Back to School: The Fall 2025 Class Series
a 6-week semester of deeply playful curriculum for the post-disciplinary imagination
6 Sundays 9/7 - 10/12 2025
Virtual (Zoom)
10am-12pm PST / 1-3pm EST / 7-9pm CEST
Welcome back to school! And join the Deep Play Institute for our first Fall Semester of deep play classes. For those who miss the whole theater of school, we’ll be playing it up with homework assignments, readings, and a virtual community of fellow students. Our curriculum will be more experiential than didactic, offering workshops that are experimental, playful, transformative mixtures of art, mindfulness, therapy and performance.
Classes will meet on Sundays from Sept 7th to Oct 12th on zoom, on Sundays from 10am-12pm PST / 1-3pm EST / 7-9pm CEST, with the exception of our intro class that meets on Thursday (see more info below). Participants must sign up for the entire series. Classes will be recorded, so if you can’t attend one you can still watch the recording. See below for our list of classes and facilitators.
Cost is by donation, taking inspiration from the dana practice in Buddhist monastic settings. We believe that this play is deeply important and liberatory, and offer the series as an act of service towards collective healing and transcendence. Please give what you can and find appropriate to support our organization and skillful facilitators, and we welcome you regardless of that number.
Classes will meet on Sundays from Sept 7th to Oct 12th on zoom, on Sundays from 10am-12pm PST / 1-3pm EST / 7-9pm CEST, with the exception of our intro class that meets on Thursday (see more info below). Participants must sign up for the entire series. Classes will be recorded, so if you can’t attend one you can still watch the recording. See below for our list of classes and facilitators.
Cost is by donation, taking inspiration from the dana practice in Buddhist monastic settings. We believe that this play is deeply important and liberatory, and offer the series as an act of service towards collective healing and transcendence. Please give what you can and find appropriate to support our organization and skillful facilitators, and we welcome you regardless of that number.
SCHEDULE OF CLASSES
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9/4*
Introductions: Grab Bags of Technique Party Favors Aaron Finbloom Welcome to our series! We’ll introduce ourselves, say some words about deep play and its guiding ethos, and then we’ll go over some agreements. We'll play connection games in large groups and small groups: think of it like a grab bag of party favors you get at the end of a birthday party when you're a kid. Games will be inspired by authentic relating, psychodrama, surrealism, and imaginal practice. Bio: Aaron Finbloom is a philosopher, artist and pedagogue. He is the co-founder of The School of Making Thinking (SMT) and the director of The Deep Play Institute (DPI). His life work (and play) involves expanding transformative inquiry practice through games, performance art and conversation scores. Aaron has training in Circling, Psychodrama, and Processwork and holds a PhD in relational practice from Concordia University in Montreal. *This special opening class will be only 1 hour long, and will be held on Thursday Sept 4th at 12pm PST / 3pm EST / 9pm GMT |
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9/7
Obstacles as Superpowers Daniel Rudolph What if the very things we see as obstacles or shortcomings could become our greatest strengths? In this interactive workshop, we’ll play and reflect to see how we can use our everyday stories and our Clown to express absurdity. And, on the flip-side how we can integrate playfulness more and more into our everyday rhythms. Guided by practices inspired by Dan’s background in mindfulness, clowning, and play, you will be invited to engage in both self-reflection and group exploration to explore how we can use our shortcomings to fuel positive change, in ourselves, and those around us. Bio: Dan Rudolph is the founder, and chief developer of Unified Playfulness. Dan has been facilitating play-based interventions, for individuals and groups, for over fifteen years, including working with schools, teams and individuals. Dan is a certified Laughter Yoga instructor. He has trained with various clown and play-based teachers including, Avner ‘The Eccentric’ Eisenberg, Mery Miguez, Anthony Trahair and Barnaby King. He has over 10 years of meditation experience, including living in a rigorous monastic setting and training with an expert teacher for 2.5 years. |
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9/14
Everything I Heard Over the Course of My Day ILVS STRAUSS What is it we hear? What is it we want to hear? This workshop will be composed of a selection of intentional listening practices, writing prompts, and opportunities to vocalize in pedestrian and not so pedestrian ways. Inspired by the physics of sound, the power of music, and an overall appreciation of our senses, attendees will have occasion to learn about our wonderful aural organs, be guided through a qigong routine to maintain ear health, and play with the concept of resonance and resonant frequencies, amongst other things. Let us actively delight in this historically passive yet powerful sense and bring back into the world a greater sense and awareness of the sounds we make and put out into the world. Bio: From a sociodemographic standpoint, I am a 46 year old educated, queer, mixed-race, white-passing, female bodied, Honduran-American artist. From a non-sociodemographic standpoint, I’m still those things, but manifest in 3D by the ethereal: experience, values, judgement, desire, need, love, motivation, inspiration, etc. I once had a job as an analytical chemist for a pharmaceutical company (BA Chemistry - OSU) but then slowly pivoted to the arts (MFA Interdisciplinary Arts - SFU). The hats I wear are many and at times I have been known to wear several at once: multi-disciplinary performance artist, writer, dancer, facilitator, technical director, lighting designer, and sound engineer. |
