A Yearlong Training for
Human-Development Facilitators
on
The Nature-Based, Soulcentric Wheel of Life
(The Wheel Training)

We must go far beyond any transformation of contemporary culture. We must go back to the genetic imperative from which human cultures emerge originally and from which they can never be separated without losing their integrity and their survival capacity. None of our existing cultures can deal with this situation out of its own resources. We must invent, or reinvent, a sustainable human culture by a descent into our pre-rational, our instinctive resources. Our cultural resources have lost their integrity. They cannot be trusted. What is needed is not transcendence but “inscendence.”

~ Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth

In a time when most people on Earth live in immature or even pathologized societies, we must re-invent cultural methods and practices for helping ourselves and others — especially our youth — grow into authentic adults, and eventually true elders, people who will sow the seeds of future sustainable and thriving cultures, agents of cultural transformation. To become fully human calls for special forms of support and guidance during childhood, adolescence, and beyond from parents, extended family, and mature community mentors. These forms of support are rare in today’s world. Optimal human development both needs and brings forth a healthy, mature culture. Such a culture, in order to exist and flourish, must inspire and tend the full possibility of each of its members.

Toward this end, Animas Valley Institute is launching in 2012 a yearlong training program for human-development facilitators, people called to the work of supporting the ecocentric-soulcentric development of children, adolescents, and people in their “first adulthood”. The training is based upon the matrix of the Soulcentric (or Ecocentric) Developmental Wheel, a nature-based, eight-stage model of human development shaped by Bill Plotkin and his Animas colleagues over the past 25 years and introduced in Bill’s book, Nature and the Human Soul. Trainees might include educators, coaches, counselors, psychotherapists, clergy, social workers, parents, daycare facilitators, wilderness guides and therapists, outdoor-adventure educators, ecotherapists, ecopsychologists, human development professionals and professors, vision fast guides, physicians, business managers, community leaders, world leaders, and other human-development facilitators. Most trainees will be professionals well established in their fields, while others will be those in the process of completing their studies or newly initiated into their roles.

The Wheel Training is designed specifically for those human-development facilitators who wish to align their perspectives and methods more fully and deeply with nature’s own rhythms and processes, and who seek support from peers and mentors in creating or adapting their own nature-aligned curricula, programs, experiential courses, rituals and ceremonies, schools, initiatory processes, rites of passage, healing and wholing strategies, and other methods. In other words, the Wheel Training is designed for creative professionals who do not need someone to show them how to do their jobs but rather seek support in understanding the nature-based, deep-structure essence of their chosen work so that they can then create or modify their own methods that optimally fit their talents, perspectives, and sensibilities as well as the needs, qualities, ages, ethnicities, languages, cultures, and life stages of the people whose development they facilitate. During the year, trainees will design their own approaches, methods, and practices based on their existing professional expertise and the settings in which they work, creating culturally viable forms for bringing to life the deep structure of eco-soulcentric human development, enabling others to grow whole in our time.

Some trainees will come from the fields of early childhood education or parent support/coaching. Others will be people who work principally with pre-pubertal school-age children, whether in schools or other contexts. The efforts of others will focus on teenagers, or with college-aged young adults. Some will be people who work chiefly with middle-aged men and women in their “first adulthood” (a stage of life that remains psychologically adolescent, although a more refined or responsible version thereof). Others will be human-development facilitators who work with people of any age (teenagers on up) who have begun to ask the formidable, life-and-death-sized questions of soul, purpose, and destiny, the very questions that contemporary Western societies have become adept at avoiding and suppressing. Some will be professionals who support the higher-level growth of adults already initiated into their soul lives.

