Crossing Thresholds: A Conversational Bridge to Your Next Opening

Crossing Thresholds: Your Next Opening
An Online Course

Join us for a four-session course with Amba Gale, Transformational Journeyor and leadership coach, author of Crossing Thresholds, Island Reflections, who opens people to their own joy, spirit, heart, and power to transform their lives.

Course Overview

Like many of us during this time, it is possible you have been feeling ungrounded, overwhelmed, or you simply sense that you are out of touch with your own spirit, your own passion, your vitality. Perhaps your own ability to be living from states of presence, joy, and wonder has eluded you. Perhaps a sense of speed has overwhelmed you, and you have not given yourself time to stop, pause, and dive into the silence, where the wisdom that comes from listening to your heart can speak to you to guide your way. Perhaps you simply know that there is a personal threshold for you to cross, from one territory where things seem not quite right, to another, where you are at one with your own sense of Self and with the world.

Crossing Thresholds is a profound and inspiring five-week course, where, through conversation, we build a bridge, a transformational shift, to take us from one land to another, from one territory to another, to land in a place of well-being, resiliency, creativity, and a sense of being at peace with things as they are.

Let us brighten our own lights during this time, on behalf of ourselves, the people we serve, our families, our communities, and all those we love, through the miracle of technology, and the deep distinctions inherent in crossing thresholds well. In conversation, we explore and lean into what it takes to cross a threshold well. We move from stress to healing, finding out what it takes to be a light in darkness. We create the pathway for creating equanimity while living in an external environment of constant change, shaking ground, our plans upended at every turn.

Drop down deep into the world of pristine nature, wonder, and stillness, as we journey together with transformational coach, poet, photographer, Amba Gale, to the Great Lakes without, and the Wild Heart within. In that still, and silent place, through the vibrant conversation of the course, your own work with yourself, the release of the wisdom of the recorded community, and the images of Amba’s musical poems, you awaken to your own Wisdom, as you travel across your own inner thresholds. From being in fear to loving, from feeling wounded to compassion, from experiencing stress to living in well-being, from resisting change, to befriending circumstances, this inner soul journey is what these times are calling for.

A lone dock with its bridge missing becomes a metaphor for Amba, for building new bridges with her now adult daughter. Though the poems are intensely personal, they are also universal in their themes, for discovering pathways for building new bridges, bridges that shift our perspective of breakdowns as a problem to breakdowns as a gift and opportunity for new life. We can re-invent our relationships. We can live a life of deeper meaning. We can create breakthroughs when things are falling apart. We can heal ourselves and others. We can flourish in times of uncertainty. We can create futures that bring us more fully alive.

Course Details

Crossing Thresholds: Your Next Opening
is offered through Vimeo recordings in four 1 ½ hour sessions.

You engage the conversations that arise as an opening from the poetry in Amba’s book,
Crossing Thresholds, Island Reflections.

Course Tuition and Options

Independent Study: Gain instant access to all course videos and self-study materials. Do the course at your own pace with a welcome letter from Amba to support you in making maximal use of the program. $397

Independent Study with Debrief Session:All of the above with a personal letter to Amba at the beginning of your work, which she replies to, and a coaching session with her on completion of your independent study. Amba will design a conversation to support you to create completion and deepen the transformative experience of the course. $797

Guided Study with Personal Coaching Sessions: Enjoy the deepest and most personalized experience of the Crossing Thresholds course. Get access to all course videos and study materials along with four coaching sessions with Amba between each session of the course, including a completion session, and an opportunity to be in written communication with Amba before the course. $1850

This choice also includes–

A podcast interview about Amba’s work
A video interview by another author and coach for authors, about the book, and the work of the book, with Derek Doepker and Amba Gale
An opportunity to view the virtual launch of the book

Who is Crossing Thresholds for?

For someone who

is interested in an inner adventure for moving from one state of being to another, with depth and meaning
is willing to initiate a courageous conversation with themselves in behalf of leaving behind what it’s time to leave behind (whatever is no longer enlivening) and is hungry to step out onto new ground of aliveness in their life
is crossing a threshold, allowing them to unfold life in life-giving ways with ease and grace
would like to enhance their mental, emotional, spiritual well-being
is willing to and interested in seeing and discovering new territory.
is interested in deeply opening the doors to presence, cultivating gratefulness, cultivating wonder
is out to have a breakthrough in their creativity and self-expression
senses that it would be wise to take a long, deep, pause and be intentionally reflective on what their life is all about

This is a conversation for the Explorer, the Adventurer, the Curious, the serious traveler, who is interested in and committed to traveling an inner journey, to developing some serious muscle for handling and moving through whatever personal threshold crossings are ours to make, during this collective, communal, global threshold crossing time.

