Doug Van Houten

This advanced quest is designed for those who have completed other Animas Offerings and are already immersed in their soul-discovery journey and prepared for an encounter with soul. This program is not focused on healing, but rather on the underworld journey of soul encounter. This is a courageous journey into the mystical depths of the soul and of the heart, there to gather the images, symbols, and threads of our individual mythopoetic identities. 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…

The Soulcraft Intensive is our popular five-day experiential plunge into the wild depths of Soulcraft; a synergistic set of nature-based practices designed to evoke the life-shifting experience of soul encounter. Your soul is your true self, those qualities that most deeply define and express who you are and the unique gift that you were born to bring to the world, a world so much in need of the socially transforming contributions of initiated, actively engaged adults. To encounter the soul is to discover the mystical image you were born with, which reveals the path to your greatest personal fulfillment as…

Soulcentric Dreamwork: The Secret Alchemy of the Nightworld The soul yearns to dream itself into the world. Every dream emerges from the mystery of the soul and is an opportunity for our conscious self, our ego, to be further initiated into the secret stream of our deeper life. On this 5-day immersion, you’ll learn what it’s like to enter dreams as mysteries; to boldly and vulnerably interact with its denizens and dreamscapes; to be moved by the deep intelligence of its living images; to open to non-ordinary ways of perceiving; and to experience the underdream of your everyday waking life.…

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…

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 the encounter with soul by temporarily displacing everyday consciousness through…