Uncoupling Ceremony
For consciously uncoupling, an uncoupling ceremony can provide the essential closure.
What is an Uncoupling Ceremony?
An uncoupling ceremony is a way to mark and process a major relationship transition. Weddings, commitment ceremonies, and hand-fastings are common: these are times when a couple receives community support to mark the threshold of coming together. However, breakups or other major relationship transitions of coming apart usually happen quite differently and may lack support and purposeful closure. An uncoupling ceremony is a chance for people to mark these comings-apart with ritual, ceremony, and intentionality.
What to Expect
Each partner will have a 60-minute intake with Rachel (virtually or in-office) to discuss goals, intentions, stuck points, and how they’re making meaning of the situation. Then all three of us will have a 30-60-minute intake to further refine our plan. After that, all three of us will meet for 2-6 hours on private land within 30-minutes driving distance of Asheville for the uncoupling ceremony itself.
The design of the ceremony will be unique to each couple’s needs, and we can design as collaboratively as you would like. The ceremony can be completely secular, incorporating aspects of expressive arts therapy, ecotherapy, and psychodrama. Or the ceremony can have a spiritual focus which incorporates practices of your choice from your own faith, or offerings of ritual, energy work, or meditation that I am able to bring from my training and experience.
We don’t do an uncoupling ceremony to achieve a particular outcome. We do this work to be present in an intentional way that allows the process to continue to unfold with more clarity, purpose, and curiosity. Expect to feel deeply. Expect to shift the responsibility of your well-being and care away from your former partner. Expect to find resourcing in wild ecology, in symbol, and in your own heart.
Signs You’re Ready for an Uncoupling Ceremony
•You both accept and agree to the relationship changes that are happening
•You are willing let go without having to continue to process or fully understand
•You can talk to your former partner with respect
Signs You’re NOT Ready for an Uncoupling Ceremony
•You haven’t accepted the breakup or changes and are still fighting for what you once had
•You can’t talk without fighting or big drama
•There has been emotional or physical abuse in the relationship
•One or both of you is currently in a mental health crisis
Is This Only for Couples? And Only for Breakups?
Not necessarily. Business partners, friends, or other kinds of relationships may also go through meaningful transitions that can be marked. A polycule could participate in an uncoupling or transition ceremony. Or a couple who is changing their relationship structure or agreements may benefit from a ceremony of transition. Not sure if your situation applies? Reach out and we’ll talk about it and see if we can adapt to your needs.
About Rachel as a Facilitator
Rachel’s gift as a facilitator is to lead people into their own experience of relating more deeply to nature, to themselves, and to one another. In 2014, she spent a year learning bushcraft, leadership, group facilitation, and nature connection in the Immersion program at the Wilderness Awareness School in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. She taught outdoor education and nature connection programs and retreats for four years before transitioning into therapeutic work. Rachel has been a student of yoga since 2001 and is passionate about yoga’s exquisitely precise spiritual technology and its power to educate us about the intricacies of physical embodiment. She received her yoga teacher training at Kripalu Institute and completed advanced study with Ame Wren. Rachel has also been a student of ritual and animistic practices since 2001. She has completed training and/or mentorship in rites of passage work, ancestral healing work, grief work and shamanic practices from around the world. Above all, Rachel is committed to the healing of people and the planet. Her own journey of following the coyote of her soul has taken her literally and metaphorically down unknown trails, through thorny thickets, into scorching days, deep nights, and valleys where the stars were so close it seemed you could almost brush them with your eyelashes. It is the privilege of a lifetime to be able to guide others into their own depths, so that they can show up for their lives with authenticy and strength.
