Inner Tracking: You Are Your Path
Is a partial scholarship for you?
We believe in making personal growth and education accessible to everyone, which is why we offer partial scholarships on a needs-aware basis for many of our programs.
These scholarships support individuals facing financial challenges, including — but not limited to — members of underrepresented communities. If financial stress might prevent you from attending a workshop, we encourage you to apply.
Partial scholarships, provided through the Association for Growth and Education, are limited to 2–3 seats per workshop and reviewed in the order received. We recommend applying as soon as possible, as scholarship decisions are typically confirmed 90–120 days before the workshop date.
Lee Johnson
MEA’s Head of Land, Livestock, and Mindfulness in Santa Fe
Melanie Smith
Experience Facilitator | Licensed Psychotherapist | Ordained Interfaith Minister
There are moments when something inside us knows – before we can explain how we know.
It might be a sensation in the body or a gentle pull. We might hesitate without knowing why, or experience a mysterious sense of recognition. These moments are signals that ask us to pay attention because something important is happening here.
Sometimes we listen to that signal and eventually come to understand why it mattered. More often, we override it. We defer to habit, obligation, fear, or someone else’s certainty – and only later realize that we had sensed something important all along. There was an intuition, a knowing that we felt but didn’t act on
The question isn’t simply, “Do I trust my gut?” It goes deeper than that: “How do I recognize my own inner knowing — and how do I stay in relationship with it?”
We live in an era of unprecedented access to information – which can drown out the quiet voice inside us.
Expert advice is everywhere we look. We have phenomenal access to research, technology, algorithms, and artificial intelligence. Those tools can help us learn, solve problems, and make decisions. They have tremendous value – but they can’t tell us how to live.
Many of us have become highly skilled at looking outward for answers, while simultaneously spending far less time listening inwardly to our own intuitive knowing. We can analyze, compare, evaluate, and optimize, but we’ve lost touch with the quieter signals that arise through the body, emotions, intuition, relationships, and direct experience.
Over time, this can lead to a subtle (or not so subtle) sense of disconnection. We may find ourselves moving through life successfully on the outside while feeling uncertain, conflicted, or distant from something essential within.
Inner Tracking: Your Are Your Path is an invitation to begin restoring that relationship.
What if paying attention to your inner experience was a skill you could strengthen?
Like any skill, it develops through practice. Trackers learn to notice subtle signs that others overlook. A bent blade of grass. A shift in the wind. A faint impression in the soil. Over time, those observations reveal a story.
Inner Tracking: You Are Your Path applies a similar principle to our inner lives. Through guided experiences, reflection, dialogue, classroom time, contemplative practices, and time in nature, you learn to notice the thoughts, emotions, sensations, intuitions, and patterns that are continually present but often overlooked.
This practice doesn’t reject reason, evidence, or external guidance, but instead brings them into conversation with the internally felt wisdom of your own lived experience.
The goal isn’t to find the “right” answer or receive guidance from someone else.
It’s to cultivate a deeper relationship with your own experience and develop greater confidence in your ability to navigate life's questions from a place of increased awareness.
This workshop is co-facilitated by Lee Johnson and Rev. Melanie Smith. Drawing from wilderness tracking, contemplative practice, psychotherapy, spirituality, experiential learning, and decades of supporting human development, Lee and Melanie create a learning environment that is educational, experiential, and reflective.
Over your stay at Rising Circle Ranch, you will explore what it means to become more attentive to themselves, more connected to their own inner wisdom, and more capable of living from that connection in everyday life.
During your time with Lee and Melanie, you will:
This workshop may be especially meaningful for you if…
A few things to know before you join us:
Inner Tracking: You Are Your Path is about discovering your own answers, rather than receiving them from someone else.
This workshop doesn’t offer a formula for making decisions, a guaranteed outcome, or a step-by-step method for eliminating uncertainty. Life is more complex, and more interesting, than that.
Some participants find the experience affirming. Others find it challenging. Most discover something unexpected.
The workshop includes experiential exercises, reflection, discussion, and opportunities to explore intuition and awareness in a supportive environment. What emerges will depend in part on your willingness to participate, reflect, and engage with the process.
Inner Tracking is not a finish line. It is the beginning of an ongoing practice of noticing, choosing what to pay attention to, accessing innate wisdom, and discernment.
If you're curious about what becomes possible when you learn to truly listen to and trust yourself, we invite you to join us.
