Patrocinio approached Experientia to continue cultivating her passion for Nature Therapy, Adventure Therapy and the understanding of the human psyche. She has spent years in connection with the wild nature of the Ripollès and Alta Garrotxa, cultivating the land, working and caring for its forests.
Given her interest and enthusiasm for the methodology, she has always remained close and attentive to the different learning and training opportunities that arise through the European networks of which we are part, and which we channel to our forest of collaborators and close professionals.
In this context, we invited her to participate in the “Re-Source” program in the mountains of Romania, facilitated by “Actions For Change” and promoted by the European network ErasmusPlus. Upon her return she wrote the following inspired text, which we share with you in our “Logbook” section, where collaborators, close professionals, and part of the team will share their adventures, experiences, learnings, journeys, and much more.
The “Re-Source, cultivating inner resources for a soulcentric life” program has been created by the non-profit organization Actions for Change and funded by the European Union. The organization’s goal is to help people discover and follow their authentic life purpose through human development. The organization promotes values such as nature, sustainability, authenticity, equality, love, harmony, adventure, and courage, and shares them through experiential learning, non-formal education, holistic education, and eco-centric development centered on the human soul.
The training course “Re-source” brought together 24 participants from 9 European Union countries (Romania, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Poland, the United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Ireland, and Sweden) with a humanistic and integrative perspective on the social sciences, and willing to explore and develop themselves in order to later inspire their communities in creative ways. Social educators, psychologists, art teachers, poets, and other mentors of human development, we shared during 7 days of adventure the Mystery of the Apuseni mountains in Romania, and these, with all their greatness, allowed us to touch some intimate and subtle place within each participant.
Sandra Horea and Bodgan Romanica, facilitators of the training, invited us into both a theoretical and experiential contact with the work offered by Bill Plotkin in the Wild Mind program at the Animas Valley Institute in the USA. Sandra and Bodgan were trained in this program in the heart of the Colorado mountains and have drunk from the water of its rivers, experiencing firsthand the gifts of a wild and pure land. In this way, I feel they transmitted their understanding to us, like the flow of the spring from which the river is born. The Map of the Human Psyche based on Nature that they offered us is based on the symbol of the Rose of the Winds, which many ancestral traditions have brought to our days and which serves as a guide for the traveler of Land and Sea, as well as for those who use it as a compass in the adventure of finding the Self at the center of the map.
From this ancestral symbol, the traveler moves through the different directions toward their own wholeness as a human being. Our wild minds, as described by Bill Plotkin, possess astonishing resources, untapped potentials, and depths we may not even be aware exist. Sandra and Bodgan guided us to discover how to access them, how to cultivate their powers, and finally how to integrate them into our daily lives. We had the opportunity to explore the four dimensions of our innate human wholeness in an upward journey toward Spirit. These innate potentials, which Bill Plotkin calls the four facets of the Self, are related in his work to the four cardinal points.
To complete the Map of the Human Psyche, we also explored the four sets of fragmented or wounded subpersonalities that are formed during early childhood. Thus, in a downward journey toward the Soul, we followed the traces of our own shadow to make contact with these four sets of subpersonalities or wounds, recognize them, and give them a compassionate and loving place within our awareness.
Through listening to and cultivating the four facets of the Self, we were able to discover and bring to light the gifts of the forgotten wounded parts and envision ways of sharing our own potential with our families and communities. In this way, we returned home with a more balanced and nourished Ego and with the certainty that we can access our highest parts thanks to their infinite qualities. And in the same way, descend into the places that frighten us, into those less attended landscapes where our emotions, impulses, intuitions, and deepest longings reside.
The program has accompanied us in discovering how to access the astonishing resources within us. Those that remain silenced in the deepest part of each one of us and that accompany us since the conception of our life here on Mother Earth. The inner resources for a soul-based life have emerged thanks to the combination of the intellectual understanding of the Map of the Human Psyche with a variety of creative expression practices, solitary exercises while listening to the voice of the Earth, group work, unlocking and movement sessions, dialogues with one’s inner voice, and deep image work through art and poetry. The training has offered us an open space to cultivate them and bring them back home. We have witnessed the inner life-giving flame and carried it lit to share with our families, projects, and communities.
On a personal level, this adventure, the wild nature of the forests and rivers of Romania allowed me to listen to the silence that exists beyond words. The silence that contains everything. Breaking the silence with words in the sacred circle was an honor and a privilege. Attending to the silence and joining it, listening to the whisper of the forest in the present moment, allowed me to joyfully express my deepest desires and connect with the hope of offering the best of myself to the community to which I belong.
