Online Courses
THE PATH OF THE WOUNDED HEALER
A Five-Week Online Course in Deep Soul Work to Open Your Heart, Tend to Old Wounds, and Find Meaning in Your Life
***Enrollment is now closed for the Path of the Wounded Healer online course. Please join Matt’s mailing list to learn of new online courses, trainings, and in-person retreats. Enrollment is currently open for Matt’s online community, Befriending Yourself.
“Medicine is not found within a healed wound, but in a wound that is weeping.” -Matt Licata
Many who are called to paths of healing and spiritual transformation have experienced deep wounding in their lives, profound grief, and difficult transition and loss. Whether this wounding manifests by way of trauma and attachment insecurity, an unexpected dissolution of lifeforce or meaning, as difficulties in intimacy and connection, or in more religious language as loss of soul, it has a way of coloring our lives, shaping our perception, and influencing our relationships and work in the world.
Please note that you need not identify, professionally or otherwise, as a “healer” to take and benefit from this course. It is not for “professional” healers, per se, but for all human beings drawn to the mystery, longing to tend to their soul in new and creative ways, and to engage life as a true alchemist or archaeologist of the heart. Each of us is linked to one another and to the archetype and myth of the wounded healer by nature of the call we’ve received to healing, spiritual awakening, and to deep, embodied transformation – not only for ourselves but for others and for all of life.
Matt will guide participants through a special series of pre-recorded practices created especially for course participants. In addition, you will receive writing exercises each week, designed to facilitate experiential immersion into the course content, and more importantly into your own heart. The course will include a private Facebook group where you are invited to share your experience and also to practice embodied listening and attunement with fellow travelers from around the world who are also participating.
In addition to the recorded meditations and journaling exercises, live sessions will take place on five consecutive Tuesdays, at 11am PT/ 7pm London. For those unable to attend live (many are not), you will receive video replays, audio MP3s, and downloadable written transcripts for each session.
Topics include: the path of the wounded healer in contemporary times, revisioning what we mean by “healing,” creating an internal holding environment, mining the alchemical gold inside the wound, the nature of a “weeping” wound, the importance of shadow work and what it really means, the essential role of meditation and imaginal work on any integral path of healing, a guided tour of attachment theory and its relevance on the journey, and the unique experience of close personal relationships and how they serve as a modern-day temple and vessel of deep transformation.
While it is natural and so very human to want to “heal” our wounds, there is another portal through which to navigate the creative realms of the psyche and the heart, one that has been shared by the great wounded healers who have come before us. Whether the shaman, the poet, the mystic, or Chiron poisoned by Hercules’ arrow, their archetypal journey involves initiation by way of the wound.
The wound, in its many forms and manifestations, is alive and a passageway into deeper self-awareness and compassion for ourselves and others, but we have to work against the grain and status quo in order to mine the gold at its core. Here, we might discover that the wound has its own longing, which may not be to be “healed” in any conventional sense, but something more vast and mysterious. In the speediness of the materialistic-consumeristic world in which we live – with endless quick fixes, pre-programmed steps to take, and overly simplified “solutions” – it can take an act of great courage to slow down and reimagine.
BEFRIENDING YOURSELF
Dialogues, Live Sessions, Meditations, and Teachings at the Intersection of Mindfulness, Nondual Spirituality, and Depth Psychology
To learn more about Befriending Yourself, an ongoing online community I co-facilitate with author and spiritual teacher Jeff Foster, please visit the course page here. We usually open enrollment to the community a few times per year, however during these uncertain times we have decided to keep the community open for new enrollment for the foreseeable future.
The structure of Befriending Yourself includes two live online sessions with myself and Jeff each month, where we gather together as a community to meditate; engage in straight-talk about shadow and spirituality, healing and awakening, trauma and meditation; and respond to your questions from both psychological and spiritual perspectives. For those unable to join us live (many are not) you will receive a video replay of each session, a downloadable MP3, and written transcript.
In addition to the live sessions together, Jeff and I will each come on live on our own to meet with the community in meditation, dialogue, and connection, where we answer questions and explore select aspects of our work such as shadow and embodied attunement, the nature of space and awareness, working with difficult experience, the path of the wounded healer, the role of grief on the journey, and a re-humanized approach to spirituality in contemporary times.
The current schedule for the live sessions is as follows:
The first Thursday of each month – live session with Matt (all sessions at 11am PT/ 7pm London)
The second and four Thursdays of the month – live session with Matt & Jeff together
The fourth Thursday of each month – live session with Jeff