Wild Mind Mirror Training – November 15-19, 2025
Artwork by Doug Van Houten
A residential, face to face, fully catered training held at Raven’s Nest camping retreat centre at Venus Bay in Victoria - 2 hours south east of Melbourne.
This program is designed and primarily intended for trainees in Animas’ Wild Mind Training Program, but other guides and human development facilitators are warmly invited to apply. Current Wild Mind trainees are encouraged to participate in the Way of Council and Art of Mirroring Intensive before this training.
Maximum of 20 participants.
Program Fees - Soulcraft ANZ Inc is a not for profit, volunteer association:
Early Bird: $1,595 - several early bird places available.
Full Price: $1,795 - with a $500 minimum deposit to hold your place - (paid in full by October 15, 2025).
Concession: $1,495 - 2 concession places available.
We encourage you to pay the full price if you have the means to do so. This will enable us to cover costs and offer concessional places to those in need. If you are challenged financially, please contact us to discuss.
In the Wild Mind Mirroring Training, we practice detecting the greater story that pulses beneath the events of a person’s life. By immersing ourselves in the practice of deep listening and mirroring, we uncover the archetypal themes that might frame a per-son’s experience within the arc of their destiny.
When our story is compassionately reflected through the skilled mirroring of anoth-er, we feel fully heard and able to experience ourselves in a larger and more meaningful context; we’re enabled to catch up to ourselves and perhaps leap into the next phase of our journey of individuation. An alchemical exchange occurs between the teller and the listener, an exchange that is magical and priceless.
In this mirroring training, we’ll work with themes such as self-healing, psychospiritual death and rebirth, courting the Beloved, romancing the world, fear personas, subper-sonalities, anima and animus, the four facets of the Self, the eco-soulcentric stages of development, other-than-human allies, underworld encounters, mythic threads, and archetypal symbols and themes.
We’ll study several principles and their application, including how mirroring is different from projection, transference, and interpretation; how analyzing is different from loving; how to recognize the gestalt of people’s life stories; pattern recognition; framing; and amplifying the storyteller’s feelings.
We’ll witness how the art of mirroring catalyzes each person into the depth of their unique way of belonging to the world. Trainees will practice deep listening to self, others, and the group field and, by the end of the program, will more fully understand their gifts and potentials as a mirrorer and how to manifest those gifts in service to others.
Note: If you are not a Wild Mind Training Program member, during online registration we will ask you several questions as part of the program assessment process. Answers will be assessed on September 1, October 1 and November 1.
Venue:
Raven’s Nest retreat centre is located in beautiful Venus Bay (Bunurong & Gunai Country) on the South Eastern Victoria coast - 2 hours from Melbourne. It offers 14 acres of private & wild Eucalyptus and Tea Tree bushland, camp sites and sand dunes. Situated along the Tarwin River estuary, it has direct access to tidal beaches, an expansive inlet, with walking tracks to a national park, ocean beach and wild bush.
Your Guide:
Brian Stafford MD MPH: Brian is a guide to the wilderness of nature, wildness, and soul. Called out of academic medicine to serve as a guide to the depths and to serve as an agent of cultural awakening and transformation, he guides with humour, playfulness, fierceness, compassion, discernment, and a deep remembering of the fullness of what each human life can, should, and was meant to be.
A native of Colorado and the former holder of an endowed chair and professor of psychiatry and paediatrics, he is currently a guide, Board Member, and Training Director of the Wild Mind Training Program at Animas. He is also an adjunct faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute, as well as an expert in psychedelic preparation and integration. He is an avid outdoorsman, teacher, writer, mentor, partner, and parent. He delights in helping individuals rewild and ensoul their lives by assisting in the dissolution of their current life so that they may discover and live from their deeper life, their soul-life. Brian currently makes his home in Ojai, California.
Food and Accommodation:
The program is fully catered, providing incredible vegetarian food by chef Ashley Mariani. We will pass on any dietary restrictions advised by you at registration. If you have not already let us know of any dietary restrictions that apply to you, please forward to us as soon as possible.
Lodgings and bedding requirements:
This is an all-camping program. Participants are responsible for bringing their own personal camping equipment, and for personal transportation to and from the program. Campers will have access to showers.
