you would like to join a future cohort, you will be asked to begin the application process anew.
No. Once the training begins, the circle will be closed.
Once the training begins, the cohort is fixed for the duration. Therefore, if anyone leaves the program, their place can’t be filled by another qualified participant. Given that, partial tuition refunds will only be issued when someone is faced with a personal medical emergency or a death in one’s immediate family. In those unforeseeable instances, a partial refund will be calculated and issued based on the date of withdrawal.