September 20 – 24, 2023
With Doug Van Houten and Sara McFarland
Being Queer is a dance with the world that is not “divergent” from the norm, rather, one way Earth Community loves, a way that the cosmos affirms diversity and communion. Understanding ourselves in the rainbow of diversity that is LGBTQIA+ is a dance with our unique and wild animal selves, all our sacred emotions, our inspiration and vision, our gifts of seeing and imagining, dreaming and creating. Being Queer is not a problem to be solved, a wound to drown in, or an identity to be held like a shield; rather, a portal to be entered, through which we can claim the gifts we are carrying for our people.
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.
Doug Van Houten
he/him
Doug draws on the wisdom of the natural world, depth-psychology, eco-psychology, dreams, somatic knowing, poetry, and many pan-cultural, soul furthering practices that includes: The Way of Council, vision fasting, shadow work, symbolic artwork, trance dancing and conversations with the more than human world. Doug’s true calling in life is to support others as they uncover their own unique gifts and in so doing, transform their lives in service to what Thomas Berry called ”The Great Work” of our times. Doug is also an ardent beekeeper, a visual artist, a wily wanderer, a dream tracker, an emergent ceremonialist, a heart-centered activist, and a yoga instructor interested in new forms of somatic practice. Learn more about Doug on his website: https://www.bodyartsoul.org.
“There is a profound and unmet longing in contemporary culture for a life of deeper meaning, purpose, and fulfillment especially at this critical juncture in human history. ”
Sara McFarland
she/they
Sara is a healer of the Golden Web of Life, an Edgewalker singing the Frequencies of Soul, a ritualist in reciprocal relationship with the Holy in the Wild. As an improvisational singer, SoulStoryteller, and guide, she creates Fire Silk and Dreams Earth’s Web, in order to weave paths of golden threads into the underworld and between the worlds for others to follow. She tracks the Life – Death – Life energy of transformation and serves as a Death Doula to that which is dying- both in the personal as well as the collective. She is a Queer, both/and creature, welcoming of the exquisite multiplicity of Life beyond the Binary. Her capacity as a Gatekeeper allows her to presence the many manifestations of life (seen and unseen) blossoming beyond a human-centric perspective. She is a traveler with, a friend along the path – her work is both trauma-informed and compassionate, in service to healing personal and civilization trauma. She is also unafraid to be fierce, lovingly cutting to the heart of the matter – in service to ending the current Paradigm of Life-destroying-ways, as well as the dying that presages the renewal of Soul Initiation. Mystery, the Cailleach and the Dream guide her Muse to live a Soul-led life. Learn more about Sara on her website: https://www.saramcfarland.com.
Registration Scholarship Information
Accommodations: This is an all camping program, participants are responsible for bringing personal camping equipment, and for transportation to and from the program location.
If obtaining the necessary camping gear is a barrier to participation, the venue may be able to loan specific items. Contact us with accessibility requests.
Participants registered for the Wild Mind Intensive September 14-18 will be able to stay on site September 18-19 for a small sliding scale fee. Contact us to make arrangements.
Location: Swanville, Maine, unceded Wabanaki territory.
A small rural town located in the mid coast area, Swanville is 40 minutes from Bangor International Airport and 10 minutes from the coastal city of Belfast, which is also accessible by interstate bus. Our camp is set in a mixed forest, with wetlands and hidden springs. Wildlife and bird sightings are abundant from resident porcupines who wander around in the evenings, to passing deer, bobcat, and many more seen and unseen wild ones. There is ample space for wandering on and off trail and plenty of areas for tent or hammock camping.
Start Time: 1pm – You may arrive on site anytime after 10:30am. Plan to arrive with plenty of time set up, we will begin promptly at 1pm. Dinner is the first meal served on the first day.
End Time: 1pm – Plan to stay for the duration of the entire duration of the program. Breakfast is the last meal served on the last day.
