These online trainings are for those who have a healing practice who wish to broaden or deepen their scope of practice in several aspects of ritual healing work: ritual containment, psychopomp facilitation, energy bind unraveling, and compassionate spirit release and relocation. These methods enable practitioners to work with some of the more complex situations that can arise in a healing practice and with situations that require a certain type of relational witnessing and accountability.
The foundation of these trainings is methodology paired with relationship building with the spirit people who do this work – the great psychopomp beings, the upholders of sovereignty, the unravellers and awakeners, those “great of magic”, the compassionate healers – and attunement to their wisdom and qualities of consciousness. These spirits will be our co-teachers for the trainings, bringing in their unique perspectives and guidance as we explore the rich terrain of the healing wisdom of the cosmos to restore right-relationship with ourselves, each other, and our other-than-human kin.
The trainings listed below can be taken as stand-alone events or in sequence. The order they are in presents a natural progression of techniques and initiations.
The dates listed for events further out in time may change. Once the registration link is available for an event those dates are set barring unforeseen circumstances.
Prerequisites:
To participate you should already have some form of healing practice and a relationship with helping spirits and/or ancestors. I recommend having at least two years of experience working with clients in your core modality.
We will be using the rattle/drum journey method in these trainings. Participants must be familiar with this process or with a comparable process for meeting spirit allies and doing journey-type inquiries.
This work can take maturity and mettle – especially Compassionate Spirit Release. Participants should be in stable and reasonably good mental health and have an ethos of tending to your own healing work and professional development.
Additional Considerations:
Participants may find that personal content for healing comes up during a training. While some of this can be addressed in cohort exchanges within a training, participants will be expected to get additional assistance outside of the training should the need arise. The trainings are for professional development and are not a means of getting personal work done.
Participants must be willing to receive the work themselves as cohort members will practice with each other as part of the trainings. Having personal healing experiences in these domains will deepen the participants’ relationships with the work and give them first-hand experience of what it is like to receive the work they will be offering.
We will be meeting and forming relationships with a variety of types of healing spirits. In psychopomp and depossession work in particular, knowing psychopomp spirits from different places in the world and from different afterlife cosmologies increases the range of people who can be assisted and is an important aspect of this work. It is the cosmology and ancestry of the departed people that matter in these contexts – not the afterlife cosmology and ancestry of the practitioner.
A practitioner’s ritual container includes boundaries, the presence of guardian and healing spirits, broader energetic resources that set the tone of the work and influence capacity, and conditioned pathways of procedural movement that enable the work to happen with more ease and efficiency. As the strength of your ritual container impacts your capacity as a practitioner, developing it can enable you to hold space for “bigger” and more complex situations, including moving from 1:1 to group work. Participants will be introduced to ways to assess and strengthen their ritual containers and shape and attune etheric space in support of their work.
The ritual container is also impacted by the practitioner themselves. Who we are, and the information in our personal fields, has direct bearing on what we can do. In this training we will explore how the practitioner’s relationship with the work, personal biases, and state of consciousness influences what healing can happen and who can show up and be well met as a client. Participants will be introduced to ways to asses the states of their personal fields in relation to particular clients or types of work and to develop the practitioner stance of compassionate neutrality.
September 18, 19, 20
From 9:00am – 3:00pm Pacific Time every day.
For those in European time zones – I will try to make the last 60-90 minutes of class each day something that doesn’t require attendance so that there’s the option of listening to a recording before the next day’s class begins. I can’t guarantee it but I’ll do my best to make it work with that schedule.
Exchange: $350 USD
The term “psychopomp” is a Greek term meaning “conductor of souls”. In ritual healing practices, “psychopomp work” refers to any situation in which a spirit transitions to another place or dimension of consciousness by crossing a threshold. This applies to deceased humans or other formerly corporeal beings when they cross the threshold of death, as well as non-corporeal spirits who need assistance relocating to their home dimension or location.
In the context of a death transition, psychopomp spirits are compassionate beings associated with ancestral lineages and spiritual cosmologies who assist those who have left their bodies in transitioning to the next phase of existence. In this training we will explore the transition of death, what makes for a successful or hindered death process, and develop relationships with several psychopomp spirits including familial psychopomps and those more broadly known through some of the world’s religious cosmologies. We will learn how to facilitate a death process with the psychopomp spirits, when practitioner involvement is helpful and when it is not, and how otherwise to be of service in this sacred work.
Psychopomp work is the foundation of Compassionate Spirit Release and a common element of curse unravelling. This course serves as a prerequisite for the Compassionate Spirit Release training modules as does any other formal psychopomp training.
October 23, 24, 25
From 9:00am – 3:00pm Pacific Time every day.
For those in European time zones – I will try to make the last 60-90 minutes of class each day something that doesn’t require attendance so that there’s the option of listening to a recording before the next day’s class begins. I can’t guarantee it but I’ll do my best to make it work with that schedule.