Meet your faculty
Lee Johnson
Wilderness Tracker | Somatic Guide | MEA’s Head of Land, Livestock, and Mindfulness in Santa Fe
Lee likes to say that he's as ordinary as dirt but as complex as soil. He found his way to teaching Inner Tracking in the same way he finds most things: by following an inner thread he couldn't ignore.
At 22, Lee moved into a yoga ashram – not because it was the sensible path, but because he'd heard someone talk about developing your internal guru, and something in him said pay attention. That inner knowing has been his compass ever since: it's what led him to become a whitewater raft guide when he'd barely been on a river. It's what told him – fifteen minutes into a phone call with a stranger – that MEA would be his next chapter.
A lifelong tracker, on the land and within, Lee has spent decades reading the subtle signals that most people walk past without noticing: the displaced leaf, the flattened grass, the print in the dirt indicating the direction a creature was headed and why.
Over time, he realized the same capacity applies inward. Each of us has our own internal navigation system. There are tracks we leave – internal signals that can point our way toward the path our deepest selves want us to take, even when we consciously may not recognize it, or understand why.
Since he started leading MEA participants through the Inner Tracking experience, Lee has watched the lights come on, again and again, as they begin to recognize their own individual tracking system.
That's exactly what he's here to help you find.
"The most powerful thing I've done in my life is develop my intuition and my trust in it. It gave me every experience that matters to me – in the right order and at the right time. If I could give that to someone, this is how I would do it."
~ Lee Johnson ~
Rev. Melanie Smith
Licensed Psychotherapist | Ordained Interfaith Minister
Rev. Melanie Smith, MACP, LMFT, CST holds a master’s degree in integral counseling psychology and is a licensed psychotherapist, and ordained interfaith minister. She is also an award-winning photographer, former instructor at the Colorado Institute of Art, and certified sound healer. With her background in art, gallery curation, and her toolkit of evidence-based practices for vibrant mental and spiritual health, Melanie weaves her passion for creativity with the art and science of healing.
With over 30 years of experience, she founded 12Tigers Psychotherapy & Counseling to support individuals and couples on their healing journey. She is also the founder of Expert Relationship LLC and the author of From Despair to Repair, a couples’ communication skills course.
As a spiritual companion and guide, Melanie joins with her clients in tapping into their own deep knowingness that their lives are divinely inspired, and that freedom and inspiration are simply waiting to be revealed and manifested. Her focus is on exploring awareness of the innermost self – the soul if you will – right alongside the experience of awe for the Divine Mystery underlying all of creation.
Melanie is known for her warm heart, intuition, and ability to “go deep.” She revels in nature, silliness, and thoroughly enjoys life’s simple pleasures with her partner, Lee Johnson.
What you'll gain
A more direct relationship with your own unique experience
Develop greater awareness of the thoughts, emotions, body sensations, intuitions, and relational patterns that shape your life, often outside conscious awareness.
A practice you can continue
Inner Tracking isn’t a technique to master in one weekend. It’s an ongoing practice of attention and awareness designed to grow with you. You’ll leave with experiences, insights, and practical ways to continue exploring long after the workshop ends.
Greater discernment
Learn to recognize the difference between what arises in your own awareness and the expectations, assumptions, fears, and conditioning that can sometimes obscure it.
A more trustworthy relationship with yourself
As awareness deepens, many people discover a greater capacity to listen to themselves, trust their perceptions, and navigate life's uncertainties with more clarity, curiosity, and confidence.
Our Agenda at a Glance
Monday:
Tuesday:
Wednesday:
Thursday:
4:00 PM: Check-In / Welcome
5:30 PM: Welcome Reception & Dinner
7:00 PM: Orientation Session
9:00 PM: Free Time
Friday:
7:30 AM: Mind + Body
8:30 AM: Breakfast
10:00 AM: Classroom Time
1:15 PM: Lunch
2:00 PM: Free Time
3:00 PM: Classroom Time
5:30 PM: Free Time
6:30 PM: Dinner
Saturday:
7:30 AM: Mind + Body
8:30 AM: Breakfast
10:00 AM: Classroom Time
1:15 PM: Lunch
2:00 PM: Free Time
3:00 PM: Classroom Time
5:30 PM: Free Time
6:30 PM: Dinner, Dessert & Graduation
8:00 PM: Evening Gathering
Sunday:
7:00 AM: Breakfast
9:30 AM: Checkout / Departure
*Please note all times are estimates and not all “classroom activities” take place in the actual classroom. This agenda is meant to give you an idea of the general flow of activities.
Step into transformation in the high desert
Rising Circle Ranch | Santa Fe, USA.
