Pathways of Sacred Embodiment
Welcome to Ancient Ground
Ancient Ground is a nature-based mystery school devoted to the art of healing, initiation, ceremony, and embodied prayer. In an age of disconnection, we tend the threads of relationship, with the body, with the living earth, with shared ritual, and with the deeper patterns of meaning that once oriented human life.
Weaving together ancestral and earth-based lineages, we work at the meeting place of psyche, body, land and spirit—offering pathways that support people to remember their deepest belonging in the web of life. Rooted in breathwork, somatic focusing, ecotherapy, vision fast, and shamanic practice, Ancient Ground cultivates the hearth where ancient ways of knowing are remembered, renewed, and lived in service of times such as these.
“Sometimes you come to a place whose only task is to trouble you with tiny but frightening requests,
questions that can make or unmake a life.”
— David Whyte
Why People Come
People arrive at Ancient Ground having followed different threads.
Some feel cut off from their bodies and seek grounding, regulation, and trust in their own felt experience. Others sense a call to connect to nature and remember a deeper belonging to the animate Earth. Some arrive at thresholds — moments of loss, transition, or change — where old ways no longer hold.
And some honour the call to reconnect to sacred dimensions of being — to meaning, mystery, and a living reverence for the web of life.
Ancient Ground offers practices and pathways that meet these needs through embodied practices of listening, through time on the land, shared ritual, and the bounty of human council.
The Four Pillars
Ancient Ground is constellated around four interwoven pillars. Each opens a different doorway into the work.
Training pathways for those called to guide others in nature-based, somatic, and ceremonial work — and for those seeking to deepen their own embodied practice.Learning
Programs that support nervous-system regulation, embodied healing, the restoration of wholeness and a deeper sense of belonging to oneself and the world.Healing
Ceremonial thresholds that mark life transitions, deepen relationship with the sacred, and renew purpose and belonging within the web of life.Initiation
One-to-one, nature-based mentoring for those navigating personal and spiritual transition, or seeking mentorship as guides.Mentorship
Upcoming Programs & Training
-
![]()
Focusing Level 1 Training — The Art of Embodied Listening
Somatic Focusing is a practice of listening to the body’s innate intelligence — the quiet, life-forward knowing that lives beneath habit, story, and analysis. When we learn to listen here, old patterns begin to loosen and new possibilities for movement and insight emerge.
Through guided attention, participants learn to slow down, sense into the body, and contact the felt sense — the subtle edge of experience that carries meaning, direction, and healing energy. This way of listening supports nervous system regulation, emotional integration, and a compassionate relationship with inner experience.
Somatic Focusing offers a grounded pathway for healing and self-inquiry, and forms a foundation for inner parts work and Earth-Based Listening. Over time, the practice opens into a felt sense of belonging — to the body, the land, and the wider web of life.
Guided by Rob Engels
Dates:Feb 17 - April 21, 2026 -
![]()
Rebirthing Breathwork Practitioner Training
Breathwork is an embodied practice where the breath becomes a doorway into presence, release, and renewal.
Through intentional breathing, participants are supported to move beyond habitual patterns and reconnect with the body as a living, sensing field — opening pathways of healing, insight, and vitality.
This work is held with care and reverence as part of Akua’s group facilitator training in partnership with Robyn Fernance of Breathwork Trainings.
Guided by Akua Gutierrez
Dates: Feb-May-Sep -
![]()
Wilderness Vision Fast
The wilderness vision fast is a time-honoured rite of passage found across cultures and landscapes.
Through fasting, solitude, and extended time on the land, participants step into a living threshold where old identities loosen and deeper truth can emerge.
Vision fasts are held with thorough preparation, skilled protection, and careful integration, supporting meaningful transition and incorporation into life beyond the fast.
Guided by Akua Gutierrez & Rob Engels
Autumn Quest: 10 - 19 April
Spring Quest: 28 Aug - 6 Sep
-
![]()
Path of Wholeness Wilderness Retreats
The Four Shields of Wholeness offer a pan-cultural map of human development, initiation, and belonging.
Held through wilderness immersion, council, and ceremony, these retreats support deep self-encounter, grief tending, and the remembering of one’s unique gifts within the web of life.
Four Shields retreats serve as both healing containers and as bridges toward deeper initiatory work.
Co-guided by Akua Gutierrez & Rob Engels
Dates:Autumn Retreat: 7 - 11 May, 2026
Spring Retreat: 26 - 30 Nov, 2026
-
![]()
Somatic Ecotherapy Guide Certification
Somatic Ecotherapy weaves embodied inquiry with nature-based practice, inviting a deepening relationship between inner and outer landscapes.
Participants learn to listen with the body in relationship with land, place, and the more-than-human world — discovering how personal healing and ecological belonging are not separate processes.
This 5 month experiential training is offered in partnership with Metavision Institute and leads to professional certification.
Guided by Rob Engels in partnership with Metavision Institute
Dates: 29 April - 23 Sep, 2026
Why Ancient Ground?
We live in a time of ecological, cultural, and spiritual unraveling. The old ways of orientation are fraying, and yet ancient maps remain — maps that show us how to live in wholeness, how to honour thresholds, and how to walk in belonging with the more-than-human world.
Ancient Ground is a place to gather around these maps, to remember our kinship with the living earth, and to walk together through the passages that renew life.
As guides, we weave a unique skillset of advanced shamanic practice, deep somatic attunement, ecotherapy training, qualifications in depth work, dream work and trauma-informed space holding — all held within decades of lived experience in conversation and ceremony with the more-than-human world. Our work tends the sacred, and the soul-centric fires within, in service of all life
Join the Circle
Stay connected with the work of Ancient Ground. Sign up to receive news of upcoming retreats, vision fasts, and trainings, along with occasional reflections on earth-based practice and sacred thresholds.
Acknowledgement
The work of Ancient Ground arises from many lineages of wisdom and practice. We honour the enduring guidance of First Nations peoples worldwide, who have carried earth-based ways of knowing across countless generations. With deep gratitude we acknowledge Uncle David King, Gundungurra Elder, for sharing some of his wisdom with us, and the Dharug, Gundungurra, and Wiradjuri peoples on whose unceded lands much of our work takes place.
We honour the Four Shields of Wholeness, traced by Hyemeyohsts Storm, a Northern Cheyenne elder, to Mayan cosmology, and carried forward through the beauty and bounty of our friends and mentors at the School of Lost Borders, who have tended the vision fast ceremony and the maps of wholeness, keeping them alive for our times.
And beyond all human lineage, we acknowledge the land herself as teacher — the mountains and waters, the standing ones and the stone people, the winged and the wild — who continue to shape and guide this work. From the wild Pinyon and Juniper of the High Sierra Nevada, and the brooding slate landscapes of North Wales to the radiant sandstone cradles of Wollemi, you have made and unmade us. We honour the many beings who have held, heeded, tended, and nurtured us through the years, and the countless conversations that have unfolded on, as and with the land. It is in this living reciprocity that our practice takes root and continues to grow.