What are the Purposes and Intentions of Crossing Thresholds?

The overall purpose of Crossing Thresholds: Your Next Opening is to open up for you a step-by-step process for navigating across a threshold crossing of your own choice, with ease, grace and an opportunity to learn and to develop, to open new doors to your own access to spirit, sanity, equanimity, and wonder. The intention for our work is for you to come home to yourself; to be able to shape and re-shape who you are – for yourself, for others, and for life – as you paddle through this threshold crossing in which the shorelines that normally guide our way have disappeared, and in a way that you are guided by your heart, by your intuition, your own Voice.

Specific Purposes, Intentions of Crossing Thresholds:

You distinguish, and then cross, a particular threshold that is yours to make.
You shift from states of resistance, to acceptance for, embracing, and viewing as gifts, the current circumstances of your life.
You create a new sense of connection with your intuition, your imagination, your own Wisdom, as your trusted guide in life.
You have a new opening into cultivating LONGING as a source for your own aliveness.
You tune into the natural world in new ways, tuning into the Wonder of Life.
You have a new capacity to surrender to and trust life’s unfolding.
You embrace and accept the endings in your life and begin to step into the new births and arrivals coming into your life.

What are the themes of each session?
The Preview to Crossing Thresholds: A Deep Introduction to the Overall Conversation Itself

Session I: Entering into this conversation deeply

Primary Question: What is at the heart of creating a breakthrough in one’s own life?
Discerning and naming a particular new possibility, new opening, or a breakthrough you want to make for yourself in your life
Cultivating a longing for journeying across that particular threshold
Creating a new practice of Reflective Journaling; finding your own inner guide, your wisdom, through your own poetic imagination
Tapping into Silence, deepening our connection with nature and nature’s connection with us

Session II: The Threshold Crossing: Accepting endings, creating completion, starting new beginnings

Primary Question: How can I possibly be all right with things just as they are and are not?
Accepting Endings and loss; embracing our own griefs
Accepting the impermanence of life
Opening the heart for healing past wounds
Befriending the circumstances
Letting Go
The power of Faith, Declaration, Surrender, Trust
The power of Forgiveness for Healing, Grieving
Allowing our wounds and vulnerability to contribute compassion to our lives
The Confluence of Surrender and Intentionality
The Power of Stand taking, and Spiritual Committing (Making Vows)
Transforming Obstacles into New Openings

Session III: The Power of Presence; Paying Profound Attention

Primary Inquiry: What does it mean to be alive, spiritually?
Wonder, Possibility, Perspective, Gratefulness
Love as Being of Service
Listening from the Heart as That Which Gives our Way
Hearing the Future Calling You

Session IV: Completion

Primary Question: What is Completion? Creating the space for completion
What is debriefing?
Sharing, exploring, embodying, deepening your new space
Tapping into the Wisdom given by each other’s journeys
What’s been left behind? What’s been stepped into?
Breathing Together: interconnectedness, Compassion
What Partnership and Community allow for
Creating commitments and practices for living your new opening reliably in the world
What new openings for action do you have?

What you will get out of engaging with Crossing Thresholds:

Awaken, revive or deepen your ability to

Create new openings for thriving when things are falling apart
Heal yourself and others through forgiveness
Have even your wounds be an opening into vulnerability and compassion
Stand in a possibility for a new future
Hear the confluence of Faith and Declaration, even when the ground shakes underneath, and change is constant
Generate pathways into living from appreciation, amazement, and wonder
Flourish in times of uncertainty

What Previous Participants have said about the Course

To hear what people shared in the most recent Crossing Thresholds conversation, click on this link.

