Nature and the Human Soul: A Special Online Program for Parents & Educators - 2025
Online
Nature and the Human Soul: A Special Online Program for Parents & Educators - 2025
May 22 - June 27, 2025
Retreat Highlights
- Identify - or clarify- your unique note in the symphony of life
- Arouse your wild imagination and earthly senses
- Encounter fierce and alluring aspirations of your soul
- Recover and integrate the forgotten voices of your own wild psyche
- Experience your conscious membership in the community of Earth
- Join other visionary leaders in shaping a soul-infused future of the word
About this Retreat
John is a university professor, where he weaves eco-centric experiences and perspectives into his offerings. He has degrees in outdoor education & leadership, sustainable communities, and ecopsychology & environmental humanities. A Sower of soulful seeds, John maintains heartfelt support towards fellow seekers negotiating the wild terrain of possibilities waiting within all of us. In addition to his work at Animas Valley Institute, he has training and certifications in gestalt practices and dialogical processing. John is an avid adventurer of wild places, professional outdoor educator, musician, wilderness guide and local initiator of soulful practices in his northern Arizona community. Above all else, however, John strives to be a loving father and partner.
Palika Wilding has been courting and centering the mysteries of the Underworld, the Moon and the miraculous blue green pearl for as long as she can remember. As threshold midwife she listens and tends the edges and holy cracks where a psyche the size of Earth, entangles with the human body and psyche, towards a discovery of the pearls and shadowed gems within that lead to one’s unique enchanted love affair, reciprocity, and response ability with the animate Earth & Mystery. An astute tracker of beauty, and the forgotten, forsaken, forbidden and feared, she sensitively and artfully serves to bring us closer to embody the fragrant poem and ecological niche which Earth has imagined as each of us, in service to the greater good of the precious Web of Life. Palika's learning has encompassed somatics, deep ecology, eco feminisms, living systems and permaculture. She lives and loves on the edges of the mossy Redwood forests, witchy Live Oak coastal lands of the Awaswas peoples, and dark watery depths of the Monterey Bay. Here she paints ceremonial drums, praises, grieves and listens with seal, owl, snake, heron, towhee and coyote.
Details of this retreat
This program is offered to parents and educators only.
Anchored in traditional four-directions wisdom, contemporary depth and archetypal psychologies, and twenty-five years of nature-based soul guiding, the Soulcentric Developmental Wheel (SDW) is a new ecopsychology of human development and cultural transformation. It's a blueprint showing how richly we can grow and mature when soul and nature are embraced as our wisest and most trustworthy guides. It includes an integrated set of developmental guidelines that can help every human mature into an adulthood of visionary leadership -- precisely what we need in this century if we are to create a just, compassionate, and sustainable world.
A life-span model of development from infancy through authentic elderhood, the SDW presents eight distinct stages of life and shows how these stages are almost always independent of chronological age, biological development, cognitive ability, or social role. Rather, the movement from one stage to the next comes about through progress with psychological and spiritual tasks that are specific to each stage. The SDW presents an achievable vision of a contemporary way of life that holds soul-discovery and genuine contribution to the more-than-human community as its most central features and goals.
(If you are a previous Animas participant familiar with the 4-directions-based map of the Self and the sub-personalities -- used on many of our programs -- please note that the SDW is something quite different and complementary.)
During this intensive, we employ talks (with handouts), conversation and story telling, and experiential exercises on the land as we explore the SDW and its applications to education, parenting, rites of passage, psychotherapy, personal growth, and cultural change. You'll discover how to use the SDW to clarify your own next steps of soul-infused development and learn a set of principles and practices by which you can align yourself with the lifelong journey of growing whole.
Sessions will take place via Zoom during the following dates and times:
May 22, 23, 30, June 6, 13, 20 & 27 at 10am - 1pm PDT Read More
Anchored in traditional four-directions wisdom, contemporary depth and archetypal psychologies, and twenty-five years of nature-based soul guiding, the Soulcentric Developmental Wheel (SDW) is a new ecopsychology of human development and cultural transformation. It's a blueprint showing how richly we can grow and mature when soul and nature are embraced as our wisest and most trustworthy guides. It includes an integrated set of developmental guidelines that can help every human mature into an adulthood of visionary leadership -- precisely what we need in this century if we are to create a just, compassionate, and sustainable world.
A life-span model of development from infancy through authentic elderhood, the SDW presents eight distinct stages of life and shows how these stages are almost always independent of chronological age, biological development, cognitive ability, or social role. Rather, the movement from one stage to the next comes about through progress with psychological and spiritual tasks that are specific to each stage. The SDW presents an achievable vision of a contemporary way of life that holds soul-discovery and genuine contribution to the more-than-human community as its most central features and goals.
(If you are a previous Animas participant familiar with the 4-directions-based map of the Self and the sub-personalities -- used on many of our programs -- please note that the SDW is something quite different and complementary.)
During this intensive, we employ talks (with handouts), conversation and story telling, and experiential exercises on the land as we explore the SDW and its applications to education, parenting, rites of passage, psychotherapy, personal growth, and cultural change. You'll discover how to use the SDW to clarify your own next steps of soul-infused development and learn a set of principles and practices by which you can align yourself with the lifelong journey of growing whole.
Sessions will take place via Zoom during the following dates and times:
May 22, 23, 30, June 6, 13, 20 & 27 at 10am - 1pm PDT Read More
Schedule
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!
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!
Note: Schedule is approximate and may change
Read MoreWhat's Included
- All of our field programs are camping based, some include catered meals.
What's Not Included
- airfare or transportation
- room accommodations
