Pathways School

Pathways Gathering II (July 1-4)

Chris Morasky — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 21:43:33 +0000

Do you feel like you are missing something? Is your life so busy that you’ve become a human doing and not a human being? Would you like to live your life more openly, honestly and in connection with your Roots? Would you like to really Know the forests that surround you?

Come to the Pathways Gathering! Your community will be there.

Feel the softness of cedar and hemlock needles underfoot, smell the scent of woodsmoke in your clothes, dance to drums around the fire and return to a natural rhythm of living. Come to the Pathways Gathering and learn Stone Age skills, permaculture, homesteading and green living, Herbology, Daoist yoga, ceremony, music and more! Held at the Rare Earth Society land at 9 Mile on Nelson’s North Shore, there is plenty of room for camping and getting to know everyone. Camp out and enjoy all 4 days or just come for the day. Cost is $150 per adult for 4 days, children 10-15 are half price and children under 10 are free. Cost per day is $45 (same discounts for children).

Just some of the scheduled activities include learning to make fire from sticks, flintknapping, basketry, hide tanning, herbal medicine making, shelter building, rope from plants, wool spinning and weaving, and activities for a deeper connection with nature. Feel your worries about modern living slip away as you focus on how to meet your essential needs of food, fire, water, shelter and community, plus art, music and dance!

Have fun with great people while gaining competence in sustainable living! Call us to Register.

First Lunar Vigil of Summer

Kurt Dehnel — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 23:05:32 +0000

An appreciation of your indigenous Mind, becoming directly aware of your interconnectedness with all other life.
Responding with the solutions of peace, equanimity and adaptability.

Applied Combat Martial Arts – Check Calendar

Kurt Dehnel — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 14:50:46 +0000

Today, in the study of Self-Defence and the Martial Arts, the focus is on finding a good combination of styles; a combination that the covers every range of hand to hand combat. We will learn the most powerful and effective strikes, kicks, timing and sensitivity drills, grappling skills, submissions and escapes. The most necessary skills that ensure your tactical advantage in Close Quarter Combat. We will also learn the essentials of knife and stick fighting, the most likely weapons to encounter on the street.

Michael Smith, one of the Kootenays most expeirenced martial artists, will be sharing over 20 years experience in training civilians, traditional martial artists, law enforcement officers, corrections officers and the military. This course is appropriate for beginners, experienced martial artists and professionals needing more skills in defensive combatives. The focus will be on 2-person and multi-person skill specific drills.

Stone Age Camp for Kids – Check Calendar

Chris Morasky — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 01:56:35 +0000

Location: Rare Earth Society land at 9 Mile, North Shore Nelson
Cost: $175
July 11-15
July 18-22
Aug 22-26

Looking for something fun, educational and wild this summer for your kids? Stone Age Camp for Kids is an amazing experience for children ages 7-13.

If your child loves nature, this is the camp to go to! We will build a shelter, start our fires by rubbing sticks together, and make rope from plant fibres. Learn “primitive” cooking, tracking, stalking and camouflage, cedar bark basketry, edible and medicinal plants, birch bark cup, coal burned utensils, Paiute deadfall trap, rabbitsticks and much more! Children learn the value of teamwork, personal competence, connected awareness, natural movement, instinctual action, and develop self-confidence.

Each day begins at 10am and ends at 5pm Monday through Wednesday. On Thursday we will begin at 10am, sleepover that night, and finish the week at 3pm Friday. Thursday evening is campfire night! (families welcome). All while having great fun with great people!

Camp director Chris Morasky has been teaching ancient skills for over 20 years and his teachings have reached thousands of students.

Cost for this amazing week is $175. Space is limited, so please call or email soon! 250-357-2822 or chrismorasky@netidea.com.

Some of the activities include:
Stone Age (Ugh!) introduction
natural way of walking, balance, wide-angle vision
walkabout
shelter
wild food foraging
birch bark cup
wooden spoon
cedar bark baskets
pit bake for dinner Thursday evening
show and tell Thursday evening for parents and family
campfire Thursday evening
tracking and stalking
navigation
flint knapping arrowheads
flint and steel fire making
bowdrill fire making
Paiute deadfall
spring pole snare
cordage (rope) from dogbane plants
“primitive” cooking
rabbitstick “hunting”
knot tying
bear and cougar safety and hanging a bear bag
trust building activities (blindfold walk)
weaving
sling making
deer and wolves game
skunk and owl (camouflage) game
chief (stalking) game

You Can Run But You Cannot Hide…

Chris Morasky — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 01:50:15 +0000

One of the most profoundly liberating realizations is that we have no
secrets. Every untruth and limiting belief that we hold is embodied in us
and revealed to everyone we meet. What we try to hide is observable in
our posture, the tension and relaxation of our muscles, our tone and
volume and pace of our speaking, our choice of words, the degree of
openness of our eyelids, our skin tone, where we focus our eyes, our
degree of coordination, our activity level, the clothing we wear, and many
more traits.

Very few people consciously understand what these outward manifestations
mean, but EVERYONE understands them unconsciously and immediately. We are
an open book whose entire story is read by the unconscious of others in a
single glance.

