Brian Stafford, MD, MPH

Brian Stafford is a guide to the wilderness of nature, wildness, and soul. Called out of academic medicine to serve as a guide to the depths and to serve as an agent of cultural awakening and transformation, he guides with humor, playfulness, fierceness, compassion, discernment, and a deep remembering of the fullness of what each human life can, should, and was meant to be. A native of Colorado and the former holder of an endowed chair and professor of psychiatry and pediatrics, he is currently a guide, Board Member, and Training Director of the Wild Mind Training Program at Animas. He is also an adjunct faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute, as well as an expert in psychedelic preparation and integration. He is an avid outdoorsman, teacher, writer, mentor, partner, and parent. He delights in helping individuals rewild and ensoul their lives by assisting in the dissolution of their current life so that they may discover and live from their deeper life, their soul-life. Brian currently makes his home in Ojai, California.
Events with Brian Stafford, MD, MPH

December 8 - 10, 2023
Anchored in traditional four-directions wisdom, contemporary depth and archetypal psychologies, and twenty-five years of nature-based soul guiding, the Soulcentric Developmental Wheel (SDW) is a new ecopsychology of human development and cultural transformation. It’s a blueprint showing how richly we can grow and mature when soul and nature are embraced as our wisest and most trustworthy guides. It includes an integrated set of developmental guidelines that can help every human mature into an adulthood of visionary leadership — precisely what we need in this century if we are to create a just, compassionate, and sustainable world. A life-span model of development…

January 8 - 26, 2024
FISHING FOR SHADOW I went out to the hazel wood, Because a fire was in my head, And cut and peeled a hazel wand, And hooked a berry to a thread; And when white moths were on the wing, And moth-like stars were flickering out, I dropped the berry in a stream And caught…….?????? Fishing for Shadow’s Dangerous Gifts is a newer online program. It is preparatory, in some ways, for the Sweet Darkness intensive. We will explore Shadow — the hidden, deep, and dangerous realm of our psyches. The psyche has sinister or negative aspects as well as positive…

January 30 - February 4, 2024
This program is full. If you would like to still apply, please do so, and the guides will review your application if a cancellation occurs. Sweet Darkness: The Initiatory Gifts of the Shadow, Projections, Subpersonalities, and the Sacred Wound, is Animas Valley Institute’s most intensive short program. Because of this, we require that people have participated in other Animas programs before applying to Sweet Darkness. In October 2022, we will be extending Sweet Darkness into a 6-day immersion. Before diving into Core Wound work, we will begin by gathering our facets of wholeness, our internal resources that allow us…

February 12 - 16, 2024
THE ART OF MIRRORING: There is an art to hearing a story as well as telling one. Mirroring is a collection of skills employed in receiving, embracing, and honoring each others’ stories. In mirroring, we neither project nor interpret but rather celebrate the magic of the story and the gifts of the One Who Bears the Tale. We help the storyteller glean-harvest-reap the jewels, the dark ones as well as those that sparkle. The Way of Council and the Art of Mirroring are invaluable practices on the descent to soul. Although much of the descent is solitary, gathering with others…

February 26 - March 1, 2024
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…

March 25 - 29, 2024
Anchored in traditional four-directions wisdom, contemporary depth and archetypal psychologies, and twenty-five years of nature-based soul guiding, the Soulcentric Developmental Wheel (SDW) is a new ecopsychology of human development and cultural transformation. It’s a blueprint showing how richly we can grow and mature when soul and nature are embraced as our wisest and most trustworthy guides. It includes an integrated set of developmental guidelines that can help every human mature into an adulthood of visionary leadership — precisely what we need in this century if we are to create a just, compassionate, and sustainable world. A life-span model of development…

April 12 - May 24, 2024
This program is offered to parents and educators only. Anchored in traditional four-directions wisdom, contemporary depth and archetypal psychologies, and twenty-five years of nature-based soul guiding, the Soulcentric Developmental Wheel (SDW) is a new ecopsychology of human development and cultural transformation. It’s a blueprint showing how richly we can grow and mature when soul and nature are embraced as our wisest and most trustworthy guides. It includes an integrated set of developmental guidelines that can help every human mature into an adulthood of visionary leadership — precisely what we need in this century if we are to create a just,…