A Golden Bridge Initiative – It all begins in the dance
Moving Through Life's Thresholds
With Melissa Michaels
2023 spring sessions have begun – thank you for your interest.
If you are here to sign up for Session II (Initiation & Completion), please contact office@goldenbridge.org. Otherwise, learn more below:
Pathways for
Embodied Living
and Leading
Access Your Educational Video and Booklet
And notify me when registration opens for the next sessions.
Moving Through Life’s Thresholds
This gift includes an introductory video of Melissa’s dynamic teaching of the 5Rhythms® along with a guidebook through the 7 Cycles of the SomaSource rite of passage process as developed by Dr. Melissa Michaels and the Golden Bridge community.
Included are simple time-tested principles offered to inspire those seeking body-centered pathways through life’s major challenging and transformational transitions. This simple booklet offers seeds for moving from suffering-to soul-to service.
A call to get grounded and get going!
Dearest Comrades on the Journey,
Who doesn’t have challenges and big teachings in these times?
Identity shifts. Stuck energy. Free-floating fear. Economic angst. Outrage. Caretaker fatigue. Groundlessness. Career pivots. Endless grief. Health challenges. No space for self. Too much time alone.
This is a soul-birthing moment for everyone, myself included.
My name is Melissa Michaels, and I’ve been consciously doing this work for 35+ years. Prior to that, I was a disembodied, enraged, acting-out young person. Hurting. The dance and the diverse tools woven into this process have saved my life and given me a life. Hundreds of others would say the same.
It is a potent time to navigate through our narrow passageways into a new way of being! These times in our lives call for us to root down, strengthen our foundation, and then meet life with clarity and calm.
The Thresholds online course is rich with visual and verbal support for those seeking a deeper practice and journey through the dance to the body, center, and soul. It offers the foundation of all of the dance-based rite of passage work unfolding globally in our moving communities.
So let’s unwind and mobilize, allow the tears, share any fears, find our feet, and live with ever more authenticity and grace.
I need that! You too?
Melissa
“The work with Melissa Michaels has been my compass, guiding and supporting my work with groups and young women in South Africa. It’s been a key in my growth and transforming in all aspects of my life.”
“This work is the key to opening my heart and connection with the spirit, willpower, knowledge, inner strength, and confidence which created me as a social entrepreneur and lovable soul. This work opened my creative thoughts and energy.”
“This process is not just about dance, it is a multi-dimensional healing trip and has been one of the most fruitful, painful, beautiful, processes I’ve experienced.”
Meet Your Guide: Melissa Michaels
Melissa Michaels, Ed.D, guides individuals and communities through major life transitions. As a soul midwife and mentor to emerging leaders around the world, she has created a rite of passage process, SomaSource®, that links somatics, human development, and peace-building. Her recently released book, Youth On Fire: Birthing A Generation Of Embodied Global Leaders, tells the story of this life-changing work as it has unfolded in diverse settings ranging from favelas to college campuses, from refugee settlements to the United Nations. Melissa is also the founder of Golden Girls Global and Golden Bridge, a nonprofit organization dedicated to our collective renewal through the liberation of the creative Spirit. Over the past three decades, she has trained dozens of mighty leaders in the SomaSource work. To learn more about their social initiatives around the world, please read about them on the Golden Bridge website. Melissa is a first-generation teacher of the 5Rhythms® and a Registered Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist. Whether she is tending to individuals transitioning from one life cycle to another or to communities in the midst of major change, Melissa is dedicated to our collective renewal through the liberation of the creative spirit.
Course Overview
This course includes:
- Online coursework, including soul-stirring readings and a total of 28 rich videos encompassing hundreds of minutes of teachings.
- Practices and step-by-step guidance about how to create your ritual of transformation and begin to move through it.
- Live classes with Melissa and SomaSource Leaders, deepening the teachings along with building community.
Foundations: SomaSource Cycles 1-3
Cycle 1: Soul Call
We’ve heard the call. We begin. We clear the space, take stock, set intentions, and ready ourselves for the moving journey ahead.
Cycle 2: Ground of Being
We orient through our bodies. We resource through our senses and sensations, beginning to move from our edges to center. We open to the dance of the 5Rhythms®.
Cycle 3: Heart of Truth
Here we deepen our capacities to love, exploring tools for embodied emotional intelligence while working with our own unique emotional biographies.
Initiation and Completion: SomaSource Cycles 4-7
Cycle 4: Liberation of Creativity
We find ourselves ever more open to the muse as we fall in love with the creative pulse moving through us. Tuned in and turned on, we allow ourselves to express in spontaneous and authentic ways.
Cycle 5: Breath of Intimacy
We access our vast fertile energies and begin to dream what is next to conceive and create. Connecting more fully with all of life, we commune in ever more satisfying and sustainable ways.
Cycle 6: Birth of Soul
Gestation nearly complete, we liberate the one who is emerging now. Soulful. Rewilded. Original medicine begins to flow fully through us.
Cycle 7: Destiny in Action
We are being called to the world. The world is calling us. We face into the future. We find our next steps. We return. More whole, more holy, more ready to show up and serve.
“Discovering Golden Bridge has been a mid-life extravaganza for me. Far from a crisis, this work and process has been a magical moment of clarity that can only aptly be described as a re-embodiment of the soul.”