Crossing Thresholds tilled my soil, so to speak. Like a master gardener’s tools, Amba’s words loosened up parts of me that had been compacted and hardened by the weight of the world, transforming what was root-bound into humus, allowing air and light in to create a fertile environment for germination and growth.
SUE TRANSEAUX

I’m still processing, integrating and luxuriating in the experience of your recent Thresholds course, so engaging, inspiring, inner depth stirring as well as nourishing with the awesome community of bright individuals you draw to you and bring into community, exploring, and sharing. And now along with technology as it was originally designed to be …. connecting for real, high level, heart-full communication to further conscious, responsible life on the planet.
ANNA BILLINGS, LMFT

The Threshold I thought I wanted to cross when the course started was to begin to write more freely and to make a lifestyle shift that will allow me to finish my first book. During the first session, I realized that cultivating longing is what was and is truly before me. I realized that my threshold felt flat, and like it would remain dormant unless I allowed that longing to come to life.
In the second session, someone said that “coulds and shoulds fade in the face of the opportunity before me.” I was struck by this and began to let those words work on me a little each day. Some moments began to yawn open before me and I could almost literally feel a burden start to lift. Thank you so much for doing what you do, for striking your gift against the needs of the world and helping light the way for so many.
JEN VERHAREN

Because I know Amba Gale and have been with her in her coaching work, I knew there was going to be a big value in the course, but I had no idea if she could enable access for a group of us through Zoom in a powerful enough way that we would step into the needed velocity and power to cross the thresholds that we were intending to cross.
Frankly, I was blown away. I did not have a lot of faith that we could be dropped down into the deep depth where we could get entry into what we needed to get complete…in order to get to the place of opening up to a new future…but we did. I felt held and profoundly contributed to in the course on Zoom by Amba. Her teaching, coaching, and her powerful reading of her own poetry opened up new windows into my soul.
Before the Course, I knew I was writing a book, but it was on the “down low.” My expressed identity out in the world centered on my coaching work. I crossed a major threshold, deepening my connection to my writing, respecting its centrality as vital, welcoming the shift-shaping of my life.
KARLA BOYD

Crossing Thresholds was a surprising journey, deep into the heart of my soul, opening up places that I had not accessed for a long time, (like a did when I would lie alone in the mustard fields in California as a kid, and star at the clouds, being in wonderment allowing the still voices in me to be heard). I entered a place that was the “right” threshold for me to cross. It was like my whole being opened up to awe, wonderment and peace for what was to unfold as my threshold around the area of Belonging.
JAN SMITH

I really want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to attend the last Amba class, Crossing Thresholds. In short it was exactly what I needed at the exact time I was ready for it. A perfect storm as they say. The last few months have been very trying for me. Not really being able to engage with my customers as I normally would, working harder than I ever have while wearing a mask, the thoughts of the “unknown” and the added daily stress of shoplifters/no maskers/worried employees really made me rise to a level of anxiety that I have never experienced before in my lifetime. How can I be in service to the employees of Mill Creek when I am feeling this way? Then there is my mom who is in her late 80’s. She ended up moving in with us a year ago and is very worried about getting COVID. I am doing everything I can to stay safe for her.
Then Amba came back in to my life. What a God-shot! One of my crossings was a strong desire to be Dave. I have not seen him for quite a few months. Where did I go? I thought back to other classes and really got an opportunity to be alone and find myself. My true self. I am using catch and correct now on this journey and soon it will be just me. Dave is back! Just last weekend I was able to spend more time on the sales floor and just be myself and it felt AWESOME. I have a couple more, deeply personal, thresholds to cross. Work in progress…
DAVE VALESON

Let me just say here that I am really, really really, glad I was in the course, … and that I am standing in front of numerous ‘new openings’ crossing thresholds that were on my mind going into the course, ones that emerged in the process of being in the course and areas that I am just now seeing either newly or am seeing from an entirely different perspective.
Exuberance is alive in me.
All manner of things shall be well……………
RICK PEDERSEN

Amba, you crossed another threshold with the birth and completion of your online course. Thank you. During this time of great uncertainty which has exhausted so many, you generated life through love.
SUSAN ALLEN

Crossing Thresholds has given me the opening I have needed for some time and I have very much enjoyed the course as well as the inquiries it has offered me. I have been navigating my employment with refreshed eyes, forgiveness for some family and trying to understand what my new relationship is with my sister. This is a lot!
With appreciation,
JASON WHETHAM

If there is anything that our quarantine time has highlighted, it is that each of us has territory to cover with our internal “undones” and having more reflective time to spend opening our hearts to creating a better pathway for ourselves is a healthy step to take. Your poetry, candor and deep reflective questions helped me considerably in opening up and working on the troubling emotions I had stored away for so long. From my listening to the others in the course, it seems to have done that in some way for all of us.
SUSAN KEITH

