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

Exploring your Wild Mind: An Online Experience of the Nature-Based Map of the Human Psyche - October, 2023
October 22 - 27, 2023

Based on Bill Plotkin’s book, Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche, this 6-day program 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 the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), mainstream psychology’s list of what can go wrong with people. Our wild minds possess astonishing resources, untapped potentials and depths that we might not…

Wild Mind Intensive - November, 2023
November 5 - 9, 2023

Based on Bill Plotkin’s 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 the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), mainstream psychology’s list of what can go wrong with people. Our wild minds possess astonishing resources, untapped potentials and depths that we might not even know exist until we…

The Wild Mind Training Residential – November, 2023
November 28 - December 2, 2023

This residential is limited to trainees in the Wild Mind Training Program (and SAIP Program) only. Please note you must be enrolled in the Wild Mind Training Program to register for this residential. You can find more information about the WMTP by clicking here. NOTE: All Wild Mind Trainees will receive a link to register for this program from the WMTP Director. Please reach out to them if you have not received it.  The Wild Mind Training Residential is the core of the Wild Mind Training Program steeped in the Nature Based Map of the Human Psyche. In this 5-day…

Fishing For Shadow Online – January, 2024
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…

Sweet Darkness - January, 2024
January 30 - February 4, 2024

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 to travel into uncharted territory.  Unlike in many modalities, we will strive to get close to the ways we are vulnerable and the ways our sensitivity…

The Way of Council and the Art of Mirroring – February, 2024
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…

Soulcraft Intensive - February, 2024
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…

Nature and the Human Soul: An Experiential Exploration of the Soulcentric Developmental Wheel - March 2024
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…