“The magic still comes through! At first I was skeptical of participating in a body/movement-based course online. But Melissa shares these teachings with beautiful and powerful videos, readings and invitations that take hold in your life right away. This course is a precious doorway to deep inner wisdom and embodied aliveness.”
FAQ
Who should join this course?
This course is available to anyone who has a body that longs to move and a soul that is ready for fuller expression.
Seasoned students of this work will learn the details of how each cycle unfolds, including comprehensive, never before fully shared practices.
People who are new to the dance or rites of passage processes will be guided in a grounded step-by-step way into ever more expansive embodiment and creativity.
This is for anyone ready for a personal upshift in the midst of life’s many challenges and possibilities.
How much time will this course take?
This course is designed to allow you to engage at your own pace with a high level of personal discretion on the amount of time you will invest. All online course content can be engaged on your own timing. A rough approximation of a weekly time commitment might include:
- 1 hour of online course content
- 2 hours of Online Study Sessions with Melissa and SomaSource Leaders
- 3-6+ hours spent on Reflect and Engage activities
The amount of time you spend reflecting and enacting the practices will influence your experience. The majority of students report spending between 5-10 hours per week.
What if I cannot attend the live class times?
This course is designed to be taken primarily a-synchronously. The majority of the course content is offered in the online course platform, which you will be able to engage with on your own time. The live sessions are designed to deepen and support the online experience, but you are not required to attend all of these sessions to participate in the Thresholds rite of passage. During the 12-week course, we encourage everyone to plan to attend at least one live session weekly. This allows our community to build and maximum support for everyone on the journey. You are still able to move at your own pace.
Melissa’s twice-weekly live sessions are designed to further support your intimate exploration of the online course material. We plan to share recordings from every live session.
This course will be a rich source of information, practice, and support with or without the twice-weekly live sessions. We recommend you consider enrolling, even if you can’t attend all of the live sessions.
Is there financial assistance available?
Out of a deep respect for the variety of economic realities that encompass our human experience, we have made various payment pathways possible.
For everyone, we have made it possible to break the course payment into two and four-month plans. If you are in need of reduced monthly payment plans over a longer period of time, please email us office@goldenbridge.org.
We have a limited number of both partial (50% off) and full scholarships for those in true financial need. We will be prioritizing full scholarships for those who have refugee status, those who come from low-income nations, and those in the US from marginalized identities. We do not want finances to keep anyone from this work, so please reach out if this course is calling you. We welcome your creative proposals for how you will pass along this gift.
To apply for a scholarship, please send an email to office@goldenbridge.org. When reaching out, please consider what level of support you are needing and share about your interest in the course. We will respond with information on how to enroll.
What is your refund policy?
If necessary, you can receive a full refund up until 24 hours after the course opens. Please contact office@goldenbridge.org with your inquiries.
How can I get technical support?
We are here to support you along the way with any questions you may have about purchasing and accessing the course. For support, please email office@goldenbridge.org. If you don’t see our reply, please check your junk/spam folder.
“I have always wanted to do work with women and children. All in all, I just want to be part of the impact in one or the other way, but it always felt like something was hindering my progress.
“The Golden Bridge online course helped me understand the work I have to do within myself before I helped others. I was able to get access to resources that ultimately have helped my healing, learning, and unlearning. Now I know that I should fill my cup first and give from my overflow.”
“This work informs me on how to be an embodied agent for change. Through my own embodiment practice, I am able to connect with my heart and therefore serve from a place of oneness with whoever crosses my path.”
“The SomaSource curriculum is invaluable. I appreciate the creativity of this work that deeply considers difference whilst at the same time transcending difference.”
“SomaSource has given me a template and a benchmark for social creativity and relationship. It has given me a method to explore the inner terrains of body and soul and helped me to find my feet in the dance of life.”
“I’ve studied rites of passage for 20 years and I’ve never seen anything remotely similar to Melissa’s work. More than a unique species of rite of passage practice, it is its own genus, maybe even family. It represents a wholly new form that I can only hope individuals, programs, and communities will unpack, study, and build upon for years to come.”
“Melissa is one of the most powerful and discerning somatic guides alive today. Her clarity of vision and purpose are contagiously inspiring and have the power to transform the lives of everyone she touches. This work undoubtedly has and will continue to spread ripples of healing and change across our planet. This course breaks down the process that Melissa uses to guide students through thresholds and translates it into a framework that can be emulated and built upon to expand this work into different contexts. Not only was this course helpful in my professional work, it helped me step more fully into the embodied practitioner that I strive to be. Highly recommend!”
Didn't Receive the Video & Ebook Yet?
This gift includes an introductory video of Melissa’s dynamic teaching of the 5Rhythms® along with a guidebook through the 7 Cycles of the SomaSource rite of passage process as developed by Dr. Melissa Michaels and the Golden Bridge community.
Included are simple time-tested principles offered to inspire those seeking body-centered pathways through life's major challenging and transformational transitions. This simple booklet offers seeds for moving from suffering-to soul-to service.
A call to get grounded and get going!
By signing up, you'll get an introduction to this unique and pioneering work, as well as a video to get you moving!