A Portal To The Imaginal – May 2025, Bulgaria
May 22 - 26, 2025
With Brian Stafford, MD, MPH and Sara McFarland
There is a sacred portal, a mysterious door, a green gate, a dark space into certain realms of our consciousness, of our and the collective Psyche. These portals are both within and without. Many of us struggle to find enchantment in the world and a connection to our imagination. An important practice for intentionally accessing the sometimes-hidden realms of the Self, the Earth, and the Cosmos is through the practice of deep imagery.
Around us we see the cleverness of the human ego creating artificial intelligence and striving for virtual reality when, in fact, what we most deeply long for is to step through the portal into our own unique imagination. Deep in our psyches are landscapes and images, beings, animals, guides, saints, demons, heroes, and lovers that are accessed during dreams, sacred medicine journeys, and in deep imaginal journeys. The images, energies, and archetypes we encounter are often aspects of our vast wholeness and they may wish to share, explore, and embody their unique perspectives on the Self, the Earth, and our mycelial relationship with everything. In this realm we share away from interpretation; rather, we explore, interact, embody and move deeper into relationship with these extraordinary images.
In this 5-day immersion, we will offer several deep imaginal journeys and other intentionally designed and interconnected practices, including solo land wanderings, dreamwork, council, ceremonies, conversations with the other-than-human inhabitants, embodied movement, dance, artwork, journaling, and poetry that comes from and invites us into these imaginal realms.
For those longing to take a step toward the journey of soul initiation, to re-enter their imagination, and to recover the extraordinary nature of themselves and experience the nature of the imagining Earth, this experiential intensive is both a great place to start and an intentional step toward bringing the enchanting imaginal realms back into one’s daily life. But, be careful! Sometimes those that step into the portal vow never to step back out.
Guides
Brian Stafford is a guide to the wilderness of nature, wildness, and soul. Called out of academic medicine to serve as a guide to the depths and to serve as an agent of cultural awakening and transformation, he guides with humor, playfulness, fierceness, compassion, discernment, and a deep remembering of the fullness of what each human life can, should, and was meant to be. A native of Colorado and the former holder of an endowed chair and professor of psychiatry and pediatrics, he is currently a guide, Board Member, and Training Director of the Wild Mind Training Program at Animas. He…
Learn more about Brian Stafford, MD, MPH
Sara (she/they) 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,…
Learn more about Sara McFarland