Bill Plotkin Animas Valley Institute
Personal and Cultural Transformation
About My Offerings
The primary goal and method of all Animas Valley Institute programs is the encounter with soul. Founded in 1980 by psychologist and wilderness guide Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., the Institute is one of North America's longest-standing organizations offering contemporary wilderness rites. "Animas" (pronounced Ann'-eh-muss) is plural for "souls" in Spanish. In Jungian psychology, the Anima is the Inner Woman in a man; the Animus, the Inner Man in a woman. The Anima and Animus refer to the mysterious energies within our psyches that guide us on the inward journey to soul. Animas Valley Institute is located in southwest Colorado in the valley of El Rio de las Animas Perdidas—The River of Lost Souls.
AVI programs are quite different than those offered by most other wildemess organizations, rites of passage guides, and colleges and universities. What we offer is not primarily rites of passage, wilderness-based psychotherapy or even ecotherapy. Our work is nature-based soul-initiation, whose central goal is the descent to soul for the purpose of maturing or deepening the ego, rather than healing it. Our programs are not designed to help people fix or solve problems in their current lives. Our goal is to help people transform their lives in such a way that they live and love more from their depths -- as opposed to merely being better adjusted or happier living in the surface world in which our contemporary culture specializes. Another way to say this is that our work is not primarily personal or interpersonal, although it includes some of both of those, but rather transpersonal -- in the sense of deepening into our connection with soul.
My Background
Bill Plotkin, PhD, has been a psychotherapist, research psychologist, rock musician, river runner, professor of psychology, and mountain-bike racer. As a research psychologist, he studied dreams and nonordinary states of consciousness achieved through meditation, biofeedback, and hypnosis. The founder and president of Animas Valley Institute, he has guided thousands of people through initiatory passages in nature since 1980. Currently an ecotherapist, depth psychologist, and wilderness guide, he leads a variety of experiential, nature-based individuation programs. He is the co-author with Thomas Berry of Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (New World Library 2003) and Nature and the Human Soul: Creating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World (New World Library 2008). To learn more about the work of Bill Plotkin go to www.animas.org
