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For Potential Medicine Woman, Shaman Path & Lifeways Apprentices
Animá Apprentice Defined
Apprentice n. (e’prentis) 1) [Latin] “Apprehendre”, meaning to apprehend... to perceive and to understand 2) A person committed to learning, vested by teachers committed to them. Animá: n. (an-i-mah) 1) [Latin] Breath, Spirit, Courage; the “collective conscious”; the vital force enlivening, animating and connecting all things. 2) A contemporary, nature and heart informed practice, correspondence course, tradition and way of life for all deeply people – helping to heighten awareness, authenticity, self-knowledge, healing skills, sense of place, response-ability, sense of purpose, integrity, sentience, bliss, and the conscious co-creation of the world we’re a part of..
Animá Apprentice
An Animá Apprentice is essentially a deeply committed Animá student, an ally and proactive extension of the Animá work and Sanctuary... and an associate to whom we have committed our heartful assistance and support. Note that “Apprentice” is in no way synonymous with “novice.” Rather, you are an Apprentice from whom much is expected from the time you are accepted and make your vows... and whether you are a relative newcomer to this kind of work or someone already far along in your personal growth, a practicing herbalist or longtime leader of workshops. Apprentices must be enrolled in either a Medicine Woman or Shaman Path Mentorship, or at least be taking a series of 8 Week Courses. All Apprentices are expected to do their best in their own ways to teach/share what they learn through their studies and practices, as well as to spread the word about Animá learning opportunities to others. But if you believe that your primary calling is to be an Animá teacher, you can apply for training in becoming an Apprentice Guide as well. Before applying you will need to decide which of the above two Paths to commit to, reading and carefully considering the detailed Path descriptions found on the Correspondence Courses page.
Duration An Apprenticeship is an opportunity to study Animá related teachings with both greater commitment and greater expectations... and potentially for a much longer time. We ask for a minimum initial 1 year commitment. It’s assumed you would want to continue apprenticing for at least the 2 years or more that it takes to complete both the Basic and Advanced Mentorship courses. An Animá Apprenticeship is a mutually-gifting alliance that can last for as long as it honestly and wholly serves both you and this work we do together. On the deeper level, the commitment of the Apprentice to Animá and self, planet and purpose, should be made with the intention of it lasting a lifetime. And yet as with all pledges, it is a promise you can walk away from at any time. The Apprentice can end this association simply by writing us explaining their reasons and the direction they plan to go. Those who want to remain involved can transition to being Core Supporters and Guides, assisting in any ways they can. We too reserve the right to end the association with explanation, if for whatever reason we feel that it isn’t working out. Requirements
For the basic Apprenticeship: • An initial 1 year commitment to an Animá correspondence course, studying and purposefully applying what you learn • Your openness, positive attitude, willingness, focus, and heartful efforts • Your donation upon acceptance, according to what you are able • A pilgrimage to the Animá Sanctuary in S.W. New Mexico • Undertaking a quest or other personalized ritual experience at the Sanctuary, prior to full mutual acceptance • A commitment to yourself and to us, to completing your assignments, and changing your life and the world around you to the best of your ability • A commitment to spread word of the teachings and Animá Center in your own ways • A commitment to act with integrity and honor at all times; to cease compromising your needs, values and dreams; to embrace and actively fulfill your most meaningful purpose • Your speaking aloud, from your heart, the Animá Vows found below, while visiting the Sanctuary
For an Animá Guide Apprenticeship: • Making being an Animá Guide your core intent and focus, even if not your only vocation. Information on the role and responsibilities of Animá Guides can be found below.
What We Offer
Your Apprenticeship would include: • Course materials for the Mentorship or 8 Week Courses of your choice • Correspondence Course instruction, involving two or more monthly in-depth student/teacher exchanges with personalized questions and assignments • Clarification, counsel, suggestion and support in excess what of non-Apprenticing students receive, lasting beyond the completion of the Basic and Advanced courses for so long as you want or need • Special time at the Sanctuary, including one or more retreats per year • An invitation to participate in any Animá workshops or gatherings at the Sanctuary, with no additional donation required • An opportunity to be considered for additional highly trusted roles such as becoming an Animá Guide or even a long-term resident of the Sanctuary/Center
• More about yourself, your gifts, strengths and challenges, developed abilities, potential, vision and purpose • Understanding and practices for increasing awareness, presence, grounding, self love and healing, conscious interconnection, sense-ual engagement, accessing the wisdom of nature, recognizing and trusting instinct and intuition, extrasensory faculties, ecstasy, manifesting vision, developing leadership skills, and the means for evolution, activism, worthy service, fulfillment and contentment • If you are in a Medicine Woman Mentorship or working on Animá Herbal Courses, you will also be learning about constitutions and energetics, diagnosis and treatment, and identifying, gathering, preparing and administering plant medicines • Research, outreach, communication and teaching skills
