We study Life and connection.
“Your life is not your body, your mind, your health or your identity. Your life is energy that moves through all of these things beautifully creating and undoing them with perfect timing.
Holding this perspective shifts everything.”
- Jeanne Denney
What is SoULL?
SoULL is a school for personal transformation and professional development for adults. We teach natural wisdom, somatic awareness with a whole human life perspective. We do this in small, highly experiential programs lasting from 3 hours to 3 years. SoULL is a vibrant community where the curious, the wisdom keepers, the creatives and the helping professionals take their life and work to a new level of depth, supporting and inspiring each other in the process. SoULL programs are offered in person in Wisconsin and online, but they also pop up in other locations around the world.
“SoULL offers a bridge that heals social dissonance and connects things that feel disconnected, like life and death, or youth and age. It does this through compassion, higher consciousness and the wisdom of the natural world.
The by-product of this education is increased vitality, empowerment, deeper relational connection and a sense of belongingness. You become aware that life is a force. It has a rhythm.”
- Andrea Pollak
Why do this study?
It will help you make sense of your life and feel more alive. Your body will know that you did it and say thank you. If you wish to guide others it will train you. If you are a professional it will deepen your presence and understanding of your clients’ human journey and yours.
Why does this study have such a profound effect? We live in much greater separation from nature in our time than any other time in human history. We seldom recognize ourselves as being actually a part of it. We fear change and death to extraordinary degrees, while we resist the natural changes of our bodies, psyches and relationships. This causes us profound distress. Meanwhile, as professionals, we may struggle with our own mortality fears and lack training in how to be fully present with the life changes in the people we help.
SoULL is a remedy for this distress. It powerfully changes student’s outlooks on their own life and how professionals approach their work. In this time, as never before, we need to reconnect to this awareness, and approach human problems with the wisdom of our true nature.
Soull is a United States Association for Body Psychotherapy(USABP) approved program
Where this work came from.
The Story of SoULL as told by Jeanne Denney, Founding Director
First, welcome to SoULL! I am glad you are called to be here, curious about what we are doing. I am happy to tell you a little bit about how this work emerged. Curiosity is where it started, and calling, and a little courage too.
In truth, SoULL teaching is every human being’s birthright. Every indigenous culture I know of teaches some version of this material. It is timeless. Anyone can learn it. But SoULL has its own unique history. Its primary roots are in western thinking: human development and somatic psychotherapy (both Neo-Reichian and Mindfulness approaches). It was also heavily influenced by my experiences in birth work, hospice and death work, transpersonal psychology and the experience of parenting four children. These streams merged into one, mainly because I was doing all of these things intensively and at once during a singular period of my life, just after I left a career in bridge engineering… Continue Reading
Our Mission:
To revitalize humanity through holistic education that aims to end human suffering and confusion about life and mortality.
We do this by:
Teaching embodied wisdom and empowering students to embrace a life that includes death.
Training helping professionals in somatic awareness and whole life perspective.
Advancing somatic theory and practice.
Maintaining a vibrant learning community that works with nature to support the life, work and innovations of students, staff and teachers.
SoULL is a 501c3 Non-profit Organization.
Contributions are tax-deductible and greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
“The strange by-product of deep, supported learning about death is both love and true vitality. Our scientific theories cannot explain this. It turns them upside down.” - Jeanne Denney
In conversation:
Jeanne Denney and Liz Carl “What is soull"?”
“It is important to recognize the patterns life makes as it courses through physical life forms. We have to back up to see not just the the trees, or the forest, but the wind moving through the forest which takes us back and forth from birth to death. It has a rhythm and pattern that can be trusted. Everyone can learn to see it.”
- Jeanne Denney
Founder, Jeanne Denney is a transpersonal and somatic psychotherapist, educator, hospice worker, healer, and author of The Effects of Compassionate Presence on the Dying. She works in many venues to help people fearlessly embrace a life which includes aging and dying. Jeanne has spent years at bedsides, contributed pioneering ideas to somatic psychology, death and grief work, and been deeply involved with creating the Art of Dying projects in New York City. Her insights on energy and the body through aging, illness, and dying are derived from a wide lens of human experience and deep understanding of our mortal journey.
Visit www.jeannedenney.com for more on Jeanne's work.
