The Nature of Being Human
ONLINE
“The SoULL experience revealed to me an inner rhythm that connects my soul, body, spirit with all the energy around and even beyond me. Life, breath, the pulsation of my beating heart and the blooming of a flower are one and the same force. It’s exhilarating!”
- Pilgrim SoULL Student 2020
The Nature of Being Human is Unit 1 of Pilgrim SoULL - Year 1.
We are proud to share this introductory SoULL program, which substantially improves the quality of people’s ordinary lives and expands pracitioners breadth of practice and stamina.
What do we do? In this course, students are introduced to a somatically-oriented overview of human development, and a language of human life that includes growth, aging and dying. Students learn to see spiritual, energetic and physical experience as deeply connected through the human life span and even beyond. On its own, this course helps people reorient their ideas of life and death and know themselves as part of nature, not opposed to it, which radically reduces existential anxiety. This course also offers a way for students to step into SoULL material without a full year committment.
The Nature of Being Human is taught in small classes and, like all SoULL material, is both didactic, interactive and highly experiential. However we teach it, we support students in linking insights from this class to existing theories within somatic psychology, especially mindfulness based practices and Neo-Reichian ideas. However do not think that this course is only for professionals. This material is powerful and completely accessible for people who are not therapists. It is for any curious, open-minded adult.
Students are often interested in continuing to complete Units 2 and 3 of Pilgrim SoULL after taking this course. We hope you do this, and we will accomodate as space allows in the class. However, we encourage people to commit to the full program from the start if they are able.
WHo is this for?
Therapists and other professionals who want to better support their clients through their existential anxiety
Regular folks who struggle to feel connected to their purpose
People who want to free themselves from the fear of death and dying so they can live more fully
The Nature of Being Human ONLINE
Curriculum includes 24 hours of learning about life:
8 recorded lectures - Approximately 6 hours
18 hours of unique and provocative in-class experiences, process and
discussion.
Moderated class platform discussions on Mighty Networks between
classes.
Live sessions will take place on Saturday or Sunday mornings (U.S.). Exact times and lengths will be published closer to the start of the program. Most classes will be 1.5 to 4 hour sessions depending on content.
Interested in joining us, but need to talk to someone? Book a free call with a past student so that you can understand the profound impact our programming has on people!
INFORMATION ABOUT The ONLINE PROGRAM
Until 2022 our online programs have been live, and taught in two- 3 day weekends (rather than an intensive 4 day retreat). Then we tried something different. Jeanne taped some lectures so that students can watch them during their own time during the week. Students then met online to discuss, do the experiential work for the course, and process with experienced facilitators. It worked beautifully! So we have continued to offer it again in this format. LiZhen and Nandita will be facilitating all classes, Jeanne will join some classes, and the lectures will be a mix of live and some recorded.
Why the change? This format allows students from all over the world to explore our curriculum and join in. Exact times for programs are determined after we know where students are coming from in the world.
2025 Session Dates
**Class times may be adjusted to accommodate student time zones*
Saturday March 1st Lecture 1 - Coming Out of Denial 4 hrs Discussion 1: Considering our own Life/Death Education
— Two week break — Homework: watch lectures 2 and 3
Saturday March 15th Discussion 2: Body, Breath and the Movement of Life 1.5 hrs Homework: Watch lecture 4
Saturday March 22nd Discussion 3: The Life Walk 2 hrs
— Two week break — Homework: watch lectures 5 and 6
Saturday April 12th Discussion 4: Deathbed Experiential 3 hrs Homework: Watch lecture 7
Saturday April 19th Discussion 5: Whole Life Journey Experiential 4 hrs
*Sunday April 20th Discussion 6: Questions, and Closing with Jeanne 1.5 hrs
— Two week break — No Homework
Saturday, May 3 Discussion 7: The Afterlife of the Teaching 2 hrs
*Note: if students cannot make April 20th b/c of religious holidays, we’ll find a time that works for us as a group to meet later that week.
teaching team
Jeanne Denney is a transpersonal and somatic psychotherapist, an educator, and author of The Effects of Compassionate Presence on the Dying. Jeanne has spent years at bedsides with the elderly and dying and in the chair as a somatic therapist. She has contributed pioneering ideas to both Body Psychotherapy and Death Education, teaches in somatic institutes internationally and the Art of Dying Institute, which she helped found. Jeanne is also founding director in SoULL, and has created most of its original curriculum.
LiZhen Wang (they/she) is a counselor and facilitator who draws inspiration from the Daoist-Buddhist spiritual traditions of her ancestors, as well as the wisdom of astrology and the natural world. They work with individuals, communities and organizations to help them find purpose and healing. Their own Dharma practice has supported their journey to live into the meaning of their Dharma name: 本思BěnSī, meaning “Thought Originating from True Nature.” LiZhen’s favorite things include climbing trees, singing in the ocean, and rooting for Taiwanese-American basketball player Jeremy Lin.
Nandita Batheja (she/they) is a facilitator, somatics practitioner, and artist who works across sectors, advocating for liberation and creative being. She is honored to collaborate with YES! World, Equal Justice USA and Circles International to support collective healing, conflict transformation, leadership development and finding new ways forward. Finally, led by life’s mysterious and perfect ways, Nandita found alignment, joy and purpose in training to be a whole-life-doula with the School of Unusual Life Learning. SoULL has been a great teacher in learning how to nurture the vitality and life-arc-processes within humans (including herself!), communities and the earth.
