Doug Van Houten

This Program is FULL. Please sign up for the waitlist. THE ANIMAS QUEST This contemporary Western embodiment of the ancient, pan-cultural vision fast is a dynamic wilderness rite for all who are 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 alone to bring to the world, enhancing personal fulfillment and genuine service. The Animas Quest catalyzes…

WE LIVE AT A PIVOTAL MOMENT IN EARTH’S HISTORY, a time of extraordinary challenge and uncertainty in which our precious world — with its endangered creatures and imperiled ecosystems — hangs by a precariously thin thread. The human species has entered a collective dark night — perhaps a necessary one. At an hour like this, each of us must dare to walk directly into the fires of love, bravely relinquishing old modes of being and surrendering ourselves to what is beckoning from the human soul and from what Thomas Berry calls, ‘the Dream of the Earth’.  While cooking in these fires, as…

WE LIVE IN A PIVOTAL MOMENT ON EARTH, a time of immense challenge and profound uncertainty, in which this precious world, with its endangered creatures and imperiled ecosystems, hangs by a precariously thin thread. This is a time of both a great unraveling and a great turning, a time when humanity has entered a collective dark night — perhaps a necessary one. And yet, this moment is not only about collapse. It is a summons – a mythic invitation to return to the body as a sacred vessel of memory, movement, and metamorphosis. A call to embrace our full participation…

Based on Bill Plotkin’s third book, Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche, this 5-day intensive is an experiential exploration of our human psyches as unique expressions of the universal forces and patterns of nature. We will work with what we call the Nature-Based Map of the Human Psyche, which is, among other things, a comprehensive inventory of what can be right about a person, a ‘shadow’ version of mainstream psychology’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), a list of what can go wrong with people. Our wild minds possess astonishing resources, untapped potentials and depths that we might…

The Animas Quest catalyses the encounter with soul by temporarily displacing everyday consciousness through five primary means: (1) solitude for three or four days and nights while (2) fasting (i.e., drinking water only), (3) being fully exposed to and enfolded within the forms and forces of nature, (4) enacting a series of ceremonies, and (5) employing a set of practices (Soulcraft) that support you in crossing into the mysteries of nature and psyche. The Quest takes place over a total of 12 days. Preceding your time of solitude are five full days of preparation activities that enhance your ability to benefit…

Enter into a divine dance where our dreaming nightbody steps into confluence with the deep source of our creativity. This dance is a powerful portal to soul work, through which we bridge from dayworld consciousness to the hidden rivers of the unconscious in ways that are unique to you as accessed through your imagination, emotions, body, and relationships. Through the interplay of these modalities, you become a mysterious dream-walker shaping soul’s longing into expressions of art and motion. During this immersion, we’ll wander slowly in the often disturbing, often splendorous nightworld with its symbols, images, and metaphors meant only for the dreamer. We’ll courageously commit to an extended stay in soul’s mysterious domain, permitting the dream to do its formidable work on our ego, to root us more fully in soul just as…