Soulcraft Intensive, June 2023
June 2 - 6, 2023
With Doug Van Houten and Laura Blakeman, Ph.D.
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!
SPIRIT HOLLOW, VERMONT
Tucked in the Taconic Mountains of Southwestern Vermont, Spirit Hollow is situated on 100 forested acres and surrounded by thousands of acres of National Forest Land. The Center was established on the slopes of Grass Mountain. In the woods that surround us, there are trails to wander and streams to meditate by.
Guides
Doug (he/him) draws on the wisdom of the natural world, depth-psychology, eco-psychology, dreams, somatic knowing, poetry, and many pan-cultural, soul furthering practices that includes: The Way of Council, vision fasting, shadow work, symbolic artwork, trance dancing and conversations with the more than human world. Doug’s true calling in life is to support others as they uncover their own unique gifts and in so doing, transform their lives in service to what Thomas Berry called ”The Great Work” of our times. Doug is also an ardent beekeeper, a visual artist, a wily wanderer, a dream tracker, an emergent ceremonialist, a heart-centered activist, and…
Learn more about Doug Van Houten
Laura Blakeman is a southwest desert-dweller who draws from her unique trans-disciplinary background in the performing arts, and her lifelong study of human flourishing, to invite worldview shift for individuals and collectives across the corporate and cultural sectors. She spent the early part of her life working as a somatic educator, producing dance events, live art immersions, and land-based programs that centered marginalized ways of knowing, doing, and being. Her academic work has bridged integral, developmental, and eco-depth psychology, complexity and systems theory, and transformative learning. Her doctoral thesis explored beauty as a catalyst for change. She is a co-founder…
Learn more about Laura Blakeman, Ph.D.