Wild Mind Deep Imagination Training – July 2024, Canada

Participants in the Wild Mind Training Program, who have taken Deep Imagination, are free to register (please contact [email protected]). We welcome others who are interested to apply.

This training program is open to you if you have a solid foundation of experience in soul work and in accessing your own deep imagery. Ideally, you will already have participated in a Deep Imagination Intensive. An application is required.

This training is designed for people who work — or plan to work — as facilitators of deep imagery. If, in contrast, you are primarily seeking guidance in developing your personal relationship with deep imagery, please enroll in our Deep Imagination Intensive.

During the Deep Imagination Training, we will apprentice ourselves to the mystery and wild otherness of images that arise from the unconscious. Depth psychologists say that the substance of soul is image, and that deep imagery (imagery that comes to us unbidden from the unconscious, from our core human nature) is one of the most direct and potent means for accessing soul. On imagery journeys, we meet inner guides who possess the wisdom and capacities to assist us on the descent to soul.

Employing a variety of modalities — including interactive dialogue with our imagery, expressive arts and movement, and wandering on the land with our imaginal guides and in our imagery — we will attune to our sensorial-feeling-intuitive-embodied selves and the imaginal world.

This is a highly experiential training. We’ll utilize lecture, discussion, demonstration, and lots of supervised practice guiding individual and small-group deep imagery journeys (including opportunities to debrief and receive feedback on your work). You will guide and be guided in deep imagery processes, recognizing that experiences with your own deep imaginations and imaginal inner guides prepare you to more artfully guide others to access theirs. You’ll meet and/or deepen relationships with your imaginal inner guides who represent your primary resources for your unique way of facilitating deep imagery work, as well as underworld work, more generally.

We’ll explore several themes and principles, including:

• Guidelines for facilitating individual and group deep-imagery work

• Cultivating your soulcentric guiding attitude, including respect for the autonomous otherness of imaginal guides and entities

• Deep imagery as distinct from “guided imagery”

• Discovering your unique style of guiding

• Deep imagery as a tool for designing self-generated ceremonies and individual soul tasks

• Employing the windows of imagination and feeling

• Deep imagery as a method of soulcentric dreamwork, sacred wound work, and supporting the three phases of the underworld journey (descent, liminality, return)

• Expressive arts: embodiment and movement practices to evoke and deepen your relationship with the deeply imaginal.

CEDAR SONG CENTRE FOR WILD BELONGING, VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Cedar Song Centre for Wild Belonging is a beautiful 54 acres property nestled in provincial parks, 30 minutes north of downtown Victoria, the ferry and the airport. It was founded by two women deeply steeped in wilderness soulcentric work, Stéphanie Marchal and Alaina Hallett, whose dream was to create a protected space for deep nature connection for the community. It hosts a wilderness school and land-based retreats and is home to mossy forests of arbutus, cedar, maples, firs, a great diversity of birds and mammals, and a seasonal creek that flows into a pristine lake across the road.