Journey to Wholeness: Navigating with the Nature-Based Map of the Psyche On private land near Louisville, Kentucky October 26 - 29, 2012 with Rebecca Wildbear & Doug Van Houten This program is being offered thru Cultivating Connections in collaboration with Animas Valley Institute for more information about the program or how to register please call Doug at 502-472-6563 or Rebecca at 435-691-3021 or email at doug@dougvanhouten.com  The Nature-Based Map of the Psyche serves as a guide to the healing and wholing work that is foundational to becoming fully human. Cultivating all four facets of our wholeness -- and coming to understand both the limitations and gifts of our wounded, fragmented, or shadowed parts -- are necessary steps toward living a soul-centered life.
In this program, you'll explore the landscape of your individual psyche through creative expression, focused time alone in nature, group work, movement, voice dialogue, journaling, and other Soulcraft TM* practices.
You'll learn:  How to recognize and consciously cultivate the four primary dimensions of the Self -- your innate wholeness- How to recognize the fragmented subpersonalities that supported you in childhood and adolescence to adapt to the challenges of social life, but ultimately became barriers to your full and authentic humanity
- Practices and guidance for cultivating relationships between the Self and your wounded, shadow, or fragmented parts, allowing for healing and further growth
- How each facet of your wholeness provides essential resources and capacities for the transformative work of the underworld journey (the descent to soul), which is the primary goal of most Animas programs
- How to use the Map to cultivate a more soul-centered life.
 This intensive provides an accessible and highly experiential immersion into the Nature-Based Map of the Psyche, developed by Bill Plotkin and other Animas Valley Institute guides over the past 15 years. Join us for a great introduction to Soulcraft TM* or, for those of you with previous Animas experience, an opportunity to dive deeper.
The Nature-Based Map of the Psyche is a holistic model that differentiates four primary dimensions of our wholeness as well as the four kinds of fragmented, wounded, or shadowed parts of our personalities. The Map orients us to a way of understanding and experiencing our psyches as healthy and uniquely human expressions of the universal forces and patterns of nature.  The human psyche evolved organically in response to the challenges of living as a highly social mammal embedded in a wildly complex web of ecological relationships in an animate world. All the ways in which we think, feel, sense, and imagine arose in attunement to the rhythm of the day and the turning of the seasons, and in intimate relationship with myriad other life forms and forces. Although in everyday life we might feel cut off from the richness of our Earthly roots and relationships, the deep structure of the human psyche -- the underlying patterns, universal archetypes, and innate capacities available to us all -- has emerged from this living web.
Program Fee: $450 (includes guide fee, camping and meals). A non-refundable deposit of $225 required to hold your space.
Scholarships available. Some private rooms available for $150 for three nights. Some shared lofts available for $100 for three nights. Best to register by: September 3, 2012
Guides:
Rebecca Wildbear
Rebecca is a wild-hearted wanderer and soul guide who supports people to open to their depths and to flower in relationship to the wild Earth. The prayer she lives is to love and embody the Mystery and the Wild as they sing each being alive, evoking their truth and beauty. Rebecca has worked as a therapist and wilderness guide since 1997, and has trained as a guide with Animas Valley Institute since 2002. As an Interdisciplinary Yoga Teacher and a student of Hakomi experiential therapy, Rebecca brings a body-centered approach to guiding. She received her Masters Degree in Counseling from Johns Hopkins University in 1997.
Doug Van Houten  Doug Van Houten has an eye for the heartbreakingly beautiful and a wild heart that sings in the dark night of his own soul. He is beekeeper, artist, brave explorer of the "darker than darkness", student and facilitator of the Great Work, and Animas Valley Institute trained vision fast guide. In his own backyard of the rolling Kentucky hills, Doug organizes retreats, conferences, workshops, drumming circles, and festivals in celebration of Earth spirit. Lit by the luminescence of his own dreams, wanderings and visions, his firsthand enraptured experience is a deep exploration of his own dark wounding. Doug has taken a vow to soul, (that would kill him to break), to live consciously with grace and to stay awake. Here, he dances with shadow, hones his artistry, and answers the call to support the soulful opening of others.
Soulcraft TM*
Bill Plotkin has masterfully woven a basket of contemporary nature-based practices to support the path to soul discovery and initiation. The practices themselves spring from modern depth psychology, ancient and enduring nature-based ways of knowing, the wisdom found in the poetic traditions, and wilderness rites of passage.
The world is in urgent need of the socially transforming contributions of actively engaged adults who have encountered their soul and retrieved its essential gift. The consistent use of Soulcraft TM*
practices builds a comprehensive foundation for discovering and embodying your soul gift.
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