Have you ever been attracted to someone from across the room? You eyes
meet and suddenly, you just KNOW that you have a connection. It’s love at
first sight! You’ve just unconsciously read the book of that person and
immediately understand that there is passion between you. This passion
comes from the blending of your emotional wounds (traumas). You’ve just
met someone who is uniquely qualified to bring your issues out of “hiding”
and into consciousness so that you can heal them (most of this begins
right after the honeymoon phase ends, lol!).

And you understood that connection with a single glance…

The ability of everyone to unconsciously read everyone else explains why
some people continually feel taken advantage of, how bullies find their
victims, and why some people have “all the luck”. We evaluate each person
that we meet to determine if we can engage in a dynamic with them. The
dynamic around the bully and the bullied is one example; these two kinds
of people will inevitably be attracted to each other.

Think of a trauma that you have experienced, big or small. The event left
an imprint within your physical and emotional body specific to the key
details of that episode. If the trauma involved abuse from another
person, the quality of the energy of that person will be locked into your
imprint of the event. You can think of this imprint like a puzzle piece
with edges unique to each important aspect of the trauma.

When you encounter someone, your unconsciousness instantly scans for a
match to your puzzle piece, someone who holds the OTHER side of your
trauma dynamic so that the edges of their trauma puzzle piece fit with
yours. If there is a match, then there will be attraction. It’s that
simple. The more closely all of your trauma puzzle pieces match up with
theirs, the more intense the attraction.

You may be wondering… “If love is so desirable and feels so good, why
are we “programmed” to find someone who will re-play with us our most
frightening events?” The beauty of love is that it opens us and we choose
to become vulnerable. We trust our partner enough to allow ourselves to
reveal our “secrets”. As the honeymoon phase ends, we feel triggered and
reactive around our partner and the arguments, anger and tears begin. In
conscious love, we hold each other at these time and allow the tears to
flow, releasing the buried trauma energy, growing closer and deepening our
ability to love. In unconscious love, we react through blame, judgment,
distraction and projection.

The most beautiful and perfect part of the love dynamic is that when one
person heals in the arms of their partner, the other person can heal their
trauma piece at the same time.

This is how attraction works. Unconsciously, at least, everyone knows all
of the most important information about everyone else.

So stop trying to hide. Be honest and real. Because… we already know.

Second Vigil of Spring

Kurt Dehnel — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 21:42:56 +0000

There is a New Moon this Friday, the Second Vigil of Spring is called “Appreciative attention”. This Vigil focuses on the childlike experience of being, an experience of spontaneity and wonder. To observe with wonder all that is coming into being, especially what you habitually push away.

First Lunar Vigil of Spring

Kurt Dehnel — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 21:28:48 +0000

The New Moon is tomorrow; the First Lunar Vigil of Spring is called “Touching the Source of Creation”. As our Qi Gong and Meditation practices continue to deepen and as the Energy of Spring enters the Sky, we will endeavor to feel our Sources of Life and the Source of this Creation as they reawaken the Land.

This month you will be asked to find a special place to spend some time in Nature every day. Over the next few weeks we will prepare our “Observatory” so that we can practice our Self-Reliance skills and learn to reconnect to Nature in the old Way.

Making a Capote Coat from a Blanket

Kurt Dehnel — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 21:15:03 +0000

Participants must make arrangements to purchase an appropriate wool blanket previous to the workshop. Contact us if you need assistance.

A Capote Coat is a full-length Cold weather jacket, or outer layer, that is made from a wool blanket. Wool is a unique fiber in that it does not lose its capacity as insulation when wet. Both pioneers and First Nations people embraced the “style” of staying warm and mobile with various styles of “blanket Coats”.

Third Lunar Vigil of Winter

Kurt Dehnel — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 00:01:44 +0000

The third Lunar Vigil of Winter is called “Exploring the Centres of Ourselves”. This Vigil asks us to combine our burgeoning awareness of our bodies with the stillness and readiness of our Mind(s). As the illusion of separation between body and mind falls away, we are left with the opportunity and challenge of going deeper into our Nature as Beings. Throughout out this Moon we will explore the three Dan Tian, or energy centres of the body, as well as the seven Chakras of Yogic practice. Each of us will have our own experience, and hopefully a Gateway to deeper practice.

Preparing Hides to Become Rawhide for the Drum Class and Hide Smoking

Kurt Dehnel — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 20:30:23 +0000

Preparing Hides to Become Rawhide for the Drum Class and Hide Smoking.

10am – ? at Sunflower Farm, Salmo, BC. No cost.
We’ll be scraping hides and soaking them in lime to get the hair to slip so that they will be ready for our upcoming drum and rattle class. For those students who have tanned a hide, today is the day to smoke it. Mmmmm… freshly smoked buckskin!

How to get to Sunflower Farm (Chris’ place):

From Nelson, drive south on Hwy 6 towards Salmo. Go through Salmo and turn right (west) onto Hwy 3 (towards Castlegar). Travel 6 minutes, going past Erie Lake on your left, the Pine Springs Motel on your right, and finally Archibald Creek Rd on your left. The next right is Meadows Rd. If you reach the Hwy split to Castlegar and Trail, you’ve gone too far.

Turn right on Meadows Rd. I am the third driveway on the right. There is no street number sign, but you will see the big metal quonset shop, cinder block building, and 3 sided horse barn.

Travel time from Nelson is about 45 minutes.