Stress Mastery is Self-Mastery
Course Description & Registration
This course, Stress Mastery is Self-Mastery, is a pragmatic practice for daily life. What sets this course apart from so many other meditation programs is how it weaves a sublime focus of human energies with sacred space and earth-honoring ritual on which participants build a strong foundation of self-support. So, the intent of this 7-module immersion into stress mastery is to bring more positive, malleable energy to your life.
Positive means:
- Evolutionary – creatively and responsibly builds upon the old
- Uplifting – while enabling our feet to be firmly on the ground
- Engaging – joyous expansions of interaction and service
- Appropriate – enhancing the highest good
- Useful – keeping it real in turbulent times
Thus, each module and follow-up medicine practice are designed to help bring more practical expression and personal insight into your life. You will also receive a weekly email to assist you with getting the most out of each module and its associated medicine practice(s), as well as to encourage your involvement with our Facebook group and share your questions or insights.
In summary, the class content, meditations, question and answer sessions, our optional course Facebook group, supportive medicine* practices and supplemental readings are designed to work synergistically to give you heightened understanding of how to master stress as you become more in harmony with self, the people and events around you. Everything we do will be applicable to daily life.
[*] Medicine – medicine is used in the generic indigenous way meaning benevolent energy.
Class 1 – Embodying a Positive Energy Flow
Overview – A meditation keying on the physical state to self-assess your state of relaxation and expression.
Meditative Journey – Directing Presence/3-point meditation
Potential outcomes
- Increase focus, awareness and amplitude of your personal energy; building relationship between you and the space you are in.
Follow-up Medicine Practices
- Do the Directing Presence/3-point practice at least twice before going on to Class 2.
- Begin to develop or enhance your personal meditation area.
- Consider that space and objects hold energy, and use this to benefit you and others.
Class 2 – Reducing Mixed Messages
Overview – Few things drain our energy or cause confusion more than sending mixed messages and giving away our power. If we send mixed messages during a spiritual practice, our practice can become unfocused and mixed messages are what we get in return.
Meditative Journey – Emanating Essence
Potential Outcomes
- Reduce the mixed messages we send and receive.
- Improve equanimity, clarity and focus.
- Strengthen authenticity.
- Refine and add to the energy balancing meditation from the week before.
Follow-up Medicine Practices
- Refine the 3-point and Directing Presence/Emanating Essence exercises. Do both at least once before the next class. They need not be done during the same “session,” but it is recommended the 3-point (Directing Presence) be done first.
- Read Chapter 11: Mixed Messages and Paradoxes from the book, “How to Get Even with the Universe by Getting Right with the World.” (Ordering information is below.)
Class 3 – Befriending Our Lessons
Overview – There is relationship between letting go, also known as surrender, and nonattachment. It’s a paradox: we no longer give our power away when we surrender. Nonattachment, which is much different than detachment, makes unconditional love possible. Letting go amplifies the power of personal space, allowing for unexpected outcomes past, present and future.
Meditative Journey – Hitting the Cosmic Reset Button: the Meditative Daily Review
Potential Outcome
- Resetting the past; sweeping away daily debris.
Follow-up Medicine Practices
- Read Chapter 9: Being Nonattached in a Connected Universe.
- Practice the 3-part meditation offered in the audio recording: Hitting the Cosmic Reset Button.
“When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.”
– Victor Frankl
Class 4 – An Existential Question
Overview – Class 4 offers a broad range of information to add extra umph and understanding to your practice and daily life. It goes into how to bring light to the dark night and enhancing your meditation space so you can go out into the world with confidence and competence.
Potential Outcomes
- Further explore the creative richness of the four directions.
- Amplify meditation space through additional medicine pieces purposefully placed to enhance your intuition.
- Recognize and understand the importance and meaning of recurring life events.
- Address the question: “How can we live and enjoy life without squeezing the world out of shape, as we seem to be doing now?”
Follow-up Medicine Practices
- Refine your labyrinth practice by doing it at least once more before moving on to the next class; select a theme/scene/icon from the practice in which to go more deeply in a meditation in your sacred space.
