Bill Plotkin, Ph.D.

Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., is a depth psychologist, wilderness guide, and agent of cultural evolution. 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 fast. 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), 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), Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche (an ecocentric map of the psyche — for healing, growing whole, and cultural transformation), and The Journey of Soul Initiation: A Field Guide for Visionaries, Evolutionaries, and Revolutionaries (an experiential guidebook for the descent to soul). He has a doctorate in psychology from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Events with Bill Plotkin, Ph.D.

August 11 - 15, 2025
Coming Home to an Animate World: A Way of Ceremony and Conversation is one of our most exhilarating and imagination-expanding intensives, and it’s foundational to all the work we do at Animas. Think of this intensive as a green doorway, an opening to a wilder consciousness shaped by forest and owls, clouds, cliff and dreams — a passage from a lifeless universe to a cosmos breathing with mystery and invitation, singing and crying in a jillion tongues. Come gather with other Earth lovers, forest whisperers, and visionary coyotes to honor the Others with ceremony and conversation. When we address…

October 7 - 12, 2025
The application deadline for this program is July 1st. Please submit your application and our guides will be in touch with you after that date. SPECIAL NOTE: This will be an especially potent Sweet Darkness immersion in that, in addition to having two guides, it will also have two assistant Animas guides, and it will be a training experience for 8 of our apprentices in our Soulcraft Apprenticeship and Initiation Program (SAIP). With a max of 16 participants, that will make a group of up to 28 people. And the guide to participant ratio will be extremely high. Lots of…