ABOUT ANIMAS VALLEY INSTITUTE

The primary goal and method of all Animas Valley Institute programs is the encounter with soul. Founded in 1980 by psychologist and wilderness guide Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., the Institute is one of North America's longest-standing organizations offering contemporary wilderness rites. "Animas" (pronounced Ann'-eh-muss) is plural for "souls" in Spanish. In Jungian psychology, the Anima is the Inner Woman in a man; the Animus, the Inner Man in a woman. The Anima and Animus refer to the mysterious energies within our psyches that guide us on the inward journey to soul. Animas Valley Institute is located in southwest Colorado in the valley of El Rio de las Animas Perdidas—The River of Lost Souls.

AVI programs are quite different than those offered by most other wildemess organizations, rites of passage guides, and colleges and universities.  What we offer is not primarily rites of passage, wilderness-based psychotherapy or even ecotherapy. Our work is nature-based soul-initiation, whose central goal is the descent to soul for the purpose of maturing or deepening the ego, rather than healing it. Our programs are not designed to help people fix or solve problems in their current lives. Our goal is to help people transform their lives in such a way that they live and love more from their depths -- as opposed to merely being better adjusted or happier living in the surface world in which our contemporary culture specializes. Another way to say this is that our work is not primarily personal or interpersonal, although it includes some of both of those, but rather transpersonal -- in the sense of deepening into our connection with soul.

 

"The heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world."

- Joseph Campbell,
  The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Animas Valley Institute: Who We Are

Animas Valley Institute’s mission, in its widest scope, is to contribute to radical cultural change and global transformation by fostering nature-based personal development and thus the maturation of individuals and the human species. We support each participant to access and embody the world-changing and vital creativity at his or her core.

Humanity has arrived at a pivotal moment in the Earth’s evolutionary process. The early decades of the twenty-first century offer us the opportunity and imperative for what deep ecologist Joanna Macy calls the Great Turning — the transformation from a life-destroying human presence (the Industrial-Growth Society) to a way of life worthy of our unique human potential — and the planet’s natural unfolding. We humans are the only Earth creatures we know of with the ability to imagine never-before-seen futures and make them real. In this precarious moment in history, we are being called to create a global network of just, ecocentric, and sustainable societies — the human element in a true Earth community. It is every person’s obligation and privilege to contribute to this metamorphosis. Cultural historian Thomas Berry refers to this vital endeavor as the Great Work of our time.

AVI’s objective, then, is to contribute to this Great Work by helping individuals re-align their lives with the rhythms and cycles of nature, with the unfolding stories of Earth and cosmos, and with their own visionary potential — their own artistry as innovators of cultural change.

The most potent seeds of cultural renaissance come from the uniquely creative ventures of authentic adults — those who have consciously discovered and committed to the one true life they can call their own, the largest conversation they are capable of having with the world. All such adults are, by definition, true artists, visionaries, and leaders, whether they live and work quietly in small arenas or very publicly on grand stages.

As Thomas writes, “We must invent, or reinvent, a sustainable human culture by a descent into our pre-rational, our instinctive resources.” Such a descent is the purpose of the underworld journey to soul undertaken by those who have moved beyond the self-involved early adolescence in which our society has stalled. The most creative, inspiring deeds in the world today are being performed by visionaries who have made that descent and have returned with their unique contribution to the Great Turning. AVI is helping to engender innovative cultural forms that enable every person to mature in this way.

In addition to authentic adults doing their real work, the Great Turning requires the wise guidance of true elders like Thomas and Joanna and tens of thousands of others like them. The entire human venture must be overseen, not by assemblies of adolescent politicians and corporate officers, but by genuine Councils of Elders. Real elders are what we naturally grow into after an adulthood of authentic leadership and artistry. And we become true adults through an initiatory process of several years during which we cross the borders of everyday life into the mysteries of nature and psyche.

AVI’s central purpose is to assist people through the initiatory process that leads to visionary leadership and cultural artistry. Our primary work is with those ready to undergo the joys and challenges of the underworld descent to soul that flowers into a life of meaningful service and abundant fulfillment — or a deepening for those already on the journey.

AVI also serves as a training institute for those who have heard the call to become soul-initiation guides for others. See the description of our Soulcraft Apprenticeship and Initiation Program (SAIP) in the AVI Programs section of this website.

AVI has been offering contemporary, nature-based programs since 1981. We are a nonprofit organization of over 20 guides and four part-time staff with offices in Durango, Colorado, USA.

Our 40-plus programs include 12-day contemporary wilderness quests, 5-day retreat-center-based soulcraft intensives, and advanced intensives on soulcentric dreamwork, shadow work, the cultivation of ecological identity, deep imagery journeys, and other topics. Our Soulcraft Apprenticeship and Initiation Program (SAIP) is an advanced training curriculum designed for educators, psychotherapists, health professionals, and wilderness guides. Animas Valley Institute founder Bill Plotkin and the other Animas guides have created and shaped over 40 contemporary practices that assist people of Western cultures in their quests for more meaningful, fulfilling, and culturally engaged lives aligned with nature, soul, and the Great Turning.

Our hope is that each of you will consciously and imaginatively join this time of planetary unfolding, this Great Work, this century-long moment of transformation.

Bill Plotkin’s book Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche provides a thorough overview of the practices utilized in Animas programs and of the mystical descent into the underworld of soul.

In the fall of 2007, look for Bill's second book (the working title is A Natural History of the Soul: The Ecopsychology of Human Development) which introduces a nature-based map of the eight stages of the human life cycle. Twenty years in the making, this four-directions-based model illuminates the way that nature designed us to mature, from a childhood of innocence and wonder through an adolescence of creative fire and border-crossings into mystery, leading to an authentic adulthood (seldom obtained in contemporary societies) of visionary leadership and cultural artistry, and finally, with good fortunate, into a true elderhood (quite rare today) of holistic caring for the world, grace, wisdom, and transcendence.