- Read the class narrative at least twice and engage with comments, questions and answers in our Facebook group. There is more posted this class than usual.
- Read Chapter 3: In the beginning…
- For fun, download a Theseus and Minotaur labyrinth game! I found this free sample here. It’s virus free and safe to download.
“Desperate times do not call for desperate measures. They call for magical ones.”
– Pagan Youngshadow
Class 5 – Disciplined Imagination
Overview – Imagination creates and has created the physical laws, or beliefs, we live by. Within the context of these laws, just how limited or unlimited are we? The fact is, we can always do and be something more. Meditation and journeying, or guided visualization, are potential catalysts. Anyone who claims s/he can help you “reach your full potential” likely sees you as limited and/or doesn’t know what s/he is talking about.
Medicine Journey – The medicine behind the medicine.
Potential Outcome
You won’t reach your potential any time soon…
Follow-up Medicine Practice
- Invitation into the Unlimited practice
- Continue to practice self-regulation
- Read Chapters 13 and 14: Disciplined Imagination and The Imagination – Intuition Conundrum
“Everybody has the capacity to dream up and believe anything he wants to. The shrinks, or the psychoanalysts would call it a personal delusional system. And you believe it because you choose to… Once we see the light, we know there will be no satisfaction until we experience a kind of divinity; something as close to divinity as man can experience – and when I start skating it happens to me.”
– SloMo Man
Class 6 – One with the World; at Home in the Wild
Overview – For many of us, life is detached from the natural world and the consciousness of our planet. True stress mastery requires a connection to the natural forces that sustain us. This is possible even for people who live in big cities. Experiencing the natural world leads to humility, awe, healing, vivacity and health ~ in a word, happiness.
Meditative Journey – Day and Night
Potential Outcomes
- Expand and strengthen our view and relationship with the natural world, seen and unseen.
- Experience connection, empathy and compassion without fatigue.
- Refine ability to bring equanimity into daily life and stressful situations.
- Provide a sanctuary within our meditation space to what is still wild and free.
Follow-up Medicine Practice – Getting to know a tree relative
“The sun, red and enormous, began to sink into the western sky. And simultaneously the moon began to rise on the other side of the river with its own glorious shade of red, coming up out of the trees like a russet firebird. The sun and the moon seem to acknowledge each other and they moved in both opposition and concordance in a breath taking dance of light across the oaks and the palms.”
– Jimmy Buffet – Prince of Tides
Class 7 – Course Recap and Q & A
Overview – A recap of sacred space and its practical interweavings in daily life. The recap may also encourage new questions not yet addressed, so don’t hold back! Most importantly, we will review the 7 Steps for Self-Mastery guide, to help assure these steps are internalized in your daily walk…if you care to walk that way.
Medicine Journey – The Cave Meditation
Potential Outcomes
- Open to any questions. Of course, participants can always ask more questions in our Facebook group.
- The Cave Meditation is a particular medicine journey to learn how to offer something back in exchange for something you have already received.
Follow-up Medicine Practices
- Participants are encouraged to go through any part or the entire course again: the written narratives, readings, recordings, FB postings and medicine practices. Many people find each offers deepening levels of ideas and potential directions to explore. You can still reach out on our group Facebook page with comments and questions.
How to Get Even with the Universe by Getting Right with the World: Working within Sacred Space and Time by Steve Guettermann
This book is highly recommended any time. However, it’s also great support for the course, as some chapters provide a good background for specific modules.
A few testimonials…
“With his combination of wisdom and love for his teaching, Steve [Guettermann] is a natural guide into matters of spirit and sacred living. Myth and storytelling are woven seamlessly into lessons on sacred relationship with all things and how we can learn to enhance our connection to the natural world and each other. I look forward to future offerings from Steve. “
– Pieter Lefferts | Artist and Universal Shaman
“Steve brings integrity, wit and wisdom to his teaching style combined with authenticity and real-person real-life practicality. You know he’s speaking and teaching from experience and his own truth, no smoke and mirrors or hype and self-promotion here, just the real-deal of someone who walks his talk, and has a readiness to share his journey from a genuine desire to support and guide and walk alongside you on yours.
