Honoring Change:
Ceremony & Rites of Passage Training
A 5-Day In-Person Training for Counselors and Healers
Help Your Clients Navigate Change and Experience Transformation
31.5 NBCC Credit Hours Available
2026 TBA
Are you longing to weave greater connection with the Earth, humans, and that which is beyond us into your healing work in the world?
If so, Honoring Change can support you. This five-day, highly experiential outdoor training is for therapists and healers who want to incorporate personally meaningful and culturally relevant ceremony and ritual into their therapeutic work with clients.
Throughout history, cultures have developed ceremonies to mark major life transitions and to help people integrate the psycho-spiritual shifts that accompany change. In our increasingly mechanized, computerized, fast-paced modern world, many of us have lost our traditional ways of ceremony and ritual. Instead, we learn myriad methods to numb our pain and to avoid the feelings accompanying change. In this training, we’ll explore personally meaningful and culturally relevant processes and practices for creating experiences that honor the complexity of life change.
You’ll leave feeling more knowledgeable in and confident creating and facilitating ceremonies and rites of passage that are relevant and meaningful for your clients.
Who This Training is For
This training is for counselors, coaches, educators and healers who want to deepen their relationship with creating and facilitating ceremony and ritual practices — both as a participant and facilitator. If you long to incorporate connection with nature, community, and spirit into your work and personal life, this training can nurture that desire. You will learn and experience creating and facilitating ceremonies and rites of passage that are personally meaningful and culturally relevant for you and your clients. We’ll look at cultural appropriateness, and how to support clients as they acknowledge and honor the significance of life transitions in unique and personalized ways.
What You’ll Get From This Training
An understanding of the arch of life through a rites of passage model
An ability to recognize and explore the transitions and inherent opportunities and challenges within that arch
Skills to craft and facilitate personally meaningful, culturally relevant, therapeutic ceremony and ritual in support of clients’ life transitions
The opportunity to co-create and embark on an overnight ceremonial wilderness solo to honor your own life transitions and unfoldings in a personally meaningful way
Experiences in nature, silence, and solitude that can be powerful doorways into deeper listening and personal alignment
Considerations for how to responsibly partner with the Earth and unseen allies in practicing and facilitating ceremony
Skills to support clients for integrating learnings and experiences from their ceremonies and rituals into daily life
“love the questions themselves… Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Training Outline
Day 1: Welcome, creating intentional space, orienting to the land, ourselves, each other and the material, exploring personal relationship with ceremony and ritual, cultural appropriateness vs. appropriation
Day 2: Create personally meaningful, culturally relevant ceremony and ritual, tracking and mirroring, prep for solo time
Day 3: Day-long personal solo on the land
Day 4: Personal incorporation of solo ceremony, integration, council of mirrors
Day 5: Continue with incorporation, applications of ceremony and ritual into your work, right use of power, next steps
What People are Saying About Honoring Change
Training Details
Next Training:
2026 TBA
Location:
In the mountains 45 min west of Boulder, CO on private land (at 9,200 feet above sea level)
Prerequisites:
Ceremony and Rites of Passage Global Training is recommended, but not required.
Food and Lodging:
Camping is included in the cost of the training. We will provide nutritious dinners but participants will need to bring their own breakfasts, lunches and extra snacks. If not fasting during the solo day, participants will need to also bring all food for that day.
*Camping gear is available for rental if desired.
Continuing Education Details
Clinical learning objectives:
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
Explain and differentiate the stages of change through a rite of passage model, including those of Severance, Threshold, and Incorporation.
Identify and discuss personal and collective life transitions, and consider the inherent opportunities and challenges within them.
Design and develop therapeutic ceremonies and rituals that are personally meaningful and culturally attuned.
Create and participate in an overnight ceremonial wilderness solo to reflect on and honor a personal life threshold.
Describe the value of nature, silence, and solitude as gateways to deeper inner listening and alignment.
Identify ethical considerations for engaging with the Earth and personal spiritual allies in the facilitation of ritual and ceremony.
Discuss and demonstrate approaches to support clients in integrating ceremonial insights into their everyday lives and therapeutic process.
Registration process: To register for the program, please click the apply button and schedule a zoom call with our Program Director. The purpose of this call is to answer questions you may have about the program and to help determine if the program will meet your training goals.
Cancellation policy: We offer full refunds until four weeks prior to the program start date, excluding the deposit of $595. For participants who paid in full, a deposit of $595 will be deducted from the refund. Between two and four weeks prior to the program start date, we will refund all but 50% of the payment amount. If it is less than two weeks prior to the program start date, there is no refund. Regarding all payment plans, our policy is that if circumstances arise that require you to exit the training during the course, while we sympathize with your situation, we require you to fulfill your financial commitment.
If the program is canceled for any reason, your deposit and any other fees will be returned.
Attendance requirements for receiving CE credit: You must attend at least 60% of the live sessions in order to receive any CE credit for the program. Attendance will be recorded each day of the program.
Continuing education (CE) credit: Somatic Nature Therapy Institute has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider(™), ACEP No. 7785. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified on the program’s specific webpage. Somatic Nature Therapy Institute is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.
If you attend all live sessions for this program, you will receive 31.5 NBCC credit hours. You are responsible for confirming with your state licensing board if they accept NBCC credit hours for continuing education.
American Disabilities Act: If you require special accommodations to attend any of our programs, please contact us at Info@somaticnaturetherapy.com.
About the Course Creator and Your Facilitator
With several decades of experience in outdoor education, therapy, and teaching, and rites of passage guiding, Katie Asmus , MA, BMP, LPC, incorporates present-moment awareness, relationship to the natural world, body-mind connection and ceremonial practices to support people in more deeply and compassionately connecting to themselves, others, and the earth.
She believes strongly in the power of spending time in nature as a way to listen deeply inward, and has a long history of creating, practicing, and facilitating personally meaningful culturally relevant ceremonies and rites of passage. Katie also has had a 20-plus-year career working with therapy and coaching clients and teaching wilderness therapy, adventure therapy, ecotherapy, and somatic therapy at a graduate level.
Currently, Katie directs and facilitates rites of passage trainings and experiences, sees therapy and coaching clients, guest teaches, and trains therapists and healers, through The Somatic Nature Therapy Institute. She is known for exclaiming that “Inner work is world peace work.”
Apply for Honoring Change
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For questions or if you’d like more information, please contact us.
Learn more about all of our Ceremony and Rites of Passage trainings for counselors, coaches, educators, and healers.