Wilderness Vision Fast
An Ancient Rite of Passage
The vision fast is a pan-cultural ceremony of initiation that has been practiced in different forms across epochs, geographies, and cultures. In nature-connected societies, it was known as a vital component of healthy village life — a way for individuals to encounter who they truly were, to discover their vision, agency, and gifts, and to return with these in service of the community.
At Ancient Ground, we hold the vision fast as both a timeless practice and a living ceremony — a space where healing, self-encounter, and deep dialogue with the land can unfold. Rooted in solitude, fasting, and deep relationship with the land, the vision fast offers a threshold between the known and the unknown. For those called to mark a life transition, to seek vision, or to enter into deeper conversation with the earth and the soul, it is a place where renewal, belonging, and purpose can unfold.
The Call to Vision
The ancient human lineage of the vision fast meets a very modern need. Embroiled in the fugue of modern industrial growth society, many of us find ourselves wandering without compass. We live our lives adrift, untethered from meaning or a deeper sense of purpose. Without an embodied knowing of who we are and where we belong, life can feel fragmented, restless, or marked by a quiet despair. Beholden to jobs that do not nurture us, slave to routines, relationships or behavioural patterns that leave us feeling empty.
Some arrive at the vision fast because they are troubled by loss, transition, or the turbulence of the inner life. Others come with a longing to remember their place and purpose in the web of life, to viscerally reconnect with the earth beneath their feet and the lands they walk.
Some are drawn by an age-old call to descend into the underworld of psyche and soma, seeking a vision, an encounter with soul or a conversation with the Mystery. Oftentimes, it is the biggest questions that usher us to the threshold of the vision fast. Questions, as David Whyte puts it, that can make or unmake a life. To remember our gifts, align with the inner guide, or sense the meaning within our wounds. And sometimes, we show up seeking to lay to rest old patterns and ways of inhabiting ourselves that no longer serve.
The vision fast calls to those ready to cross a threshold — to reinhabit our hunger for life, our enchantment with the world and an embodied sense of belonging to the earth.
A 10 day Journey
Each vision fast unfolds over ten days, guiding participants through the three great thresholds of transformation:
Severance – The first days are spent in council and preparation. You will be supported to let go of daily habits, roles, and patterns that no longer serve, and to step away from ordinary time.
Liminality – At the heart of the program is a four-day and four-night solo fast. Alone on the land, you enter the space between worlds — a place of solitude, fasting, ceremony, and listening where vision, healing, and deep self-encounter may arise.
Return – After the solo, you come back to the circle. Through witnessing and mirroring, your story is received, and the beginnings of integration are supported. This threshold is about re-entering life with renewed vision, carrying seeds of meaning and responsibility for yourself and your people.
This journey is not about leaving the world behind, but about returning to it more deeply connected to soul, self and the encompassing earth.
The program is guided by Akua Gutierrez and Rob Engels, co-founders of Ancient Ground. Together they bring decades of experience in wilderness guiding, rites of passage, shamanic and somatic practice, ecotherapy, and deep ceremony with the more-than-human world. Their work is trauma-informed, lineage-rooted, and carried with a deep reverence for the land as the primary teacher, mirror, muse and beloved.
Held With Care
“An invisible door stands before the quester. Beyond the door, deity abides in the wild garden-womb of nature.”
— Steven Foster
2026 Program Dates
Two Wilderness Vision Fasts will be offered in 2026 in NSW.
Autumn Fast: April 10-19, 2026
Spring Fast: Sep 4-13, 2026
Expressions of interest are now open. If you feel called to this life changing work, we invite you to register below. By adding your name, you will join our circle of interest and receive updates as details unfold, including locations, and next steps for preparation.
Meet Your Guides
Akua Gutierrez is a breathwork and shamanic healing practitioner as well as a wilderness solo guide. She leads earth based self- generated ceremonies that bring ancestral remembering and inner wisdom. Over the past 12 years she has been deepening her connection to self, others, and nature aided by ceremony as a tool for healing, celebration, and magic. She has also been facilitating the maidens camp for the Wise Women Gathering for the past four years celebrating and honouring the slow becoming from childhood to maidenhood. In doing so, she brings deep insight into the potency of ceremony and ritual where we gather during this transitional time of growth and transformation supported by our community. Akua is a mother of two divine boys, wife of a beautiful man and part of a soulful community in the land of the Darug andGundungurra people, the Blue Mountains, NSW.
Rob Engels is a guide to the inner wilderness. A somatic psychotherapist, ecotherapist, and father, he has spent decades exploring the deep terrain of psyche, soma, and soul—walking his own initiatory path and supporting others to find theirs. As founder and principal teacher of the School of Awareness, he is dedicated to somatic and nature-based learning that restores embodied presence and sacred relationship with the more-than-human world.
A certified Nature and Forest Therapy Guide and lecturer in Somatic Ecotherapy with the Metavision Institute, Rob’s work opens doorways for people to remember their deeper belonging in the web of life. He is also co-founder of Wild Passage, guiding teens and young adults through rites of passage, and in 2021 established the Blue Mountains Men’s Group to nurture connection, kinship, and cultural repair.
“Oh, not to be separated, shut off from the starry dimensions by so thin a wall. What is within us if not intensified sky traversed with birds and deep with winds of homecoming
— Rainer Maria Rilke
The vision fast is deep, transformational work. It is not only a personal rite of passage, but part of a lineage of ceremonies that serve the renewal of individuals, communities, and culture.
To honour the vast differences in financial resources among us, all of our program tuition is offered on a sliding scale. We set forth no strict criteria, and simply ask that you reflect with honesty on your own circumstances and contribute at the level that feels appropriate for your life. If the sliding scale still feels out of reach, you are welcome to contact us to enquire about scholarship support.
We invite you to consider your contribution not only as an investment in your own journey, but also as a way of sustaining this work for others. Each offering helps weave a wider circle of access and inclusion, while honouring the merit and significance of this ceremony.
Standard Rate: $1950 — This reflects the real cost of producing and holding the program, including land use, permits, preparation, and the time and presence of your guides.
Supporter Rate: $2400 — For those with the means to contribute more. Choosing this rate helps fund places for others who may have limited financial resources.
Supported Rate: $1650 — For those who need financial assistance in order to attend.
You can see recommendations on using the sliding scale here
Investment
An Invitation
If life is beckoning you toward a threshold that can no longer be ignored, we invite you to step into this ancient rite of passage in 2026. For ten days you will be held in ceremony with the land, tending the deeper dimensions of body, mind, and soul, opening to a way of belonging that can transform how you live and how you serve.
Acknowledgement
We honour the legacy of deep listening and earth-based wisdom carried by First Nations peoples across the world, and pay our respects to the Dharug, Gundungurra, and Wiradjuri peoples on whose ancestral lands we work, dream, and wander. We acknowledge their unbroken relationship with Country, their care for land, water, story, and spirit, and their guidance in remembering what it means to live in reciprocity with the more-than-human world.
We honour the ancient ceremony of the vision fast, carried in many cultures as a threshold practice of renewal for both individuals and communities. We bow to Hyemeyohsts Storm, who traced the Four Shields of Wholeness to Mayan cosmology, and to our friends and mentors at the School of Lost Borders, who have tended and carried this work with devotion, keeping alive the ceremony of the vision fast and the maps of wholeness as pathways into soul, initiation, and belonging.
And we honour the earth herself as the first teacher, the great container of all ceremony who continues to guide us in the practices of deep listening, remembering, and reverence.