Distinguishing the Wheel Training from other Animas Training Tracks and Programs

The Wheel Training (WT) is designed primarily as a comprehensive study of the Eco-Soulcentric Wheel — in particular of the deep structure of human development, especially its first four stages. In other words, the purpose of the WT is to help trainees think about, feel about, and imagine their work in a soulcentric and ecocentric way and to help them design their own approaches to their work in this light. As noted above, the WT is not designed as training in the practices and techniques that trainees might employ in their work as human-development facilitators. Rather, the WT assists trainees to develop their own practices and techniques — or identify those that they might study elsewhere or in other Animas programs. (Examples of specific practices that might be studied on other Animas training programs include council leadership, mirroring, dreamwork, and deep imagery guiding.)

In particular, it’s important to distinguish the Wheel Training from another Animas training track: the Soulcraft Apprenticeship and Initiation Process (SAIP). SAIP is a 3-to-7 year training for those called by mystery to serve their people as nature-based underworld (soul) guides (which is applicable only when working with people in stage 4 and later). SAIP is a training in the use of specific practices and techniques for this purpose (as well as in the deep structure of the descent to soul).

As applied to facilitating the development of people in stage 4, the Wheel Training, in contrast to SAIP, provides more of an overview, a “counseling and coaching” approach to working with stage-4 people, including a review of soulcraft practices. But it is important for potential WT trainees to understand that the WT is not a training in underworld guiding per se. The WT session on stage 4 emphasizes the developmental task of “leaving home” — supporting stage-4 people to loosen their attachments to their “first-adulthood” or pre-initiatory way of being in the world — and to begin to live the questions of soul and the mysteries of the more-than-human world. When it comes to facilitating people in stage-4 work, the WT is “auxiliary” in the sense that it helps trainees understand the special needs of stage-4 folks, how to orient them to the challenges and opportunities of their stage, how to help them with their preliminary practices (preparing them for a later descent), how to assist them to address unfinished business from stages 1 – 3, and how and when to refer them to an underworld guide for support during the actual descent.

Some applicants for the Wheel Training (especially those whose work is primarily with people in stages 4 – 6) might also seek training, at some point, in underworld guiding, whether through Animas (SAIP) or elsewhere. Please contact us if you’d like to see our SAIP brochure and application form.

It’s also important to distinguish the Wheel Training from “the Map Training,” which we plan to launch in 2013. The Nature-Based Map of the Psyche is not a developmental template (like the Wheel), but rather a guide to the “parts” of the human psyche at any stage of life. These parts include the four facets of our human wholeness (collectively, the Self) and the four kinds of fragmented or wounded sub-personalities. The Wheel Training provides a foundational understanding of the Nature-Based Map of the Psyche. The Map Training, in contrast, will offer an in-depth study of the structure and use of the Map. Many participants in the Wheel Training might also want to take the Map Training.

Pre-Requisite for the Wheel Training

A 4-day intensive is a pre-requisite for the Wheel Training, followed by four 5-day sessions spread out over the year. The pre-requisite is Animas’ Intensive on the Soulcentric Developmental Wheel (SDW), which serves as an overview of the ecocentric model of development.

Between group sessions, trainees are supported in a variety of ways, including small-group conference calls, to apply what they have learned to their own fields, work projects, and personal development.

In addition to training in the skills and concepts that inform eco-soulcentric human development, all sessions include experiential opportunities for trainees to address the unfinished tasks of their own current and earlier developmental stages. Trainees explorethe essence of each stage beyond mere intellectual comprehension — thereby incorporating what they learn into the bones where it can take root.

Training fees = $595/session; 2 two-hour teleconferences between sessions (for a total of 6 teleconferences) in small groups of 4 or 5 @ $40 each; total = $2620 (not including camping, motel, or retreat center fees, or fees for the pre-requisite SDW Intensive)
Camping and retreat center fees: $745. Additional fees for optional individual mentoring between group sessions = $60/hr.

An application for this training is required.

For more details or an application, please contact soulcraft@animas.org or 800-451-6327.

We expect a lot of interest and space is limited!