Our spectacular Santa Fe campus is located on an upscale regenerative ranch featuring traditional Pueblo architecture and nearly 2,600 acres of wildlife, hiking trails in the arroyo, and awe-inspiring beauty. Close to historic Santa Fe, an artisan’s mecca.
PLUS: Gourmet from-scratch meals, snacks, and drinks featuring locally sourced ingredients, made by our in-house chefs
Explore the ranch on horseback
Our Rising Circle Ranch spans 2,600 acres of New Mexico high desert, offering guided horseback riding for all experience levels through diverse terrains under the vast Southwest sky.
You’ll experience highlights like:
Horseback riding is an optional add-on activity you can book once you arrive on the ranch. Whether you're seasoned or brand new to horseback adventures, this guided experience lets you discover the ranch's natural wonders alongside our gentle horses.
Your workshop also includes:
Listen for what you already know.
Many of us have become highly skilled at looking outward for information, advice, and guidance.
These resources can be valuable, but there are also moments when something within us seems to know before we can explain how we know. A feeling, an intuition, a bodily sense – a deeper recognition that wants us to pay attention.
Rather than asking you to ignore reason or reject outside guidance, Inner Tracking: You Are Your Path invites you to become more aware of your own experience and to explore how intuition, awareness, reflection, and direct experience can work together.
During your time with Lee and Melanie, you will:
Inner Tracking is about listening more carefully to your inner knowing and discovering what becomes possible when awareness, intuition, knowledge, and discernment begin to work together.
Join Lee and Melanie at Rising Circle Ranch this October.
Book your spot today
Inner Tracking: You Are Your Path
Is a partial scholarship for you?
We believe in making personal growth and education accessible to everyone, which is why we offer partial scholarships on a needs-aware basis for many of our programs.
These scholarships support individuals facing financial challenges, including — but not limited to — members of underrepresented communities. If financial stress might prevent you from attending a workshop, we encourage you to apply.
Partial scholarships, provided through the Association for Growth and Education, are limited to 2–3 seats per workshop and reviewed in the order received. We recommend applying as soon as possible, as scholarship decisions are typically confirmed 90–120 days before the workshop date.
The program was spectacular. It really surpassed my expectations. I was really surprised about how the course was curated. There was such a warm intensity and personal touch to it.
I experienced MEA as a newly diagnosed multiple myeloma cancer patient, and as a result of the things I’ve learned - I’ve banished the anxiety of being a cancer victim, am in remission, and living with a newfound energy and purpose.
Just know how grateful I am for the joy fuel you all put in my rocket ship. When I want to feel loved or just need a good smile I can think of my time at MEA, which came at the perfect time to encourage me on my journey. Thank you!
Frequently Asked Questions
What exactly is Inner Tracking?
Inner Tracking is Lee Johnson and Melanie Smith’s approach to developing conscious awareness of how you navigate your life from the inside. Rather than adding more external tools or expert guidance, it’s about learning to recognize – and trust – the internal signal system you’re already running. Most of us have it. Almost none of us have been taught to use it intentionally.
Do I need prior experience with meditation, yoga, or somatic work?
No. While Inner Tracking involves bringing awareness into the body, it doesn’t require any prior experience with contemplative or somatic practices. Lee and Melanie lead participants through the experience step by step. People with widely varying backgrounds – from seasoned meditators to complete beginners – have found it immediately accessible and meaningful.
I've had the one-hour Inner Tracking experience at MEA. Is this for me?
Yes – this workshop was built with you specifically in mind. It’s a deep dive designed for people who had that initial experience and wanted more. You already have a sense of what you’re getting into, and you’ll be able to go further because of it.
What will I leave with?
Lee and Melanie’s honest answer: a beginning. This is an introduction to something that takes a lifetime to develop. You’ll leave with a lived, embodied sense of how inner tracking works – enough to go home and start practicing on your own, making the mistakes you need to make, building from there.
Is this workshop religious or spiritual?
Inner Tracking isn’t tied to any religious tradition. It grew out of Lee’s experience as a wilderness tracker and Melanie’s education and work with somatic awareness – rooted in nature, the body, and direct experience rather than doctrine. People from any background or belief system are welcome.
What if I'm not sure this is right for me?
Book a call with our team. Every MEA advisor is an alum who’s been through the experience themselves – they’ll help you get a sense of whether this is the right fit and the right timing.
Still deciding or have questions?
Connect with our helpful team of Advisors
Our Advisors are all MEA alumni who can offer genuine insights into our programs. They’re passionate about helping you finding the right fit to make your next chapter the best one.
Daniel Booz
Lucas Erie
Leslie Bartlett