– Susan Griffin
Woman and Nature
and Made from This Earth
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Selected Past Programs - 2008: April 11-13, 2008 - 3-Day Program with Robert Sardello
Sunday, April 13, 2008 Wednesday, March 5, 2008 Saturday, March 1, 2008 Saturday, February 16, 2008 Sunday, January 20, 2008 Selected Past Programs - 2007: December 14-16, 2007 - Michael Meade, author of The Water of Life
Sunday, December 16, 2007 Saturday, December 1, 2007 Saturday, December 1, 2007 November 9-11, 2007 - 3-Day Program with David Abram
Saturday, November 11, 2007 Saturday, October 27, 2007 Engaging Images of Evil: Exploring the Victim/Perpetrator/Bystander in All Of Us with Lisa Herman and Armand Volkas  This experiential workshop will explore the effect of images of evil on those who are not directly involved in the events. These images may be the story of a client’s suffering, the sound of a friend’s sob, a photo in a newspaper, or a film clip on television or the Internet. When the image of evil continues to haunt us in our waking and dreaming lives, it becomes part of our own story calling us to respond. Through drama and other expressive arts, we will explore our responsibility to engage with the images of evil done to others. Saturday, October 13, 2007 Saturday, July 21, 2007 Saturday, July 14, 2007 Saturday, July 14, 2007 Saturday, June 16, 2007 Saturday, May 12, 2007 Selected Past Programs - 2006: November 18, 2006 November 18, 2006 November 10-12, 2006 - 3-Day Program with Joanna Macy The Great Turning - Friday, November 10, 2006 Taking Heart in Tough Times - Saturday, November 11, 2006 Theory and Practice of Deep Time - Sunday, November 12, 2006 October 21, 2006 September 9, 2006 Saturday, August 26, 2006 Saturday, August 26, 2006 Saturday, July 29, 2006 Saturday, July 15, 2006 Saturday, July 15, 2006 Saturday, June 17, 2006 Saturday, June 17, 2006 Saturday, June 10, 2006 Sunday, April 23, 2006 Selected Past Programs - 2005: Saturday, October 29, 2005 Saturday, October 8, 2005 Saturday, April 30, 2005 Saturday & Sunday, January 22-23, 2005 Imagination in Art, Life, and Work with Shaun McNiff Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul with Shaun McNiff Fall 2005 Programs Postcard: Selected Past Programs - 2004: An Evening with Angeles Arrien The Spirit of Renewal: Seeds of Transformation Saturday, November 13, 2004 Stoking the Creative Fires: A Dialog on Sustaining a Creative Life
Saturday, November 6, 2004 Saturday, November 6, 2004 Saturday, October 2, 2004 Saturday, October 2, 2004 Saturday, September 18, 2004 Saturday, September 18, 2004 Saturday, August 21, 2004 Saturday, August 21, 2004 Saturday, August 7, 2004 Saturday, August 7, 2004 |
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Friday, April 11, 2008
A job is never just a job. It is always connected to a deep and invisible process of finding meaning in life through work.In his groundbreaking book Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore taught readers ways to cultivate depth, genuineness, and soulfulness in their everyday lives. Now, in A Life at Work, Moore turns to an aspect of our lives that looms large in our self-regard, an aspect by which we may even define ourselves—our work. The workplace, Moore knows, is a laboratory where matters of soul are worked out. A Life at Work is about finding the right vocation, yes, and it is also about uncovering one’s avocation—becoming the person you were meant to be. . .Join the IIS Community as we dialogue with Thomas Moore about A Life at Work: The Joy of Discovering What We Were Born To Do.
Growing our capacity to create community is one of the most pressing issues we face in our culture today. Engagement with the imaginative, somatic, and expressive dimensions of our selves is necessary if we are to develop our capacity for collaboration. This workshop uses the Chormmunity (choreography + community) method to facilitate the participants in growing collaborative capacities — through movement inquiry, dialogue, drawing, collectively choreographing, and enacting a “movement text” (re-inhabiting the self-authored collective body). Together, we will be the playwrights, choreographers, directors, performers, and audience of our own soul’s unfolding.
We can only fight a war if we imagine an enemy who is confronting us. In this workshop we will explore ways of responding to images of the enemy that draw upon our creative resources and enable us to go beyond hatred and fear. Ultimately, as James Hillman reminds us, only "aesthetic passion" can be a match for our "terrible love of war".
Good poetry dips down into the sorrow areas of the soul, just as the great stories do. The listener often finds his or her most puzzling failure or limitation evoked in the opening words. They are then offered, through images and metaphor, some way through. They are even offered a way to rejoice in their failure, just as great stories and great psychotherapy sometimes do. Robert Bly will tell two or three classic stories, as well as some poems by Rilke, Yeats, and others.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Conflicts provide an opportunity to improve relationships and increase understanding. Managing conflicts successfully greatly enhances our quality of life, reduces stress, and gives us more self-confidence. This interactive workshop is an in-depth exploration of how to understand and transform conflicts in our daily lives. We will examine the roots of conflict, develop practical skills for effective communication and conflict management, and create plans for post-workshop study and practice.
