This is one of four planned Women’s Medicine Shield Workshops for 2016, focusing on the West or Fall Shield.
The Medicine Wheel teachings provide a deep and powerful foundation for understanding ourselves as co-participants in Creation with the entire natural world. During these weekends, we explore each direction through discussion, sharing, movement, art, time spent with assignments in nature, telling the story of these encounters, and mirroring of the stories by staff and participants.
Special emphasis is placed on the Four Shields of the Medicine Wheel for women and the creation of a safe and nurturing container to explore and experience the movement of the Four Directions in the cycles of our lives as women as we journey from childhood to maiden to mother and crone. We will also address what happens when trauma or wounding occurs for each particular shield and how we can recover and whole ourselves.
The idea of the Four Directions is found within many cultures and traditions, often understood as four cycles or seasons of nature, shared by humans:
-Four archetypes of human nature: Spirit, Body, Psyche, Mind —The seasons of our life cycle, representing death/birth and infancy (Spring), childhood and early adolescence (Summer), self-consciousness of later adolescence and early adulthood (Fall), full adulthood (Winter) and elder hood (Spring again).
-Orienting our internal process to the landscape: the four directions of the compass these core teachings are at the heart of the work we do, helping us to name and meet the transitions and changes that we face.
