Nature and the Human Soul: A Special Online Program for Parents & Educators – May, 2025
May 22 - June 27, 2025
With John Lynch, Art.D. and Palika Wilding
This program is offered to parents and educators only.
Anchored in traditional four-directions wisdom, contemporary depth and archetypal psychologies, and twenty-five years of nature-based soul guiding, the Soulcentric Developmental Wheel (SDW) is a new ecopsychology of human development and cultural transformation. It’s 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 — 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 and complementary.)
During this intensive, 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, personal growth, and cultural change. You’ll discover how to use the SDW to clarify your own next steps of soul-infused development and learn a set of principles and practices by which you can align yourself with the lifelong journey of growing whole.
Sessions will take place via Zoom during the following dates and times:
May 22, 23, 30, June 6, 13, 20 & 27 at 10am – 1pm PDT
Guides
John is a university professor, where he weaves eco-centric experiences and perspectives into his offerings. He has degrees in outdoor education & leadership, sustainable communities, and ecopsychology & environmental humanities. A Sower of soulful seeds, John maintains heartfelt support towards fellow seekers negotiating the wild terrain of possibilities waiting within all of us. In addition to his work at Animas Valley Institute, he has training and certifications in gestalt practices and dialogical processing. John is an avid adventurer of wild places, professional outdoor educator, musician, wilderness guide and local initiator of soulful practices in his northern Arizona community. Above all…
Learn more about John Lynch, Art.D.
Palika Wilding has been courting and centering the mysteries of the Underworld, the Moon and the miraculous blue green pearl for as long as she can remember. As threshold midwife she listens and tends the edges and holy cracks where a psyche the size of Earth, entangles with the human body and psyche, towards a discovery of the pearls and shadowed gems within that lead to one’s unique enchanted love affair, reciprocity, and response ability with the animate Earth & Mystery. An astute tracker of beauty, and the forgotten, forsaken, forbidden and feared, she sensitively and artfully serves to bring…
Learn more about Palika Wilding