How to thank you for the gift that you and your course, Crossing Thresholds: A New Opening, has been for me? The gift began before the course even started when you challenged me to name and commit to the Threshold that was in front of me to cross. I knew what it was right away, it had been sitting there, beckoning, for nearly five years. My Threshold, as you know, was to pick up my paintbrush and paint again, create again. To rediscover they joy of getting lost in the wonder of bringing into being something from myself that only I can make. Did I cross that Threshold? YES! Absolutely. But that is only the beginning of my journey and the gifts I received from you.
Talk about life changing! Outwardly, I look the same. I still get up and go to work everyday. I am still my family’s sole source of income and support. But, inside, oh the change!! I am no longer living in a grayscale world. I see and feel colors again, I have put brush to canvas, pigment, paint, shape, texture, all are awake and real again. I feel renewed, reborn, rejuvenated, and I am filled with unwavering gratitude for the gift that you are, Amba. I am eternally in your debt.
With gratitude and love,
DEBBIE HULBERT

This course has a poetic quality to it, as you led us through your journey with each poem. The greatest measure of a poem is not its clever craft, but the person you encounter, when a picture painted with words becomes a window into a poet’s heart, and then a window becomes a mirror into the hidden truth in your own soul. Where you sang beautiful harmony with voices like Nepo, Whyte, and O’Donohue in previous courses, this one had more of a “singer-songwriter” feel, you telling us your stories, singing us your songs, and (most importantly), calling us to write our own. To paraphrase one of the poems, this collection of verse calls us home to ourselves.
In this course, I came to appreciate and understand the pathways to wholeness, like gratitude, forgiveness, and acknowledging accomplishment. But the big, unique feature of this course is in the title. From the start, we were challenged to identify the threshold before us that we are called to cross, then to summon the courage to cross it. What is it time to do, to become? When you, Amba, take a stand for MY breakthrough, it’s like a power booster to my own intentionality. I felt you reaching through my screen, willing me into a space of creation. I know it comes through tremendous effort. It is also a gift I’ve not encountered in anyone else. (A gift to all of us.)
A threshold is not a transition. I don’t need a transition into some new projects. I need to move out of my old, comfortable home, put it up for sale, and inhabit my pilgrimage. One of the “Eureka” moments of the course was realizing I didn’t need to create a new format or enter into new activities. The pilgrimage happens as I bring a full-throated, wholehearted howl to every opportunity I ALREADY have to make a difference in someone’s life.
Love and gratitude always, peace and joy to you.
Thank you!
RYAN JOY

As Covid 2020 brought sweeping changes in my life, I enrolled in Crossing Thresholds to help me grieve thoroughly what there was to let go of. My one-on-one coaching time with Amba facilitated movement through certain pieces that were layered and therefore difficult to appreciate and release. I found clarity and peace with my circumstances and the present moment they brought me to. This was truly an important tool for me in one of the most profound moments of my life. I finished the course with a sense of a new dawn coming and a refreshed sense of excitement for the unknown future.
KYLEEN LEE

For those threshold crossings that are particularly difficult and deeply personal, I highly recommend signing up for one-on-one coaching with Amba. Simply put, journeys of this kind are less burdensome when you travel with another. With Amba, I was able to move through a loss in my life, to mourn the ending, to honor the time that was over, and ultimately find full peace and acceptance with my present. This was a true gift I gave to myself!
EVIE MERRILL

ENDORSEMENTS FOR THE BOOK,
CROSSING THRESHOLDS, ISLAND REFLECTIONS

Amba has fashioned for us a work of great transformation and healing for our troubled earth. This is surely a contemporary Scripture where every verse, every image and every contemplation is a prayer for the universe. Franz Kafka, wrote: ‘A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.’ Now is the time, reader, to take up this literary cleaver, Crossing Thresholds, and begin cutting through to the fish hole of your soul.”
– The Rev. Nóirín Ní Riain, PhD, spiritual singer, author, teacher

Crossing Thresholds provides a gift of healing for all of us – individually, collectively, and globally – as we cross this threshold time, between worlds.
– Lynne Twist, author of Soul of Money and cofounder of Pachamama Alliance

But now, our eyesight rinsed by tears and our hearts widened by silence, we are ready to be guided across inner thresholds we will have to cross before we can cross the outer ones awaiting us. Amba Gale’s work can provide much needed guidance. Blessings on its task!
– Brother David Steindl-Rast, Benedictine monk and co-founder of Gratefulness.org

USE THIS LINK TO SEE WHAT OTHERS HAVE SAID ABOUT THE BOOK >

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