Guardian Warrior training
Training – First Level:
Becoming Invisible, Becoming Invincible
Online, via email and Zoom
80 days
Date: November 11 2023 to January 29 2024
Training – Advanced Level:
Becoming Invisible, Becoming Invincible
Location: undisclosed location in the Upper Great Lakes Wilderness.
80 days
Date: to be announced only to Advanced Trainees. Tight security is kept around all aspects of this phase of the Training.
Training – Elite:
Quiet Mind, Cold Fire
Taking the full power and limitless capacity of the naked mind, to perform the impossible. Burning with all the energy and illumination of fire, but without its draw or destructiveness.
This is not a training as much as it is a dying — the death of the cluttered mind and hot passion. A screaming mind is no more than a garbage heap, and burning passion is just raging blindness.
Tuition
Training – First Level – $2500
Training – Advanced Level – $6000
First and Advanced Level Training together – $8000
Inquire about group rates
Who are you?
- Do you wonder why you’re never content with your job, or school, or your lifestyle?
- Do your friends and family never seem to quite understand you?
- Do you know something is missing, but you don’t know where to look for it?
Do you feel like a square peg in a round hole? Here is a chance to explore your archetype, to see if you are a Guardian, and to discover how to reach your fullest potential and best serve your people and your Mother Planet. Check out the recording of the zoom call with Tamarack Song and Lety Seibel:
Who is the Guardian?
“Some call them Scouts, many call them Warriors, and others know them as Protectors. To Native people, they are Guardians: the manifestation of the band’s courage, selflessness, and desire to serve. Guardians can be female or male, old or young. Invisible, alert, and detached, they serve as sentries, wayfinders, messengers, ambassadors, sleuths, defenders, providers, and mentors. Their presence gives peace of mind to their people, so that they can comfortably pursue their day’s activities and rest peacefully in the night.
“All that Guardians do centers on respect—the deepest reverence for the Earth and all Her children, along with a high regard for the perfected self. In this day, Guardians are again needed by their people and their Earth Mother—perhaps more than ever.”
– Taken from the opening lines of the training text book Like a Shadow: The Life and Training of a Guardian Warrior, by Tamarack Song (Snow Wolf Publishing, 2020)
You are invited to join Becoming Invisible, Becoming Invincible. Immersing yourself in the Life and Training of a Guardian Warrior, you gain a deep sense of self-knowing, along with the ability to perform and serve in ways that until now you may have only dreamed about.
In Training – First Level, you get thorough foundational instruction and practice in all of the essential Guardian skills; It is an At-Home training, meaning that you get the instructions online, and perform the exercises where you live.
In Training – Advanced Level, you go deep into the wilderness for a full-immersion experience in our traditional Guardian Training Camp, located near the School’s main camp.
The Training
The heart of Guardian Training is to learn that enrichment comes not from living for yourself, but for your people. The focus of the Training is to develop into a highly attuned being, with strength of body, clarity of mind, and purity of spirit; so that every thought, word, and action becomes conscious and responsible.
The nature of this Training could make it the most challenging and life-changing experience of your life. Its rigors could bring you to your knees. Yet don’t mistake Guardian Training for some macho delusion. Rather, the instruction helps you to develop the strength of presence to be gentle, unobtrusive, and effective. You learn to remain centered and summon your energy to extend empathy, create space for all voices to be heard, and assure that everybody’s needs are met without preference or prejudice.
Like a Shadow, the Guardian Training manual is now available in our store.
You gain the ability to:
- Integrate Guardian Training with everyday life and activities.
- Function at peak level by releasing yourself from limiting beliefs.
- Become failure-proof by eliminating chance and mistakes.
- Succeed without creating conflict or needing agreement.
- Use problems to find solutions, and create options where there weren’t any.
- Become aware of everything around you, so you’ll no longer be caught off guard.
- Deliberately lose in order to gain more than if you won.
- Stay limber and responsive at all times, while avoiding training injuries.
