Deeper Waters - Program Summary
What is it, then that inexorably tips the scales in favor of the extraordinary? It is what is commonly called vocation: an irrational factor that destines a person to emancipate himself from the herd and from its well-worn paths.
-CG Jung
Bringing together deep and directed inner work and a tailored and real learning adventure, Deeper Waters is a simple, inexpensive, and intuitively sane way of learning for anyone who would like to enhance their connection to the world and themselves. It is a way of learning what you want to know that puts YOU and your unique life path at the center of your education - where the context for learning IS your inner journey and life purpose and a learning environment of YOUR choice.
Deeper Waters Education is an antidote to education that is guided by someone else's values, that is disconnected from real life, or that leaves out imagination, mystery, our body, creativity, or some other equally vital aspect of our wholeness.
Each Deeper Waters semester starts with a group of committed individuals who meet for the first time at an intensive residential retreat in rural northern California - becoming quiet and focusing inward in order to be able to hear and move with the deeper currents of their lives. As each student begins to unlock the ways they have tied themselves up, deepening their connection with their body, their creativity, their unique life purpose, they open to the possibility of reframing their life in ways that are more aligned with who they are today.
We bring this inner work and personal context together with an amazing and unparalleled database of over 6,000 individual internships in 126 countries- offering the possibility of traveling to one of 126 countries throughout the world to do three months of social service work, teaching, work with animals, work with children, protecting the environment, learning about traditional and alternative medicine, acting politically, immersing oneself in a new language or culture, working with the elderly and the dying, learning midwifery, grappling with women's issues, and much, much more.
Each life-sized living/learning adventure is completed in a 7-day residential retreat to ground new awareness and integrate transformation before we rejoin our life.
Deeper Waters at a Glance
Deeper Water Dates & Descriptions:
|
Fall 2010:
|
Spring 2011:
|
Retreat 1
Held at our Northern California campus, 7 days long,
12-20 participants
Wholeness Inventory:
Looking deeply at our strengths and challenges, we begin an
in-depth assessment of what we need to step fully into an
evolving, forward-moving life - filled with vitality, integrity
& a generative embodiment of mature adulthood.
Completion & Integrity: Identification
of the unconscious commitments that sabotage our conscious
intentions. Learn to align thought, feeling and action.
Bring the past into a state of completion, freeing our focus to
act in the world with clarity and integrity.
Conscious Living practices
Embodiment: Learn to live in the
present moment with the body as a reliable vehicle and resource.
Internship: Choosing a long
internship from a database of over 6,000 options. Dream big and
act globally.
The Golden Thread: The constant hum of
our soul has been all but obscured as we live out of
relationship with the natural worlds. The
through-line of Deeper Waters is all about slowing down, asking
deep questions, listening for the response, then following the
thread of our rooted soul's song.
Preparation for Travel/Study/Adventure during
the 3-month internship
Solo Internship
3-months anywhere in the world
This internship is a primary focal point of the Deeper Waters learning journey. It is chosen from over 6,000 options in 126 countries. With our sister organization (the Center for INTERIM Programs) we have amassed this database through travel, research and collection since 1977, and it is the largest of its kind in the world. During the Major Internship, Deeper Waters students live, study and travel in a region of their choice for up to 12 weeks. Internships include the following and much, much more:
- Martial arts study in Brazil, Japan, Taiwan, China and Thailand
- Medical work outside of the United States - in Ecuador, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Africa, and many other locations.
- Work with children just about anywhere in the world - in schools, orphanages, on the streets, in refugee camps and other settings.
- Alternative and conventional building construction & sustainable living in the U.S. and many other countries
- Work on organic farms throughout the world - Australia, NZ, Africa, Asia, Latin America, the U.S, Europe, and the Caribbean.
- Work with animals in the U.S., Australia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Kenya, South Africa, India, Argentina, Nepal, and other countries. Work with elephants, primates, pumas, birds, sea turtles, penguins, musk oxen, baby baboons, horses and farm animals, Great White Sharks, and more.
- Language immersion and homestays throughout the world.
- Arts & crafts study and apprenticeship in Latin America, India, Africa, Europe, Canada, and Asia.
- Work with scientists - ecology, botany, marine science, forestry, archaeology, and more.
- Work with midwives in Latin America, Indonesia, Africa and elsewhere.
- Political internships in the UK, Australia & Switzerland
- Blacksmithing, jewelry-making, glass blowing, weaving
- Historical restoration
- Work on kibbutzes (kibbutzim) in Israel and in eco-villages & intentional communities throughout the world
- Work with indigenous people in the U.S. and abroad
- Work with women's issues and women's empowerment groups throughout the world
- Spiritual study: yoga retreats, ashrams, meditation, etc.
- Hotel management internships, work in chateaus in France, retreat center internships
- Work on remote Pacific islands
- Work at SCUBA dive centers - Galapagos, the Caribbean, the Gulf of Thailand, and on the Great Barrier Reef.
- Service work with people with disabilities, with the very poor, the dying, with the blind, and with those who are developmentally delayed.
Retreat 2
Held at our Northern California campus, 7 days long
The final retreat is all about grounding and integration - focused on harvesting what you have learned about yourself through the first retreat and the internship, and integrating it into your life. Topics include planning the next phase of your life or education, embodiment, re-entry and reverse culture shock, soul-centered living, navigating the world as an adult, and much more.
How to use Deeper Waters
When I left everything behind and went into the wilderness, I did what people have done for generations in countless cultures. The force of all those who had gone before entered me, not because I was worthy, but because I was human.
-Steven Foster
Bringing together deep and directed inner work and a tailored and real learning adventure in the world forms the Five E's of Deeper Waters: Education, Engagement, Embodiment, Exploration and Evolution. Deeper Waters is a life-sized chunk of education that is truly meaningful, flexible, self-directed and focused, and that can be naturally "plugged" into many stages of the adult life journey:
-
As a part or the whole of a Gap Year
-
After the first year of college
-
As an antidote to Sophomore Slump
-
As a junior year semester of study abroad
-
As a way to engage the world immediately after graduation from college:
To tune into yourself and explore the world as part of the process of discerning a career
To get real-life experience and sense of career or life direction prior to starting graduate school
-
As a career break
-
As a way to move through periods of aridity any time in your life
-
As a way to successfully navigate mid-life
-
As a way to re-career in a way that aligns your work more fully with you
-
To learn to fly again after helping your children to fly from the empty nest
-
To un-retire and catapult yourself back into deep engagement with your life
Flexibility: If you read through this page carefully, you can see that there is a great deal of flexibility inherent in the structure and curriculum of Deeper Waters. We are happy and willing to work with each student to tailor the program to themes they are interested in or to special projects they would like to pursue.
Deeper Waters Navigation:
Deeper Waters Home | Logistics | Curriculum & Academic Credit | Application