Possible fast in October 2011. This will be a 5- or 6-day trip with a 3-day fast, preparations, and post-fast storytelling and incorporation.
$800 – $1,200 sliding scale

2012 Dates TBD

July and August (week-long trips include 3-day fasts, with preparations and post-fast storytelling and incorporation)
$800 – $1,200 sliding scale

If you are interested in participating in 2011 or 2012, please send an email to info [at] bcwildernessvisions [dot] com, so we can plan numbers and dates.

To arrange a customized individual vision fast for other dates, contact Karen at 604.251.6337.

“…by the time you step out of your purpose circle into the broad daylight, something has happened, whether you know it or not.”
Steven Foster and Meredith Little

A teenager is about to be released from a minimum-security youth prison, and has a chance to make a new start. A stay-at-home mom contemplates returning to the work force now that all her children are in school, but is unsure about whether she is ready. A business executive in upper management feels dissatisfied despite prestige and financial success, and wonders whether some other work would be more fulfilling. What do these three people have in common? They are each at a time of potential transition, and wonder what direction to go in.

The vision fast is a cross-cultural ceremony that brings guidance and healing through solo time in wild nature. This journey is a very personal one, and its meaning will be unique to you. Traditionally, the vision fast is a rite of passage that marks an important transition in your life, such as the passage into adulthood. The vision fast can be used for contemplation and celebration of life at any time of change, including puberty, marriage, divorce, career change, meeting life goals and milestones (something we often don’t take the time to celebrate and acknowledge in a meaningful way), loss of a loved one, retirement, illness, and preparation for death.

Today, precious time alone in wild nature is rare, and you might wish to take this time for contemplation or to renew your connection to yourself, to the earth, and to the sacred dimension in your life. Or perhaps there is an area of your life that you want to spend some time healing, such as a distressing event or a relationship. Or maybe you are aware of an inner quality of yourself that you wish to cultivate and invite to participate more fully in your life. What longing in your heart is calling you to undertake this journey?

The week-long vision fast ceremony begins with two days of preparations and clarifying intentions. Then participants fast alone in the wilderness for three days and nights, following the ancient practice of going without food, human companionship, and built shelter. (To adapt this ceremony to modern questers in a mountain climate, fasters use a tarp and sleeping bag for shelter.) The final two days are spent beginning to tell your story, integrating your solo time, and preparing to reincorporate into your life at home. For customized individual fasts, the week-long format described here can be shortened to five days.

The basic structure of this wilderness retreat draws on elements of rites of passage and renewal that stretch back to the beginnings of human consciousness: removing ourselves from our familiar worlds and going into the wilderness; using ceremony to deepen awareness and open our hearts; having time together in close community; having time alone; fasting; and returning with greater clarity and specific tasks.

Required reading: The Trail to the Sacred Mountain—A Vision Fast Handbook for Adults

To register, please fill in the online Registration Form. For payment information, see Fees.

Peoples of many cultures have created traditions and ceremonies involving solo time in wild nature. In North America, the plains peoples are the most well-known groups to use the ancient practice of the vision quest. John Murray recounts, in editors Michael Tobias and Georgianne Cowan’s The Soul of Nature, a story of discovering a vision quest site in Rocky Mountain National Park. Archaeologists from Colorado State University and the National Park Service studied the site and determined it had been used for vision quests and fasts from 10,000 years ago until about 500 years ago. This is remarkable! Long before the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, the first peoples of North America had been using spiritual ceremony to help their people live and thrive.

The vision quest was used as a rite of passage to mark the transition from childhood to adulthood. The quester would fast from food, people, and shelter. In some groups the faster would go forth naked, with only a bear-skin robe for warmth and protection. Severing from her people (I don’t know for sure if young women participated in this ceremony, or if it was only males in traditional societies who used this rite of passage, but today they definitely do!), the quester would enter a threshold space—a space between worlds, a place of spirit. The faster would be invisible to her people—a spirit form—until returning back across the threshold, sometimes after four days and four nights of fasting, sometimes for different periods of time. Upon returning, the quester would tell her story of the fast. The story would be received by her elders, and the entire community would know that the quester had successfully crossed over into adulthood. She might have received a vision, or a gift to bring back to her people. Incorporation, the final stage of the vision fast process, would involve living her gift or vision—bringing it back to her people, and making it real.

There are historical accounts of Native Americans who saw the coming of Christopher Columbus’s ship in a vision, but didn’t know what it was because they had never seen a ship before. There are many accounts of first peoples visionaries seeing the coming of the “white man” and the ensuing drastic effects on their way of life.

Today, First Nation peoples in some parts of North America still use the vision quest ceremony. Contemporary groups such as the School of Lost Borders and Monkey Valley Retreat Centre also put people out on the land to undergo the rite of passage of the vision fast. See the Links page for other contemporary organizations who offer vision fasts.