Exchange: $400 USD
Binding influences are persistent energetic patterns that can have positive or negative impacts on our lives depending on their intended effects and match with current circumstances. Binding influences are commonly found in ancestral lines and soul histories. They can be created with intention, as with spell work and contracts, or they can be unintentional, as when a strong emotional situation plus an associated thought creates a recurring thought-loop. In this work we define a curse as any binding influence that is having a negative impact. Intentional curses contribute to limiting conditions in life such as bad luck, illnesses, dysfunctional and recurring family patterns, and lack of personal power. Past life or ancestral vows, oaths, and contracts can also limit personal freedom, well-being, and abundance. Participants will learn a process for detecting and clearing binding influences with healing spirits related to this work – unravellers, those wise in ways of magic, and the contract lawyers of the spirit world.
November 13, 14, 15
From 9:00am – 3:00pm Pacific Time every day.
For those in European time zones – I will try to make the last 60-90 minutes of class each day something that doesn’t require attendance so that there’s the option of listening to a recording before the next day’s class begins. I can’t guarantee it but I’ll do my best to make it work with that schedule.
Exchange: $400 USD
Recommended: As curses in particular often include bound spirits the Compassionate Spirit Release training compliments this work.
Many people doing spirit-mediated healing work are trained in journey methods of connecting with spirits and spiritual dimensions in order to support healing movement for clients. A complimentary method, mediumistic field perception, involves inviting and invoking the healing presence of spirits and spiritual dimensions into middle-world space with the consciousness of the practitioner staying centered and present. This process causes an alteration and attunement of etheric space that matches the qualities of the spirits and dimensions invoked.
Practitioners can use this method to create a strong field of healing support as part of their ritual containers. As part of this training practitioners will learn how to perceive-while-present, using only a slight alteration of consciousness that is more like a shift in attention than inducing trance state. This enables practitioners to perceive and detect useful information in a client’s field without engaging a journey process. As this form of perception is used in Compassionate Spirit Release work, this class is good preparation for that training.
During this training we will be connecting with spirits that are good to know for healing work and ritual containment, and with imaginal locations for healing and ritual support, further developing our ritual healing connections and containers.
December 5 – 6 2026
From 9:00am – 3:00pm Pacific Time every day.
For those in European time zones – I will try to make the last 60-90 minutes of class each day something that doesn’t require attendance so that there’s the option of listening to a recording before the next day’s class begins. I can’t guarantee it but I’ll do my best to make it work with that schedule.
Exchange: $285
Overshadowing is a state in which a person’s experience is influenced by another conscious being who is sharing their physical and energetic space. Overshadowing can be intentional or unintentional and can be the result of trauma, soul history and ancestral karma, insufficient boundaries with the kindred dead, and incidental circumstances. Overshadowing is a natural, if often undesirable, occurrence that can lead to or be a factor in a number of issues including chronic illnesses, physical pain, addictions, obsessions, depression, anxiety, identity confusion, and suicidal ideation. Spirit release, when indicated, can resolve issues that are resistant to other forms of healing work.
Participants will learn the method of compassionate spirit release developed by Betsy Bergstrom (called Compassionate Depossession). This method is not combative or heroic. It is a compassionate process that benefits both the clients and overshadowing spirits, working in harmony with the structure and principles of natural order. We will meet with high-capacity helping spirits who support this work and further develop our ritual containers to have the capacity and strength to engage this work in sustainable ways.
The training consists of eight days of training divided into two training modules and one intervening practicum. The practicum is an opportunity to review, clarify, and practice what has been learned and experienced up to that point in the training.
Prerequisite: Formal training in psychopomp work. See Psychopomp Facilitation above, or any other formal psychopomp training applies.
Recommended:
As overshadowing spirits can be bound into spell constructs and soul contracts, Binding Influences: Curses and Soul Contracts compliments this work.
For those who are not used to working mediumistically, Mediumistic Field Perception and Development is recommended.
Exchange: $875
Training Module 1: January 20, 21, 22, 23
February 20th – Practicum
Training Module 2: March 12, 13, 14
From 9:00am – 3:00pm Pacific Time every day.
For those in European time zones – I will try to make the last 60-90 minutes of class each day something that doesn’t require attendance so that there’s the option of listening to a recording before the next day’s class begins. I can’t guarantee it but I’ll do my best to make it work with that schedule.
I love all of Maris’ classes, and the training is a delicious deepening— beautifully paced and rich with teachings woven masterfully together with experiential drop ins. One of the hallmarks of all of Maris’ courses is her generous sharing of wisdom gained over many years working as a medium and a Spirit Mediated Healer. Together with her own dedicated inner work her teachings are anchored in the compassionate wisdom approach that reminds and inspires us to ever refine our own perception and understanding towards what is. This is a grounded, empowered container from which we learn and grow in our connection with world of the spirit. I highly recommend her courses and her training to all who want an authentic and highly integritous approach to spirit work.
The advanced practitioner training with Maris has been truly valuable in deepening my skills as a healer. Although I had previous training in most of the areas, the depth of wisdom and skill that Maris holds has brought me to a whole new level of capacity in my practice. While I generally dislike trainings on zoom, Maris creatively works with that platform to make it enjoyable and accessible. Maris has a wonderful combination of humility, clarity, respect and good boundaries which make for a very well-tended learning environment. I highly recommend this training to anyone wishing to expand and deepen their healing abilities.