REGISTRATION for Nature & the Human Soul: An Experiential Training in the Soulcentric Developmental Wheel Online – January, 2025

Important note: This intensive is a training program designed for people with a professional or personal interest specifically in the Soulcentric Developmental Wheel.  The training is anchored in experiential exercises as well as lectures and discussions, but this program is not a good choice for people primarily seeking an introduction to the work of Animas or an experiential dive into our Wild Mind work or into the journey of soul initiation. For the latter purposes, any of our Animas immersions that are not trainings would be much better choices. This training is designed primarily for those we call professional human development guides (PHDGs) and for PHDGs in training — in such fields as psychotherapy, psychiatry, clinical psychology, professional counseling, ministry, life coaching, ecotherapy, rites of passage, education, and certain realms of mentoring and outdoor education. But parents and others who wish to study an ecocentric and soulcentric approach to human development are warmly invited to apply!

Anchored in traditional cross-cultural four-directions wisdom, contemporary depth and archetypal psychologies, and thirty years of nature-based soul guiding, the Soulcentric Developmental Wheel (SDW) is a new ecopsychology of human development and cultural transformation. As presented in Bill Plotkin’s book, Nature and the Human Soul, the SDW is 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 — a stage of life that has become rare to attain but is 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 although totally complementary.)

During this training, 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, spiritual formation, personal growth, the journey of soul initiation, and cultural regeneration. You’ll discover how to use the SDW to support others in their personal development as well as to clarify your own next steps of soul-infused development. You will learn a set of principles and practices by which contemporary people can once again align themselves with the lifelong journey of growing whole.