- Increase lung capacity and run distances without getting winded.
- Execute a covert Mission by becoming invisible and disguising your actions.
- Help your adversaries defeat themselves with their own energy.
2023 Trainings
Becoming Invisible, Becoming Invincible
There is no belief, bullet, or army that can stop what can’t be seen. Invisibility is invincibility — it is virtually impossible to overpower or outsmart a force that can’t be focused on. It can be in many places at the same time, or it can be nowhere. It can take on many disguises. It has no opposing force, and no boundaries or rules to limit its actions. It doesn’t have to take sides, so it can command the entire scene.
When a Guardian is invisible, he/she wields the power of the unseen. The more invisible she is, the more visible is her effect. By being a non-presence, she can be ever-present and devote her entire energy and attention to the Mission, without having to deal with the distractions and resistance inherent in being visible. She can shapeshift into anything, overhear everything, and inject herself into any situation. She can shout from the rooftops and not be stopped — she wields the power of being nothing.
In order to do so, the Guardian needs to leave his ego and identity behind. Yet we do not have to fear losing ourselves, because when we are nothing, we can become everything. When we get our invented selves out of the way, we can become our true selves and let all our uninhibited energy flow into fulfilling the Mission.
In the Becoming Invisible, Becoming Invincible Training, you learn how to:
- Strip down to your essence, so that you have full access to your gifts and powers.
- See through things, in order to know what is really there.
- Read the secret thoughts and intentions of others.
- Avoid physical harm by allowing the aggressor to defeat himself with his own energy.
- Set up decoys, to divert harmful energy and derail false Missions.
- Pull off the greatest illusion of all: getting your “enemy” to see your Mission as his/hers.
Reaching Your Full Potential
We may be good at something and think we have reached a high point in our development. A Master would never settle for that. Mastery takes us beyond our self-perception, beyond what we think we have achieved — and beyond what anyone else can envision.
Our goal in this pivotal Training to re-become the fully spontaneous, completely flexible, and infinitely adaptable Masters we were in our youths, before we were domesticated. A Guardian seeking Mastery trains to be a completely autonomous being—a part of everything, and a part of nothing. A Master is unaffected by others’ thoughts, beliefs, or judgments. He/she has the sense of presence, skill set, and adaptability to train and serve in any environment, under any circumstance, at any time.
Serving is the Guardian’s first lover. When there is divisiveness and spite, the Guardian transforms it to honor and acceptance. It is his sacred mission to restore this restive planet to a world of love. When that comes to pass, the Guardian can rest.
Is this your calling?
Becoming Invisible, Becoming Invincible is a standalone experience for some, and for others it is preparation for the Becoming Invisible, Becoming Invincible Advanced Level Training.
The Training Philosophy
When there is no challenge, the Guardian creates it. S/he persistently disrupts lifestyle routines, such as sitting in the same place, sleeping in the same position, and making love in the same way.
Repetitive motion is repetitive thinking. The Guardian avoids all routine exercises. Whether it’s personal workouts or established practices such as Qigong, tai chi, yoga, or martial arts forms, they rigidify the mind and destroy the body. Along with that, the Guardian shuns repetitive mental processes, such as regularly reading or reciting the same discourse, prayer, or mantra.
The Guardian’s gym is Nature — she is always there and ever-changing, which continually challenges the Guardian to Mastery. Nothing can be taken for granted, which is a key training component for the Guardian. Rocks, trees, the landscape itself, and anything around the house, yard, or city, become the gym equipment.
The four Training themes woven throughout the Guardian trainings:
- Right Diet The Guardian learns to satisfy body hungers rather than emotional cravings. Too much protein weakens the immune system and brings on premature aging. The wrong fats rob vital energy.
- Right Exercise can increase melatonin level threefold, which promotes a deeply restful and healing sleep. Endorphin levels rise, which strengthens the immune system. Both are essential for Self-Mastery
- Mental Conditioning for optimal functioning as a pack, flawless stealth movement, and quickly vanquishing physical threats.
