This offering in the Kiva at True Nature Healing Arts offers a grounded exploration and practice of the ritual and way of Council – including working with the diverse and meaningful formats for engaging with the wisdom of the circle, the conversations that want to be had, and stoking the fire of the sacred ritual for coming together with one another and the Earth. This gathering is offered by donation. Please sign up here on our website to help us prepare the space and refreshments.

Council is a unifying and compelling way and practice of communicating which cultivates empathic and transparent connection. It is both a compass and a guide that grounds an interweaving of voices – spoken and unspoken. The practice of Council and the Wisdom of the Circle are rooted in our ancestral lineage. Many indigenous, earth-based communities gathered in the form of a circle as ritual for communicating together --- such as telling stories, seeking collective truth, visioning & revelations, seeking understanding, decision making, and problem-solving.

Today, Council is found & practiced within cultures all around the world and brought into a variety of contexts in diverse communities, relationships, and educational settings helping to nurture the roots of authentic connection, meaningful dialogue, healthy individuation, and reciprocal interdependence.

This offering is facilitated by Alchemy of Prana’s co-founders, Thompson Bishop and Colleen Bishop. Alchemy of Prana is a nonprofit organization serving to illuminate, connect with, weave, and bridge the elements of wholeness within the web of a universal, evolving, liberated field of consciousness -- a field that includes and extends into the liminal unknown. Alchemy of Prana offers local gatherings such as Council, guided wilderness Immersion, and Vision Fast Rite of Passage ceremonies. To learn more about local experiences and offerings, please visit www.alchemyofprana.com

Bios:

Thompson Bishop, MA (tbird)

tbird grew up in the hills of East Tennessee and the mountains of Colorado. From an early age, tbird began his study of music and a deep connection to the natural world. Trained in classical piano and voice, he received double undergraduate degrees in Music and Recording Arts. Deeply touched by the ecological struggles of the earth in human hands, tbird returned to graduate studies in Animal Policy and Advocacy and then into Transpersonal Ecopsychology (MA) at Naropa University. tbird has a deep affinity for the Ragged Mountains and the Crystal Valley, and now finds sanctuary and home with his partner Colleen and their loving fury-kins just outside of Redstone, CO. tbird loves trail running, hiking, mountain biking, yoga, and all things contemplative. He is an active part of three boards, including the Advisory Board for the Prairie Dog Coalition and is the Vice President for the American Society of Acoustic Ecology.

colleen bishop, MA (collfeatherz), is a transpersonal ecopsychologist, vision fast guide, ceremonialist, rite of passage guide, lover of life, and yoga instructor. Colleen was raised in Philadelphia, PA. Her ecological identity was first birthed through the ocean and sand along the eastern coast of the USA. She began a career path in Elementary Education before hearing the call to nature. After living closer to the eastern coast in South Carolina in her mid-twenties, she eventually found herself in Landstuhl, Germany. During the two years she spent living in Landstuhl, Germany she discovered an affinity and profound loving connection with the Black Forest. In some ways, the connection began the path toward contacting wholeness the natural world, which eventually carried her to the "crazy wisdom" that Chogyam Trungpa founded Naropa University on and where she met and committed to deep loving with her beloved and now husband, Thompson Bishop. Together, they now call home a majestic narrow crystalline river valley within the Great Mysteriousing of the Western Slope Region of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.

Colleen is a graduate alumni of Naropa University with a MA in Transpersonal Ecopsychology. She is trained in guiding human beings through transitions and rites of passages using the vision fast model through the School of Lost Borders. Colleen is also a certified yoga instructor and offers ceremonial & heart based yoga classes which give voice to the myriad of ways we practice consciously navigating surrender (severance), the unseen liminal space (threshold) and birth (initiation) again and again. Her vibrant presence and soft voice speaks to the fierce loving she embodies. Colleen's dharma involves *being* in conscious, loving, embodied, connected and sacred relationship with all of life and in midwifing/bridging the births with Earth-body through ceremony and ritual.