Held within the Mystery School community
An Invitation at the Threshold
Dear friends,
There are moments in our lives when we find ourselves standing at a threshold.
Something may be changing, even if we cannot yet say exactly what. An old way of understanding ourselves has begun to loosen. A question we thought we had answered returns in another form. Or perhaps we simply sense a longing to slow down, to listen more carefully, and to become more intimate with the life we are already living.
I’ve come to believe that these passages ask something different from us than another attempt to improve or perfect ourselves.
So much of healing unfolds more quietly—in the body and the heart, in our relationships, and in those moments when something we have carried alone discovers that it can finally be met with curiosity, compassion, and care.
This is the spirit in which I created The Winter Passage.
From November through January, we’ll gather within the larger Mystery School community for three months of teaching, practice, reflection, and companionship. We’ll make room for what is known as well as what remains uncertain, for the places in us that are ready to emerge and those that may still need the shelter of darkness.
You do not need to arrive with a particular goal for yourself, or with some clearer idea of who you are supposed to become.
You can simply come spend the winter with us.
We’ll listen together for what is asking for our attention, allowing the work to unfold in its own way and in its own time.
If something in you recognizes this invitation, I’d love to welcome you.
With warmth,Matt
What Our Gatherings Are Like
Each gathering has its own rhythm. There may be teaching and reflection, guided meditation or experiential practice, periods of quiet, and time for questions and exploration.
The work draws from depth psychology, contemplative practice, and the wisdom of the body, while remaining open to those dimensions of healing that cannot always be understood or resolved through insight alone.
These gatherings are not about mastering a body of material. They are a place to slow down, listen more carefully, and explore what becomes possible when our inner lives are met within a sustained field of presence, curiosity, and companionship.
“Matt’s understanding of the subtleties and nuances of the healing journey, and how meditation and psychological work fit together were a key for me which unlocked the door to a part of myself that I had forgotten about. The way he held my experience and contained it with such love and kindness allowed me to end the war with myself and to begin to perceive even my most challenging emotions and sensitivities as allies and just how he’s right when he says that the path really is everywhere. Spending time with him was a real fork in the road in my life, a true turning point that opened up a whole new way of being for me.“
–J.R., London
Themes We’ll Explore Together
The Winter Passage is not organized around a fixed curriculum or a series of steps to complete. Our gatherings will move through a number of interconnected territories within the life of psyche and soul—healing and relationship, the body and the life of feeling, grief and the unlived life, uncertainty and not-knowing, and the mystery of what continues to unfold within us.
These themes are not meant to be mastered or resolved. They are places we’ll return to and explore together, allowing new questions and possibilities to emerge as the winter unfolds.
Initiation and the Living Path of the Soul
Discovering That the Path is Everywhere
There are experiences that change us in ways we could never have planned. Loss and disappointment, love and longing, illness, transition, the ending of one season of life and the beginning of another—each can become a threshold, asking us to meet ourselves and our lives in a new way.
Initiation is not something that belongs only to ancient traditions or ceremonial rites. It is woven into ordinary life. Again and again, we are brought into contact with places where our familiar ways of understanding ourselves no longer quite work, where something unknown is asking to emerge, or where a part of our unlived life begins to make itself known.
The path, then, is not somewhere else. It is here—in the body and the heart, in our relationships, in grief and joy, in what we know and what we cannot yet understand. We’ll explore what it means to meet these passages with curiosity and care, allowing the experiences of our lives to deepen rather than diminish our participation in the mystery of being human.
THEME 1: Initiation and the Living Path of the Soul
Discovering That the Path is Everywhere
Each of us carries wounds — from early relationships, moments of betrayal, or experiences of loss and disconnection. These experiences shape how safe we feel in the world, how deeply we can connect, and whether we trust that we truly belong.
While painful, these moments can also serve as thresholds. They invite us into deeper layers of soul, showing us that the very places we feel most broken can become gateways into wholeness. This is the essence of initiation — not something abstract, but something lived in the body, the heart, and our everyday relationships.
We don’t have to be professional “healers” to walk this path. Simply by being human, sensitive, and alive, we are called to bring presence, care, and compassion into our world. And though the journey often feels solitary, we are never truly alone. Friends, fellow travelers, and unseen helpers accompany us along the way.
In this theme, we’ll explore:
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How our wounds can serve as initiations into deeper layers of soul and spirit.
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Why our sensitivities and struggles are not obstacles to the path, but the very path itself.
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What a contemporary, emotionally-sensitive approach to wholeness and aliveness looks like.
