Animas Valley Institute

Animas is a nonprofit organization of 20 guides and a small staff with offices in Durango, Colorado, USA. Since 2008, we have structured ourselves as a team-led, service organization with no executive director.

Our 50-plus annual programs include 12-day contemporary wilderness fasts, 5-day camping or retreat-center-based intensives, online introductions and immersions, local and partnership programs, yearlong immersions that meet for five sessions (one in each season), and advanced experiential intensives on soul centric dreamwork, shadow work, the cultivation of ecological identity, deep imagery journeys, and other eco and soul centric human development practices. Animas founder Bill Plotkin and the other Animas guides have created and shaped over 40 contemporary practices that assist people of Western cultures in their quests for more meaningful, fulfilling, and culturally engaged lives aligned with nature, soul, and the Great Turning.

Animas also serves as a training institute. Our Soulcraft Apprenticeship and Initiation Program (SAIP) is an advanced training curriculum designed for those who have been called by Mystery to serve as nature-based Soul-Initiation Guides. Our Wild Mind Training Program offers training for professional human development practitioners in applying the Wild Mind Map of the Psyche towards nature-based embodied wholeness. For more information, see the Training Programs sub-menu under the Animas Programs tab of this website.

For more info read The Story of Animas