Nature and Soul Council

Next Council - 30 January 2025 

Noordhoek, Cape Town

We offer a quarterly ‘Nature and Soul Council’, as a way for our community to remain connected and engaged with Soulcraft practices. Each gathering has a different host, a particular theme and comes with an invitation to wander prior to the meeting.

Timings: 5.30pm - 7.30pm
Cost: Suggested donation - R100.  However, the invitation is to donate within your budget and to attend regardless of whether you donate or not!

These offerings are open to those who have attended an Animas Valley Institute or SoulNature immersion programme in South Africa (in person or online).

We will issue an invitation to the Soulcraft Africa community via email prior to each meeting. You will then be able to RSVP. You will receive details including a theme for the meeting and an invitation to wander.

23 - 30 April 2025

near Plettenburg Bay

with Brian Stafford MD MPH and Rachael Duffy 

This is both foundational and adventurous. Remember, life is a wild adventure. and this program is a great starter to rewild one’s life. Many, if not most of us humans, have been domesticated and indoctrinated by homes, schools, churches, and offices – we’ve lost our wildness. We have forgotten that our primary place of belonging is the Earth community. This program is a step back into wildness, a pilgrimage into wild places, and an awakening from our anthropo-centric slumber.

We will venture into wildish places leaving our previous identities behind. We will engage in conversation with each other, but in a sacred circle. We will engage in conversation with the wild ones (dragonfly, raven, river, giraffe) whose ecosystem we are stepping into. We will engage in conversation with long-forgotten aspects of ourselves – our muse, our wild self, and our innocent child. We will converse with the sun, the moon, the stars, the rain, and the ancestors.

Various practices that open us up to our senses, our wild connection with Earth, and the imagination, will help us re-enter the magic of our lives. We will engage in Wild Mind, Eco-Awakening, and Soulcraft practices, such as council, talking across the species boundaries, deep imagery, eco-poetry, dance and other embodied movement, and soulcentric dreamwork.

The culmination of this journey is a 24-36 hour wilderness solo where you might be welcomed homed by Earth, heal your rift from the wild, and propel you into the joy of what it is to discover the sacredness of the Earth and the Self, and the grief of what is happening to Earth, her species, and our people.

The guides will help you track patterns of awakening and protection, from your dreams and wild conversations. They will offer you group and uniquely crafted invitations for your solo. A particular self-designed ceremony on the solo will likely deepen your connection with Earth and awaken you to the sacredness of everything.

When you return from this wild awakening, you won’t likely desire to go back to the old Self. You might feel the urgency of the times. You might know that, as the poet Mary Oliver says, “It was late enough.”

This intensive is designed for those called to rewild their Self and the world, for the ones who are curious about what the Earth really is, and about who they really are. It is also a great step into the wild and for those who have spent little time in nature, a great precursor to most of our deeper programs and the Animas Quest.

This is an all-camping programme and participants must bring their own camping gear.

Participants bring their own breakfasts and lunches and evening meals are shared in cook teams.

Early-bird: Bookings by 03 February

SA and SADC residents:  R9,750

Others: R15,250

Price: 

SA and SADC residents:  R11,250

Others: R16,750

Please enquire about bursaries available to BIPOC individuals

1 - 5 May 2025

Bodhi Khaya Nature Retreat

with Brian Stafford MD MPH

Animas Valley Institute’s 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 community. 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!

Early-bird: Bookings by 3 February

SA and SADC residents:  

Camping: R9250

Shared accommodation:: R9500

Single accommodation: R11,000

Internationals: 

Camping: R13,500

Shared accommodation:: R14,250

Single accommodation: R15,750

Full Price: 

SA and SADC residents:  

Camping: R10250

Shared accommodation:: R11,000

Single accommodation: R12,500

Internationals: 

Camping: R15,000

Shared accommodation:: R15,750

Single accommodation: R17,250

Please enquire about bursaries available to BIPOC individuals

8 - 12 October 2025

with Brian Stafford MD MPH

An advanced programme for those who have attended an Animas Valley Insitute or SoulNature programme before and who are immersed in their soul journey. 

 We’ll deepen what we discover in the imaginal world by grounding it in the body through somatic exercises and movement, and expressing it creatively through various art forms in order to fully take in and honour the gifts we receive.

Early-bird: Bookings by 13 August

SA and SADC residents:  R9,250

Others: R13.500

Full Price: 

SA and SADC residents:  R10,750

Others: R15,000

Please enquire about bursaries available to BIPOC individuals