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9/21
The Oracle of Sensation Quincee Lark Can you trust your body to lead the way, even if you don’t know where it’s going? What happens when we translate movement and sensation into visual art? In this playful, creative container, we use breath and visualization to tune into the body, turning towards sensation as the guide of creative expression—no art experience needed. We'll use super simple materials (just paper and something to draw with) and drop into a series of guided exercises that invite us to make marks straight from sensation, rather than thought. Bio: I’m Quincee Lark—an artist, poet, and facilitator drawn to the delta where the river of creativity meets the sea of healing. With a background in psychology, yoga, and wilderness therapy, I’m endlessly curious about the way breath, movement, and art can help us come home to ourselves. My work lives at the intersection of the spiritual and the somatic. I make visionary art, teach yoga and embodiment workshops, and host gatherings that honor the inner landscape. Through my startup, Visionseed, I share podcasts, an oracle deck and other offerings that explore what it means to live a creatively embodied life, with a deep love for the alchemy of becoming. |
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9/28
Conflict Improv James Boutin What if conflict could be fun? In this workshop, we’ll explore how humor and play can shift the way we relate to tension. We’ll start with a body-based icebreaker and a brief introduction. Then we’ll dive into conflict improv—silly roleplays like confronting someone for faking a British accent at a retreat. After each scenario, we’ll pause to reflect on what we noticed and learned. We’ll end by creating our own “conflict monsters”—the parts of us that show up when things get tough. You’ll leave with new awareness about your conflict habits and how to make light of them in a useful way. Bio: James Boutin is an educator, facilitator, and trainer who specializes in working with conflict. He holds masters degrees in education and process-oriented facilitation. James has experience facilitating conflict in a wide range of contexts from family systems, public schools, to nonprofit and policymaking spaces. He is the author of a short eBook entitled The Foundations of Generative Conflict. James partners with mission-driven organizations and individuals to help them use conflict as one of their greatest resources for achieving their goals. He also adores local coffee shops, needlessly complicated strategy-based video games, and racquet sports. |
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10/5
Tricksters at the Edge - A Play Practice for Disruption Ana Rosa Marx and Athena Zero. How will we conspire with the tricksters inside us to break out of the systems that bind us? What is unleashed when belief in the possible meets action? Inspired by political tricksters of the past and present, we will use tools and games to activate our subconscious as an autonomous space in which rebellion can be sparked. Expect scavenger hunts, embodied listening, mini-altar creation, surrealist writing games, and more. Bio: We are Ana Rosa Marx and Athena Zero. We activate the trickster during moments of rupture through tools and scores that we have crafted over the course of an 8 years collaboration around the role of the trickster archetype in shaping and sparking change. Our collaboration takes the form of poetic interventions stemming from the meeting of Athena’s background in performance and direction, and Ana’s practice in photography, film, performance, and installation. We create provocations balancing choice, chance, and trust- elements that allow us to listen with increasing sensitivity to bodies who speak in ways other than linear narrative: for example, a Kentucky sinkhole, an abandoned grandmother’s island, a rock, the space between us. |
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10/12
How to be Angry with God* Martje Witzel Many of us—especially those on paths of consciousness, healing, or spirituality—find ourselves longing for life (or “God”) to make sense, to be beautiful and meaningful. But what happens when it doesn’t? When do we feel betrayed? When prayers go unanswered or faith gets interrupted. In this workshop, we’ll explore what it means to be angry with God—or with life itself. Not as a rejection, but as a path to deeper connection. Like a child whose anger toward a parent can lead to greater intimacy, our truthfulness can become a doorway to trust and wholeness. Through guided techniques, embodiment, play, and intimate conversation, we’ll explore our resistance to these feelings and reclaim the parts of ourselves we’ve exiled in the name of positivity or spiritual growth. This is not about fixing pain, but about making space for it—so life can move through us more fully. Bio: Martje is a transformational coach, group leader and mystical artist. For over 20 years, she has worked with people in diverse contexts, blending embodiment, soul work, ritual, trauma work (NARM) and the relational arts. Extensively trained in Circling and Surrendered Leadership she guides individuals and groups into deeper relational presence. She is a lover of the wild unknown, she leads spaces with a gentle fierceness and lets her gold touch the edges of your soul. Find more about her here: www.all-there-is.com *this class will go for an additional 30 minutes after the indicated time for closing reflections, integrations and goodbyes as a conclusion to the workshop series as a whole (facilitated by Aaron Finbloom) |