Remaining 2019 Programs
Wild Mind Intensive – September 2019
Guides: Brian Stafford, MD, MPH, Bruce Howatt Limit: 16
| Requires | application | backpacking |  |
Accommodations | camping | |||
| prerequisite | retreat center |
Description:
Based on Bill Plotkin’s book, Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche, this 5-day intensive is an experiential exploration of our human psyches as unique expressions of the universal forces and patterns of nature. We will work with what we call the Nature-Based Map of the Human Psyche, which is, among other things, a comprehensive inventory of what can be right about a person, a “shadow” version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), mainstream psychology’s list of what can go wrong with people.
Our wild minds possess astonishing resources, untapped potentials and depths that we might not even know exist until we discover how to access them, cultivate their powers, and eventually integrate them into our everyday lives. In this intensive, we’ll access these depths and potentials — which we call the four facets of the Self, or the four dimensions of our innate human wholeness — and also the four sets of fragmented or wounded subpersonalities that form during childhood.
Rather than attempt to eliminate our subpersonalities (which is not possible) or to beat them into submission, we’ll cultivate the four facets of the Self and uncover the gifts of our subpersonalities. Our goal is to fully embody our multifaceted wild minds, commit ourselves to the largest, soul-infused story we’re capable of living, and serve the greater Earth community.
Discover:
- how to recognize and consciously cultivate the four facets of the Self — your innate human wholeness
- how to identify the subpersonalities that supported you in childhood and adolescence to adapt to the challenges of family and social life, but ultimately became barriers to your full and authentic humanity
- practices and guidelines for cultivating relationships between the Self and your subpersonalities, enabling you to heal your subpersonalities, discover their gifts, and foster Self-actualization
- how each facet of the Self provides essential resources for the underworld journey (the descent to soul), its radical transformation of personal identity, and for living as a visionary artisan of cultural evolution.
We’ll explore the landscape of the psyche through a variety of practices, including creative expression, self-designed ceremony, solo exercises while wandering on the land, group work, movement, voice dialogue, journaling, and deep imagery work.
Price is based on shared rooms
Brian Stafford, MD, MPH
![brianstaffordpic-150x150[1]](https://www.animas.org/wp-content/uploads/brianstaffordpic-150x1501.jpg)
Brian Stafford is a guide to the wilderness of nature and soul. He was called out of academic medicine to serve as a guide to the depths and to serve as an agent of cultural awakening and transformation. He guides with humor, playfulness, compassion, discernment, and a deep remembering of the fullness of what each human life can, should, and was meant to be.
A native of Colorado and the former holder of an endowed chair and professor of psychiatry and pediatrics, he is an avid outdoorsman, teacher, writer, mentor, partner, and parent.
He guides individuals and groups in the Colorado River Basin as well Nosara, Costa Rica, to the place they most long and fear to go – the numinous depths of their soul.
Brian currently makes his home in Ojai, California.
Bruce Howatt
Bruce was pulled towards wildness at a young age and continues to explore the wilderness of psyche, the deep imagination as well as relationship with the more than human. He is dedicated to helping others explore their own authentic nature so as to further cultivate a deeper relationship to Soul and discovery of the unique genius that they alone carry. Bruce is an ACMG/IFMGA Mountain Guide, photographer and general all-around mischief maker.
Register here:
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Come join me and my wild colleagues for these extraordinary events. I am the Initial Dreamer, Lead Guide, and Co-Founder of Seminary of the Wild, an organization dedicated to returning leaders in the Christian tradition to wild nature – both outer and inner. This year we have some amazing keynotes who are aligned with our vision that will only deepen the experience on the sacred and breath-taking Ghost Ranch property.
Wild Christ, Wild Earth, Wild Self – At Ghost Ranch, NM
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OCTOBER 20-24 with Guest Speakers: Richard Rohr and Geneen Marie Haugen
This introduction to Seminary of the Wild offers an experiential, nature-based, journey of apprenticeship into the wild mysteries of the kingdom of God.
It’s an invitation into your own deeper participation in the restoration of the world, at a time when the old ways don’t resonate anymore. Created for those who long for a more soul-infused life and yearn to find ways to re-connect to the natural world as a person of faith during a time of deep cultural unraveling.
Finding a way forward for the Pilgrim, the Church, and the Culture will require that we live in alignment with the life-enhancing wisdom of Creation — the revelatory Book of Nature.
Seminary of the Wild supports that journey. We call it the Journey of the Wild Christ.
