TRAININGS, REVIVAL and SELF-CARE RETREATS
(1) RAINBOWDANCE© REVIVAL FOR PARENTS AND CAREGIVERS: (16 hours)
Experience Rainbowdance© from the child's perspective: Be as children, full of wonder and belief. Sing and move your bodies to enchanting lullabies; let the repetitive ritual circles build a container of trust for you and your peers; Be as animals, gentle and strong; Let our stories remind you of yours, past, but present in your bodies. Give yourself a gift that WILL influence the way in which you care for your children.
2) CBI© (Classroom,Community, and Culture Based Intervention): (40 hours)
3) NATURE: SEVERED ATTACHMENT AND VIOLENCE: (8 hours)
Fifty seven percent of children born today will be raised in anthropogenic environments: urban slums. Such environments, by definition support only one species. Today's children will have no physical relationships with nature's places, cycles, or creatures. Severed from their original attachment, severed from the body of Nature, these children stand alone, unprotected. It is small wonder that their experience of the world is one of danger, of violence, of isolation.
Violence is the execution of aggression, the rejection of negotiation and engagement. We have robbed our children of their biological place in the natural world with it unifying rhythms and rituals. The workshop offers to participants, the experience of reincorporation: becoming again part of the "body". Exercises may be adapted for children of all ages who have experienced some form of isolation.
Specific goals include: 1) Creating safety and trust, 2) Experiencing Nature as protector and teacher, 3) Reducing the sense of personal and peer isolation by creating incorporation rituals, and 4) considering the relationship between depression and the lack of relationship to the natural environment.
4) EXPLORATIONS IN SPIRITUAL TRAUMA RECOVERY: NEUROSCIENCE OF ATTACHMENT AND ATTUNEMENT: UNLOCKING THE LOST VOICE (24 hours)
For experienced psychotherapists and clinicians, intermediate to advanced body workers, martial artists, and yoga practitioners, as well as the general public with strong interest in mind-body work. CE credits.
Psychological trauma is a subtle but root cause of worldwide violence and environmental destruction. Trauma manifests in three primary ways: spiritual immobilization, alienation and fragmentation of the body, and the potential for post-traumatic growth. Deep connections with self, significant others, and nature can provide the resiliency needed to adapt and spiritually evolve after exposure to overwhelming experiences.
Recent research clearly demonstrates how overwhelming experiences impact sympathetic and parasympathetic reactivity, altering brain functions, self-perception, meaning, and neurobiological homeostasis. What trauma specialists Robert and Dicki Johnson Macy call "the mind-body voice" becomes immobilized, locked, or silenced. A person in this state is highly sensitive to both internal sensations and external stimuli, which can be carefully worked with to foster and sustain post-traumatic growth and free the mind-body voice.
The Macys use ritual circles, theatre exercises, sound, dance, movement, Taoist-yoga fusion meditations, and didactic lectures illustrating the innate healing functions of neuroception to explore scientific and mind body components of current research and practice models. Participants will learn detailed somato-cognitive processes to regulate neurophysiological arousal of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system.
5) MOVING FORWARD: RAINBOWDANCE FOR PARENTS AND TEACHERS OF AUTISTIC CHILDREN (8 hour session)
Because mirror neurons appear to be involved in social interaction, dysfunctions of this neural system can explain some of the primary symptoms of autism, including isolation and absence of empathy. If mirror neuron functions can be revived it may be possible to reclaim the "Voice”, which is the expression of self in the environment. Rainbowdance© is a group intervention which encourages the experience of collective harmony, self esteem, and self regulation .Its basic and repetitive circle formula is laced with integrative and mirroring elements which enhance the sense of affiliation with, and attachment to, the self, the physical, social and spiritual landscape.
Aims: Identify and demonstrate methods used to successfully implement Rainbowdance© with children of varied neurological and social disabilities, including the dual diagnosis of autism spectrum and profound deafness; Define "Voice" as it applies to expression of self; Identify the components of this intervention, which include: visual and vocal mirroring, vibrational frequencies, afilliative gesture, circumambulation, and rituals of repetition.
Methods: Presenters will use lecture, slides, film, interactive audience demonstrations to present how Rainbowdance© can be implemented as participants experience its core intervention components.
6) INCARNATING HEALING ARCHETYPES: ISADORA DUNCAN'S CIRCLES AND ETUDES (8 hour or 16-hour sessions)
Isadora Duncan expressed a theory of continuous movement that included sensitivity to the literal and metaphorical flow of energy into and out of the body. Her choreographic etudes explore, through the action/ rest continuum, the dynamic relationship between affiliation and solitude. Celebrating the rhythmic unity of all things in Nature, as personified by the "Goddess", these dances remember ancient rituals and archetypes; they are simultaneously tribal and divine. The indomitable human spirit, ever hopeful, is present in these archetypal dances, and in all true healing.
Life cannot be sustained in isolation; therefore, compelled toward health and survival, it seeks connection to other life forms. Seeking balance and integration is a dynamic process; Disease (dis-integration) manifests as a static state of physical, emotional, spiritual or cognitive imbalance: occurring individually or collectively, it may be sustained for generations. Alienation from the body and the underlying disconnect from the larger "body of Nature" is the etiology of "Disease".
As we reconnect with the rhythms of Nature by participating in Duncan etudes, integration, balance and ultimately, health are encouraged. As we remember archetypal movement patterns, our sense of isolation is minimized as we experience our connection to a "greater reality".
This workshop, illustrates, experientially and didactically, the application of the Duncan vision for:
1) Reducing the experience of isolation created by Trauma/Disability
2) Contemporary translation of the Archetypal Ritual Circle (cross culturally)
3) Encouraging self awareness and social empathy
4) Reclaiming the lost image of "Divine Female" (necessary for individual and collective wholeness)
All life forms (human, plant, animal) respond rhythmically to the cycles of nature, the most primary of these rhythms being the action rest continuum. In health, life forms are responsive to the solar clock (Circadian Rhythm). Calendar time (linear perspective), contradicts biology as it teaches us to compete, to isolate, and to perceive any present action as isolated having no connection to the past or to the future. As individuals, we have become alienated from our bodies; as a culture, we have become alienated from the larger body of nature. We are out of touch with consciousness transforming practices, which have the potential to put us in touch with ancestral and archetypal patterns. Isadora Duncan, the Mother of Modern dance stated, " Free animals when placed under false restriction, lose the power to move in harmony with nature and adopt movement which is expressive of this restriction".
7) INTERNATIONAL EXPRESSIVE ARTS THERAPY ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE: "Expressive Arts and Social Action: Peace-ing Our World Together";
August 12-15, 2009: Lesley University, Cambridge, MA: Keynote Speakers: Robert and Dicki Johnson Macy