UPCOMING EVENTS
PAST EVENTS
RESET / RECESS
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RESET / RECESS, PHILADELPHIA [08/6-08/07, 2022]
a weekend of iterative exercises and games to question & reinvent our ways of being within and between our bodies Join The Deep Play Institute for a sensorial and relational weekend R*E*S*E*T. As we return to shared physical space, how are we leveraging the increased richness and interactivity of our environments and senses? What identities and relations are we bringing to our encounters? Could they be re-envisioned and improvised towards more playful, nourishing, and mutually liberating forms? Our facilitators will draw on their experience in: Internal Family Systems, Contact Improvisation, Circling, Authentic Relating, Nonviolent Communication, Psychodrama, Theater of the Oppressed, Existential Games, Somatic Awareness, Nancy Stark Smith’s Underscore and Pauline Oliveros's deep listening.
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SUMMER 2022 RETREAT
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SUMMER 2022 RETREAT, Rochester Folk Art Guild, NY [07/23-07/31, 2022]
GROWING EDGES IN RELATIONAL PRACTICE The Deep Play Institute’s Summer 2022 Retreat is an opportunity for artists, therapists, healing-arts practitioners, coaches, and facilitators to gather, share resources, build skills, grow, and relax in the beautiful setting of 300 acres of rolling hills in the Finger Lakes Region of New York State. This retreat is designed for anyone with a relational practice (i.e. a practice where you facilitate others in some capacity) who is interested in exploring the edges of this practice. Perhaps you are a therapist learning about somatic work, but you aren’t comfortable enough yet to try it with your clients. Perhaps you are a performance artist who wants to explore an intimacy practice for an upcoming performance. Perhaps you are a facilitator who has worked in conflict mediation, and you want to integrate a new therapeutic modality you are just starting to learn. This is an opportunity to experiment, to play with your practice, and to lean into an edge in support of growth.
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ECOLOGICAL GRIEF GROUP
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ECOLOGICAL GRIEF GROUP [Spring 2022]
a monthly virtual drop-in group to collectively process ongoing environmental collapse DPI’s Ecological Grief Group is a monthly virtual drop-in group designed for emotional and somatic exploration of what it is like to live through ongoing environmental collapse. The group will use Internal Family Systems therapy to explore the parts of ourselves that are reacting to climate change and its accompanying losses: past, present, and future. The intention is to make space for collective processing of anxiety, grief, anger, and other emotions that can be harder or impossible for people to hold in isolation. There is also an intention to support activist work, not through planning political actions, but by supporting our resilience by allowing for the expression of stuck feelings related to climate change. By doing this work, group members may find more energy and capacity to grow or maintain their activist practices.
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GROUP: PERSONA(S)
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GROUP PERSONA(S): [WINTER 2022]
a weekly committed group where members create a persona to assist in deep explorations of self and other Participants will construct a semi-fictional character which they will play for the entire duration of GROUP. This character will be modeled off of Internal Family Systems (IFS) 8 Cs of Self-Energy: Calm, Connection, Compassion, Creativity, Clarity, Curiosity, Confidence and Courage. The hope is that this fictional character will help participants to playfully investigate dark, shadowy or problematic aspects of themselves and others in a manner that allows for greater growth and transformation.
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SYMBIOSIS
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SYMBIOSIS [12/11/2021]
a live action role playing (LARP) that explores the quest for healthy coping and communication skills in relationships The characters in Symbiosis are an alien species on the planet Saturn who subsist on stardust. In this larp, a group of Saturnite adolescents are sequestered at a retreat. Their work is guided by the Gardener, a fully adult Symbiote, who facilitates their development through a series of structured exercises. In adolescence, Saturnites are Parasitic -- meaning that in order to acquire stardust, they can only extract it from their loved ones through dysfunctional strategies.
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QUESTION FESTIVAL
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QUESTION FESTIVAL [11/13/2021]
a virtual festival featuring immersive, interactive, embodied workshops about life's biggest questions Each workshop is led by a different facilitator who will use deep play to guide participants through one vital question. Our questions will include: Are we there yet? What is happiness? Is your love bad medicine? What choices do we have in this play? What if our shadows could dance? Who are my other selves? What is attention? What’s happening right now? What is a question?
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PLAYING WITH WHAT
WE LOVE MOST
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PLAYING WITH WHAT WE LOVE MOST [FALL 2021]
Finding your passion isn't a serious business. It really is a risky play. What do you love the most? Have you given yourself to it, and if not, why? What dampens that fire? What is possible when it is sparked more? In this brand new month-long series, we will be playing with what we love the most. We will court them, play with them and likely be enthralled by what we found.
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CONTACT (MORE OR LESS)
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CONTACT (MORE OR LESS) [FALL 2021]
An experiment and an exploration of contact wanting more, wanting less, and playing with what’s actually already here in our own breathable bubbles. This playful, immersive, and also restful workshop will accompany participants through embodied awareness practices, contact improvisation scores for beginners, and experiments with social space as it intersects with the imagination, on a mercurial quest to reclaim our very own kind of contact with the life that is already here.
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LOVE GAMES
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LOVE GAMES [FALL 2021]
a 10 week workshop exploring romantic love using a variety of therapeutic, somatic, meditation, and pedagogical practices to structure our time together. This workshop will draw from a series of practices to help us deepen our questions, including Psychodrama, Process Work, Internal Family Systems therapy, Contact Improvisation, Tavistock Group Relations, and Theater of the Oppressed. These methods will aid us to move beyond analytical conversation into more embodied and experiential ways of learning and knowing.