Dreams come nightly as unedited expressions of the soul's stirrings, longings, suffering, and potential. Active engagement with our dreams through the cultivation of transformative dream practices offers a pathway to tap into and realize this soul potential. This workshop offers practices that facilitiate exploring the roles of dreams in aligning with the soul's unfolding toward its deeper potentials.
Friday, November 9, 2007
The experience of shame plays a critical role in developing a discerning conscience and an autonomous individuality while at the same time sustaining integrity and dignity. Our ability to imagine how we are affecting the other—our moral imagination—is profoundly linked to the depth and breadth of our engagement with shame. This workshop is an experiential exploration of the role of shame-discerning awareness in transforming relationships within families, communities, and the workplace. This experiential program is an introduction to the principles and practices that guide Transformative Learning at the Institute of Imaginal Studies.
We who are alive today hold the future in our hands. With the view that we are in our collective adolescence, undergoing a rite of passage toward our future maturity, our current world problems can be seen as evolutionary drivers, initiators that are calling us to a new way of living. Through story, song, poetry, visual images, guided visualizations, and interactive participation, this workshop will focus on how the initiation process within each of us brings us to the next level of consciousness, a movement from power to love.
Consciousness is a “crime” against the parents, the authorities, the priests, the rabbis, the imams. On the way to becoming ourselves, the repressed steps out of the closet, skeletons dance; the child who was meant to be seen and not heard, breaks silence, tells the family secrets. Psychotherapy, a most subversive process, encourages such “crimes”. The therapist opens doors and windows to forbidden realms; lures our imagination to come out to play. This workshop invites you to reflect on and write about the “crimes” of your journey toward individuation. 
Everyone has a story to tell, but few of us have the opportunity to express ourselves freely in a safe and supportive environment. Stories reside in the body, so we will begin by moving from our center, giving voice and gesture to our private characters and realities. Unbounded self-expression is remarkably satisfying–for the heart, the mind, the soul, and the body. This workshop includes relaxation, meditation, movement, singing, storytelling, and theater games.
This workshop will provide, through experiential process, role playing and group exercises, the means through which we can learn to listen to and speak from the truth each moment. We will explore the means through which we can honor the wisdom of the heart even when it is closed in fear or pain. In coming to terms with the hidden aspects of ourselves, we can bring greater authenticity, playfulness, intimacy, and co-creativity into our lives and all of our relationships.Saturday, May 5, 2007
We have been taught for so long to be reasonable, polite and controlled, that our voices have lost much of their range and power. Yet the voice is your most potent tool for reaching out and expressing yourself to others. A baby, when it wants something, can cry for hours without letup and without strain. The breath flows in, the sound comes out - powered by need, and nothing gets in the way. But as we get older, muscles tighten, breathing becomes restricted, faces rigidify, and we lose the free sound that was ours at birth. This workshop is designed to help you connect more fully with your body and breathing, find and use your natural, full sound and improve your voice for speaking and singing.
A global revolution is underway: the transition from a self-devouring consumer society to a life sustaining civilization. A key feature of this Great Turning is the rediscovery of our interconnectedness with all life forms, and the power it provides us for the healing of our world.
As psychotherapists and others in the helping professions, our bodies are resonating with the concerns of our patients, clients, or students. This workshop includes somatic theory and exercises for somatically transforming yourself. As we are able to transform ourselves, freeing muscles and emotions, we move toward the actualization of our full potential. This workshop is designed for professionals seeking to enhance the somatic dimension of their work as well as for individuals seeking further personal development.
Long before the rise of our state level societies, our indigenous ancestors discovered powerful methods for mastering the capabilities of the human body-mind-spirit complex. Today, there is a resurgence of interest in the ancient, time-tested ways of the shaman for entering mystical states of consciousness for healing and problem solving. This experiential workshop includes an overview of the three classic causes of illness and the four traditional levels of healing.
Ritual is necessity. As the lungs breathe, so does the soul ritualize. Ritual has an essential role in tending relationships, families, communities, and even workplaces. Our ancestors knew that life is unbearable without ritual. The origins of art and religion are in ritual; to ritualize is to make sacred. This workshop explores the creative and transformative uses of ritual in our everyday lives.
To create a work of art is emotionally and spiritually challenging in the best ways. An artist grows not so much from catharsis but through the demands of art, beauty, form, and narrative. Such demands push the imagination outside ordinary and conventional boundaries and assumptions, providing support for a journey into uncharted territories of the soul.
Our body politic suffers from a profound dysfunction whose symptoms include cynicism, denial, and despair, all indicative of the loss of soul. To restore the soul of democracy is a project which will require faith, courage, hard work, and passionate engagement. The antidote to cynicism and despair is engagement. When we bring our full humanity into mindful, loving action, the world is transformed and we are transformed. Understood in this context, politics itself can be a profound spiritual practice.
We live in stories, consciously or not. Many of them bedevil us, especially stories we are stuck in, fail at, fight about, or find boring. This workshop explores basic narrative issues we encounter in life, and the resolutions portrayed in folk and classic narratives. Using exercises to apply these perspectives to our own lives, we will journey through ever-deeper levels of narrative. The result is a map of adult development which ideally culminates in enlightenment.
