The Resilience Project/Deep Resilience Group

Deep Resilience Group (4-Month Experiential)

What your life is not giving you elsewhere.

What a good resilience course provides:

What Lorca is.

comfort for the afflicted
affliction for the comfortable
resistance to burnout
love where you least expect it
ideas that simmer a while
writings that lift the spirit
thoughts that survive quiet time
design for amazement
blind spots made visible
correctives to drama
insistent creativity
delight in mastery
roots without bigotry
fire for your projects
a place to reflect on your stands
a direct gaze at death
steady prompts to joy
a voice that brings you home

This is resilience.
 

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

In a nutshell, this practice shines light on your beautiful core -- and then pulls that core forth into how you risk, how you grieve, how you love, and how you lead.  Whatever your current projects are, inside and out, they will blossom beautifully during this time, and sooner rather than later.

We are natural seekers, but we do not have 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 this venture we move beyond the cultivated lands of life into the backcountry of resilience, up into beauty unseen by most.  In me you will find a poet of resilience, a resilience philosopher, an economist, an artist, a musician, 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.  Three of these months will be outward bound, both as a group and individually, learning advanced resilience backcountry skills and navigation and learning a new way of life mapping.  We are invited to engage repeatedly with deep compassion, the nervous system's languages, beautiful paradox, blind spots, leadership, Time... The final month together will have less new terrain, circling back and deepening, support and fellowship, recalibration, and celebration of each other and ourselves.  From here, you will dare again, but from a new place.

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, beautiful things on the way and naturally giving away what we find 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 Lorca.  Compassion and grief, play and curiosity 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.  And I give you myself.  

As a wilderness guide, my job is to take you with me into inner landscapes you have not 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

How do I know whether I am fit now for this?

You ask yourself whether you are getting what you truly want.  And you ask me anything.  You call or write me and I will help you arrive at your own answer.  Any pilgrimage is not well-taken by the close-minded, the utterly depleted, or by one who already knows everything.  It is taken from a longing for joy and for a quietness of spirit, and sometimes from a stubborn reclaiming of the possibility of both openness and happiness. It rises from a commitment not only to yourself but to the communities you give to. It is a leaning into connection on the deepest human levels -- with others, with your real work, and with yourself.    

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.  I have found that when we consciously work on resilience, it deepens quickly.  And therefore, we deepen quickly.  And 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.  

Is a payment plan available?

Always.  You do this because you really want this for yourself, or because not doing resilient things is costing you more.  This voyage together is $3600 if you want to pay all at once, or you can make four monthly payments for a total of $3700.    

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 students enter for four-months with me.  The next cohort begins in January of 2022.  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.  
    • Each month we meet as a group for three weekly two-hour sessions. 
    • Each fourth week you will have a solo session with Lorca. 
    • During the four months each student has a deeper half-day session with just Lorca, virtually or in person.
  • I will 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...
  • A care package, sent from me to you through the post for support and for delight.  
  • This cohort is supported in the Deep Resilience Basecamp, an online community hosted here 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.

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.