Date & Time Details: March 5-9, 2023 - Start Time 1pm End Time 1pm

Location: Joshua Tree National Park, California

What to Bring: : This is an all-camping program. Participants are responsible for bringing their own personal camping equipment, and for personal transportation to and from the program.

Meals : Participants also responsible for bringing their own lunches, and snacks. For breakfasts and dinners, the group will be divided into meal teams to plan, purchase and prepare group dinners using safe protocols.

COVID-19: To protect the health of you, your fellow participants, and our guides, please review our COVID-19 POLICIES AND PROTOCOLS. We also ask participants to be especially vigilant in the weeks leading up to the program to avoid exposure to the virus.

Prices
  • $700.00 to $985.00 – Sliding Scale Price: you are free to select any price within this range
  • $985.00 – High End Program Price: choosing the high end amount or more allows us to compensate our guides at a higher rate
Program is fully booked

Soulcraft Intensive – March, 2023

March 5 - 9, 2023

With Brian Stafford, MD, MPH and Pete Fonken

Program is fully booked

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 well as the essence of your true service to society (the cross-cultural wisdom traditions say these are one and the same). Soulcraft practices spring from nature-based cultures, modern depth psychology, the poetic tradition, and wilderness rites of passage—to comprise a truly contemporary Western path to soul discovery and soul initiation. For a full discussion, see Bill Plotkin’s book Soulcraft: Crossing Into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche.

The Soulcraft Intensive is highly experiential and—well—intense. We alternate between practices utilized in group, practices explored in solitude in nature, and sharing and deepening those experiences in small groups (5 to 9 people each). There is a Soulcraft guide for each small group, providing you with a fully individualized experience. What you discover through one practice is carried into and amplified by what you learn in the next. By the end of the intensive, you will understand yourself and your place in the world from a more soul-oriented perspective, be clearer about the gifts you were born to bring to the world, and have new skills to enrich your life and to defend the health of the more-than-human world.

Soulcraft practices include:

  • Soulcentric Dreamwork
  • Deep Imagery Work with Animal Guides
  • Talking Across the Species Boundaries
  • The Way of Council
  • Soul Tasks in Nature
  • Self-Designed Ceremony
  • Shadow Work
  • Soul Poetry
  • Sacred Wound Work
  • Synchronicities: Working with Nature’s Signs and Omens
  • Befriending the Dark
  • Ecstatic Trance Drumming and Dancing
  • many others!

Note: There is a $30 Joshua Tree National Park Entrance Fee not included in the price of the program. 

 

JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK

Joshua Tree National Park is immense, nearly 800,000 acres, and infinitely variable. It can seem unwelcoming, even brutal during the heat of summer when, in fact, it is delicate and extremely fragile. This is a land shaped by strong winds, sudden torrents of rain, and climatic extremes.  The park encompasses some of the most interesting geologic displays found in California’s deserts. Rugged mountains of twisted rock and exposed granite monoliths testify to the tremendous earth forces that shaped and formed this land. Arroyos, playas, alluvial fans, bajadas, pediments, desert varnish, granites, aplite, and gneiss interact to form a giant mosaic of immense beauty and complexity.

 

 

Guides

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…
Learn more about Brian Stafford, MD, MPH
Pete Fonken
Peter Fonken’s guiding is informed by a lifetime spent wandering wild places while listening to and learning from other than human beings. He feels strongly that nature’s wisdom can help us access our intuitive knowing, thereby allowing a reintegration of authentic wildness and a deeper connection with Soul. He is also fascinated with the human psyche and is committed to exploring its nuances. Peter has been a ranger, guide, wildlife biologist, writer/editor, yoga teacher, and graphic designer during his peripatetic journey through life. He has a M.S. in zoology and a B.A. in both creative writing and biology, is the…
Learn more about Pete Fonken