Soulcentric Dreamwork Training - May, 2026
With Bill Plotkin, Ph.D. and Nate Bacon, M.A.
May 4 - 8, 2026
An application is required for this training. Please apply!
This training program is open to those with a background in soul work and lots of previous experience doing their own dreamwork, as well as experienced dreamwork facilitators. Ideally, you will already have participated in an Animas Dreamwork Intensive. For those primarily seeking guidance in working on your own dreams, please join us for our Soulcentric Dreamwork Intensive, earlier in June, 2022.
There are many methods of working with dreams. Soulcentric Dreamwork holds the view that the soul wants to initiate us into our soul path by familiarizing the ego with the nightworld or underworld. Other forms of dreamwork might attempt to import some images from the nightworld of soul into the dayworld of personality — to support the ego’s healing, therapy, self-understanding, or entertainment. But in Soulcentric Dreamwork, we commit ourselves to an extended stay in the soul’s mysterious domain, permitting the dream to do its formidable work on us rather than the more common approach of doing our work on the dream. For further information about soulcentric dreamwork, please see Bill Plotkin’s book Soulcraft, chapter 7.
During this training, we apprentice ourselves to the mystery held within dreams. With a variety of modalities — including direct dialogue with the dream itself, expressive arts and movement, deep imagery, and wandering on the land with (and in) our dreams — we will seek the “underdream” that lies beneath the everyday conscious self.
We’ll employ lecture, discussion, experiential demonstrations, and — most importantly — lots of supervised dyadic and small-group practice in dreamwork guiding.
We’ll explore several themes and principles including: guidelines for individual and group dreamwork, soulcentric attitude, intuitive abilities, understanding archetypal themes and dream characters, working with sub-personalities, subjective (Jungian), archetypal (Hillmanian), and other approaches, identifying specific middleworld work to be done in preparation for underworld journeys, incorporating dream symbols in the design of ceremonies, designing soul tasks from dreams, employing the windows of imagination and feeling, identifying Sacred Wound themes, use of poetry in dreamwork, and expressive arts in dreamwork.
TEMPLE OF THE HOLY EARTH
We will be camped in northcentral Washington on private land at an altitude of 1700 feet beside a wild river in a deep canyon in the foothills of the North Cascade Mountains. With the help of dedicated human beings, salmon are returning to this river. In June, it’s likely themock orange will be blossoming and wafting their seductive scent. Perhaps osprey will startle us as they dive for fish in the surging river. Or maybe we’ll hear the spellbinding song of the olive-backed thrush. We’ll wander through the riparian zone of aspens, cottonwoods, fir, and ponderosas, and up through whimsical rock formations to seasonal ponds on the dry shrub-steppe south-facing slopes of the canyon. We’ll be in the company of bald and golden eagles, black bears, salmon, and deer, and many others not often seen but known to be in the neighborhood, including mountain lions, wolves, and moose.
About the Guides
Bill Plotkin, Ph.D.
Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., is a depth psychologist, wilderness guide, and agent of cultural evolution. As founder of western Colorado’s Animas Valley Institute in 1981, he has guided thousands of women and men through nature-based initiatory passages, including a contemporary, Western adaptation of the pan-cultural vision fast. Previously, he has been a research psychologist (studying non-ordinary […]
Learn more about Bill Plotkin, Ph.D.
Nate Bacon, M.A.
Nate Bacon lives with his family on the east flank of the North Cascades, where he delights in his great fortune of being able to raise his children on the banks of a cold mountain river. A cultural ecologist, wilderness guide, and writer, his work concerns the intertwined nature of perception, language, worldview, and identity. […]
Learn more about Nate Bacon, M.A.Categories : Immersions, Trainings