In development - leave a comment below for the type of course you would like to see … Or if you want to run a course, consistent with the philosophy of Imaginal, please let me know.
Imaginal will run transformative courses with leading nature visionaries and elders from both Australia and overseas. Our courses will be both foundational and experiential, and based in nature.
As an example of the type of courses that will be run, I have listed a few courses I have found from around other places, and some of my own.
Becoming Local to Place
This course explores what it means to reinvigorate our connection to place, the local modality of the earth, no matter where you live, city or country, wild or urban. While most aspects of “saving nature” focus on iconic and picturesque places, this course explores finding nature where you are living right now. We explore how your “place” can sustain your life, and how to belong to it. The modern world is addicted to mobility, and instransience, and we discover how we find our home by being in place, without the need for constant travel.
Art in Place - Linking art to ecology - idea from Schumacher College
Nature has always inspired artists, and art offers a medium for a deeper environmental connection. This course will offer an opportunity to explore the relationship between humans and the natural world. Course participants will investigate the union between art and ecology using a variety of techniques, natural materials and sources of inspiration.
A Psyche the Size of Earth: Cultivating a Planetary Imagination - - idea from Animas Institute
What if Earth is trying to seduce us for her own purposes, much the same way the nectar lust of bees serves the desires of flowers? Is the bee aware of its own role in the inter-species seduction? Are human beings aware of ourselves as elements of the dreams, imagination, and evolving story of a planet-sized organism?
A Psyche the Size of Earth: Cultivating a Planetary Imagination in a 5-day immersion in the wildland, creatures, and wild psyche — our own, and the psyche (or soul) of the world. This immersion is designed to facilitate a more sensory and sensual relationship with our own bodies and with the body of the organism we inhabit, to encourage awareness of and closer companionship with our fellow creatures, to open the individual consciousness to the voices of the sentient, wild Earth, and to encourage a more conscious collaboration between the human imagination and the animate planet.
Re-envisioning ourselves as interconnected with nature in the biggest sense — as unique, imaginative, creative expressions of the larger body called Earth — is an opportunity to address not only individual alienation and longing, but also the emergent crises and possibilities for the human presence in a planetary ecosphere in a fragile time.
This immersion is appropriate for artists and writers, wilderness-initiation guides, environmental activists, psychotherapists, educators, and health professionals as well as for those who wish to expand their own discovery of wild-self-and-world, as well as for those who seek training in soul-and-nature-oriented skills that can be employed in guiding and teaching.
Animate Earth - idea from Schumacher College
In this course, a scientist and an archetypal psychologist look at how the latest scientific information about our self-regulating Earth can inspire new metaphors and stories that can foster a more reciprocal relationship with our living planet.
Many traditional cultures, including the pre-scientific West, saw the cosmos as animate, alive and sentient, as full of soul. In today’s world this sounds implausible, but what does it mean, critically and specifically, to approach a world ensouled? The course begins by showing how the stories we live by define our relationship to the world around us.
The question is: to what extent an ‘animate Earth’ perspective can be used to reinterpret the scientific findings that have come out of James Lovelock’s Gaia theory. Through this melding of archetypal psychology and Gaian science, participants will have the opportunity to become aware of the contemporary metaphors that hold us in their grip.
Indigenous Peoples & the Natural World: - idea from Schumacher College
This course will explore the relevance of the wisdom embodied by indigenous peoples all over the world. Course tutors will discuss the assaults being inflicted by globalisation upon indigenous peoples and their implications for planetary well-being, including:
> exploring, sharing and experiencing the power of ancient tribal wisdom for transforming our modern world
> exploring the ways and means to resist the onslaught of globalisation, which is destroying the wisdom of indigenous peoples and their world view.
The World Behind the World: Myth & Imagination in Troubled Times - idea from Institute for Imaginal Studies
The world behind the world refers to the roots of imagination that give rise to the real world, to the deep resources hidden in the human soul, and to the spirit that imbues the green garment of Great Nature with fervent life. This workshop offers mythic tales and perspectives which weave together the psychological with the mythological, the visible with the invisible, and the immediate with the ancient.
Shadowed Wonder: Wild Language and the Ecology of Perception - idea from Institute for Imaginal Studies
The intensifying ecological crisis may usefully be considered a crisis of perception; many persons — indeed whole cultures — seem to have lost their ability to actually see surrounding nature with any clarity, or to hear as meaningful anything other than a human voice. This blindness and deafness have lodged themselves in ways of speaking that continually deny the expressive vitality of other animals, of oak trees and rushing rivers, and indeed of the living land itself. We will explore the fluid, participatory nature of perception, and the ancient reciprocity between our senses and the sensuous earth. Weaving storytelling and poetics with insights from diverse indigenous, place-based cultures, we will ponder the ecological dimensions of language —the power possessed by our words to either enhance, or to stifle, the solidarity between the human animal and the elemental, animate earth.
Earth as Teacher, Earth as Healer - idea from Starhawk
The Earth herself is our greatest teacher and healer, whether we want to heal and transform our personal hurts, or heal the huge wounds our society inflicts on the Earth and other human beings.
The ancient Goddess traditions had no sacred texts or dogmas: instead, their mystics learned to read the book of nature. Understanding how the Earth’s cycles work, how change occurs in nature, and how Mother Earth designs co-evolving, interdependent systems can help us be better designers of the changes we want to see in our own lives and the world.
No matter what the outcome of current political debates, the work of healing will continue for our lifetimes, and our connection to Earth is our deepest source of hope, renewal, and strength.
This workshop, drawing on Starhawk’s latest book Earth Path, weaves together ritual, guided journeys, games, and stories to help us connect more deeply with the great transformative powers of nature, and to bring those creative energies fully alive in our lives, homes, and communities so that we can also bring healing, justice, and balance into the world.