ALTAR OF AUTHENTICITY: Eco-soulcentred practices for radical authenticity and self-expression
ERASMUS + CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS
Training course for Youth workers
ALTAR OF AUTHENTICITYEco-soulcentred practices for radical authenticity and self-expression
Gudevitsa village, Bulgaria
24 April – 03 May 2026
Photo Jana Eriksson 2025
* Application process includes recording a short video of yourself
For more information read below
ALTAR OF AUTHENTICITY is an international program aimed at people who are, or strive to become, agents of cultural (r)evolution and social transformation. Humans who, with their daily actions, are models in their community and leaders of the awakening and change in the world.
People who are ready to turn their look inwards and explore everything – light and dark – that is in their hearts and souls.
THE DEEPEST QUESTIONS
Soul doesn’t speak in the language of societal roles and jobs. When revelation of the deepest parts of our identity occur, it is rarely in terms of job description or study program that it expresses itself. Yet, when we choose to live a truly authentic life, it is well and truly those underworld threads of identity that illuminate and animate our daily choices. When questing for self-knowledge from a connected heart, the questions that tend to haunt us may sound like “who am I?”, “what are my gifts?”, “what am I called to serve?”, “how may I have an impact?” “who are my people?”, “what is mine to speak?”, “how may I be heard?”…All too often, we tend to seek answers to these questions with our minds, and with haste. Misguided, or unguided, by our consumerist culture, these fertile and courageous questions to ask, although vital gifts as such, can be lived as yet another source of performance pressure or anxiety, or deemed unnecessary luxury or indulgence. Faced with that, we all too often end up either discarding them in order to fit in and “get on with life”, or sink into isolation and confusion.
But if these questions harass us like wild fire coursing through our psyches, it is well and truly because this is exactly what they are: fire! Within them, they hold the spark to ignite a life of meaning and purpose, they carry the flames of our true calling, they comprise the ambers of what will truly nourish and sustain us to stand rooted in this world. They speak of our passion, our longing, our life-force. What if we re-entered in relationship with the fire of these pressing questions?What if we stoked them, danced with them, stared into them? What wild flames of clarity and vision might they ignite within us?
WHAT DO WE OFFER
- A Nature-based journey – whereby it is Nature, or rather, the other-than-human world, who will coach and coax each one of us to reclaim and allow our most innate way of belonging within the wider ecology of all beings, including our human societies.
- A mysterious exploration of the psyche – through movement, deep imagination, dreamwork, personal ceremony, cross-species conversation and many more rewilding and consciousness-shifting practices
- A resecration (making sacred again) of artistic expression – where your own unique medium for artistic expression (be it singing, dancing, sculpting, painting…) will be invited to journey so performance might shift to unveiling, show to communion, and stage, clay or canvas to temple and altar.
What might you learn if you dared to ask Nature and Mystery who they see when you look in the mirror?
What unique colours of you might reveal themselves if you had the practices, guides and a healthy and safe community to experiment with?
What power and inspiration might arise out of you if more of your energy was spent on authentically relating than on conforming or rebelling?
What might you discover about your unique way of belonging with the world – loving it, seeing it and participating in it – if you widened your perception of who you belong with?
AIM OF THE PROGRAM
This course will offer an eco-soulcentric approach to the quest of knowing our deepest, most unique selves, and embodying them in the world with radical authenticity. Through the lens of Eco-psychologist Bill Plotkin’s methods, we will look at:
- self-expression as the unabashed wildness of our sentient bodies,
- creative inspiration as the mesmerizing courtship with our inner mysterious Muse-Beloved
- personal vision as the Earth’s dream breathing through the unique being that we are.
Participants must be over 18 years and have a good level of English as the entire course will be in English.
At the core of the program, we will create time and space for deep and prolonged connection with the wild others. Participants will be invited to stay alone in Nature for 24h of wild conversation, prayer, deep listening and all else that might arise. You will be invited (optional) to fast during this time, and to stay without a tent, fully exposed to the mysteries of the world. There will be safety measures in process in order to ensure that everyone returns physically safe and wildy dangerous.
APPLICATION PROCEDURES AND DEADLINE
If you want to participate in this training course, we invite you to fill in the application form available at this link: APPLICATION FORM*
* Application process includes recording a short video of yourself
Applications are open for youth workers, educators, teachers, social workers, councelores, therapists and trainers from any EU Member state (Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Greece, Spain, France, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Hungary, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Ireland, Croatia, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Malta, Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Slovakia, Finland, Sweden) or any of the associated with the Erasmus + Programme countries (North Macedonia, Serbia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Turkey).
The deadline for applications submission is 24 February 2026 (included).
DETAILED INFORMATION AND PROCEDURES
Please read carefully the detailed Call for participants for more information about the Commitments, Logistics, Venue and Administration!
Detailed Call for participants – ALTAR OF AUTHENTICITY – Call for Participants
CONTACT
Galena Tsvetkova – Project Coordinator
galena.tsvetkova@gmail.com
+359 888 566 655
SOBRIETY POLICY
We ask that you refrain from using any consciousness-altering substance (alcohol, cannabis, any drug, etc.) for the whole duration of the course. This is because the program will be offering nature-based methods of consciousness shifting for which your whole mental and physical capacities will be required. By applying to the course, you commit to respect this agreement.
GUIDES TEAM
OGNIAN GADOULAROV (Bulgaria) is a passionate naturalist, rock climber, and expert in wildlife, birds, and forests. For 16 years, he has been working in the field of non-formal education and personal development.
Ognian supports people to unfold their full potential in life and to discover themselves. He is a guide with interests and experience in meditation, yoga, and energy practices. His favorite topics are nature-based human development, self-discovery, responsible consumption, deep nature connection. He lives as an activist for cultural evolution, re-sacredtising life and reconnecting people with more-than-human-world. As a participant in the Great Turning, he is known as Death Tracker/Life Breather, dedicated to the Great Work for a fair future for all living and nonliving beings on Earth.
Оgnian is certified through Nature-based Wholing and Self-healing Wild Mind Training Programme (WMTP) at Bill Plotkin’s Animas Valley Institute, Colorado, USA
LUCIE KLEIN (France) Lucie is a soul initiation guide, devoted to the soul-rooted unfolding of all beings. A sacred midwife of birth and death, she shimmers at the threshold between the worlds and guides the hungry traveller into the fertile mysteries of Soul. In inextricable conversation with the invisible and the unseen, she allures questers to the drop of poison-medicine that burns them back to their essence and re-members their unique, vital and wild place of belonging in the sacred web of life – their soul.
For over a decade now, she has guided groups and individuals on the treacherous paths of connection and revelation, using soul-centric development methods based on the wild outdoors, the arts, movement and breath, depth psychology and energy medicine.
She is part of Bill Plotkin’s Soulcraft Apprenticeship and Initiation Program (SAIP) at the Animas Valley Institute and is also a therapist of Hermetic Medicine. She offers her own work at www.viamagus.org and steers the sowing of Bill Plotkin’s work in French at www.soulcraftfrancophonie.org
She believes in the road-maps of body, dream-time, nature and myth to guide us through the radical revolution Earth is asking for in these times.
After 12 years of living in the south-west of England and traveling on the roads of Europe and Latin America, she has just moved back to France, the land of her birth, with her three-year-old daughter.