What does it mean to live council — that is to embrace the practice as integral to one’s professional and personal life, going beyond seeing the practice as a useful approach to group interaction? What does it look like to see the world through the eyes of a council carrier? How do we practice council beyond the boundaries of the actual practice of sitting in a circle and using a talking piece? This deeper perspective is unique to each council practitioner, but there are threads that weave all our experiences together in recognizable ways. The curriculum of Council 3 will be based on the group that gathers. For this reason, a letter of intention is required as part of the registration process. How it all unfolds over the course of the weekend and our reflection on the unfolding and weaving is the metacurriculum.

This advanced workshop focuses on the challenges of becoming a carrier of council: devotion to the practice, reading the field, and being able to simultaneously participate and witness the process and oneself in the process. We will practice becoming a hollow bone and experience witnessing from various perspectives, be they directional from a medicine wheel teaching, elemental or otherwise. What do these perspectives have to teach us about our place in the world and how we can serve? We will explore energy field work, movement, sound, and the relationship between nature and council. We will live council in how we listen to the people, the place, and all living things. We will dance on the edges of the practice and through ceremony make space for mystery, with attention to the subtle gateways to inner knowing, and council as threshold into the numinous, a way of creating sacred space with others.