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ReWild

A Foundation Course
for Being Human

SoulCraft Retreat
19th-25th June Solstice 2025
Cultivating the West Facet of Wholeness

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

​​ThThis programme will take place at the Wangapeka Study and Retreat Centre, nestled in the foothills of the Kahurangi National Park, near Nelson AotearoaNZ

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ABOUT THE WILD WEST DIRECTION

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 plac where one can apprentice to the emergence of their mytho-poetic identity

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

The home of 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 and come find out more about this retreat programme  
 

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 potentials to others, we think a certain kind of person is above us, more skilled than us. "I could never be that..."

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 recieve.
 

Imagination

Our capcity for imagination has been suppressed, yet it is the essential capcity 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 power tool for creativty, empowerment and be an artist of and for life. 
 

Mytho-Poetic Identity

Bill Plotkin is very clear that Soul Encounter is a rare event. Most people over estimate where there are at in the developmental wheel. Your mytho-poetic identity is about gathering the threads 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 the 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 preperation, 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 between 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. 
 

Why Rewild?

Elements of the Four Trainings of Rewild

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North - Courting the Wild Natural One within.

Connect with your innate wildness through nature; explore the healthy expression of feelings bringing healing to the wounded child; exploring life force, instinct and intimate relating to self, other and our world.

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West - Foundations to Encounter Soul. 

Soul as  muse, dark mystery, guide to the underworld. The possibility to earn our name, find our soul gift for the world. In a Dark Time the eye begins to see… Dream work, myth work, Shadow work. Laying foundations for Vision quest wilderness solo.

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South - Growing the capacities of the inner generative, nurturing inner adult. Develop capacities for self care, self regulation. How to live with awareness, apprentice to the art of maturing the ego to be in service to human soul. Able to create from the tensions of the polarities.

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East - Sacred fool and the harvest of pure presence. 

Learning to rest in non dual awareness of being, matched with the capacitors of the sacred fool, trickster, the one able to speak truth to power, able to pivot, to turn difficulties into opportunities. 

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The 4 retreats are aimed to help humans of all ages develop a embodied sense of belonging to this living earth, to touch, taste, glimpse the mystery behind all appearances that may speak to them of their unique gift for the human and more than human community. While the retreats are aimed to support young adults aged 20-40 I am inviting people of all ages because every life stage brings a gift, it takes a village to grow a child psychology into an adult one. This is a vision of a learning village where each life stage supports each other. The aspiration is to facilitate the foundations of Wholeness as described in Bill Plotkins helpful book, Wild Mind.

THE TEAM

Vision

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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. 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, purpose for the generations to come. He supports humans to awaken their ecological self, the innate sense of belonging to the natural world. Jaime has a Masters in Education, is a wild poet, a mean blues guitarist with a few fingers that can make it sing. Together they bring the right kind of trouble to the world waking up. 

Jaime Howell

Facilitators and Support

Elders

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Bill McEwan

I’m a 79 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.

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Lois Mead-McEwan

I’m a 72 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

 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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. 

  

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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.

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​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.

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