Show up at school knowing Who You Are and
how to live your life with excellence
& authenticity
Identify your Inner Purpose and gain confidence, clarity and strength
Learn about building friendships, bonding and trust through self-exploration
Express and discover Who You Are in relationships with friends and community
Discover the power of NOW by deep transformative sharing
Initiate into your own Inner Power and Authenticity
Rites of Passage and ceremony by Native Elders
Filled With Fun Activities…
Rappelling & Climbing, Canoeing, High & Low Ropes Course, Archery, Kayaking,
Hiking, Singing, Music and Dancing, Sculpting, Native Sweat Lodge Ceremony,
Evening Camp Fires with Drumming - and much more!
Teen Journey goes far beyond an ordinary teen camp experience. While
incorporating many fun activities that we have long come to associate with
summer camp, including the opportunity to create deep, long-lasting friendships,
there is also an invitation into the awareness of the depth and sacredness of
the task of being a person of integrity and honour. A person who is true to
themselves and a valuable member of a community.
We will introduce young people to tools and multi-disciplined perspectives that
will support them with their most important task in life…discovering and
expressing who they really are in order to contribute to the whole.
Accepting one’s own unique essence, experiencing interconnectedness with all
living beings, inevitably leads us to an understanding of our own soul’s
purpose. While many of the experiences during this week will be transformational
in nature it is first important to understand the process of being an
adolescent, psychologically.
There are two major forces that drive us as human beings in our development, the
force for togetherness and belonging and the force for individuating, deciding
for ourselves who we are and what course our life will take, the force for
autonomy and freedom.
As children we naturally choose the force for togetherness signified by our
family and tend to shift or unconsciously accommodate ourselves to fit into the
family rules and beliefs of what is good or bad in order to belong. Every family
has a different set of rules both spoken and unspoken of what it means to be a
member of this family. Because our very survival does depend on the contact and
care from our family we will cut off or repress parts of ourselves that may not
be accepted in this particular system in order to feel secure. Children will
always choose the force for togetherness and belonging and adapt themselves to
fit.
Yet the force for autonomy, for the freedom to decide who we are and what we
will stand for, can only be submerged for so long. The stages in our lives when
the clash of these two forces is most apparent is at 2 years old and again in
adolescence. The 2 year old is starting to say NO, and wanting to do it
themselves as a demonstration of their independence from the caregivers. The
same task appears again in adolescence. The teen wants to define themselves as a
separate unique being.
Whether this natural task goes smoothly or not will often depend on the parent’s
response to it. It is the teenager’s job developmentally to now begin to test
the family boundaries and themselves in their personal discovery of who they
are. This is often a time of collision between parents and teens and much of
that chaos can be brought to harmony if we understand what is actually helpful
and supportive, what aligns with this task and what does not. Fight the flow of
this drive and you are in effect upping the ante in terms of the teens needs to
act out or act in.
Teen Journey will include the parents in a closing day workshop to learn both
how better to communicate with their teens and increase their understanding of
themselves and how this time can actually be an expansion in awareness for the
whole family.
Teen Journey will invite teens into first an understanding and expressing who
they are through intimate sharing in small group circles with teen mentors. A
trained Assistant’s Team will oversee these groups and ensure that each teen is
cared for, not pushed but invited into a sacred expansion of their humanity,
spirituality and unique purpose.
Holding space for the entire group for the 8 days of this remarkable and
creative journey will be workshop facilitators Tasha Simms M.A. R.P.C. and Ian
Barhydt. Through the creativity of ritual, meditation, visualization, dance and
intention, a safe and familiar container is formed that allows for stepping into
the unknown to learn to trust one’s inner guidance and accept oneself.
Various internationally acclaimed leaders including Malidoma Patrice Some,
Satyen & Suzanne Raja from WarriorSage, Mahara Brenna and Native elders will
come to the camp to work with the teens both in helping them experience
themselves in new and deeper ways and then calling on them to creatively
determine their place in the whole community from the perspective of what they
are called to give.
Each person is unique and has much to contribute to this community, just as the
community will become a
safe and solid container to hold the teen in their
personal exploration and questioning. Once this level of confidence and purpose
is reached then the teen can decide what their particular gifts are that they
can offer back both globally and to their community.
The beauty of this program will not end after 8 days. Both the possibility of
ongoing gatherings as a community and smaller more intimate group work will be
available for the following year. Groups will focus on various themes as well as
checking in to offer a supportive environment of learning and sharing. Group
work can be available to parents as well in order to facilitate healthy
parenting and personal exploration.
Filled With Fun Activities…
Teen Journey goes far beyond an ordinary teen camp experience. While
incorporating many fun activities that we have long come to associate with
summer camp, including the opportunity to create deep, long-lasting friendships,
there is also an invitation into the awareness of the depth and sacredness of
the task of being a person of integrity and honour. A person who is true to
themselves and a valuable member of a community.
Various internationally acclaimed leaders including Malidoma Patrice Some,
Satyen & Suzanne Raja from WarriorSage, Mahara Brenna and Native elders will
come to the camp to work with the teens both in helping them experience
themselves in new and deeper ways and then calling on them to creatively
determine their place in the whole community from the perspective of what they
are called to give.