UPCOMING EVENTS
PHANG
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PHANG [Philly, PA & Portland, OR / Monthly]
Philly Here-and-Now Group / Portland Here-and-Now Group A monthly, experimental, in-person “Here-and-Now” group in which we explore what’s emerging among us for two hours once per month. Anywhere between 3 and 12 people will gather on a given month to explore what is present through discussion, emotional and somatic exploration, movement, journaling, and meditation. The group will most closely resemble Psychodynamic Group Therapy, but this group is not therapy and the intent is community building and experimentation. The structure will riff on and borrow from practices including Tavistock Group Relations, Process Work, Authentic Movement, Authentic Relating, Psychodrama, Internal Family Systems, and Circling (you need not be familiar with any of these to participate, nor does the group require any special preparation).
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EXISTENTIAL PLAYGROUNDS
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EXISTENTIAL PLAYGROUNDS [Free / Virtual / Monthly]
A monthly free virtual event dedicated to playfully experimenting with the essential questions of our existence Our existence is fluid. What it is to be, is to be in relation to others, and the embedded rules that define our togetherness. In Existential Playgrounds we play with those rules, by breaking them, questioning them, and re-making them. Each playground creates an immersive container around a particular theme, technique or practice. Existential Playgrounds are free! This is an opportunity to come together and play without financial exchanges — a time to gather, connect, play deeply, and converse. This is also a great opportunity for people to explore what The Deep Play Institute is about, to get to know us, and feel into what we do, and how we do it. Think of it like recess!
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PSYCHODRAMA INTENSIVE Jan 2024, Portland
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PSYCHODRAMA INTENSIVE [Portland, 01/27-01/28, 2024]
A Weekend Psychodrama Intensive in Portland, OR Psychodrama is an action method (developed in the 1920s by Jacob Moreno in Vienna) in which participants use spontaneous dramatization, role playing, and dramatic self-presentation to engage a situation or encounter. It is an incredible performative practice for diving deeply and playful into intra/inter-subjective facets of self and other. Psychodrama is practiced in a group, whereby one participant volunteers to be the protagonist who then acts on their "drama" with the aid of other group members as auxiliaries. It is a highly structured technique with forms that establish safety, minimize projection, and create the capacity for extremely deep and transformative expression.
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PAST EVENTS
PARTS PRACTICE
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PARTS PRACTICE: INNER DRAMATURGY [New York, NY, 11/18-19 2023]
A weekend intensive of Psychodrama practice informed by inner parts-work. Join DPI for a weekend intensive to intimately explore our psyches in a nourishing and creative container through these two powerful therapy practices which, when put in combination, offer unbelievable depth in very little time. Psychodrama and parts-work can work together to breathe creative vitality into your ongoing contemplations, and we offer this workshop towards a goal of broadening our introspective toolkits and fostering collective healing.
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ALLIES & SHADOWS
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EXPLORING OUR ALLIES & SHADOWS THROUGH PSYCHODRAMA AND TAROT [Portland, OR]
Saturday November 4th, 2023 | 10am-6pm Come join us for a day of dialogue with our inner world. Which aspects of our self do we know well & rely on as allies, and which parts of self are unseen, rejected, unconscious or in shadow? Playing with these hidden parts of self can expand our strength and self-knowledge. We will invite our allies in as we welcome parts of our shadow into consciousness and integration.
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PLAYING WITH PARTS, PLAYING WITH POWER
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SUMMER 2023 RETREAT: PLAYING W/ PARTS, PLAYING W/ POWER [Finger Lakes, NY Aug, 2023]
A relational mindfulness retreat in the bucolic hills of the finger lakes region of upstate New York Join us for a rigorous, week-long relational mindfulness retreat. The goal of our work together will be to deepen our collective presence, curiosity, creativity, playfulness, and connection through edgy relational work in the here-and-now, as well as reflection about that work. The bulk of our time will be spent in experimental social mindfulness practice, with breaks in between for shared meals, and unstructured time for pond swimming, sauna-ing, hiking, playing, and resting. The main task will be to explore inter-, intra-, and trans- personal dynamics in the here-and-now in small groups, large group, and as witnesses to the facilitators. Included in these explorations are the various parts of our selves, as well as those of others, including nonhuman elements such as atmosphere, histories, ghosts, wildlife, projections, etc. Just as we learn together through mindful relational techniques, we will also play with those very techniques, moving from immersion to examination to critique to affirmation to play to immersion and so on.
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PACIFIC NORTHWEST RETREAT
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PACIFIC NORTHWEST DEEP PLAY RETREAT [Elkenmist, WA / July 27-30th, 2023]
A retreat for playing in and experimenting with relational deep play Our intention is to gather community who live in & around Portland, Oregon and who are deeply invested in exploring the healing, artistic, and revelatory potentials that can arise in group dynamics. We are particularly calling in those of us who feel tired, frustrated, or bored with the way healing arts culture tends to manifest in the pacific northwest (aka a yummy-pleasure-follow-your-bliss culture. You know what we mean? :)
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AN AGGREGATION
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AN AGGREGATION [Vox Populi, Philly / July 15th, 6pm-2am, 2023]
A parts-work durational performance piece Two friends, colleagues, therapists, artists - Netta and Aaron - will use a co-created method drawing from Circling, Psychodrama, and Internal Family Systems Therapy to concretize the fragmented and fragile nature of their friendship and collaboration. The process will excavate their relationship as it unfolds in the here-and-now in an eight-hour durational performance.
