NoCal AP Retreat Basics Program Information

This is a residential retreat program. Students arrive on Friday evening for hors d’oeuvres at 6pm and dinner at 7pm. Teaching begins Saturday through Tuesday 9-5 (dinner on Tuesday is not included). Steve will use the "sorting hat" to select charts to review.

Location:
Mountain Home Ranch
3400 Mountain Home Ranch Road
Calistoga, CA 94515
http://www.mountainhomeranch.com

Program Costs Includes 4 days of Teaching, Food and Lodging (a shared room in the lodge or a cabin). Some private rooms, or deluxe rooms may be available for an additional cost. Please contact us for room availability. Deposit to hold your space: $150. Early Registration Discount Given ($50) varies by event (please contact us).

What are qualifications for joining the NoCal Apprenticeship Program?

They are fairly minimal. If you have a basic understanding of the meanings of signs, planets, houses and the core mechanisms of astrology, that is enough. You need only to “speak the language,” in other words. A good way of saying it is that a person is qualified if he or she has internalized a few of Steven Forrest’s books.

That said, many advanced astrologers, even professional ones, are members of the program. Steven’s style of Evolutionary Astrology is different enough from conventional forms of the art that it has attracted a wide range of practitioners. His approach is to go deeply into the primordial elements of astrology rather than to focus on obscure technical procedures.

How will the Apprenticeship Program Benefit Me?

Many students in the Program have gone on to establish private astrological practices. While it is perfectly acceptable for someone to join the program purely for purposes of personal growth, the heart of the work lies in preparing successful astrological professionals. Good astrology helps people. Our ultimate aim is to maximize that benefit to the human community. Always, the focus of the AP is upon presenting the material in the counseling context.

How is the AP different from the other seminars Steven offers?

While the material and philosophy are the same, there are distinctions. Astrology is a wide-ranging field and its full power can only be reached integratively. Steven might teach about secondary progressions in Australia then about the phases of the Moon in Georgia - but only members of the AP learn how the two pieces of the puzzle fit together. Members of the AP family share their own stories too, which vastly enriches our visceral understanding of the way the symbols actually work and feel. In a nutshell, the AP simply goes a lot deeper.

Astrological hobbyists are quite welcome, but it is fundamentally a professional program. Once a person has attended a single four day seminar, we consider them part of the family. They are then bound to confidentiality regarding any personal material revealed in the group. They also qualify for access to the vast backlog of recordings and transcriptions of all the previous meetings of the program, plus a collection of donated personal readings which Steven has done over the years. This represents a library of monumental proportions, and allows any student to catch up with the group.

If all this feels good to you, please feel welcome to join us. The work is rigorous, but the group is warm and open.

If I'm not driving, how do I get to the NoCal AP Retreat?

The town of Calistoga is located near three airports. Sonoma county Airport is the closest. If you wish to fly directly into the Sonoma County Airport, you can do so from Seattle or Los Angeles, but has limited service and is more expensive. Oakland or San Francisco Airports are both International Airports and are equi-distant from Mountain Home Ranch.

How do I get to the Retreat without renting a car if I'm coming from Oakland or San Francisco Airports?

Take a shuttle or bus from either airport to Sonoma County Airport. From Sonoma County Airport to Mountain Home Ranch: We have two Airport Express Shuttle pickups from on Friday evening 4pm or 6pm. Please notify us if you will need to be picked up. Return trips to connect with the shuttle at 6pm Tuesday evening.

Shuttle Service is available from Airport Express, serving both SFO and Oakland airports. Their FAQ page has a phone # to call for airport to airport shuttle service. http://www.airportexpresssf.com/

Bus Service from both SFO and Oakland is also available from Sonoma County Airport Express. The bus schedule is online at http://www.airportexpressinc.com/home.html

You’ll need to also coordinate your flight arrival with the airport shuttle/bus so you arrive in Sonoma County in time for the pick-ups.

For all other arrival times, you would need to take a cab ride from Santa Rosa to Calistoga.Because Mountain Home Ranch is hidden back in the hills, it is expensive.

We recommend buying a one way Airport Express bus ticket because you can often got rides at the end of the retreat back to Oakland or SFO airport directly. If you’re unable to hook up with another student, we will drop you off at the Sonoma County airport on Tuesday evening after class to catch the Airport Express back to Oakland or SFO.

If you know other people who are coming to the retreat, you might want to organize a ride with them.

What If I Need to Cancel? Can I Get a Refund?

We do not refund initial deposits after December 11, 2009. The balance is non-refundable 3 weeks prior to the event, February 12, 2010.

What about Confidentiality?

Deep and personal information is shared during the 4 days as participants' charts are used by Steve to illustrate astrological principles. All AP members are held to a strict code of confidentiality. No information about specific individuals is to be shared outside the program.

Can I bring a Guest who is not participating in the AP event?

Guests are welcome at the ranch the days before or after the retreat. To protect the privacy of group members during the four days, guests are not allowed during that time.