Cost: $1,475.00 – $1,750.00. The sliding scale tuition model is a type of fee structure that accounts for variability in assets, income, and expenses as an attempt to increase accessibility for people with less financial and/or class privilege. This model allows self selection of registration cost, please pay the actual cost of attendance if you are able to. We highly recommend reading more about Sliding Scale: A Tool of Economic Justice. The Animas community and several incredibly generous donors make it possible for Animas to grant scholarships to programs. Scholarships covering up to 70% of program costs are available for anyone who would otherwise be unable to participate, if you need additional financial support beyond this, the Wild Geese Collective offers additional scholarships supported by individual donations.You can begin this process by applying at the link below.
Registration Scholarship Information
Animas Valley Institute — founded in 1980 by Bill Plotkin — offers a rich assortment of journeys into the mysteries of nature and psyche, including soulcraft intensives, contemporary vision fasts, and training programs for nature-based soul guides. Read more about the Story of Animas.
We stand on the threshold of a great unknown. Individually and collectively, we launch into an uncertain future — at once, both perilous and saturated with possibility. Our accustomed, culturally-determined roles and identities are inadequate to navigate the sea change of our time. Our collective journey requires a radical shift in the human relationship with the community of all life — a cultural transformation so profound that future humans might regard it as an evolution of consciousness. Safe passage requires each of us to offer our full magnificence to the world. Popular culture cannot help us uncover our singular gifts; contemporary institutions do not invite their expression. Our particular genius can be discovered only in an initiatory journey — an accidental or intentional descent into the mysteries of soul. Guiding the intentional descent to soul has been the unfolding work of Animas Valley Institute for 40 years.
Animas Valley Institute offers multi-day, experiential explorations into wild landscapes and into the wilds of soul with the goal of discovering the meaning and destiny at the heart of each life. We are guides to the initiatory journey — the descent into the mysteries of nature and psyche where the husk of outgrown ego-identity is shed; where tricksters, demons, and perhaps angels are encountered; and from which a new self emerges as a vessel for one’s distinctive genius and world-transforming gifts. Although our work evokes non-ordinary perception and ways of knowing, it is not shamanism, nor is it primarily rites of passage, wilderness-based psychotherapy, or emotional healing. Our immersions are not designed to transcend the ego, solve everyday personal problems, or help people better adjust to — or be happier in — the flatland of contemporary Western culture. Rather, our intent is a deep-structure shift that matures the ego and elicits each person’s most creative, soul-rooted response to our critical, liminal moment in the unfolding of the world’s story — on the threshold of a future shaped by those who can see beyond our own time.
Past Programs
Queer Wild Mind Intensive
September 29 – October 3, 2021
Guided by Doug van Houten and Sara McFarland
The Wild Mind model is a map of the human psyche, of our fierce and fantastic inner worlds in their entangled and unique expressions of wholeness. In the process of “wholing”, we heal our inner protective parts with their survival strategies from childhood, recognizing our belonging to the more-than-human Earth Community and gaining the resources for embodying our authenticity. What if our wounded and outcasted ones — within the human collective as well as those of our inner landscape – might be welcomed home as Queer Human and Earth? What if our inner protections and strategies, are not only to be applauded and honored, but carry the very seeds of our magical powers and gifts? Falling ever deeper in love with all parts of ourselves, we heal the pain of feeling different and separate and cultivate the inner capacity to hold and love ourselves unconditionally. We experience our Queerness through our inner landscape and through the wild world around us as we enter communion with rivers and fungi, mountains and beavers, interpenetrating and entangling ourselves further and deeper in the Web of Life, embodying a Queer Ecology.
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. 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 (inner protectors) that form during childhood. Rather than attempt to eliminate our subpersonalities (which is not possible) or to beat them into submission, we’ll heal them and cultivate the four facets of the Self, thereby uncovering the gifts of our subpersonalities. Our goal is to fully embody our multifaceted wild minds, embody a Queer Ecology, 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 four facets of the Self — innate human wholeness.
• How to identify protective strategies that supported you in childhood and adolescence to adapt to challenges of family and social life, but ultimately became barriers to full and authentic humanity.
• Practices and guidelines for cultivating relationships between the Self and your subpersonalities, enabling you to heal them, 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.