A wide range of psychological and physical conditions are responsive to an integrated approach that includes Western psychotherapy, Qigong, and imagery based practices. This workshop introduces participants to Michael's distinct approach to bodymind healing which incorporates Taoist breathing methods, self-hypnosis, psychodynamic work, Focusing, acupressure self-touch, and symbolic process methods. Theory, case examples, and experiential methods will be interwoven.
The call to the life you are meant to live–the message of your soul's true voice, your spiritual motive force–may be pressing up on you right now, unheeded. To consent to that unlived life is a major challenge of adult life. C.G. Jung once said we all live as if walking in shoes too small for us. We are tigers walking around as goats. This workshop is a laboratory to discover your bigger story, an opportunity to redefine the meaning of success in your life, a chance to remove obstacles. We will employ experiential techniques to call forth and validate your bigger story.
This workshop will explore the themes of Shaun's forthcoming book Art Heals, including how the arts heal through immersion in soulful expression; how to transform conflict and pain and make use of our disturbances as sources of creative power; and how to construct creative spaces to help you trust the process, let go, and access self expression.
Every culture recognizes the major transitions of human life. This workshop explores these transitions and the cycles of everyday life as distinct gates of initiation--in our work, relationships, creative projects, and our own transformative journey.
"What are you on fire about now?" asks writer Phil Cousineau and musician R.B. Morris. "Where does your fiery urge to create come from? What do you do to rekindle the inner flame when it is nearly extinguished by despair or fear? What are you doing to pass on the torch of your inspiration?" The great mystery of how to lead and sustain a creative life begins in the exploration of these primal questions. This evening dialogue is about the great fires of the imagination and finding the courage to create as truly, deeply and boldly as possible.
The workshop leaders are passionately independent artists who have been haunted by words, music, and images all their lives. Phil Cousineau has been in the vanguard of the mythopoetic movement for more than twenty years, writing, filming, and teaching all over the world about the power of ancient stories in modern times, and the healing forces of the arts. R. B. Morris has been performing as singer, composer, and actor on stages across Europe and America, and has recorded five CDs of original music. In this evening dialogue, these long-time friends will join forces to Stoke the Creative Fires.
This workshop focuses on the relationship between the unconscious and the creative process. Presentations draw on timeless stories such as Alice in Wonderland and Robin Hood, to look at issues faced by imaginative people. Special attention will be given to the blocks and challenges encountered in the pursuit of creative endeavors and transformative learning.
This workshop explores our personal relationship with the larger human journey as we make the transition to a new world. We will explore the current lifestage of the human family and the relevance of our own personal experience for understanding how to assist in this time of passage. We will also consider the unprecendented challenges ahead as 'adversity trends' (such as climate change) meet equally momentous 'opportunity trends' (such as the global communications revolution). We will then explore what we can do in our personal, professional, and civic lives to bring our true gifts to these pivotal times.
The heart longs for love. Mature love requires connection with our authentic self, which is the foundation for connecting more deeply, safely, and tenderly with others. To be authentic without being critical or blaming creates a safe climate for a spiritually rich, vibrant love and intimacy. This workshop will help to develop skills to connect more intimately with yourself so that you may connect with others in a more intimate, delightful, and authentic way. We will explore how to go beyond shame to a deeper, more fulfilling love in our partnerships and friendships.
Our task in this workshop will be to understand the interplay of Desire, Imagination, and Necessity in the cycles of enticement and betrayal in our own lives. Such understanding facilitates equanimity and forgiveness. Equally important, such imaginal understanding decontaminates our perception, allowing for a more accurate and compassionate seeing of others and the world. This workshop will be a weaving of poems, stories, slides, commentary, experiential processes, and group conversation. 
The body is an under-used channel of learning. Listening to the body gives us access to this area of expertise, expands our ability to have insight about ourselves and others, and trains our bodies to move through difficult emotional states. The foundation of Physical Intelligence is the relationship between emotions and the body. In this workshop we will explore emotional polarities inherent in a range of personality styles (based on the Enneagram) to give an experiential understanding of different ways of being in the world.
Remembering our indigenous connections is foundational work for awakening the ecological imagination. This work enables us to heal our loss of intimacy with our plant, animal, and rock relations, to mend fractured stories, and to envision a sustainable future. This workshop explores the transformative power of ecological imagination through storytelling, visualization, and ritual.
In what could be called the tragedy of everyday couples life, wishes are expressed as complaints, needs are stated as demands, vulnerability is disguised, and power struggles take the place of open communication. Dan Wile will present an approach which utilizes the fight that is occurring in the moment by developing each partners' point of view, and turning it into a moment of intimacy. Dan will show how to create intimate conversations by bringing out the haunting feelings which each partner struggles with alone. Using volunteers from those in attendance for demonstrations as well as video-taped vignettes, Dan will demonstrate this process with a moment-by-moment analysis which highlights the core components.Copyright © 2007 Institute of Imaginal Studes. All rights reserved.