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GAMES WE PLAY WITH OURSELVES
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GAMES WE PLAY WITH OURSELVES [FALL 2021]
Reveal your secret adult gameplay dynamics and – if you desire – re-envision your existential playbooks using the methods of Ludic Liberation Whatever happened to those childhood games of ours? In this 6-week workshop series for adults, we’ll consider the possibility that we didn’t just outgrow imaginative solo play; rather, we’ve adultified it – made it complicated, work-like, self-important. In fact, we played our games so well into this next level that we forgot that we were even playing. In the process, we also lost the most important rule of childhood play–the one that says that you can always change the rules.
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LAYERS
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LAYERS [10/23/2021]
a performance piece that playfully investigates the hidden layers of reality contained within the present moment The 'here and now' will be endlessly questioned and explored using a series of techniques drawn from: surrealist word games, free association, psychodrama, parts work, circling and experimental vocalizations. While this performance piece will contain a pre-fabricated structure, the content itself will be entirely improvised – as performers feel into the unique qualities of a given moment.
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CAULDRON
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THE CAULDRON [WINTER & FALL 2021]
A free, 3-month long, weekly, one-on-one, virtual event for playing with creative facilitation The Deep Play Institute’s “The Cauldron” is an opportunity to engage in this kind of living experiment by creating a one-on-one practice between yourself and another. Perhaps you are an artist with a relational, somatic or performative practice; how would your practice look when shifted into a one-on-one container? Perhaps you are a coach, therapist, counselor or facilitator; what ways are you curious to expand or modify your practice that aren’t possible with a paying client in need of a trusted method?
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EXISTENTIAL PLAYGROUND THE ROOM
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EXISTENTIAL PLAYGROUND #4 THE ROOM [07/10/2021]
a structured exercise in collaborative imagination via a series of verbal scores – Action, Sensation, Space. You are in the real world, in a real room. I am in the real world, in a real room. We both close our eyes and enter another space. Together, we illustrate our surroundings. Everything in this room is built through our words. Together, we build something outside ourselves that belongs to both of us. It’s surprisingly intimate to create a world for each other. In this world, limitless creative potential is tethered by accountability. This world is both a dream and an ecosystem. Everything is available but all choices must coexist with those that came before them. Each moment is idiosyncratic, emerging from the relationality between you and the others crafting this imaginary scene.
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GROUP
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GROUP [SPRING 2021]
a 2-month play laboratory aimed at exploring the big questions of self and other – what am I, who are you, and how does our togetherness shape us? GROUP will be led by Aaron Finbloom, who will hold the group (organizing openings/closures and comings/goings) as 8 facilitators from vastly diverse backgrounds will guide the group through relational exercises and creative togethering. Throughout the 2 months there will also be one-on-one sessions to process, integrate and reflect on the content brought up in GROUP. Participants with curiosity, openness and compassion from all backgrounds and experience-levels are encouraged to apply.
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SYLLACRUM
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SYLLACRUM [06/06/2021]
an immersive event playfully exploring our inner parts inside of a fictional world Why is Syllacrum? To playfully explore the mysterious unknowns of self and other. To use fiction and fantasy to play with inner parts and relational interactions that might otherwise feel unsafe. To learn about the importance of our inner parts and how they might serve us. To identify what our parts need from us to feel welcome in our everyday lives, our groups, and as citizens of the world. To explore how emotional needs play into political and historical trajectories. To explore nuances of how groups function in personal, relational, and political spheres
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EXISENTIAL PLAYGROUND W/HOLES
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EXISTENTIAL PLAYGROUND #3 W/HOLES [05/07/2021]
four ~40 minutes w/holes, orchestrated by a facilitator who will divide their w/hole into a series of holes. For this existential playground we will explore holes and wholes. How are holes wholes? Where are the holes inside our holes? When do we feel a hole or a whole? How are holes and wholes mixed and intermixed? How does language make holes whole again? Are holes holy? We’re thinking about: shadow integration, holes in crocheted doilies making fractal patterns which reveal the whole, black holes (that which sucks in all things), and even arse holes (in the existential sense).
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DEVELOPMENTAL TRANSFORMATIONS
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DEVELOPMENTAL TRANSFORMATIONS WORKSHOPS [SPRING 2021]
a playful, embodied method that increases spontaneity and creativity as well as improving one's ability to relate with others. DvT is based on the principle that all life is unstable and instead of trying to create a false impression of stability, we practice going with the flow and embrace the instability of being. DvT can be used for both therapeutic and life practice purposes.
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EXISTENTIAL PLAYGROUND CHARACTERS
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EXISTENTIAL PLAYGROUND #2 CHARACTERS [03/06/2021]
a formidable adventure into our inner worlds through the construction of a character devised from a few of our inner parts. For our event the fictional world we will construct and enter into will be the following: You are one member of a group of participants who have been solicited by the United States government to brainstorm a brand new adult education program designed to increase emotional intelligence. This program will be mandatory for all adult citizens and so your participation is vital. Through a series of intimate structured encounters with the other participants you will help construct a world that makes more space for people like you.
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EXISTENTIAL PLAYGROUND PARTS
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EXISTENTIAL PLAYGROUND #1 PARTS [11/21/2020]
a 4-part playground devoted to the exploration of our inner parts After a short parts mapping introductory exercise, a handful of facilitators will offer workshops for us to participate in – as our parts. As we play, some of the questions that will most likely frame our playground are: What are my parts? What are your parts? Do they get along? Should they get along? How should they get along? What does that getting along look like? Is “getting along” an authentic mode of relating?
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