Deep Resilience Cohort (4-Month Experiential)

Design for energy, for strength.

Emerging from a pandemic, we face an expectation to be back where we were before in productivity, in effectiveness, in energy. And the gap between expectation and truth feels like guilt, tiredness, sadness, and a fear of needing to start over that is overwhelming.
The instinct is to hide and deal with it on your own until you get past the initial low until you find your footing again, and to not let anyone know you're struggling.
This solo time is a design for shame.

Go in belonging.

The Cohort -- Life energy to be with the hard and the beautiful.

In a nutshell, this practice shines light on a beautiful core -- and then pulls that core forth into how you risk, how you grieve, how you love, and how you lead. Whatever your bold projects are, inside and out, they will flourish during this time.

We are natural seekers who are not meant to seek alone. We take guides and companions who take us out of our safe zones and then who bring us home safe and renewed. In me you will find a scientist of resilience, a resilience philosopher, an economist, an artist, a musician, a poet, a diplomat and designer of resilience. All these realms come into play in you.

We spend four months together, both virtually and in person when possible, learning advanced resilience navigation and skills and a new way of life mapping. We engage repeatedly with deep compassion, the nervous system's languages, beautiful paradox, blind spots, leadership, time itself... From here, you will dare again, but from a new inner ground.

Packing

You do not need new gear, or to have been in this work before. You could be in quarantine, or even in bed. You need what you have, the life you are living, and who you are.
And as on a pilgrimage, we will find ourselves picking up meaningful things on the way and giving away what we didn't really need. This is a housecleaning of life, and of the spirit. I will take care of you. You don't have to be brave to start, or even ready. You know.

What you will need are these:

curiosity
humility and humor
longing
a willingness to get muddy, step into games...

Your guide --

I am yours. Play and curiosity, grief & compassion raised me. I build resilience in the world as I design and share a long-tested and expanding toolbox that keeps us over time in a place to meet hard things with a gathered energy, wisdom, and warmth, and holds the future with vibrancy.

As a guide, my job is to take you with me into inner landscapes you haven't yet navigated, using skills you may not yet have, and then to bring you home safe into a knowing of yourself that you can love and a way of giving that feels amazing.

Words of students...

Stu Trusler, REI Experiences

This is a study in leadership, grounded in the belief that to be effective and grow as a leader and a person, you must first create an ecosystem of resilience.

Here Lorca Smetana is your skilled and knowledgeable wilderness guide. She will lead you down the trail to the open expanses of compassion and embodiment. While you may want to stay there a long time, like any good guide Lorca will let you take it all in, ask you what you saw, and subtly keep you moving down the trail. You will visit the edges of cliffs, looking over the edge into the depths of leadership, time, and your own blind spots. Lorca has a light hand on your shoulder, to keep you safe and grounded. She has a playful smile and a gleam in her eyes as you explain what you saw.

As with any worthwhile adventure, you'll feel the full range of emotions and delve into the true reasons you make the decisions you do. Invite yourself down alternative paths that unlock your authentic self and shine a light on how and where you want to impact your world.

Kerensa Robinson

"By helping me view life through a new and vibrant lens, and heightened curiosity, what I once thought would take years of hard labor to gain momentum transformed into moments, then minutes, then hours of whispering possibility. I didn’t think it was possible but now I wish every person I love could taste such sweetness in their lives.

What Lorca offers is more generous, positive, and transformative than any other avenue of self-repair I have sought out in more than twenty years, and through eight years of exhaustion. Not only does she offer this with the curriculum she has crafted but in her innate way of being. She tends to the spirit and not just the mind. She lives and breathes embodied resilience.

If this is what can be achieved in just a few short weeks, I can only imagine the ways in which this could change my life when explored for the rest of my days. I now eagerly look forward to the sunrise and lie in bed grateful at night.

There is no greater value."

FAQs

The details?

THIS FITS INTO YOUR LIFE AS IT IS. And because we're adding ease and resilience, your life keeps getting easier and better! You will like your new problems more than the ones you have now. Seriously.
New cohort members enter for four-months. The next cohort begins in April of 2023. There will be no more than eight students at any time. And these people are amazing. You will like them and they will lift and inspire you, and vice versa.
We spend Zoom, phone, and/or in-person time together.
- Twice each month we meet as a group for two-hour sessions, structured around the Resilience Design Spiral with group check-ins, trainings, and small-group time.
- Alternate weeks you will have a solo session with Lorca for individual arenas of focus.
- During the four months each student has a deeper half-day session with just Lorca, virtually or in person.
I feed you from my so-far bottomless toolbox -- advanced resilience games, practices, playlists, challenges, useful phrasing, introductions, reference video or audio, beloved authors, links, and packing lists, follow-up notes and recordings...
This cohort joins a community of all who have done deeper work with me using the Resilience Design Spiral. These are your people and our army for growing resilience in the world. Here you can draw on questions, images, people, ideas, and requests and be supported by me and by each other.
Reasonable email & text support.

Investment: one-time payment of $3800.00 (save $400) or 4 easy payments of $1050 invoiced and payable through PayPal, credit card, or ACH.

Who are traveling?

This is a small band of travelers, no more than eight at a time. These are leaders, artists, writers, founders, climbers, caregivers, designers, teachers, inventors, explorers, and more. Who we are for each other deepens quickly. This becomes a cohort of trained resilience warriors, part of a larger movement toward a resilient world. Backcountry work, even metaphorical, simultaneously invites and builds this trust. And I can say from experience, this kind of work draws in some truly beautiful humans, every time. All of my previous cohort members are still meeting together to this day in support and fun.

Life as more extraordinary than we are prepared for...

When we voyage, the person who arrives is not the person who began. We want a life that naturally supports us as brave. You want beautiful growth, and then to live in that beauty. With each resilient step, we have rejected disconnection, shallowness, and separation. And we inhabit the pathway with fullness and, as the poet David Whyte tenders, "dependent on a brave participation, a wild generosity with our gifts, and always, a long-practiced vulnerability, equal to what any future may offer."

This is that group, a steady conversation with the next stages of your own maturity and strength and grace.
This is your invitation.

You can complete these five questions as soon as possible. We'll take it from there.

Because we want you.

Love, Lorca