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How even our most difficult experiences can open into deeper connection — with ourselves, with others, and with the living Mystery.
Trauma, Healing, and the Sacred
What Could Not Be Held Alone
There are experiences in our lives that exceed our capacity to feel, understand, or integrate them at the time they occur. What could not be held does not simply disappear. It may remain within the body and psyche, shaping our relationships, our sense of safety, and the ways we have learned to protect ourselves.
Healing asks us to approach these places differently—not as problems to solve or symptoms to overcome, but as experiences that may still be waiting for the conditions in which they can be felt, accompanied, and gradually integrated. What once had to be carried alone can begin to change when it is met with warmth, curiosity, and compassionate presence.
There is a mysterious relationship between these unfinished places and the life of the soul. Our psychological and spiritual lives are not separate worlds, and healing does not require us to transcend the vulnerable, embodied places within us. We’ll explore what becomes possible when psyche, soma, relationship, and the sacred are allowed to enter the same conversation.
THEME 2: Trauma and the Sacred
Healing as a Spiritual Path
All of us carry experiences that were too much to fully process at the time they occurred. These unresolved impressions live in the body and nervous system, shaping how safe we feel, how open we can be with others, and even how we experience the sacred.
Trauma is not only a psychological event — it is also a spiritual one. The places where we feel most fragmented often hold the seeds of deepest connection. When given the right conditions of safety, warmth, and presence, what was once split off can return to the flow of life.
In this theme, we’ll explore trauma not as an obstacle to the spiritual path, but as one of its gateways. As we come to understand how trauma lives in the body, psyche, and nervous system, we also discover how its healing is inseparable from the journey of the soul.
In this theme, we’ll explore:
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The nature of trauma and how unmetabolized experience shapes how we see ourselves and the world.
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How trauma organizes in the body and nervous system — and how it can be gently unwound.
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Why the felt sense of safety is the ultimate medicine and the ground of self-discovery.
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The mysterious link between trauma and the sacred — and how our deepest wounds can become pathways into spiritual life.
The Holding Environment and the Relational Field
Healing in the Presence of Another
Some of our most important experiences were shaped in relationship. We learned what could be felt and expressed, what needed to remain hidden, and what we had to do to preserve connection with those upon whom we depended. These adaptations were intelligent and necessary, even when they later became ways of keeping parts of ourselves at a distance.
The psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott spoke of the “holding environment”—a relational field of attunement, steadiness, and care in which something new can begin to emerge. We may discover that experiences we have tried for years to understand or change do not need another explanation as much as they need to be met under different conditions.
Something becomes possible when what once had to be carried alone can be felt in the presence of another. The parts of us that learned to remain hidden may begin to soften when they sense that the conditions are present for their welcome. We’ll explore healing not only as an individual undertaking, but as something that can unfold within relationship, companionship, and a sustained field of presence.
THEME 3: Meditation, Inner Work, and the Holding Environment
Discovering a Spirituality of Your Own
There are many forms of meditation, inquiry, therapy, and inner practice. What matters most is discovering a path that feels alive and true for you — one that honors your own body, heart, nervous system, and soul.
The psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott spoke of the “holding environment” — a relational field of empathy, attunement, and warmth. When we experience this, either with others or within ourselves, we find the safety to rest, to play, to feel fully, and to risk showing up as who we are.
From this ground, healing becomes possible. We can explore the joys and sorrows of being human, stay connected to our vulnerability, and discover that all true transformation is deeply relational — with self, with others, and with the Mystery.
In this theme, we’ll explore:
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How daily self-attunement and compassion practices create the foundation for lasting healing.
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Ways to weave together insights and practices from meditation and psychotherapeutic traditions into your own “toolkit.”
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How to gently rewire old patterns of working with pain and challenge, opening to new pathways of resilience and soul.
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How to walk a path of healing with heart — without turning your life into an endless self-improvement project.
Providing a Home for the Lost Orphans of Psyche and Soma
Welcoming What Has Been Left Outside
There are experiences within us that never found a place to land. Feelings that could not be expressed, grief that could not be mourned, needs that had to be set aside, and parts of our embodied experience that remained outside the stories we learned to tell about ourselves. These unfinished places do not disappear simply because we understand where they came from.
I sometimes think of these pieces of experience as the lost orphans of psyche and soma. They do not necessarily need to be analyzed, corrected, or hurried toward resolution. They need somewhere to belong—a place where what was once unwelcome can be approached with curiosity and where even the most difficult feelings can discover that they no longer have to remain outside.