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RITUALS OF PLAY, FAILURE & LOVE
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RITUALS OF PLAY, FAILURE & LOVE [Devon, UK / June 23-26th, 2023]
An Inner-Parts Intensive discovering together new ways of relating to our inner selves with failure, play and love Join us for a four-day immersive adventure in the rolling hills of Devon, discovering together our inner parts and our group dynamics. The workshop will be rooted in parts work, a practice that involves tracing individual and collective selves through therapeutic methods, sensory experiments, mindfulness exercises, and social structures that invite creative imagining and courageous honesty with ourselves and one another. Our workshop hopes to bring us into deeper relationship with our parts and each other’s, and to do this we anticipate oscillating between intense interpersonal relating, including explorations of conflict, frustration, shame, sadness, and on the other hand, quiet and creative contemplation. We will use our personal explorations and those of the group to play with interpersonal dynamics that are patterned throughout larger communities and the world.
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ART LIFE PRACTICES
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Art Life Practices [Virtual, 02/27-03/08, 2023]
A Short Journey of Enchantment Much has been thought and written about how one’s life, experiences and autobiography can inform one’s art practice and creative processes. However, very rarely we turn this equation the other way around, and investigate how art practice, or an artistic way of seeing and positioning ourselves in the world might inform our life processes, challenges, and the creation of our day to day. This is a journey of enchantment. Together, we will be exploring new, strange and fun ways of looking at what is around us and our autobiographies, monsters and challenges as strategies of Autopoiesis. Guided by the artistic process of visual artists, performers, poets and filmmakers that have been exploring the boundaries between art and life, as well as by therapeutic techniques such as mindfulness, visualizations, contact-improvisation and the work of Willem Reich, we will be looking at our creative processes, traumas and stereotypes and opening up space for new forms of seeing and creating. Deautomatization, presence, a living body, attention, integration of feelings, finding stimuli beyond screens are some of the key words for this process.
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PSYCHODRAMA INTENSIVE
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Psychodrama Intensive [Portland, 02/10-12, 2023]
A Weekend Psychodrama Intensive in Portland, OR Psychodrama is an action method (developed in the 1920s by Jacob Moreno in Vienna) in which participants use spontaneous dramatization, role playing, and dramatic self-presentation to engage a situation or encounter. The weekend intensive will contain four 3-hour blocks during which the group will enhance somatic and dramatic expression, enact short vignettes and solo-plays, access allies and self-energy, and perform full psychodramas as well. Participants will learn tools for self-facilitating psychodramatic play, so that these resources can be practiced on one one's own outside of a group. This intensive hopes to give participants greater insight into their inner systems of parts or roles, and provide renewed creative vitality and agency to play with these inner worlds together towards the collective goal of healing and self expression.
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PARTS PRACTICE
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Parts Practice: A Weekend Intensive [Toronto, 11/5-11/6, 2022]
a weekend intensive of teaching and playing with the practices of Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Psychodrama. The Deep Play Institute (DPI) presents Parts Practice: A Weekend Intensive of teaching and playing with the practices of Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Psychodrama. Both practices are a form of parts work, which means they aim to provide transformation by working with a non-singular self that is made up of various inner parts. Day one of our intensive will introduce participants to IFS – a somatic therapy system for differentiating between parts of self, mediating among them, and putting them into contact with curiosity and compassion. Day two will introduce participants to Psychodrama – an action method in which participants use spontaneous dramatization, role playing, and dramatic self-presentation to engage a situation or encounter. Our hope is that not only will participants leave with practical skills from these two practices, but that participants will carry forward the open-heartedness and creativity that these practices help to cultivate.
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PLAYING WITH TRANSFORMATION
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Playing with Transformation – Improvising Healing Arts Practices & Techniques [virtual, Fall 2022]
a virtual workshop series for creative skill sharing and form-building in healing arts practices The Deep Play Institute presents Playing with Transformation - Improvising Healing Arts Practices & Techniques. This is a 1-month workshop series designed for creative skill sharing and form-building in healing arts practices. Our series contains two blocks. The first block offers experiential tastes of a handful of vibrant contemporary healing practices including: Internal Family Systems, Circling, Voice Dialogues, Developmental Transformations, Family Constellations, and Psychodrama. The second block offers more divergent and creative articulations of transformative techniques blending somatic practices, roleplay techniques, guided meditations, and dramatization methods.
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PSYCHODRAMA
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Psychodrama Group, Portland [bi-weekly, Fall 2022]
a bi-weekly drop-in psychodrama group in Portland, Oregon Psychodrama is an action method (developed in the 1920s by Jacob Moreno in Vienna) in which participants use spontaneous dramatization, role playing, and dramatic self-presentation to engage a situation or encounter. It is an incredible performative practice for diving deeply and playful into intra/inter-subjective facets of self and other. Psychodrama is practiced in a group, whereby one participant volunteers to be the protagonist who then acts on their "drama" with the aid of other group members as auxiliaries. It is a highly structured technique with forms that establish safety, minimize projection, and create the capacity for extremely deep and transformative expression.
more details
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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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