The Body Speaks: from Impulse to Expression
a workshop drawing on the principles of Michael Chekov's "Psychological Gesture"
Wild Heart Wellness, Portland OR
February 28 - March 1
$350-500
[early bird until Dec 30]
Psychological Gesture is an embodiment technique developed by Russian actor and teacher Michael Chekhov in the late 1920s and early 1930s to help actors embody a character’s inner life through movement. By distilling a character’s main desire or emotion into a single, expressive action, Chekhov used the gesture as a gateway to genuine feeling and psychological truth, allowing actors to access emotion through the body rather than through analysis. For our weekend workshop, The Deep Play Institute will be bringing in Anna Karpukhina, a renowned theatre and movement trainer, director and choreographer from Seattle, who will be leading a workshop drawing from the core principles of Chekhov’s technique.
The workshop will be about learning to hear the language of genuine impulses, to trust them, and let them guide your expression. When you stop trying to be right, to please, or to control the outcome and simply let the movement lead, something authentic begins to appear. You start acting, moving, and feeling from your natural truth, not from performance. We’ll explore how movement awakens emotion, how gesture carries meaning, and how the qualities of movement shape our presence. Through these explorations, participants open a sense of honest embodiment, a connection to their natural expressiveness and inner clarity. The goal is not to perform, but to be real: to discover how sincerity and imagination can meet in the body, and let your movement speak - freely, consciously, and in your favor.
The workshop will be conducted in both English and Russian, with live translation provided, as Anna Karpukhina will be teaching in her native Russian.
–🌾— PRACTICALS DETAILS —🌾–
Schedule: The workshop will go from 10am-5pm on both Saturday and Sunday with a 1-hour lunch break. Participants are encouraged to pack a lunch for the sake of time and ease.
Price: Price is tiered sliding scale based on 3 income levels. All prices are in USD.
EARLY BIRD (until Dec 30): Tier 1 $450 / Tier 2 $400 / Tier 3 $350
REGULAR: Tier 1 $500 / Tier 2 $450 / Tier 3 $400
Sliding Scale: Please try to reasonably and honestly select the price that reflects your economic situation. If you are unable to find a price that is suitable for you, please get in touch [[email protected]]. We are committed to covering our basic costs, while also making this possible for everyone who wants it.
Maximum Participants: 13
Emotional Safety: The practices on offer are designed to cultivate vulnerability, with its pleasures and its hardships. The practices tend to surface conflict and hurt that might conventionally be quieted or minimized. It is common to experience triggers of past psychological wounds within this practice, and this should be accounted for as a possibility. The intimacy of these practices might be compared to the way one's deepest romantic relationships sometimes surface one's most challenging psychological material. The facilitators will use techniques to contain and care for what arises, but will not be able to provide ongoing care for emotional fallout. The invitation is to be watchful of one's own safety and opt out in little and big ways as needed, and to have emotional processing methods in place (such as therapy, meditation, journaling, processing with friends, etc) that can help you learn with and from what happens at the intensive.
Cancellation Policy: Refunds are available up to 30 days before the event - minus a $20 processing fee. After this time we are unable to provide a refund for the event. Partial refunds might be given if a cancellation takes place under extenuating circumstances (e.g. a death of a 1st or 2nd degree family member, serious non-preventable illness or accident requiring hospitalization). Refunds in such cases remain at the discretion of the local organizers and will be decided on a case to case basis.
Partial Attendance: All participants are required to attend the Opening Circle on Day 1 of the Intensive. Given the intimacy and trust building inherent to the program, we highly recommend that all participants plan to stay for the entire weekend.
Note on Out-of-Town Guests: The Deep Play Institute is not able to provide accommodations for out-of-town participants. DPI is also not able to refund any travel or housing costs in the unlikely event of cancellation.
About the Deep Play Institute The Deep Play Institute is a nonprofit organization committed to exploring life’s deepest questions through transformative play. DPI’s facilitators – therapists, artists, coaches, and philosophers – aim to use play to bring people into an experiential questioning of what it means to exist. Each program that DPI runs is a unique container, creatively constructed and inspired by practices that include: Gestalt therapy, Process Work, Psychodrama, Internal Family Systems Therapy, Tavistock Group Relations, Relational Psychoanalysis, Authentic Relating, Nonviolent Communication, Circling, coaching, performance art, contact improvisation, experimental theater, LARPs, surrealism, existential games, and various schools of meditation.
