The Three Year Training Program

First Year

The first year of the training program consists of an introduction to the seed imagery, working with a single animal, several days of experience working with polarity animals, and ultimately work with all seven chakra animals including the council of animals, the healing circle, and working with people on a continuing basis.

The fundamental orientation of this first year of training has always been to bring a student to the place of being able to guide another person one-on-one, not through imitating someone else and not through having learned an intellectual formula, but through the process of having undertaken their own growth work in relationship with the animals in a profound and serious way. Respect for the animals and for the individual being guided have been essential precepts. And the manner in which this is accomplished is based on non-intrusion on the part of the guide and on knowing how to recognize when they have been snagged by the journeyer's process and what to do on such occasions.

The guide is essentially a sherpa, who must know the trails and the weather conditions and is available to the journeyer, but does not confuse the person's journey with their own.

Second Year

Whereas the first year of training is focused on an individual looking within and developing a relationship with those inner dimensions that essentially guide one through the experiences necessary for healing, growing, and coming into wholeness, the second year of training will involve a broadening of possibilities.

It will begin with journeying with the animals of the senses (eyes, ears, taste, smell, and touch), work with dreams in non-intrusive ways where the dream itself is held in respect and not "used" or manipulated, and working with the Animals of the Four Windows, the animals of the four memories, and the animal of intuition. The second year may also involve work with using imagery as a way of looking outward, and arriving at the place of natural storytelling, the quality that most differentiates us from the other animals.

Third Year

The third year is devoted to relationship work: working with the animal of relationship, working with people's projections on one another, and working with people in pairs with their corresponding chakra animals meeting and their animals of the four windows meeting.