Part of our mission is to help educate and prepare staff to work for retreat centers all over the world. Our training is comprehensive and effective. It improves guest experiences while emphasizing safety, ethical practices, and leadership.
For many centers, finding qualified staff can be a huge challenge. After more than a decade of attending and working in retreat centers, we have compiled an easy-to-follow plan of action to equip facilitators, administrators, integration coaches, and on-site staff to give guests the best possible experience in a challenging field. Guests are looking for skilled staff beyond the maestro, curandero, or shaman serving the medicine, and the people who complete our coursework are prepared to work for any center.
Facilitators are the unsung heroes of guest experiences. If you are already working for a center or looking to move into the field, Mountain Wind can advise you on how to level up!
The word “facilitator” comes from the root word “facilis,” meaning easy, and the suffix “-ator,” meaning one who does. Facilitators make challenging things easy. Easy on the master, easy on the staff, and easy on the guests. As facilitators, we fill in the gaps: cooking or cleaning when other staff are unavailable, answering questions and concerns about a guest’s stay, and guiding guests through a center’s processes.
Facilitators are highly sought after for all types of centers. Beyond employment, many facilitators hope to own or run a center of their own one day. Working as a facilitator gives valuable experience in how a center operates and in solving guest or staff challenges.
Additionally, facilitation offers a chance to apprentice under a qualified teacher and to participate in classes and ceremonies while providing a valuable service.
Our facilitator training program is structured as a professional coaching program. Drawing on data about the skills centers seek, it prepares new facilitators for the field and helps current center staff build the competencies guests look for when choosing a center.
The curriculum focuses on skills that apply to every type of center, including emergency medical training, conflict resolution, foundational integration techniques, and basic therapeutic guidelines. Centers regularly turn to Mountain Wind for hiring advice, and graduates of this course are considered when we recommend candidates.
This course begins with a one-on-one consultation about your experience level, expectations, and where you would like to focus. Our coursework is currently available only by direct contact; a virtual course is in development. The course is divided into five sections:
Mountain Wind offers this course for those who wish to learn at their own pace and on their own schedules. To fully complete the course, you will also need certifications that can be costly but are highly valued. We offer the course to improve safety and guest experience, and to share our own skills with others.
For this reason, we keep the cost of this course very low, compensating our facilitator trainers only for their time.
Administrators are first contact for a Retreat Center. These professionals are experts at organization, communication, and preparing guests for their experience.
Potential guests who are looking for retreats want a quick response. Centers are looking for someone who can answer email and social media questions at a moment’s notice. Additionally, we train people in this field to update advertising across multiple platforms, create or post social media updates, and document the center’s processes.
Administrators should also be responsible for creating forms or questionnaires, screening potential guests, and answering questions from guests who are arriving soon.
In the highly competitive world of retreat centers, administrators are hard to come by. It’s not a glamorous job, but a competent administrator makes all the difference in guest experience at the most crucial moments.
Administration is also an excellent way to gain experience helping guests: answering questions, giving advice, and solving challenges before they become problems. The vast majority of our administrators work remotely and travel the world while preparing to move into management of retreat centers of their own.
Our administration course gives you advice on software, form creation, and documentation to help a center operate at its full potential. You will also learn how to update advertising on platforms specific to the retreat center space.
Additionally, you will learn how to screen guests for medical issues and how to maintain and organize digital assets. Once the course is complete, Mountain Wind has retreat centers that are ready to put you to work!
This course begins with a one-on-one consultation about your experience level, expectations, and where you would like to focus. Our coursework is currently available only by direct contact; a virtual course is in development. The course is divided into five sections:
Mountain Wind offers this course for those who wish to learn at their own pace and on their own schedules. We offer the course to improve safety and guest experience, and to share our own skills with others.
For this reason, we keep the cost of this course very low, compensating our administrator trainers only for their time.
Many retreat guests look for integration support after their experience, and some seek it beforehand. Mountain Wind does not offer integration coach training. If you want to become an integration coach, we refer you to Out of the Dark Academy where members of our team earned their Psychedelic Integration Coach certificate. We recommend them based on that firsthand experience. Mountain Wind receives no compensation for this recommendation.
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