Bios of the Trainers:

Sabina Wyss, CPCC, MCC, is a guide for contemporary Quests in the American Southwest and, accompanied by nomadic camel caravans, in the Sahara desert for over a decade. She leads Animas intensives, her own soul-centered programs and trains new underworld guides. Sabina is a certified Life Coach (CPCC, MCC) and Holistic Health Practitioner (HMC) in private practice for over 20 years, passionately assisting others in uncovering and courageously manifesting their soul gifts. She is a founding partner of Sage Canyon, a Colorado center for nature-based soulwork. As faculty of CTI, she trains new coaches and trainers. She leads a foundation in Niger, Africa to support the indigenous Tuareg. In her work in the U.S., Europe, and Africa, she loves to dive full-heartedly and with a dash of humor into the depths of soul to help unleash the potential in all of us to be change agents in this critical time on earth.

Nate Bacon, M.A. is a guide whose passion is firmly rooted in the fecund soil of our carnal reciprocity with the more-than-human world-and our inherence within that world. His work explores the intertwined and braided rivers of perception, language, and worldview with a commitment to the re-wilding of human culture. He is dedicated not only to undermining the psycho-cultural structures of our modern ways of being in the world, but also to re-membering how to feed and truly be fed by this wild and holy world that we call nature. A wildlife tracker, cultural ecologist, and writer with an M.A. in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness from the California Institute of Integral Studies, Nate brings to his guiding fierce compassion and a deep love for the mysterious yearnings of soul.

Gene Dilworth, M.A., is an educator and wilderness guide with more than twenty years experience leading groups in nature-based pathways to self-discovery, wholeness, and community. He is committed to facilitating meaningful encounters with the more-than-human world, and supporting individuals and groups to bring forth the unique gifts of their true nature. With an M.A. in Environment & Community, Gene has taught ecology and ecopsychology at Naropa University, and mentors graduate students in ecopsychology at Prescott College. He has been a college academic administrator and has served in a variety of roles in environmental and educational organizations. Gene is a long-time student of the Diamond Approach to Inner Realization, and has trained with Animas Valley Institute since 2004. He nurtures his own sense of wonder by exploring the Boulder foothills with his young daughter, and courts the muse through music and poetry.

Rebecca Wildbear, M.S., is a wild-hearted wanderer and soul guide who supports people to open to their depths and to flower in relationship to the wild Earth. The prayer she lives is to love and embody the Mystery and the Wild as they sing each being alive, evoking their truth and beauty. Rebecca has worked as a therapist and wilderness guide since 1997, and has trained as a guide with Animas since 2002. As an Interdisciplinary Yoga Teacher and a student of Hakomi experiential therapy, Rebecca brings a body-centered approach to guiding. She received her Masters Degree in Counseling from Johns Hopkins University in 1997.

Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., is a depth psychologist, wilderness guide, and agent of cultural transformation. As founder of western Colorado’s Animas Valley Institute in 1981, he has guided thousands of women and men through nature-based initiatory passages, including a contemporary, Western adaptation of the pan-cultural vision quest. Previously, he has been a research psychologist (studying non-ordinary states of consciousness), professor of psychology, psychotherapist, rock musician, and whitewater river guide. In 1979, on a solo winter ascent of an Adirondack peak, Bill experienced a “call to adventure,” leading him to abandon academia in search of his true calling. Bill is the author of Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (an experiential guidebook) and Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World (a nature-based stage model of human development through the entire lifespan). His doctorate is in psychology from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Sheila Belanger, M.A., is an inspiring astrologer, wilderness guide, and soul ally. She is a passionate advocate for our wild nature and our capacity to track and navigate the currents of soul. She has guided vision fasts and nature-based soul programs since 1997. From her training in Transpersonal Psychology, Authentic Movement, and Deep Imagery, she is committed to nurturing the personal expression of embodied imagination and relationship to the Sacred. In her private practice, Sheila specializes in the astrology of midlife mischief and its attendant unique opportunities for soul growth. She lives on Whidbey Island, Washington and is an avid backpacker and sea kayak apprentice in the wild lands and waters of the West. Sheila brings her huge open heart, infectious humor, and compassionate respect for each person’s individual Mystery to all her guiding work.