“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”. It 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 certificate program that meets from spring to fall in 3 residential modules (4 days each), with online discussion groups between. It extends into winter home study with integration discussions. These are required for students who want to continue toward certification (see description of distance learning below).
A full year program isn’t everyone’s first step in SoULL. Unit 1, called “The Nature of Being Human”, is available for students who aren’t ready to commit to a whole year of study. We offer this as space allows. On its own Unit 1 makes a powerful impact on students’ outlook on life. The Nature of Being Human is often also offered online between winter and early spring.
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....The teaching continues to show up in my work and my life and my work ways that I don't recognize until I look back on it."
-Wendy - Chinese Medicine Practitioner
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.
planned as a residential program at
The DeKoven Center in Racine, WI
ThursDAY, May 23 to MonDAY, May 27, 2024
*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.
planned as a residential program at
The DeKoven Center in Racine, WI
Unit 1 is a prerequisite
ThursDAY, Aug 1 To MonDAY, Aug 5, 2024
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… What an adventure!
-Ami Isett - Therapist, Dancer and Movement Teacher
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.
2024 Modules are planned as residential programs held at
The DeKoven Center in Racine, WI.
ThursDAY, October 17 to MonDAY, October 21, 2024
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
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.
SoULL is a United States Association for Body Psychotherapy (USABP) approved program
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.
" Nothing is still any more. I see that everything is moving.”