You will discover:
A re-enchantment of the natural world and a re-visioning of your deep belonging to this world by reconnecting with your senses, body, emotions, imagination directly with the land and creatures.
A re-wilding of the Christian story that begins with deconstructing processes of domestication, and distortions that have tamed and suppressed the earth-based vision of the Christ.
A re-claiming of your own wild, prophetic voice as a leader engaged in transforming culture during this age of ecological destruction and calling for reformation.
A re-membering yourself into a much larger Whole in a journey of wild discipleship, expanding your capacity to connect directly with the Holy and follow your unique calling as a participant in a wild and beautiful story of inter-connection.
Click here for Registration and more information: Ghost Ranch
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October 3 – 6, Bangor, Pa
Keepers of the Sacred Fire: A Wild Mind Circle of Trust
(In collaboration with Parker Palmer’s Kirkridge Retreat)
Register here:http://www.kirkridge.org/?e=event&eventId=30258&rDate=10/3/2019
A three-day nature-based immersion where we practice how to fully embody our multifaceted wild minds, commit ourselves to the largest, soul-infused story we’re capable of living, and serve the greater Earth community.
This is a nature-based retreat combining the work of Parker J Palmer and the Circle of Trust® approach with the work of Bill Plotkin and Animas Valley Institute’s WIld Mind® approach.
Our wild beings possess astonishing resources, untapped potentials, and depths that we might not even know exist until we discover how to access them, cultivate their powers, and eventually integrate them into our everyday lives. In this intensive, we’ll access these depths and potentials — which we call the four facets of the Self, or the four dimensions of our innate human wholeness — and also the four sets of fragmented or wounded sub-personalities that form during childhood.
•for those who are way-finders on this globe, hungry to know your ecological ‘wild’ soul place, and to experience more fully your innate human wholeness as an inter-connected being in the natural world.
• for those who actively care about spiritual practice, body/mind connection, and global awakening.
• for those who wish to stop, look and listen more deeply in the solitude of nature, in a circle of trusting companions
Register Here
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Soulcraft Intensive – November, 2019
Guides: Gene Dilworth, M.A., Brian Stafford, MD, MPH Limit: 18
| Requires | application | backpacking | |
Accommodations | camping | |||
| prerequisite | retreat center |
Description:
The Soulcraft Intensive is our popular five-day experiential plunge into the wild depths of Soulcraft; a synergistic set of nature-based practices designed to evoke the life-shifting experience of soul encounter. Your soul is your true self, those qualities that most deeply define and express who you are and the unique gift that you were born to bring to the world, a world so much in need of the socially transforming contributions of initiated, actively engaged adults. To encounter the soul is to discover the mystical image you were born with, which reveals the path to your greatest personal fulfillment as well as the essence of your true service to society (the cross-cultural wisdom traditions say these are one and the same). Soulcraft practices spring from nature-based cultures, modern depth psychology, the poetic tradition, and wilderness rites of passage—to comprise a truly contemporary Western path to soul discovery and soul initiation. For a full discussion, see Bill Plotkin’s book Soulcraft: Crossing Into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche.
The Soulcraft Intensive is highly experiential and—well—intense. We alternate between practices utilized in group, practices explored in solitude in nature, and sharing and deepening those experiences in small groups (5 to 9 people each). There is a Soulcraft guide for each small group, providing you with a fully individualized experience. What you discover through one practice is carried into and amplified by what you learn in the next. By the end of the intensive, you will understand yourself and your place in the world from a more soul-oriented perspective, be clearer about the gifts you were born to bring to the world, and have new skills to enrich your life and to defend the health of the more-than-human world.
Soulcraft practices include:
- Soulcentric Dreamwork
- Deep Imagery Work with Animal Guides
- Talking Across the Species Boundaries
- The Way of Council
- Soul Tasks in Nature
- Self-Designed Ceremony
- Shadow Work
- Soul Poetry
- Sacred Wound Work
- Synchronicities: Working with Nature’s Signs and Omens
- Befriending the Dark
- Ecstatic Trance Drumming and Dancing
- many others!
Participants are also responsible for their own transportation to and from the program location.
Start/End Time: 1 pm / 1 pm
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What you already missed in 2019:
Wild Mind Intensive – Joshua Tree N.P. – February 2019
Nature and the Human Soul Intensive –Joshua Tree N.P. – February 2019
Illuman Leadership Retreat – May 2019
Seminary of the Wild – Ghost Ranch, NM – August, 2019