- Emotional Freedom We are always lying — always disguising our fear. We are always wearing a mask — always hiding behind creating an illusion. It’s because of emotional attachment, which creates hell on earth. Our guide to emotional liberation (see below) is one of this Intensive’s three training manuals.
Registration
The Becoming Invisible, Becoming Invincible Training is open to only ten people, and you already know if you are one of them. You get that this is not just a Training, but a way of life. But before you apply, please know that there can’t be any quitters. To abandon your pack would be like someone ripping out your heart and still expecting you to function. And there is no halfhearted participation, as you want to be worthy of being called a Guardian.
First level Training: 80 days, online via email and zoom.
Date: November 11, 2023 to January 29, 2024.
Advanced Level Training: 80 days, somewhere in the upper Great Lakes Wilderness.
Date and location to be revealed only to Trainees, as tight security is kept around this phase of the Training.
Prerequisites: Successful completion of First Level Training is required, followed by an interview with Tamarack.
First Level Training can be taken alone or in conjunction with the Advanced Level Training.
First Level Training is a prerequisite for the Advanced Level Training.
Graduates of prior First Level Trainings can proceed directly to the Advanced Level Training
Tuition
First Level Training: $2500
Advanced Level Training: $6000
First and Advanced Level Trainings together: $8000
Inquire about group rates.
Feel free to pay by check, debit or credit card, or money order and save on added fees.
The companion book for the Guardian Training is now available in our store.
To apply for the Advanced Level Training, contact Tamarack for an in-person or video interview at 715-546-2944 or training@teachingdrum.org
Quiet Mind, Cold Fire
Elite Training
Taking the full power and limitless capacity
of the naked mind, to perform the impossible.
Burning with all the energy and illumination
of fire, but without its draw or destructiveness.
This is not a training as much as it is a dying — the death of the cluttered mind and hot passion. A screaming mind is no more than a garbage heap, and burning passion is just raging blindness.
It is within the emptiness that deeper wisdom is spoken. Only what we give away are we able to keep. The same mind that created the problem cannot solve it. It takes a purging — shaking things up, turning them upside down and inside-out. To be reduced to a fool, a blithering idiot, completely shameless, with no qualms. It takes selling your soul to service.
The Heart
Not since the birth of the great martial arts traditions have there been trainings like Quiet Mind, Cold Fire. Those indigenous trainings were long ago merged with the need for defense at the birth of the era of conflict caused by the rise of kingdoms. Among the results were Chinese Shaolin, Celtic Tailteann, Indian Sastravidya, Korean Taekkyon, West African Gidigbo, and Egyptian Beni Hasan, which preserved some of the original stealth and logic-defying Guardian practices.
Still other pre-civilization Guardian practices have been kept alive by the illusionist and ventriloquist in the form of carnival entertainment. Legends, fairytales, and various esoteric and meditative practices have done the same. All are brought back together in Quiet Mind, Cold Fire.
The Calling
Think of the fully empowered, fully engaged Guardian of classical times as a Bull— a mighty creature with stout horns, a neck the girth of his waist, and hooves capable of pounding nearly anything to dust. However, when the gate is left open and he can charge out to freedom, his spindly little tail will not let him pass through.
This is because the Bull is locked in a battle that will not allow him to awaken to who he is. On one side is fear, and on the other side is longing, and the tussle between the two — the tugging on his tail — renders him impotent. He longs to run, yet he fears tumbling off the cliff immediately ahead. At the same time, he fears staying in the pen, because he will end up being butchered.
With all that power and majesty—and potential—the Bull is still controlled by his spindly little tail.
We who are called to the Guardian Way are like that Bull — that fear-paralyzed powerhouse. All we know, all we are capable of, is what our spindly little tail allows us to do.
The Training
It starts the moment you read this. It is a solo training—it is all about you, and it is all about who you are not. You can’t buy your way in, and you can’t talk your way out.
