Interns Wanted
The Tau Internship program is a way to complete training in Therapeutic Touch, Counseling, and Therapeutic Trance in exchange for completing community service at our 3 Mothers Medicine Camps.
The 2025 Winter Term includes six intern positions and two of these six are reserved for Indigenous students.
Each Winter Term begins November 1 with initial work being connected up through the program’s online resources. Each term cohort has their own ‘home room space’ that they keep active for the term and beyond as they choose.
Here are the main points of the Tau Internship program:
- Program Overview:
- The Tau Internship program offers training in Therapeutic Touch, Counseling, and Therapeutic Trance.
- Interns do not pay any tuition costs for this training, some book costs are required
- Ideal for healthcare students to expand their knowledge in healing skills to complement their role in any of the healthcare occupations and services.
- Program Benefits:
- Integrates group-based, self-care into the centre of their healthcare professional training.
- The Hans Kai Self-care Wellness program is integrated throughout the six terms.
- Connects you to the community of practice that centers on integrative and holistic wellness practices.
- Multiple opportunities to practice multiple counseling techniques in a safe and supportive environment.
- Successful completion allows you to registration as a Certified Hypnotherapist through the International Association of Medical and Dental Hypnotherapists.
- Community Service Requirement:
- Interns complete community service at the five 3 Mothers Medicine Camps that are scheduled each term.
- Duties are wide ranging from set-up/takedown to providing Reiki.
- Community Service Days are held on the second Saturday of each month (except April and October).
- Application and Selection Process:
- Limited intern positions are available, selected on a first-come, first-served basis for the best-qualified candidates.
- Applicants not selected receive a refund of their payment or can choose waiting list option.
- Affiliations and Scheduling:
- The Tau Centre for Therapeutic Trance (TCTT) is a certified training school by the International Association of Medical and Dental Hypnotherapists (IMDHA).
- TCTT is a service provided by Our_Community Health Initiative Cooperative (OCHI), a not-for-profit organization.
- Training days are typically on weekends, with occasional special workshops on weekdays.
A full-term schedule is provided to all applicants.
Whatever context brings you into contact with people seeking help with their problems, throughout and after there is a need for a better understanding of the counseling toolkit and the three main types of tools, unconditional positive regard, empathy, and the part of the work, congruency.
Being of Tau, or being a Tau Person is about chosing how you want to be in this world, today and a thousand years hence.
What the world gives in return is a deepened ability to “Bring to each the medicine that is uniquely theirs”
Integrating Therapeutic Arts
We host a arts and crafts program that provides challenge in a range of interests regardless of gender or generation.
Eus-stress, is the experience of positive (tau) challenge that is nurturing for humans of all ages.
So that we can be prepared to offer a more robust program we needed to bring a focus to the activities, as such we chose puppets.
The CWW program includes puppet making and puppetry as our arts component.
We weave them into our wellness work.Â
Our current area of interest are young children who are nonverbal.
Details about the arts part of the work are found below.
The ShoBoat
The centrepiece of our program is undoubtably our stage – a beautiful 20 foot Viking Longboat/Chinese Junk hybrid. With space for half a dozen performers inside and more that a few puppet surprises built in, our stage boat is sure to be a worthy vessel on our journey of self-discovey together.
Building Puppets
Members of our circle of elders are currently working away of a collection of customizable puppet bodies that can be dressed up and modified as easily as building a LEGO set using assessories mounted on velcro. Betwix’t members can modify and costomize one of these puppet bodies to create a puppet avatar that reflects some aspect or charactristics they would like to portray, or, if they are really ambitious, they can take on building their own puppet from scratch (with help and guidance from us,, if they want it.)
Puppeteering
A core part of the philosophy underpinning Betwix’t is the value of theatre and performance as a means of overcoming challenges and fears. When we perform in front of a live audience, we must be a little vulnerable and emotionally engage with our audience and fellow performers. We have to get the correct timing and delivery of things, and act in a coordinated manner with other people’s bodies in physical space. It requires us to overcome momentary anxieties to become capable of acting freely under pressure. But, of course, sometimes that’s a lot for a person new to performing to take on. Sometimes it helps to have a little puppet dude act as an intermidiary or safety barrier between yourself and the audience.
Similarly, puppet therapy can help people express emotions they might have difficulty with otherwise, and the use of puppets for the exploration of grief and trauma is well established.
The use of puppets in Betwix’t is to open participants up to engaging with their own identities and emotions, as well as with those of others, in a fearless and honest manner that results in a greater depth of communcation and understanding.
All Arts Needed
We have centred things like puppets and performance in our planning for Betwix’t, but we think of the show we are putting on a bit like the Space Race. The rush to be the first to explore space led to all manner of scientific and technological advancements beyond space travel applications. We use the goal of creating a live puppet show as a means of exploring and developing our entire character.
Similarly, it takes all manner of arts to put on a show. We need a variety of types of performers, each with their own skillsets. But we also need poets and writers, who can put what they are feeling into words of depth and beauty. We need craftspeople to build puppets, props, set additions, costumes – any material thing that can enrich our performance. We need visual artists to design images for our posters and playbills, as well as to even storyboard the staging and visual appearance of the scenes of our show.
Just like we believe in a diverse and equal world, any and every artform is welcome in Betwix’t. If a participant has something they love doing, we will put in every effort to integrate it into the final show.
And if you have no arts experience whatsoever? Then you are even more welcome to come!
Year End Show
Our year end show will be comprised of different parts. We’ll have some musical bits sung by our elders, and we’ll have important stories that we feel need to be told, as well as room for a bit of an open mic for whoever has a talent they’d like to share, but the part that our Betwix’t youth will be concerned with is a 12 minute segment centred around our youth’s undrstanding of their own identies and their place within our community. They will decide the characters and the storyline, and the themes of the story will be drawn from the lessons they learn during the time we spend working together.
Our starting point this term is the question of “I am not my body, but without my body I am not.” – a core struggle for many trans and queer youth. We aim to build empowerent to self-define, combined with the ability to act within and upon the external, physical world. We can define our own interpretation of reality while still engaging with an often unpleasant physical reality that exists independently of the language we use to understand it.
Our show this term will hopefully reflect our youths’ ability to assert themselves to the world on their own terms.