Apprentice Responsibilities & Role As an Apprentice, you would be not only a student of the Animá teachings and your Teachers/Guides, but also an ally, adjunct, agent, protector and emissary of Animá and the Animá Sanctuary. You would effectively serve as a bridge and conduit between Animá and the larger culture, a means by which we’d awaken, heal and beautify the world together. The most valuable requests for Animá, would be made of you. When looking for suggestions or feedback, it is you that we would be first to ask. As the most informed, committed and trusted, we would call on you before anyone else in time of real need. And as such an intimate representation of us and the Animá School, it would be expected that you would make every effort to: • Act with integrity at all times, making every moment ever more conscious and decisive • Apply all your lessons and realizations, to deepen your life and better your world • Purposefully share your knowings and insights with others, as well as teach through example • Actively spread word of Animá the teaching, and the opportunities at the Animá Center • Possibly assist with the further continuous development of Animá teaching materials • Possibly assist with suggestions, editing or proofing for our evolving Animá manuscripts and books • Possibly organize Animá study and practice groups • Find ways to raise funds to support the work of the Animá school. • Ethically raise funds or develop income to not only meet your real needs, but also to further your teaching and outreach • Support the work of the Animá School and Sanctuary financially and energetically, as you are able • Open to the lessons and blessings of the larger earthen anima and the natural world through which it manifests
Apprentice Guides train to be our trusted (our equivalent of “certified”) teachers of Animá tools and insights. All Apprentices are responsible to do outreach and share all they learn with others, and Apprentice Guides are different only in that they identify their primary role and mission as being that of Animá teachers first and foremost... even if supported by an unrelated vocation. Being a Guide is not a step above other forms of apprentices, only a specialization for those so suited. Responsibilities Include: • Remaining a student of Animá as well as of life itself, studying and working to expand on all present and future Animá related knowings and written works • Developing a model for attracting the right students • Assisting with the further continuous development of Animá teaching materials • Assisting with suggestions, editing or proofing for our evolving Animá manuscripts and books • Expanding a curricula personalized to include your personal experiences, gifts and vision • Accepting and fulfilling assignments intended to maximize your effectiveness as a Teacher/Guide • Setting up member Study & Practice groups in one’s home town, or traveling to help set up groups elsewhere • Setting up on-line study groups, and/or networking and sharing our understandings on the innumerable discussion sites, forums and chat rooms • Sending reports to the Center on the work being done, student responses, quandaries and questions, to make it possible for us to best support, clarify and aid the Guides and their charges, and to help improve the Animá curricula or teaching methods • Fundraising by whatever means to finance the Guide’s own outreach, purchase of materials, and minimal subsistence as needed • Fundraising, and making donations/tithings to the Center to support the Sanctuary land, events, publications, curricula developments and national outreach • Giving presentations, seeking book and magazine venues that could be submitted to, and if you can, writing press releases, essays, poetry, blogs • Seeking out venues for giving your own print and radio interviews, or arrange for interviews for Jesse Wolf Hardin and Kiva Rose • Applying, utilizing and teaching all insights and knowings as powerfully, creatively, beautifully as able • Continuously improving speaking, writing, counseling and teaching skills • Consciously setting an example at all times • Always acting and teaching with impeccable intention, effort and integrity
Apprentices & The Animá Sanctuary
Apprentices are required to journey to the Sanctuary at least once for their initiation quest and vows, and we suggest they return at least once or twice per year if possible. Finally, if there are ever to be more long-term, full-time or even potentially lifetime residents of the Center, they will of necessity arise from the pool of active Apprentices.
Your Donations No one is ever turned away for lack of funds, but the Animá Sanctuary and all the work of Animá depends on your gladly given donations. Suggested donation rates are above those of regular students, sliding scale, the amount meant to be based on your income or resources, but also to reflect the amount to which you value and appreciate this teaching and project. It is expected you will continue to donate as you are able and moved even after completion of your Basic and Advanced Mentorship, for so long as you remain an Apprentice. The latest suggested annual donation rates can be found on the Apprentice Application, should you decide to make this commitment.