Tell nobody, talk to nobody, about your Training. Let the people around you think what they will. It is part of the mask, the counter-tracking, that dissuades people from what you are really doing. They create their imaginings for you, because the mind hates a vacuum or something unexplained, and will do all it can to fill the void, whether or not it is true.
Your silence has nothing to do with secrecy, but rather with maintaining the integrity of the experience. It is impossible for a Guardian to serve two masters, so separation must be established and maintained.
It is the Way of the Wolf — our inspiration and guidance for this Training. As with Wolves, there is no schedule, as training is life. That is, the life you are about to live. And as with Wolves, the training is intense. You can’t imagine how intense. Just know that regaining control of your tail is only the beginning.
Prerequisites
Your life is the essential prerequisite. It may help to have completed the First Level and Advanced Level Trainings, but that is no guarantee.
The Registration Process
There is none. This is a way of living. You know what to do next.
Here is a clue: When a Squirrel jumps or falls, her head stays pointed directly to where she is going to land, with her eyes focused unblinkingly on the precise spot. Her body will be going through all kinds of gyrations to get her there, but her head remains focused, directed, unshakable.
First Pack Rendezvous
May 25th–August 14th, 2025
This is the last you will hear of it in public.
Your Guide
Tamarack Song, founder of Teaching Drum Outdoor School, got his training in the Guardian Way from the pack of Wolves he lived with, and while serving as an Ogichida (Ojibwe for Guardian-Warrior) alongside the Ojibwe Indian Ogichidas in the struggle to reinstate their treaty rights. Tamarack and his team bring you the traditional Guardian Way, as Tamarack learned it.
Please fill in e-mail and phone number, so we can contact you.
What the 2019 At-Home Trainees had to say:
I am really sad that this training is ending. Although it sometimes felt like too much to handle, I would wish to go on with you all and to hear your thoughts and stories! Thank you for all the teachings!! Right now it feels like I can take a lot of it into my daily life. Although I didn´t meet most of you, I will miss your stories.
Everything has changed
Thinking is not just thinking anymore
Eating is not just eating
Drinking is not just drinking
There was always a part in me who wanted the old known, comfortable patterns. But I felt a stronger part of me — and my whole body — shouting for more. Thank you all, packmates!
As I follow this path closer and closer to the core, I feel an intense oneness radiating.
Thank you to my precious Elders, Guides, and Packmates for continuing this journey with me. This sense of togetherness makes these blind steps into the abyss more bearable and oh’ so beautiful. I’m feeling more like the Guardians in our stories every day.
Blessings to the people, places and beings that whisper truths in our hearts. Blessings to the cycles of emotions, breath, water, and weather. Blessings to the teachings wrapped carefully and delicately around this hearth. Blessings to the tears of grief and longing; to childlike joy and silly sounding laughs and snorts. Blessings to an empty belly, a glass filled with warm water, a simple meal shared in silence with loved ones. Blessings to the sun and moon and the magnetic forces that hold us together. Blessings to the creatures that have been displaced or died in order to create the technology that has allowed for this virtual circle to come together. Blessings to all unnamed and unseen.
I just spent four days on a Medicine Walk into manhood. It was a journey where many of the things I learned in this pack came into place. To me, many aspects of walking as a man and the Guardian Way overlap. I am grateful and feel honored for this pack and the way we walk together. It was a beautiful journey and I will continue on this path.
I want to share my gratitude for the pack. It has been another very unique experience of the At-Home Training, and it showed me how the pack showing up and sharing can support the journey in a very deep way.
I am deeply grateful for all that has been shared throughout these Moons together. It has given me new inspiration and clarity on my lifepath. Pieces of my puzzle have fallen more into place. I see and experience how all these pieces work together and are making a deep impact on me. I feel slowly more and more stable and able to serve in the spirit of the Guardian Way described in the stories we heard in the Training.