2024 dates in process - please stay tuned for updates. Also aiming for a retreat in Oaxaca, Mexico in early January 2025
Five Day Residential Workshop Retreat
Living Wholeness
Wholeness in Motion • Teaching from Wholeness
We are Nature, Nature is Wise.
When I asked participants what the first words or images that came to them about their time in the Living Wholeness in Motion retreat they said: me, laying on the ground, embracing the world, safe, whole, content, community, thriving, growing, nourishing, sweet, hip hip hurray.
When I asked what is the experience like they answered: playful, expansive, safe, surprising, restorative, energizing, nourishing, liberating, rich, varied sensual, beautiful, delightful, intriguing, fun, playful, laughed, satisfied, opening, bountiful, nourishing, flowing.
"Dear Educator, Through your own work during this week you discover new tools to bring to your studios and students. These tools include new vocabulary - a new way of thinking about our whole self. This shift in perspective opens up a whole new realm for you and your students. " - Maureen Batt, Soprano
Immerse yourself in your wholeness. How you frame your sense of yourself is what you experience. The culture is dominated by parts language: my body, my mind, my pain, my happiness. This work gives you the experience of a whole system framework. I move, I have ideas, I am supported, I am responsive, I get signals to guide me. This simple shift has profound implications for how you experience your system.
The heart of the retreat is having time and space to be in the woods and in company to listen to your own artistic voice. Through a series of exercises I call "Have a walk" we gather and create the content of our work together.
The workshop is rooted in you and your well-being. From this experiential foundation we will layer in pedagogical principles that emerge from our explorations.
Participants often experience and observe aligning living/teaching strategies with new paradigms of human structure, coordination and learning. Living and teaching with language and an approach rooted in these perspectives, that all point to wholeness, serves
living and teaching as a whole alive expressive being. Specific tools emerge to support us to teach and learn without inadvertently contributing to fear and stress.
Some of the territories we have explored in this retreat are:
The time together will have a feel of a retreat in that your are nourished with fresh food from the garden, time to be quiet in nature, opportunities for 'add-on' play like wandering an amazing local sculpture garden. We have an infra-red sauna you can enjoy anytime. This is learning environment that is recuperative as well as inspiring.
When I asked what is the experience like they answered: playful, expansive, safe, surprising, restorative, energizing, nourishing, liberating, rich, varied sensual, beautiful, delightful, intriguing, fun, playful, laughed, satisfied, opening, bountiful, nourishing, flowing.
"Dear Educator, Through your own work during this week you discover new tools to bring to your studios and students. These tools include new vocabulary - a new way of thinking about our whole self. This shift in perspective opens up a whole new realm for you and your students. " - Maureen Batt, Soprano
Immerse yourself in your wholeness. How you frame your sense of yourself is what you experience. The culture is dominated by parts language: my body, my mind, my pain, my happiness. This work gives you the experience of a whole system framework. I move, I have ideas, I am supported, I am responsive, I get signals to guide me. This simple shift has profound implications for how you experience your system.
The heart of the retreat is having time and space to be in the woods and in company to listen to your own artistic voice. Through a series of exercises I call "Have a walk" we gather and create the content of our work together.
The workshop is rooted in you and your well-being. From this experiential foundation we will layer in pedagogical principles that emerge from our explorations.
Participants often experience and observe aligning living/teaching strategies with new paradigms of human structure, coordination and learning. Living and teaching with language and an approach rooted in these perspectives, that all point to wholeness, serves
living and teaching as a whole alive expressive being. Specific tools emerge to support us to teach and learn without inadvertently contributing to fear and stress.
Some of the territories we have explored in this retreat are:
- Looking at Movement principles that determine how we are embodied at any given moment, This area is about having more choice and availability in our beingness.
- The inherent expressiveness of our embodiment and how to harness that in artistry.
- Understanding space, time, force, shape as elements of communication.
- Honoring multiple avenues of knowing, of gathering information and learning.
- How to teach without cheer leading or barking orders. (How to learn without shame.)
- Helping yourself and your students develop personal criteria for assessment and artistic choice.
- Enhance your/their ability to accurately interpret responses so they, and you, can make informed choices
- Your ability to ask useful questions to foster discovery in the student and yourself rather than just telling them what to do.
- Your ability to get interferences out of the way so you can get to the art making.
The time together will have a feel of a retreat in that your are nourished with fresh food from the garden, time to be quiet in nature, opportunities for 'add-on' play like wandering an amazing local sculpture garden. We have an infra-red sauna you can enjoy anytime. This is learning environment that is recuperative as well as inspiring.
|
|
|
The Details
Sample Schedule - Sunday evening to Friday afternoon
Sunday, 6 PM - gather for a meal and welcome session
Ends Friday, 3 PM
Welcome evening will be a meal and evening session.
Full Days 1, 2 and 4, 5 will weave 3 to 4 hours of class time and 1 to 2 hours of individual time (You may observe the lessons but it will be one on one work).
Day 3 will be a day free of a schedule. It is a day for reflection and synthesis. We’ll have several options for supplemental activities like doing a short paddle down the local creek or visiting a fantastic nearby sculpture garden or a taking an herb walk. I do a lot of fermentation and plant medicine/lotion making. If something like that interests you we can do these. Sunday we will play by ear.
See below for sample schedule.