Each week of the course brought new and unexpected aha’s and integrations as Steve provided fresh inspiration and understanding on what on the face of it may have seemed simple or familiar subjects.
The course gave me new tools, new understandings, new perspectives, and quite literally also new vistas through the guided visualizations, as well as helping to stabilize my understanding of the foundations on which it was based. (The picture I get is being supported to find the right stepping stones as I navigate a river-crossing.) Interactions with the other participants provided an extra layer of support which was both valuable and pleasurable. Highly recommended, and I’m looking forward to participating again.”
– Eadie Miller
“Steve Guettermann has a gentle and focused teaching style with relevant and enjoyable stories to tell. I took some notes and appreciate I can re-listen to the classes. If you have a busy life – you can get a lot in a relaxed and easy flow. The processes he teaches are compelling. His life’s wisdom shines through his voice – which is calm, fun, and funny. I learned a lot that I will surely pass on to others. The course – Befriending Sacred Space (now known as Stress-Mastery) – is enhancing my life.”
– Julia King | Shamanic Explorer
“Steve is a receptive, humble, and perceptive teacher. He is able to read each individual in the group and adjust the energy and content of the class in order to address the needs of everyone. He has a laid back, humorous, and grounded communication style that puts students at ease. Steve transmits a great deal of information and energy in a reverent, yet practical, way. I felt Steve completely saw, accepted, and understood me.“
– Alison Tierney
Stress Mastery is Self-mastery
Course and Bonus Package
(Here’s what you get…but not what you pay)
Seven high-impact teaching and meditation modules to harmonize self and master stress with Purpose/Expression/Self-expression for increased beneficent presence in the world. Each module includes in-depth written guidance, recorded journeys/meditations, and follow-up medicine practice suggestions and resources – $279 value.
Ongoing support via our private Stress Mastery is Self-mastery Facebook group that continues for twelve months after you complete the course! This group stays fresh with the ongoing addition of new members, and each person is welcome to participate as much or as little as desired. I will personally answer questions, as well as moderate others’ answers, discussions and shares. All of this contributes to the group’s impact. It is “virtually” a course by itself, assures you get individual attention, and is impossible to put a price on because of its ongoing value…but we will – $299 value.
Supplemental videos and information complimentary to your practice, such as periodic text compilations of Facebook Q & A and Facebook Live sessions – $99 value.
Total Value – $677….But wait!
Order on or before July 4th, 2020 and take advantage of our Independence Day Special:
• The Seven Module Stress Mastery is Self-Mastery Course
• Ongoing Facebook Support
• Supplemental videos and other bonus materials: charts, handouts, follow-up medicine practices and more!
• AND a no-risk money back guarantee…all for only $139•. That’s a saving of nearly 80%. Try the first two modules at no risk – you’ll get one module a week, plus some extras. If you are dissatisfied for any reason, you will get your money back. Who loves you?
• Please note this is the price per household. You are welcome to purchase additional packages for others, as this information is copyrighted and unauthorized copying or sharing is prohibited. You may purchase additional BSS course packages for only $119. Of course, if you’ve purchased before and would like additional packages at any time, just email us and you’ll get the “additional package price.”
Meditation and guided visualizations are generally considered to be safe. At beginning levels, they are mainly an exercise in relaxation and concentration. Advanced levels of meditation can require focused concentration in order to engage in self-study and examination. If you feel you might be uncomfortable engaging in such a meditative practice, either refrain from such study or consult a medical professional before continuing.
If you have a history of receiving treatment from a mental health counselor, please consult with your health care provider before listening to these course recordings. You are entirely responsible for how you choose to understand, misunderstand, use or misuse any information on this website, downloaded from it or from the book How to Get Even with the Universe by Getting Right with the World: Working within Sacred Space and Time. No medical advice is expressed or implied. Nor is the content intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. You are encouraged to stop using the information and consult a medical professional immediately if you feel uncomfortable with any of it.