Welcome to Tracking Yes: A Guide to Everyday Magic
Coming Home to a Soul-Centered Life with Doug Van Houten

October 01, 2021

Coming Home to a Soul-Centered Life with Doug Van Houten
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Show Notes:

My guest today is Doug Van Houten, Nature-based Soul Guide. Join us for a fascinating exploration into the ways we've lost touch with our innate, wild relationship with the natural world, and how coming back into that relationship brings us home to our deepest sense of meaning and purpose. 

Doug shares the essence of nature based spirituality, and specifically the healing and wholing work he does in his role guiding life-altering wilderness intensive retreats with Animas Valley Institute. He answers questions about:

  • how dialoguing with nature can help us navigate our planetary crisis
  • healing the pathological adolescence of our culture
  • embodying wholeness: reclaiming our archetypal aspects of self
  • the essential role of elders in re-establishing healthy earth societies
  • vision fasting: the practice, purpose and power of soul encounter
  • Bill Plotkin’s model of The Nature Based Map of the Psyche


Links mentioned in today’s show:
Doug Van Houten website
Animas Valley Institute (and Bill Plotkin)
The Chalice and the Blade - Riane Eisler
Nature and the Human Soul - Bill Plotkin (Soul Centeric Development Wheel)
Trusting the Disruptive Energy of Change: Part 3

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The story that launched the ethos:

Doug Van HoutenProfile Photo

Doug Van Houten

Nature-based Soul Guide

Doug Van Houten draws on the wisdom of the natural world, depth-psychology, eco-psychology, dreams, somatic knowing, poetry, and many pan-cultural, soul furthering practices that include: The Way of Council, vision fasting, shadow work, symbolic artwork, trance dancing and conversations with the more than human world.

Doug’s true calling in life is to support others as they uncover their own unique gifts and in so doing, transform their lives in service to what Thomas Berry called ”The Great Work” of our times.

Doug is also an ardent beekeeper, a visual artist, a wily wanderer, a dream tracker, an emergent ceremonialist, a heart-centered activist, and a yoga instructor interested in new forms of somatic practice.