Accommodations:
You are welcome to stay on our land and in our home. The house is small - space for 2 or 3 people depending on your flexibility and privacy needs. You are welcome to camp. (If weather got terrible, of course you could come on in and sleep in the house-). We also have a small truck camper one person or a couple can use. I am working on seeing if any neighbors might provide an informal air-bnb type situation. There are motels nearby, just not in very pretty places. If you want this option I can send you links. Essentially, If you stay with us the accommodation will be informal and somewhat primitive. PLEASE NOTE WE HAVE A CAT AND A DOG. Both are friendly and lovely presences. But in case you are allergic this option may not be possible.
Meals
I will provide meals for the 6 days. Since I am not a commercial kitchen and don’t have insurance etc about providing meals, you would be eating as a guest. The meals will be fresh, relatively gluten free (If you have a dietary restriction I am fully comfortable making adjustments. Lots of vegies from the garden and local meat and eggs. Once the group is decided, it might be fun to have each person give me recipe for a favorite dish. I could get ingredients and you could either cook or tell me how. So meals would be an additional way to share.
Costs
$ 800 or pay as you can - there may be some fixed costs. To be determined as dates and locations finalize.
A $250 deposit is due upon registration. This would be non-refundable unless you can find another person to take your spot.
Class Limit 6
If you would like to bring this workshop to a custom group or location please contact me. Fee adjusts to situation.
Sample Schedule - Sunday evening to Friday afternoon
Sunday, 6 PM - gather for a meal and welcome session
Ends Friday, 3 PM
Welcome evening will be a meal and evening session.
Full Days 1, 2 and 4, 5 will weave 3 to 4 hours of class time and 1 to 2 hours of individual time (You may observe the lessons but it will be one on one work).
Day 3 will be a day free of a schedule. It is a day for reflection and synthesis. We’ll have several options for supplemental activities like doing a short paddle down the local creek or visiting a fantastic nearby sculpture garden or a taking an herb walk. I do a lot of fermentation and plant medicine/lotion making. If something like that interests you we can do these. Sunday we will play by ear.
See below for sample schedule.
Accommodations:
You are welcome to stay on our land and in our home. The house is small - space for 2 or 3 people depending on your flexibility and privacy needs. You are welcome to camp. (If weather got terrible, of course you could come on in and sleep in the house-). We also have a small truck camper one person or a couple can use. I am working on seeing if any neighbors might provide an informal air-bnb type situation. There are motels nearby, just not in very pretty places. If you want this option I can send you links. Essentially, If you stay with us the accommodation will be informal and somewhat primitive. PLEASE NOTE WE HAVE A CAT AND A DOG. Both are friendly and lovely presences. But in case you are allergic this option may not be possible.
Meals
I will provide meals for the 6 days. Since I am not a commercial kitchen and don’t have insurance etc about providing meals, you would be eating as a guest. The meals will be fresh, relatively gluten free (If you have a dietary restriction I am fully comfortable making adjustments. Lots of vegies from the garden and local meat and eggs. Once the group is decided, it might be fun to have each person give me recipe for a favorite dish. I could get ingredients and you could either cook or tell me how. So meals would be an additional way to share.
Costs
$ 800 or pay as you can - there may be some fixed costs. To be determined as dates and locations finalize.
A $250 deposit is due upon registration. This would be non-refundable unless you can find another person to take your spot.
Class Limit 6
If you would like to bring this workshop to a custom group or location please contact me. Fee adjusts to situation.
Living Wholeness Retreat Overview
The Living Wholeness residential workshop is built around Wholeness in Motion Patterns of Nature and WIM Movement Sequences. Each of the four working days will be organized around two of WIM's Patterns of Nature - The concepts of the day’s Patterns will be the lens through which we look at the four territories of the work: 1. Well-being/response system 2. Structure/Suspension System, 3. Action/Coordinating System, 4. Learning/Adapting System.
Flexible Schedule
First Evening - We gather and share a meal.
The daily schedule (days one, two, four and five) will gently follow this pattern:
Day three is a pause day – extras, field trips, kayaking, co-creative collaborative learning time.
Morning to do your own thing and any assignments
9:30 Locate – threshold and Patterns of Nature of the day.
10:00 Deep Play – Heart of the day through Have a Walk.
11:30 or as sensible – Break
11:45 Deep Play – Have a Dance - expanding the work.
12:15 Paradigm – Presenting the overview and details of one of the four fundamental paradigms of the work each day: Suspension System, Coordinating System, Adaptive System and Response System
1:00 Lunch
2:30 Wholeness in Motion- The developmental movement, experiential anatomy – Embodiment work.
3:15 Lessons – Pedagogy – Individual lessons that others observe: Three 30 Minute lessons and/or participation in LearningMethods™ class
4:45 Gather to tie-up the day – Patterns of Nature Dance
5:15 Break for the evening
Flexible Schedule
First Evening - We gather and share a meal.
The daily schedule (days one, two, four and five) will gently follow this pattern:
Day three is a pause day – extras, field trips, kayaking, co-creative collaborative learning time.
Morning to do your own thing and any assignments
9:30 Locate – threshold and Patterns of Nature of the day.
10:00 Deep Play – Heart of the day through Have a Walk.
11:30 or as sensible – Break
11:45 Deep Play – Have a Dance - expanding the work.
12:15 Paradigm – Presenting the overview and details of one of the four fundamental paradigms of the work each day: Suspension System, Coordinating System, Adaptive System and Response System
1:00 Lunch
2:30 Wholeness in Motion- The developmental movement, experiential anatomy – Embodiment work.
3:15 Lessons – Pedagogy – Individual lessons that others observe: Three 30 Minute lessons and/or participation in LearningMethods™ class
4:45 Gather to tie-up the day – Patterns of Nature Dance
5:15 Break for the evening