The Apprentice Process 1) Go to the Correspondence Courses Page, read about then choose a Mentorship path to apply for. If there are no Mentorship openings at the time you apply, you will be expected to start by choosing and enrolling in a series of 8 Week Courses 2) Mindfully reread everything on this page, then feel out in your whole self (heart and body as well as mind) if you: • Believe that you would benefit • Can commit to Apprenticeship responsibilities and role • Are willing to learn hard to hear lessons from sometimes difficult teachers • Are not only willing but insistent on utilizing your insights and lessons for the good of more than yourself and your immediate family • Have a determined nature, and are willing to follow through on what you start 3) If the answer is a clear “yes” to all of the above, you are encouraged to download, fill out and return an Apprentice Application 4) If accepted, you will at once be considered an Apprentice Initiate awaiting full Apprenticeship... and we’ll send you your first Course lesson 5) Send as much of your pledged annual donation as possible, via PayPal or money order 6) Begin coursework, giving your best to it and to your Animá assignments and practices, and returning them with both your answers and any questions or comments you may have 6) If you continue feeling strongly about becoming an Apprentice, and empowered rather than placated or disempowered by the studies and practice, then plan and follow through on spending a week or more at the Animá Sanctuary 7) While at the Sanctuary, undergo a personalized quest or other challenge/lesson/experience to make more real your intention and potential commitment 8) If you remain ever more ready to commit at the conclusion of your quest or other self-exploratory experience at the Sanctuary, you will then speak aloud the vows as shown below, and be vested by us with this special role and deep association 9) Continue with study and practice, using your Teachers/Guides as a resource to assist in your evolution, manifestation, satisfaction, and the fulfillment of your unique but closely allied purpose: Feeling more. Learning more. Doing and giving more. And never to be forgotten... savoring and celebrating more
. . Reconsidering If you are yet unsure about whether an Apprenticeship is for you, consider that a successful, effective Apprentice would tend to be: • On a search for self knowledge, and committed to change and growth • Appreciative of having a teacher’s assistance and support, rather than acting out of a sense of competition or entitlement • Grateful for the opportunity to learn, even the hardest of lessons • Willing to be challenged, and their comfort levels tested • Honoring of the decades of work that has gone into this place and teaching, and the generations of earth informed wisdom that preceded it • Conscious of a spiritual or nonordinary reality • Open to strenuous effort, and desirous of increasing effectiveness • Desirous of new skills, and excited to develop existing abilities • Drawn by the call to help, heal, change or otherwise benefit • Impelled by or insistently in search of their most meaningful purpose
Apprenticeship is a mark of honorable association and dependable alliance, and a mutual commitment to each other as well as to the values, knowings, practices and missions we share in common. An Animá Apprentice is not waiting to “become” anything. She is not waiting for certification to feel empowered, nor waiting to graduate from anything before taking on the work of her life. Becoming an Apprentice is a way in which she becomes more her real awakened self, a role that begins with her vows, ending only with her either growing away from this form and commitment some day, or with the last breath she takes. ---------
I’ve come from afar, for the purpose of speaking aloud the commitments already heard in my heart, and to request the responsibilities and honor of Animá apprenticeship. I recognize now that everything I have ever been blessed with, or suffered from, was necessary for my strengthening, deepening and learning. Together my experiences, joys and pains have served to prepare me for the fullest living of my dreams and hopes, and the fulfillment of my most meaningful purpose... leading me to this exact point in time. With these vows, I commit wholly to the way and work of an Animá apprentice: To love and honor myself. To tune into and trust my instincts. To listen to my heart and body in unity with primal mind. To tap my inherent powers as well as develop new skills. To actively apply every lesson, act on every insight, and utilize every tool according to the needs and knowings of my true whole self. To give back to the world with a passion, in my own unique ways. To make every act intentional. To realize I effect everyone that I meet, and to therefore take on the intent of a teacher. In addition, I commit to protect, aid and support the Animá Sanctuary and the inspirited canyon it nests in, in any ways I am needed. I pledge to assist and further the work of my teachers and allies there, giving back in whatever ways I can, for so long as I share in this alliance and way of being. I pledge to return to the Sanctuary periodically to reconnect and learn. When I am away, I commit to spreading the word about these opportunities and teachings, as well as to embody Animá in everything I do, every living day. And I pledge to be open to all gifts in turn, knowing in my heart that I am worthy. I pledge to take in nourishment, enjoy nature, savor and celebrate. I’ve learned that every moment is a decisive moment, and from this moment on I will treat every setting, situation, and possible course of action as a personal choice. I commit to taking full responsibility for my effects on myself and the world, and for what I don’t do as well as what I do. I will not be a victim, and will gladly pay the costs of doing what is right. I make these pledges as a conscious and deliberate co-creator of both my reality and the world that is my larger self. It is my intention to keep these vows for a lifetime or beyond, but with the knowledge that being true to Animá means being true to my core. It is my responsibility to turn away from this teaching if ever it disempowers me, but to practice it no matter how hard or at what price so long as it rings true in the core of my being. Each day I awaken will be a conscious recommitment to all that I’ve said, to all that I believe, and to all who have given to me. This important day, I ask that you accept me as your Animá apprentice.
Caveat Our years of study and practice, and opening up to our hearts and the will of the living earth, have blessed us with much to give. And as an Apprentice we would expect you not to let your existing ideas or habits get in the way of experiencing yourself, this teaching, and life in new ways. We will support with all our hearts and faculties, but never coddle, ease or appease. What we offer is all that we are and know, this most magical place of power, clarity and love... an alliance of deep living and compassionate purpose meant to benefit all concerned as well as the larger world. And what you can apply for is an association of profound connection, deep caring and powerful doing meant to not only benefit but last. . . . |
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1) Someone accepted for a special commitment to Animá and the spreading of Animá tools and insights , and in turn the recipient of a commitment of instruction, assistance, alliance and support... pledged not only to continuous learning but also manifestation and utilization, to help heal not only self but others, society and planet... and taking responsibility for passing on the Animá teachings and contributing to the wholeness and betterment of this world.
What You Will Learn
• Core Apprentice responsibilities, as described above
TThe Animá property in S.W. New Mexico is a source or conduit for much of what we teach, and has proven to have a powerful effect on everyone who comes. Complacency, delusion and distraction become impossible in short order, when faced with the relentless combined provocation and palpable support that this ancient Place of Power provides. 
Conclusion