Perhaps this is one of the quieter meanings of healing: providing a home for what has been exiled from our own experience. We’ll explore what it means to accompany these places with presence and compassion, allowing grief, tenderness, imagination, and even play to return in their own time. What we encounter there may not always need to be changed. Sometimes it first needs to be known, felt, and loved.
THEME 4: Providing a Home for the Lost Orphans of Psyche and Soma
Holding the Pieces of Soul with Presence and Compassion
Much of our deepest wounding happens before we even have words. These experiences can’t be healed by simply changing our thoughts or “thinking positively.” Trauma lives in the body and nervous system, in places beyond the reach of reason.
When pain, fear, or shame overwhelm us, the raw energy of those moments is stored away — like hidden orphans of our inner world. These parts of us don’t want analysis or clever insights. They want presence. They want to know they are not alone.
Healing begins when we learn to turn toward these inner children with care, patience, and love. What they most long for is not to be fixed, but to be held — to feel safe enough to rejoin the flow of life, to breathe and play again.
Together, we’ll explore how to create this sanctuary within, discovering that what feels broken can become a source of tenderness, integration, and unexpected magic.
In this theme, we’ll explore:
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How to establish a caring relationship with the inner parts of ourselves that have been forgotten or exiled.
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The true nature of “inner child work” — why it matters, and how it is often misunderstood.
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The life-giving practice of giving voice to the voiceless and making sense of our story in a new, more cohesive way.
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Why lasting transformation is not primarily about insight, but about love — and what it means to embody that love in our daily lives.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever been with a teacher or therapist who saw me so transparently and so lovingly. At first it was uncomfortable, scary, and I wasn’t sure if this was for me. But the kindness that came from Matt and his insight and presence into my wounding and vulnerability melted something within me. It was like years of conditioning came crashing down and I felt real love for myself and compassion for the little girl that was raging alive inside me. There is a way that I finally felt safe, to unravel and fall apart and be fully empowered, with him there next to me. After all the healing I had “thought” that I had done, Matt helped me to see that there were always deeper realms of the body and heart to excavate and open to the light. Also, just how human and real and authentic he is meant so much to me. He wasn’t “trying” to be someone he wasn’t, honest about his own biases and brokenness, and that just made it so much more natural for me to open.”
– J.P., New York
Here’s What You’ll Receive
1) Nine Live Gatherings with Matt and the Community
From November through January, we’ll gather live nine times for approximately 90 minutes of teaching, reflection, guided practice, and exploration together.
Each gathering has its own rhythm, with space for questions and for the work to unfold in response to what is alive in the group.
Can’t attend live? Many people participate primarily through the recordings, so you can move through The Winter Passage in a way that works with your own schedule.
2) Lifetime Access to All Recordings
Every gathering will be recorded, with both video and downloadable audio available in your private member portal. You’ll have lifetime access, so you can return to the teachings and practices whenever you wish.
3) Private Member Portal
All Winter Passage recordings and materials will be housed in a private member portal that you can access from desktop, tablet, or mobile.
4) Private Facebook Community (Optional)
You’ll also be welcomed into the private Facebook community, where you can connect with fellow travelers from around the world and stay connected between our live gatherings.
Participation in the Facebook group is completely optional. Everything you need to participate in The Winter Passage will be available through the live gatherings, recordings, and member portal.
A Few Additional Resources
Over the years, I’ve created a number of teachings and practices that complement the work we’ll be exploring together. I’ve included a few of these here for those who would like some additional material to explore during The Winter Passage.
These resources are entirely optional. There is nothing extra you need to study or complete—the heart of The Winter Passage is our time together.
BONUS #1
Staying Close to What Hurts
This beautifully designed guided journal is a companion for the deeper work of healing—a quiet place to slow down, listen inwardly, and stay close to your own experience with kindness and curiosity.
Blending depth psychology, somatic awareness, and contemplative practice, The Courage to Heal offers short teachings, gentle guided reflections, and spacious writing invitations that support the slow integration of what has been hurt or left unseen. Rather than offering techniques to master or problems to solve, this journal invites a different orientation—learning how to remain present with your inner life as it unfolds.
You can use the journal alongside Shadow Work, returning to its reflections and practices between sessions as a way of staying close to what is emerging and giving further space to the places within you asking for attention. It is not a journal to rush through, but a companion you can return to again and again, across many seasons of your life.
