June 14-15, 2025 | 9 am - 1 pm Pacific
Tending The Bones
Weekend Summer Intensive
Join us for Tending the Bones Intensive, an immersive online weekend designed to help you reconnect with your ancestral cultures, mythology, and folk traditions.
Guided by Lydia Violet Harutoonian and Leah Song of the internationally acclaimed folk group Rising Appalachia, this experience offers a deep dive into cultural self-discovery.
Gather at the…
Wellsprings of Story and Song
Over the course of the weekend, Lydia and Leah will guide us through a rich tapestry of practices designed to awaken cultural awareness, reconnection, and insight. Together we’ll explore:
Cultural and mythic teachings from the ancestral cultures of our attendees that illuminate humanity-centered legacies in our lineages
Deepening into folkloric traditions held down in your ancestral cultures
Interactive Q&A time to deepen your learning and integration
Optional vocal explorations to tap into the variety of expressive ways of folk music
Whether you join us live or engage with the recordings on your own time, this experience is an invitation to root more deeply into your cultural heritage and begin (or continue) a meaningful relationship with your ancestors and their wisdom
Your Lineage Holds Potent Medicine
Many of us experience a sense of ancestral cultural separation due to displacement from our traditional homelands. This disconnection can lead to feelings of disorientation from land, language, and tradition. However, by studying the past, we can inform our way forward. Every culture has preserved its lessons and medicines in stories and songs. What wisdom lies within yours?
Why Ancestral Study Matters
Learning about the cultures of our ancestors is not a nostalgic pursuit—it is a rigorous and intimate process of remembering. In a time when many of us have been severed from the languages, land-based practices, and cosmologies that shaped our lineage, turning toward ancestral knowledge can offer powerful tools for:
Disentangling inherited patterns of disconnection and harm
Cultivating more rooted relationships—with ourselves, our ancestry, others, and the earth
Recovering a deeper sense of meaning, belonging, and direction
As we engage with ancestral stories, songs, and lifeways, we begin to re-enter the psychic and spiritual terrain our people once walked. This work is not about returning to an idealized past, but about listening carefully to what remains—and allowing it to inform how we live, repair, and imagine forward.
Tending the Bones is…
For you if:
You love learning about mythology, land-based ways of living, soul, and song.
You're eager to explore your ancestral culture and traditions in a supportive, immersive environment.
You seek knowledge in a healing container through practices that engage somatically, intellectually, creatively, and spiritually.
You wish to build meaningful connections with others and cultivate a greater sense of belonging.
You're curious about harvesting wisdom and finding meaning by exploring your cultural heritage.
You're interested in discovering the ancestral instruments and music styles resonating within you.
The Curriculum
All sessions run 9:00 - 10:45 AM and 11:00 AM–1:00 PM Pacific Time
Day 1
Saturday, June 14
Session 1: A Cosmological Home – Discovering Lineage and Legacy
Understand the concept of cosmology and its relationship to culture, humanity, and story
Dive into the rich cosmologies and cultures intertwined in your lineage
Unpack archetypes, psyche, and soul
Explore ‘de-orphaning’—reconnecting with parts of ourselves disconnected from our indigenous communities
Learn how myths convey deep, often non-literal, insights
Session 2: Myth & Folklore I – Archetypes and Universal Narratives
Discover the mythic and literal truths in folklore
Explore archetypes and their cultural and personal significance
Identify universal story patterns across cultures
Learn about the vital cultural role of storytellers
Day 2
Sunday, June 15
Session 1: Healing the Split Through Song – Vocal Harmony and Heritage
Simple vocal and somatic exercises to get into the body and voice alongside this rigorous study group, led by Leah Song (no musical experience needed!)
Explore the variety of percussion, string, and wind instruments in our folk heritage
Explore the sounds and meanings of your ancestral languages
Discuss cultural inspiration, resonance, exchange, appropriation, and erasure
Session 2: Tending the Bones Celebration – A Cultural Mosaic
Share an artifact from your cultural exploration: a story, image, song, mythic figure, or instrument
This is a gentle, supportive circle—no perfection needed
Listen, witness, and celebrate the discoveries of others as we weave a collective mosaic
FInal thoughts with Leah Song and Lydia Violet
Testimonials
“Thank you for your wonderful stewardship of the course as a whole, such a blessing to connect and know so many others feel and care about the same things amidst the fragmented/warped culture today.”
— Eugene Seah
“This class felt like the opening ceremony for the rest of my life…”
— Hollyn Bermonde
“Participating in this course has brought more love, meaning, and vitality into my heart. This journey felt as if I was falling in love for the first time, staying up late researching wanting more, more, more!”
— A.S.
“I still feel the energy singing and vibing in my bones after this interesting and wonderful journey it has been traveling with you all tending our bones.
It feels like a footprint has sat its mark into my bone and cell structure, like a constant humming and melody, ancestors chanting and singing their songs. Like a path I can’t turn my back on now after stepping in these footsteps of histories, sharing, music, culture etc…like the show must go on 😅❤️👣”
— Trine Concordia Dams
“I jumped at the chance to participate in this course when I saw Leah was one of the teachers (longtime Raising Appalachia fan). I was unfamiliar with Lydia but have loved getting to know her passion, her insight, her wisdom, and her amazing creativity.
The assignments nudged me to connect my maternal heritage, which I have felt ambivalent about for a long time. In these modern polarized times, my rural Czech descent relatives and I land on opposite sides of most political and cultural views. About the only commonality we share are a love of dancing to polka music and eating kolaches. Following the Moravian threads has healed a division within me and given me the permission to choose what I wish to bring forward with me on my journey.
Thank you so much for creating this container to safely hold, nurture and inspire us while we go on these explorations.”
— cici singleton
Your Facilitators
Lydia Violet Harutoonian
(she/her)
Lydia brings robust scholarship in cosmology, archetypal psychology, and group facilitation centered around personal and collective healing. Through compassionate, grounded leadership, she integrates intellectual study, somatic tending, and emotional mending.
Leah Song
(she/her)
Leah, frontwoman of Rising Appalachia, brings over 15 years of experience in folk music and community healing. She blends music, storytelling, yoga, dance, and meditation into a soulful offering of embodied cultural exploration.
Join us
Early bird Pricing ends May 14
After that price goes up to $240 or 3 month payment plan at $80/mo
Early Bird One Time Payment
$190
One time purchase
Early Bird Payment Plan
$64
Payment plan for 3 months
FAQs
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The live sessions will be held from 9 am - 1 pm
June 14
June 15
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If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions, please feel free to contact us at care@schoolforthegreatturning.com. Our team will be more than happy to assist you.
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It’s completely private! Our courses and forum are hosted by Circle, and only School for the Great Turning members have access. Circle provides a social media-like platform layout, allowing for posts, comments, links, and direct messages between members, but you will never see ads, or content from outside the School.
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To sign up, simply click the "Join Now" button on our landing page, or click here, choose a payment plan, and complete the registration process.
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Not to worry! All sessions will be recorded and uploaded into our course portal within 24 hours, and you will still have full access to our interactive group forum to connect with other students and your teachers.
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There is no registration deadline, just know that the workshop begins June 14