WILD MIND INTENSIVE
September 19 -23, 2025
Spirit Hollow and the Animas Valley Institute
Guides: Sara McFarland and Rebecca Wildbear
Register through AVI, with the link below.
September 19 -23, 2025
Spirit Hollow and the Animas Valley Institute
Guides: Sara McFarland and Rebecca Wildbear
Register through AVI, with the link below.
September 19 -23, 2025
Spirit Hollow and the Animas Valley Institute
Guides: Sara McFarland and Rebecca Wildbear
Register through AVI, with the link below.
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.
Participants are also responsible for their own transportation to and from the program location.
Start/End Time: 1 pm / 1 pm
Register
Participants are responsible for bringing personal breakfasts and lunches – all dinners are provided by Spirit Hollow. Participants are responsible for their own transportation to and from the program location.
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 are responsible for bringing their own breakfasts, lunches, and snacks. Dinners will be provided..
Sara McFarland
Sara (she/they) is a healer of the Golden Web of Life, an Edgewalker singing the Frequencies of Soul, a ritualist in reciprocal relationship with the Holy in the Wild. As an improvisational singer, SoulStoryteller, and guide, she creates Fire Silk and Dreams Earth’s Web, in order to weave paths of golden threads into the underworld and between the worlds for others to follow. She tracks the Life – Death – Life energy of transformation and serves as a Death Doula to that which is dying- both in the personal as well as the collective. She is a Queer, both/and creature, welcoming of the exquisite multiplicity of Life beyond the Binary. Her capacity as a Gatekeeper allows her to presence the many manifestations of life (seen and unseen) blossoming beyond a human-centric perspective. She is a traveler with, a friend along the path – her work is both trauma-informed and compassionate, in service to healing personal and civilization trauma. She is also unafraid to be fierce, lovingly cutting to the heart of the matter – in service to ending the current Paradigm of Life-destroying-ways, as well as the dying that presages the renewal of Soul Initiation. Mystery, the Cailleach and the Dream guide her Muse to live a Soul-led life.
Rebecca Wildbear
Rebecca is the author of Wild Yoga: A Practice of Initiation, Veneration & Advocacy for the Earth and has offered Wild Yoga™ programs since 2007. She guides people to listen to the mysteries within nature and their bodies and dreams so they can belong to and serve the Earth community. She has been a wilderness and soul guide for decades and has spent most of her adult life in wild places. Rebecca has extensive somatic therapy and dreamwork training and loves to tune in to the mythic stories of humans and the animate world. An Earth lover, activist, feminist, and writer, she fiercely supports radical social and cultural change. Rebecca often guides alongside her canine muse-beloved, Xander, who is guide to love, joy, presence, and play.