“A True Initiation never ends.”

- Robert Anston

Pilgrim SoULL

LEVEL 1

This level of study gives students an overview of the deep, energetic patterns that exist within the mind, body and spirit of human beings. We could call this our common human “Life Language”. Level 1 (sometimes called “Year 1”), presents radical insights on individual human life, relationships, community, and the deep, intrinsic connection between them.

In its essence, Pilgrim SoULL is a kind of initiation, as we learn about and actually experience how birth, death (and all that comes before and after) live not in the past or future, but in our bodies every moment of our lives. These understandings have subtle, but positive affects on students’ minds and bodies that continue long after the course is over.

“I’ve been awakened to an energy that has no language but has more “life” than I’ve ever known possible. I am more alive than I’ve ever been and more curious than I could imagine. I feel connected to every sound, every smell, every texture every expression I see in another’s eyes…. it feels as natural as breathing.”

- Kim, NICU Nurse

How is it Organized?

Level 1 is a 3 unit, 120 hour program that meets from spring to fall in 3 residential modules (4 days each), with online discussion groups and home study between.

Below is a description of the three residential weekends of Pilgrim SoULL.

"This life force awareness...feels like an old knowing. It is like it is something I am wired to know, but the switches to it were turned off. This work has turned those switches back on...."

Wendy - Chinese Medicine Practitioner

Why do it? 

• This program will teach you how to be more deeply alive while radically reducing your existential anxiety.

• Group learning will deeply support your personal growth and professional practice.

• You will joyfully expand your service into stages of life that may be unfamiliar to you and see greater continuity in life processes.

• You will deepen your intuition about all stages of life.

• You will expand your clients ability to find peace within a culture of epidemic existential anxiety.

• You will learn to become fascinated with aging and even dying rather than arrested by fear and discomfort. You will help others do the same. 

STRUCTURE OF Pilgrim soull

Unit 1 - The Nature of Being Human

In Unit 1 Jeanne will introduce a language of human life, integrating the processes of aging and dying into an overview of human development. Through didactic teaching, experiential learning and discussion, students will learn to see spiritual, energetic and somatic experience as deeply, inevitably connected, and discover the continuity of life within the body and psyche. They will learn to recognize patterns within this movement, which include the Vertical Pulse, the Allometric Wave, the Circular Pulse and the Radial Pulse. Students will link these insights to existing developmental theories within somatic psychology, especially Neo-Reichian theories.

You may take Unit 1 without committing to the full program (as space allows.) Click “Nature of Being Human” to the left.

Unit 2 - The Nature of Relationships

We know that relationships are essential for human survival, but what are they? In this unit we take up this question, seeing relationships as living energetic systems that grow, breathe and change just as our bodies do. We examine how they develop, get ill, heal, inevitably end and also live forever. We recognize that there are patterns in relationships we can learn. The inevitable experience of grief will be explored, as well as attachment, breakups, and the components of good and bad endings. In this weekend, we study the Horizontal Pulse, the Vertical Pulse, patterns of natural life movement within a relationship. In sum, we will be studying the energetics of human relationship and how they effect our nervous systems and bodies.

Unit 1 is a prerequisite

Unit 3 - The Nature of Community

In the final unit of Pilgrim SoULL, students put learning about individuals and relationships together to explore larger systems of energy: families, groups and communities.

We look at leadership in different forms of groups, group identity, belongingness, conflict, individual roles within groups and ultimately the role of communities in understanding our life purpose. We also look at how communities impact our personal development and the elements of the wise and sustainable communities we all need.

Application and interview is required for admittance to full program.

For more information, email us @

soullcommunity@gmail.com

“Pilgrim SoULL has been a profound learning and life experience for me. It begins before the first gathering, and it continues far after the last. The course may span five months, but its teachings are like rich soil—the growth that emerges is quite endless.”

- Nandita - Group facilitator, Dancer, Activist

" Nothing is still any more. I see that everything is moving.”

-SoULL Student

“My SoULL experience completely changed my life. Before SoULL I thought that to truly be “alive” meant to deny death. How wrong I was. My life has blossomed by honoring the rhythms and flow of the life journey here on earth through a connection to nature and relationships. I can now see, feel and know from a deeper place…”

-Ami Isett - Therapist, Dancer and Movement Teacher

Distance Learning Between and after Modules:

The weekends of teaching and experiential work open a door into a new way for students to see themselves and others.  The work of really integrating the ideas into lives, bodies and practices takes place between the modules and after. The curriculum supports this entire process. Students are strongly urged to participate in distance learning.  This work is required for a certificate. Here is how it works.

Online Platform: Between classes, students connect on a student platform (Mighty Networks) to share and comment on each other’s ideas while staying connected through the course.

Online Zoom Discussions provide a way for students to share of their experiences and be supported in their personal process.  These occur approximately every 2-3 weeks.  Facilitators generally offer questions for group discussion and sometimes offers new material in these meetings. Students may also be asked to read or view something before discussion.

Home Study, Inner Work  Suggested assignments are offered to help students move deeper into the material and see it from other perspectives.  This is particularly relevant to the Winter Integration period for certificate students.