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ReWild

A Foundation Course
for Being Human

SoulCraft Retreat
29th April - 4th May 2025
Cultivating the West Facet of Wholeness

ReWild is an experiential journey through the four facets of the Eco-centric Map to wholeness. 

​​This residential programme will take place at Treesong 
a community event space in the Motueka Valley
near Nelson Aotearoa NZ

About the West Direction

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The place where Soul muse lives (messenger/guide  between underworld and day world).

It a place for Deep Imagination, an apprenticeship to feeling the deep longing of the earth.

It a place to begin learning about Shadow work 

The place where one can apprentice to the emergence of an mytho-poetic identity.

In the West we apprentice ourselves to the cocoon/death, both personal & archetypal. 

The place of soulcentric dream work

A place where we learn to amplify the longing for Soul Encounter.

If these words do not mean much to you, yet you intuit there is something here, then read Wild Mind or Nature and the Human Soul by Bill Plotkin, or watch Bill video below.  

 

Shadow Work

Arguably the most helpful awareness tool for modern humans. This is an introduction to how we can begin to claim back the power we project onto others, usually without knowing it. Golden shadows are when we give away our potential to others. Sinister shadows can be noticed when we experience an uncomfortable feeling about another, sometimes someone we hardly know. They are demonstrating an unacknowledged and therefore unintegrated quality that is actually a part of ourselves.

Wholeness is the apprenticeship to a integrating with awareness the potent aspects of ourselves that were exiled for good reasons when we were young and life appeared unsafe. 

Courting the Muse

In the west lives the possibility of a conversation with our soul muse beloved. He/she/they are the fountain of creativity. They speak to us in images, intuitions, in poetry and dream. The strategic mind is clever, capable, a powerful tool for getting things done. But who does it serve? The muse is where our happiness and pure creativity lives. There is a sense that if we are to fall in love with the world, this is the primary relationship to foster. Like any relationship the more we give the more we receive.

Imagination

Our capacity for imagination has been suppressed, yet it is the essential capacity for re-imagining the world and our place in it. Imagination is pure genius, it is the capacity to open the doors that animate the world, to move from the isolation of feeling like the world is filled with objects to the juice of realising we are in relationship with all things, and all things are speaking. Imagination is our greatest, most powerful tool for creativity, empowerment and being an artist of and for life.

Mytho-Poetic Identity

Bill Plotkin is very clear that Soul Encounter is a rare event. Most people overestimate where they are at in the developmental wheel. Your mytho-poetic identity is about gathering the threads of an identity you were born to occupy in the world. It is not something that can be given, it is not something that can be obtained through will. It is something you can track, gather, glimpse and hold lightly. It is the source of your greatest happiness, your fullest capacity. It is not a path for everyone, yet for some it is the only path.

Laying foundations for Vision Quest

Vision quest is a process of stripping back. Typically it involves preparation, intention setting, community, elders. It involves being alone with it all in a natural setting for three or four days without food and limited shelter with the possibility of opening a larger conversation with your soul and the living world. The skills and capacities we learn in the West are essential for this work. We offer this programme as a way to build these skills.

What is this work about

What is the Great Turning

THE TEAM

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Guide Jaime Howell

Jaime is a trained Wilderness Rites of Passage guide, Work That Reconnects facilitator and experienced teacher of Open Floor movement practice. He is the founder of the Centre for the Great Turning a movement inspired by Joanna Macy, Bill Plotkin, Tarchin Hearn and many more.

Jaime is passionate to develop maps and inquiries that support the flowering of human creativity, wisdom and care for the generations of all life to come. He supports humans to awaken their ecological self, the innate sense of belonging to the natural world. Jaime has a Masters Degree in Education, he is a wild poet, a student of mythology and holds a mean blues guitar. He lives in the knowing of what it takes to live in a community aspiring to wake up. A friend to shadow, bruised and bumped with a heart still open. A recent new father and peaceful warrior to bring the right kind of trouble to a world waking up.

 

THE ELDERS

 

Bill McEwan

I’m a 80 year old retired counsellor with an academic background in Agricultural Science and Theology. I live in Blenheim with Lois. In 2015 I felt overwhelmed by an ignorance of climate awareness in Marlborough and sat in the centre of Blenheim for a week with my son Robbie and fasted. That led to the formation of Climate Karanga Marlborough. I’m giving a lot of attention to ways of being an older person in an adolescent society. I am a work in progress and treasure close listening, silence, patience, emotional warmth, tenderness where there is shame and support for the broken hearted.

Lois Mead-McEwan

I’m a 73 year old grandmother with a professional background in education and mental health. I’m passionate about the well-being of the ecosystem - in the widest sense of the word - and all that interconnects within it.

Running alongside this is a love for making collages, writing poetry and performing at open mic, creating functional household items using fibre arts, music and dance.

Family, friends, community, adventure, nature and humour also play an important role in my personal well-being.

Why the ReWild trainings?

 

(1)

We have lost touch with our Wildness and we need this more than ever. 

Our ancestral inheritance, our connection to earth has the power to show us who we really are and where we belong.

A consequence of western modern society (especially for masculinity) is the tendency to repress fundamental modes of healthy being, namely our capacity for imagination and deep play, and our ability to know and use feelings as compass for wholeness, our connection with eros and our love for the world. These capacities are how we connect to our life force, they are how we will find our way to our unique gift we are born to share with the world. This training will begin the work of reclaiming and integrating these ancient energies in service to wholeness.

(2)

More than a peak experience but the possibility of on going support with scholarships that mean you can really integrate the new understandings into your living.

 

We have spent over a decade exploring and facilitating retreats. Our work in the rites of passage has shown us that every training needs on going to support if wholesome change is to be sustained. The inertia of unwholesome habitual patterns are strong, so are the powers of media and consumerism. We seek to create soulful experiences, glimpses of insight and match them with on going support which mean that the new patterns of wholesome behaviours have a better chance to be integrated skifully into the living of our families, friends and working life, especially for young adults.

(3)

 

Every life stage has a gift and a responsibility, and there are not so many places that will teach you about these.

Every life stage has a gift, an archetypal inheritance that if tapped will bring energy and resources. Every life stage also has some essential development tasks, when a person tends to these the result is psychological maturity, or put another way, there is a sense of joy and fulfilment, like you are in the flow and aligned with your path of purpose.  You will not read about these in our schools, universities and businesses. These are the development tasks that will lead you all the way towards and into  Soul Initiation, this is the possibility of finding and offering your unique gift for the world. 

  

(4)

What is a True Adult?

True Adults know what is wholesome and what is not, and they have self assuredness. They know something of their shadows, enough to live with responsible awareness. They also know their gifts and they offer them. Most of all they stand firm yet flowing, in the birthright of their belonging to and in service of Earth. Our experience is that these kind of people have a twinkle in their eye, and a nose for the right kind of trouble. They also know how to relax and be at ease.

The people at Animas Valley have developed a map to this and we are bringing this to life in Aotearoa New Zealand, at a third of the cost and with an appreciation and dedication to respect the people and the perspectives of the people indigenous to this land.

(5)

​REWild is

Intergenerational communities supporting each other to develop maps, pathways and initiations that lead to a meaningful, resilient, wholesome life.

Less gurus, less isolated therapy on mass, less indulgent fragmented life styles that rob future generations of life resource and more thriving communities where we cooperate to raise inspired and empowered future generations.

CENTRE FOR THE GREAT TURNING

Resourcing Communities for the Great Turning

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CONTACT

Aoteroa/New Zealand

jaimeopeningminds@gmail.com

02102644351

© 2019 by Immeasurable

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