When Raccoon, the eco-therapist, reaches down into his or her bag of medicine, is the vision fast there? The therapeutic power of a four day and night fast (or a one day and night fast), should be at the fingertips of every teacher, professional, or guide who has personally experienced the therapeutic power inherent in the wilderness passage. The two-week vision fast training is an introduction to a classic modern...
For more than thirty-five years, the School of Lost Borders has offered a unique training for students, therapists, teachers, caregivers, and guides interested in deepening their understanding of rites of passage and initiatory ecotherapies. While its focus is wilderness rites of passage, this training has also supported professionals in many areas, including those who work primarily in offices, classrooms, and...
Perhaps the most important task for young people today is to find and face their deepest inner truths, their strengths and weaknesses, and ask the critical questions, “Who am I to be in the world, what do I have to offer as an adult?”
Our intent is very simple, to evoke and feed the stories and archetypes of the masculine, and to continue to create venues for the male voice to express… Because it’s being called for. Because something in the male experience is seemingly wanting to emerge.
At this profound moment in human history, there's a monumental wave of women in the developed world who are awakening to their full potential and becoming passionate and empowered co-creators of change. Those of us riding this wave feel a yearning to gather our unique gifts, passion, wisdom, and vision for what's possible and offer them in service to the world with a desire to make a meaningful and enduring...
In a health care setting, caregivers often focus intently on diagnosing and fixing problems. When the pace of this work becomes too fast, too intense, the ability to truly listen can diminish. Often lost in a patient’s life-and-death struggle is a personal lifestory: a mythic telling of "who I am" and "where I'm going" in that person’s singular and precious life. If not seen...
Imagine you live in a community that has its own “Death Lodge,” a place where a dying person can rest and receive the visitors who come to say goodbye. This is the natural place of “making it good” with your people so you can cleanly move on, and they can let you go in the fullness of completion. An old hospice teaching says that to complete a relationship five things must be said: “I forgive you”; “you...
This is the first course in the Practice of Living and Dying series that Meredith and Scott created years ago. It’s now been offered over twenty times in ten different countries. This program explores how to move through the dying process—be it a symbolic dying or a physical dying—while also building a bridge between the growing wisdom of the modern hospice movement and the ancient, pan-cultural wisdom...
In today’s world, the role of elder has been largely lost, yet an increasing number of people in or approaching their senior years sense that there is a difference between being older and being an Elder. They feel an inner call to an elderhood of purpose, passion, service and spiritual growth. Through long lives of rich experience, they are seeking to convert knowledge and experience into wisdom, which they can pass...
In your bones you may hear the singing of your sacred ancestors. You follow in their footsteps. You go alone, with an empty belly and a bare minimum of equipment, into the heart of the wilderness, for four days and nights. There you live with yourself, in perfect solitude. You surrender to the mirror of your wild environment, and to memory, the looks-within-place. You enter the mansions of nature’s soul. You ponder...
The following advanced training is designed for those in SAIP but is open to others by application. Please contact the Animas office for an application.
The following advanced training is designed for those in SAIP but are open to others by application. Please contact the Animas office for an application.
This contemporary Western embodiment of the ancient, pan-cultural vision fast is a dynamic wilderness rite for men and women seeking greater depth and clarity about life purpose and meaning. As a rite of initiation, the quest is a ceremonial descent to the underworld, in which you die to your familiar way of belonging to the world, uncover the passion and wisdom of your soul, and retrieve the gift that is yours...
Annie Bloom has been guiding with Animas Valley Institute for 17 years. Her gift is to break open our wild hearts to the numinous beauty we each carry in the fertile seed of our souls. Her passion lies in mirroring our individual and collective destinies as held in the luminous stories brought back from solo time on the land. In her Salt Lake community, Annie gently and fiercely supports people in their awakening...
Product Description
Unleash the power of fasting to help you discover your sacred self. A centuries-old tradition, fasting has historically been recognized as a way to heighten human sensitivity to all things-animate and insensate-in the universe. Ancient cultures understood the link between the physical, the emotional, and the spiritual experience and acknowledged fasting as a means for making this connection.
The Soulcentric Developmental Wheel is a new ecopsychology of human development and cultural transformation with soul and nature as our wisest and most trustworthy guides. During this intensive, 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...
Joyce Lyke is one of the senior and supervising teachers of the Diamond Approach to Inner Realization, a contemporary spiritual path developed for those living in today’s world. She leads on-going Diamond Approach groups in Canada, Europe, and the United States. With great love and respect for the Earth, Joyce also explores the deeper dimensions of the Mystery through Earth-based ceremonial...
Cristin DeVine is a therapist, wilderness guide and teacher who is passionate about tending souls and help- ing individuals discover and bring their unique gifts into the world. She has been guiding wilderness rites of passage with adolescents and adults for thirteen years and has trained with the Animas Valley Institute. Her study and prac- tice of primitive skills has taken her from the Yup’ik regions of...