The workshop will be about learning to hear the language of genuine impulses, to trust them, and let them guide your expression. When you stop trying to be right, to please, or to control the outcome and simply let the movement lead, something authentic begins to appear. You start acting, moving, and feeling from your natural truth, not from performance. We’ll explore how movement awakens emotion, how gesture carries meaning, and how the qualities of movement shape our presence. Through these explorations, participants open a sense of honest embodiment, a connection to their natural expressiveness and inner clarity. The goal is not to perform, but to be real: to discover how sincerity and imagination can meet in the body, and let your movement speak - freely, consciously, and in your favor.
The workshop will be conducted in both English and Russian, with live translation provided, as Anna Karpukhina will be teaching in her native Russian.
–🌾— PRACTICALS DETAILS —🌾–
Schedule: The workshop will go from 10am-5pm on both Saturday and Sunday with a 1-hour lunch break. Participants are encouraged to pack a lunch for the sake of time and ease.
Price: Price is tiered sliding scale based on 3 income levels. All prices are in USD.
EARLY BIRD (until Dec 30): Tier 1 $450 / Tier 2 $400 / Tier 3 $350
REGULAR: Tier 1 $500 / Tier 2 $450 / Tier 3 $400
Sliding Scale: Please try to reasonably and honestly select the price that reflects your economic situation. If you are unable to find a price that is suitable for you, please get in touch [[email protected]]. We are committed to covering our basic costs, while also making this possible for everyone who wants it.
Maximum Participants: 13
Emotional Safety: The practices on offer are designed to cultivate vulnerability, with its pleasures and its hardships. The practices tend to surface conflict and hurt that might conventionally be quieted or minimized. It is common to experience triggers of past psychological wounds within this practice, and this should be accounted for as a possibility. The intimacy of these practices might be compared to the way one's deepest romantic relationships sometimes surface one's most challenging psychological material. The facilitators will use techniques to contain and care for what arises, but will not be able to provide ongoing care for emotional fallout. The invitation is to be watchful of one's own safety and opt out in little and big ways as needed, and to have emotional processing methods in place (such as therapy, meditation, journaling, processing with friends, etc) that can help you learn with and from what happens at the intensive.
Cancellation Policy: Refunds are available up to 30 days before the event - minus a $20 processing fee. After this time we are unable to provide a refund for the event. Partial refunds might be given if a cancellation takes place under extenuating circumstances (e.g. a death of a 1st or 2nd degree family member, serious non-preventable illness or accident requiring hospitalization). Refunds in such cases remain at the discretion of the local organizers and will be decided on a case to case basis.
Partial Attendance: All participants are required to attend the Opening Circle on Day 1 of the Intensive. Given the intimacy and trust building inherent to the program, we highly recommend that all participants plan to stay for the entire weekend.
Note on Out-of-Town Guests: The Deep Play Institute is not able to provide accommodations for out-of-town participants. DPI is also not able to refund any travel or housing costs in the unlikely event of cancellation.
About the Deep Play Institute The Deep Play Institute is a nonprofit organization committed to exploring life’s deepest questions through transformative play. DPI’s facilitators – therapists, artists, coaches, and philosophers – aim to use play to bring people into an experiential questioning of what it means to exist. Each program that DPI runs is a unique container, creatively constructed and inspired by practices that include: Gestalt therapy, Process Work, Psychodrama, Internal Family Systems Therapy, Tavistock Group Relations, Relational Psychoanalysis, Authentic Relating, Nonviolent Communication, Circling, coaching, performance art, contact improvisation, experimental theater, LARPs, surrealism, existential games, and various schools of meditation.
ABOUT THE FACILITATOR
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Anna Karpukhina is a movement director, choreographer, and acting coach with over 20 years of professional experience in dramatic theater. She has worked on more than 45 productions as a movement director and choreographer, developing a distinctive approach that blends expressive physicality with imagination and emotional truth. Her teaching is rooted in the Michael Chekhov Technique and focuses on helping actors connect body and impulse to reveal authentic expression on stage. Anna is the founder of BodySpeech, a studio dedicated to training performers in movement, gesture, and embodied presence. She is the recipient of the Outstanding Choreography Award at the WSCTA Kaleidoscope Festival in Spokane.
READ MORE ABOUT ANNA'S BACKGROUND / EXPERIENCE |