Wild Mind Intensive, August 2023
August 7 - 11, 2023
With Doug Van Houten and Palika Rewilding
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 discover how to access them, cultivate their powers, and eventually integrate them into our everyday lives. In this intensive, we’ll access these depths and potentials — which we call the four facets of the Self, or the four dimensions of our innate human wholeness — and also the four sets of fragmented or wounded subpersonalities that form during childhood.
Rather than attempt to eliminate our subpersonalities (which is not possible) or to beat them into submission, we’ll cultivate the four facets of the Self and uncover the gifts of our subpersonalities. Our goal is to fully embody our multifaceted wild minds, commit ourselves to the largest, soul-infused story we’re capable of living, and serve the greater Earth community.
Discover:
- how to recognize and consciously cultivate the four facets of the Self — your innate human wholeness
- how to identify the subpersonalities that supported you in childhood and adolescence to adapt to the challenges of family and social life, but ultimately became barriers to your full and authentic humanity
- practices and guidelines for cultivating relationships between the Self and your subpersonalities, enabling you to heal your subpersonalities, discover their gifts, and foster Self-actualization
- how each facet of the Self provides essential resources for the underworld journey (the descent to soul), its radical transformation of personal identity, and for living as a visionary artisan of cultural evolution.
We’ll explore the landscape of the psyche through a variety of practices, including creative expression, self-designed ceremony, solo exercises while wandering on the land, group work, movement, voice dialogue, journaling, and deep imagery work.
QUAKER CENTER, SANTA CRUZ, CALIFORNIA
Located in Northern California on 80 acres of redwood forest, an hour and a half south of San Francisco and 25 minutes outside of Santa Cruz. We welcome all people and groups, regardless of Quaker affiliation, who are in harmony with Friends’ values of integrity, unity, equality, simplicity, peace and community. We also strive to live in harmony with all creation.
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
Palika Rewilding has been courting and centering the mysteries of the moon and the wild miraculous blue green pearl as long as she can remember. As a threshold midwife she listens and tends the edges and holy cracks with fierce love for pearls and shadowed gems within the psyche and hearts of the individual and collective, longing to recover our enchantment with Mystery, and our reciprocity and response ability with the Animate Earth. Passionately committed to the somatic and imaginal, deep structure, the descent into the Underworld, and the way of beauty; she tends questions that matter, praise, grief and…
Learn more about Palika Rewilding