BONUS #2
This foundational book explores the heart of the path — how healing, awakening, and transformation unfold not somewhere else, but within the ordinary moments of our lives. The Path is Everywhere traces the movement of learning to meet experience with presence and compassion, discovering that even our struggles and uncertainties can become doorways into deeper meaning and wholeness.
Along with the complete eBook edition, you’ll receive the full audiobook — personally narrated by me as a contemplative teaching you can listen to at your own pace. Many participants find that hearing these reflections spoken aloud allows the teachings to land in a different and more intimate way, making the audiobook a powerful companion for walks, quiet evenings, or moments of reflection.
Even if you already own the printed book, this audio version offers a unique opportunity to engage the material in a more personal way — as a living transmission you can return to again and again.
BONUS #3
As open, sensitive, relational human beings, it’s easy to feel ungrounded, anxious, or disconnected — and to believe something is wrong with us when we can’t stay calm or regulated. In this bonus teaching, we’ll explore how to relate to these states with compassion, discovering them not as obstacles but as unexpected allies on the path of integration. You’ll be guided into a simple 5-minute practice that helps you touch a natural center within — a place of refuge that is always here, quietly holding even our most dysregulating experiences. Through reflection and micro-moments of attunement, you’ll learn to return, again and again, to the luminous ground of presence that never leaves you.
Who is The Winter Passage for?
Perhaps something in you is already beginning to recognize the answer.
The Winter Passage is for those who feel drawn toward a slower, deeper way of being with themselves and their lives—not as another project of self-improvement, but as an opportunity to listen, explore, and be accompanied.
It may speak to you if you are:
- Moving through a time of transition, uncertainty, loss, or change, and sensing that something in your life is asking for a different kind of attention.
- Longing for a psychologically deep and spiritually alive approach to healing that makes room for the body, the heart, and the life of the soul.
- Tired of treating yourself as a problem to be solved, and curious about what might become possible through a more compassionate relationship with your experience.
- Drawn to exploring grief, tenderness, relationship, imagination, uncertainty, and the unlived parts of yourself without needing to hurry them toward resolution.
- Looking for companionship with others who value emotional honesty, curiosity, depth, and respect for the mystery of another person’s experience.
- Wanting a space in which psychological and spiritual life can meet without reducing one to the other.
You don’t need to arrive with a particular level of experience in meditation, therapy, or spiritual practice. And you don’t need to know exactly what you’re looking for.
A willingness to come as you are, to listen, and to be curious about what you discover is enough.
Your Winter Passage enrollment will automatically continue into the next three-month Mystery School period at $297 unless you choose to cancel. We’ll send you two reminders before your next payment is processed, giving you plenty of opportunity to decide whether you’d like to continue. There is no annual commitment when joining through The Winter Passage.
I want you to have the opportunity to experience The Winter Passage and decide whether it feels like the right fit for you.
If after joining and attending or watching the first gathering you decide that it isn’t right for you, simply email support@mattlicataphd.com by Sunday, November 8 and we’ll be happy to issue a full refund.
My hope is that these three months will offer a meaningful space for reflection, exploration, and companionship. If something in you recognizes the invitation, I’d love to have you with us.
Warmly,
-Matt Licata
Meet Your Teacher
Matt Licata, Ph.D.
Matt Licata is a psychotherapist, author, and spiritual mentor whose work explores the meeting place of depth psychology, contemplative spirituality, and the healing of the human heart. For more than 35 years, he has studied and practiced within psychological and spiritual traditions concerned with the mysteries of healing, relationship, embodiment, and the life of the soul.
With a Ph.D. in psychology and training in the psychology of religion, Matt’s work draws from depth and relational psychologies, trauma studies, contemplative practice, and the wisdom traditions, while remaining rooted in the uniqueness of each person’s lived experience.
He is the author of A Healing Space: Befriending Yourself in Difficult Times (Sounds True, 2020) and The Path Is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You (Wandering Yogi Press, 2017). His forthcoming book is The Unfinished Work of Love.
For Matt, healing is not primarily a project of fixing ourselves or arriving at some perfected state. It is an invitation into a more intimate relationship with our experience—with the body and the heart, with one another, and with those dimensions of life that remain mysterious.
Matt’s Featured Books:
Praise for Matt’s book, A Healing Space
“A Healing Space is a brilliant weave of Jungian and Eastern contemplative wisdom. In this powerful new offering, Matt Licata guides us to a place of sacred refuge, where we can meet even our greatest moments of confusion and suffering with compassion and grace.”
