…In what way does genius appear in you and how might it contribute to both your own well-being and that of the world around you?
We are a part of a growing cultural movement that celebrates wholeness in youth and adults by reintroducing meaningful rites of passage. More than a simple ceremony or celebration, our approach to transformation is intentional, well researched and informed by earth-based traditions as well as modern innovative educators of consciousness-based human development. Read more about our roots and lineages.
At the heart of this movement is right-relationship. Our offerings and mentors embody relational wellness with emotional wisdom, cultivation of trust, and acknowledgment of our innate interconnectedness with all of life. This way of relating, along with the 6 ingredients of a rite of passage, together create the recipe for the emergence of wholeness. Whether you are a woman seeking clarity on a Vision Quest, or a parent seeking deeper connection with your child, trust in our team to journey with you to wholeness.
“Capacities are innate, development depends upon relationship.”
We envision a human culture that creates loving and mature community support for individuals to be welcomed, to be seen and celebrated for their unique gifts. We envision initiated mentors that offer these meaningful experiences for youth and adults alike, at key windows of readiness, so that each member of our community may know and feel their authentic expression as essential and inherent to our community and to the larger web of life.
Alison DeLong is a seasoned Wilderness Rites of Passage guide. After training with Anne Stine at Wilderness Rites, earth-based healing practices in 2001, she completed her Masters Degree in Ecopsychology at Sonoma State University. Since then Alison has co-facilitated Vision Quest programs for youth 16-18 years old, and for adults in California, Idaho and Montana over the past 24 years.
Inspired by her motherhood, Alison expanded her field of study to discover practices for growing families to navigate developmental passages and their impact on self-knowledge and parent/child relationships. This led her to studying with educators and rites of passage advocates, Ba and Josette Luvmour, creators of the holistic relationship-based framework for child development and family wellbeing called Natural Learning Relationships (NLR). She is currently completing her certificate in NLR with the Transformative Learning Foundation. For the past ten years, Alison has facilitated family rites of passage for youth under 15, while teaching parents to create meaningful rites at key passages for their child.
Alison is also a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner. For the past 6 years she has supported women and families to resolve trauma, restore nervous system regulation and wellbeing for youth and adults. She lives in Sandpoint Idaho with her husband, son, daughter and their cat Buddy, where they attend festivals, make music, eat homemade soups, cross country ski, kayak and hike in the mountains and lakes of the ancestral lands of the Kalispel Tribe.
Larisa Noonan is an animist, ritualist, Ancestral Lineage Healing Practitioner, and certified Existential Kink coach. A lifelong nature devotee, Larisa graduated from Nature University, a Portland Metro naturalist training program, in 2009 where she guided nature connection excursions for youth.
Locally in Sandpoint, she co-guides the Women’s Wisdom Quest and the Rites of Passage weekend for 10-12 year olds. Like Alison, Larisa has worked with Ba and Josette Luvmour completing both a Rites of Passage course and an introduction to Natural Learning Relationships at the Transformative Learning Foundation.
Larisa also guides in-person ancestral healing immersions and monthly circles to support the healing of intergenerational trauma and reconnection to our beautiful Earth and other-than-human kin.
She is the founder of the Witchy Healer Wisdom School – an online school supporting witchy healers in growing Spirit-Guided businesses (not currently ennrolling as she has shifted her focus off-line, to her local community).
She lives with her husband and son in lovely Sandpoint, ID, where you can find her foraging cottonwood buds in the winter and yarrow leaves and flowers in the summer, on the ancestral homelands of the Q’lispe (Kalispel) tribe.
For more about Larisa visit https://www.larisanoonan.com
Rites of Passage Sandpoint honors the relationships, teachings, and experiences that have informed the creation of our offerings. We share deep gratitude to the following teachers and lineages.
Indigenous and African Wisdom have inspired the heart of our mission and vision. As guides, our relationship with first nations peoples, elders as teachers and authors from many tribes have helped our sacred remembering.
Some of these inspirations are:
Malidoma Somé, recently passed elder from Burkina Faso, who taught ancestral and elemental tending, community rituals, and divination in addition to what it means to be human in these times;
Sobonfu Somé of Burkina Faso, guide for grief and sharing stories of community and children in Women’s Wisdom from the heart of Africa;
Hyemethysts Storm’s stories sharing the Cheyenne Medicine Wheel teachings in Seven Arrows; and
Tyson Yunkaporta’s stories of patterns & symbols of Aboriginal life in many podcasts and writings including his book Sand Talk.
Other teachers and guides who have strongly influenced our approach to rites of passages include:
Ba and Josette Luvmour are elders, educators, consultants and authors that have developed Natural Learning Relationships™ (NLR), a whole child understanding of child development as a tool for families and parents to grow together with their child as they deeply understand the needs and nourishments of each age. The Luvmours have combined their consciousness-based approach to human development with extensive study and fieldwork to bring meaningful Rites of Passage to our times. www.luvmourconsulting.com
Daniel Foor, PhD, is the author of Ancestral Medicine, Rituals for Familial and Cultural Healing and teacher of the 5-step ancestral repair process that Larisa guides. https://www.ancestralmedicine.org
Anne Stine is a retired marriage and family psychotherapist and wilderness rites of passage guide and trainer, founder of Wilderness Rites who mentored with the School of Lost Borders founders Meredith Little and Stephen Foster https://schooloflostborders.org/about/ . Foster and Little co-authored many books including The Four Shields of Human Nature and Vision Quest: Personal Transformation in the Wilderness.
Mark Morey is a creative artist, visionary educator, and cultural engineer who designs regenerative holistic communities with timeless living systems principles. In addition to work on bringing natural systems to the workplace, he has trained parents and leaders to facilitate rites of passage for early childhood passages. https://ifnaturallearning.com
