“A True Initiation never ends.”
- Robert Anston
The Nature of Relationships & Community
2026 Yearlong program
This year of study, in tandem with The Nature of Being Human, forms SoULL’s cornerstone program. It offers students an overview of the deep, energetic patterns that exist within the mind, body and spirit of human beings. The curriculum presents radical insights on individual human life, relationships, and community — and the deep, intrinsic connection between them.
In its essence, this program is a kind of initiation, as we learn about and actually experience how birth, death (and all that comes before and after) live in our bodies, in our relationships, and in our capacity for belonging. These understandings have subtle, but radical, effects on students’ minds and bodies that continue long after the course is over.
This program is available to anyone who has completed The Nature of Being Human.
Apply by January 21. To reserve your spot, please pay a $500 deposit by January 28.
““This life force awareness […] feels like an old knowing. It’s like something I am wired to know, but the switches were turned off. This work has turned those switches back on...”
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What We Study
The Nature of Being Human
TNBH is a prerequisite for applying to this yearlong program. In that first unit, you studied the natural pulsations of life: from birth to death and everything in between. We learned to recognize the interconnectedness of spiritual, energetic, and somatic experience — and ultimately, to see the continuity of life.
The Nature of Relationships
Next, we bring our learnings to our 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. Through our 6 weeks of study, we examine the natural patterns of life moving through a relationship. In sum, we will be studying the energetics of human relationship and how they affect our nervous systems and bodies.
The Nature of Community
In this final unit, students put learning about individuals and relationships together to explore larger systems of energy: families, groups, communities, and social systems. We look at belongingness and group identity, conflict and continuity, the role of the outsider and the role of all individuals in groups. This study helps us understand the role community plays in understanding our life purpose. Through real, embodied exercises, we investigate leadership, various group formations, and what they make possible. Finally, we reflect on how we can enact the elements of the wise and sustainable communities we all need.
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This is a 120-hour program with an online unit in the spring (The Nature of Relationships) and an in-person residential unit in the fall (The Nature of Community). While we are excited to increase accessibility by bringing this course online, we are still figuring out how to best pace the timing of classes for the online unit.
The Nature of Relationships (online):
Class meetings are composed of teaching, experientials, discussion, and ritual. We find that ritual time takes its own shape; it can expand, contract, bend, and multiply. For this reason, we want to reserve sufficient time for the rituals and process to work on us. But rest assured, we will take spacious breaks (30-60 minutes) during classes. We also may not need all of the allotted time. We will have a better sense of what’s needed after the first couple of classes and can update the schedule rhen. Thank you for your patience! Please don’t hesitate to share other access needs with us in the application as well.
The Nature of Community (in person):
Our plan is to gather in person for this final unit at a retreat center in Santa Cruz, CA. However, if it would be prohibitive for several people to meet in person, we could alternatively move online with weekly meetings in October and November. If you are unable to meet in person, please make that clear on the application.
Online Discussions:
Leading up to and in between the units, we hold online discussions every 3-4 weeks. These provide students a space to share, be supported in their personal process, and support one another in their journeys. Please plan to attend all of these — your presence really does make a difference for the group — as well as participate in the following:
Home Study, Inner Work: Suggested assignments are offered to help students move deeper into the material and see it from other perspectives.
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.
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This yearlong program meets from March through October.
As mentioned under Program Structure, the amount of time per class is still being determined. We want to reserve sufficient time for the rituals and process to work on us, but in balance with how much is sustainable for our bodies and minds online. We will have a better sense of what’s needed after the first couple of classes and can update the schedule then. Thank you for your patience!
In the meantime, here are the dates and time we ask you to hold. Class times will most likely start at 9am Pacific; we can confirm once all applications are in.
Saturday, March 14 for 1.5 hours: Introduction
Saturday, April 11 for 1.5 hours: Online discussion
The Nature of Relationships:
Saturday, May 2 for 3.5 - 4.5 hours
Saturday, May 9 for 4.5 - 5 hours
Saturday, May 16 for 3.5 - 4.5 hours
Break
Saturday, May 30 for 3.5 - 4.5 hours
Saturday, June 6 for 2 hours
Sunday, June 7 for 1.5 hours
Saturday, June 13 for 4.5 - 5 hours
Saturday, July 11 for 1.5 hours: Online discussion
Saturday, August 1 for 1.5 hours: Online discussion
Saturday, August 22 for 1.5 hours: Online discussion
Saturday, September 12 for 1.5 hours: Online discussion
The Nature of Community (IN PERSON)
Thursday, October 1 afternoon to Monday, October 5 morning
Saturday, October 24 for 2 hours: Closing
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The at-cost rate of this yearlong program is $2,500. This is a significant reduction (approximately $900) from the how much this course has previously charged in tuition. If we meet in person for Unit 3, there will be an additional $675 cost/person for room and board.
To increase accessibility, we are offering a sliding scale, suggesting participants pay in the range of $1500-$4500. We offer some considerations for how to interact with the sliding scale on the application. We are also able to offer payment plans.
A lot is given to this course and to the participants. We ask you to generously support this work so it can be sustained into the future — and we ask you to consider what would feel good to pay! We trust in that.
Took this before, and want to do it again? We are offering a lower rate scale for repeat students. Contact us if you are interested!
tHE teaching team
Nandita Batheja
Nandita (she/they) is a facilitator, somatics practitioner, and artist who works across sectors, advocating for liberation and creative being. She is particularly honored to collaborate with YES! World and Circles International to support collective healing and conflict transformation.Nandita has a M.S. in conflict resolution and is also a certified Core Energetics practitioner; her work aims to integrate the teachings of somatic psychotherapy with the field of peacebuilding, to ultimately reduce violence and create symbiosis amongst our many earth ecologies (human and non-human). In addition to co-directorship, Nandita is a teacher and whole-life-doula with SoULL.
LiZhen Wang
LiZhen descends from a lineage of fisher people, jewelers, and community mediators from the island of Penghu. As a counselor and facilitator herself, LiZhen draws upon her ancestral traditions of Daoist-Buddhist practice, astrology, and the wisdom of the natural world. They work with individuals and organizations to support them to live into their soul’s calling. Experiencing her mother’s death was one of the greatest spiritual revelations of LiZhen’s life. It has opened them to the incredible richness of a life that includes, not avoids, death.
Jeanne Denney
Jeanne is the founder of SoULL and creator of its original curriculum. She is a transpersonal and somatic therapist, a former hospice worker and the author of The Nature of Being Human (forthcoming) and The Effects of Compassionate Presence on the Dying. Jeanne has contributed pioneering ideas to both Body Psychotherapy and Death Education and teaches in somatic institutes internationally, as well as the Art of Dying Institute. Finally, she is poet, a mother of four and a grandmother.
What Students HAVE SAID
““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…””
““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.””
““Nothing is still any more. I see that everything is moving.””