– Tara Brach, PhD, author of Radical Compassion
“Matt Licata pinpoints a space within us where healing, awakening, and a vibrant reckoning of who we actually are can be realized. The wisdom hidden deep within our darkest experiences comes from not turning away from these, but by directly tending to them with gentleness, love, and compassion. This book depicts a way of genuine freedom.”
– Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness and Real Happiness
“In A Healing Space, Matt Licata serves as a compassionate and insightful guide to the transformative task we all must face: how to forge our pain and sorrow into remedies of Spirit that can illuminate our way. With the soft clarity of a magnifying glass, Matt brings into view the many things that inhabit our nature, though they are seldom easily seen. Stay in conversation with this book and you will be a better friend to yourself, those you travel with, and to life itself”
– Mark Nepo, author of The Book of Soul and Drinking from the River of Light
“Weaving the wisdom of reflective practices, the insights from Carl Jung and the alchemists, and the relational truths of attachment research and psychotherapy practice, Matt Licata offers us a beautiful tapestry of truths to transform trauma into healing and strength. Adversity can constrain us, but with this wonderful book, we can find the perspectives and courage to embrace the reality of life’s innate uncertainty to guide us on a journey of growth and discovery—moving from post-traumatic imprisonment to liberation.”
– Dan Siegel, MD, clinical professor at UCLA School of Medicine, director of Mindsight Institute, and author of Aware: The Science and Practice of Presence and Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation
“If you are looking for a book to be a companion to you during this extraordinary time, it’s this one. A Healing Space is a robust guidebook into the inner territory of yourself, assisting you in the exploration of deep and rich personal and life questions that lead, always, to wondrous realizations and growth. What a treasure to find in these times of great change.”
– Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Intimate Conversations with the Divine
“Tender, profound, and deeply useful, this book is gem. Remarkably, Matt Licata weaves together self-compassion, depth psychology, and radical acceptance into a beautiful, passionate, soaring exploration of all that it means to be human.”
– Rick Hanson, PhD, New York Times bestselling author of Neurodharma: New Science, Ancient Wisdom and Seven Practices of the Highest Happiness
“A Healing Space is a beautiful, insightful, and moving contemplation of the journey of healing we all undertake as human beings. It illuminates how self-compassion—holding our own pain with love—transforms our experience in a profound way so that we can learn the lessons life offers us moment by moment.”
– Kristin Neff, PhD, associate professor, University of Texas, and author of Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself
“This inspiring book invites us to trust the intelligence of whatever is unfolding in our lives, especially when it hurts, and to meet it in a deeply compassionate way. Matt Licata is a cartographer of the human heart. He knows the ineffable space where healing occurs and offers us a map for getting there, right up to the threshold. The rest is alchemy. We have been waiting for a long time for a book like this.”
– Christopher Germer, PhD, clinical psychologist and lecturer at Harvard Medical School, author of The Mindful Path ot Self-Compassion
Frequently Asked Questions
Are the gatherings live or pre-recorded?
The Winter Passage gatherings will be held live on three Thursdays each month at 9:00 AM U.S. Pacific Time. Each gathering will be approximately 90 minutes.
If you aren’t able to join us live, that’s completely fine. Video and downloadable audio recordings will be added to the private member portal after each gathering, so you can participate in The Winter Passage entirely through the recordings if that works better for your schedule.
What are the dates and times of the live gatherings?
The Winter Passage includes nine live gatherings from November through January, held on Thursdays at 9:00 AM U.S. Pacific Time.
November: 5, 12, 19
December: 3, 10. 17
January 2027: 7, 14, 21
You’ll receive an email reminder before each gathering with the Zoom link and everything you need to join us live.
If you aren’t able to attend a particular gathering—or aren’t able to join us live at all—you’ll be able to participate fully through the recordings in your private member portal.
To see what time this will be in your time zone, please reference this time zone converter tool.
How can I get technical support?
If you have any questions about accessing The Winter Passage, using the member portal, joining the live gatherings, or finding your recordings and other materials, we’re happy to help.
For support please email: support@mattlicataphd.com
I signed up but I haven't heard anything...
After registering, you should receive a confirmation email with information about accessing The Winter Passage. If you don’t see it, please check your spam, junk, or promotions folders.
If you still can’t find it, email us at support@mattlicataphd.com and we’ll be happy to help.
Is The Winter Passage a psychotherapy or therapy group?
No. The Winter Passage is an educational and contemplative offering and is not a psychotherapy or clinical treatment group. While our gatherings may explore psychological, emotional, and relational dimensions of healing, Matt will not provide psychological assessment, diagnosis, treatment, or individual psychotherapy as part of the program.
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