The Art and Science of Lucid Dreaming
Fariba Bogzaran

Lucid dreaming—awareness in dreams while we are dreaming—is a powerful practice of awakening to the great dimensions of our creative mind. Engaging in lucid dreaming challenges our perception and habitual patterns and can lead to the practice of lucid waking. In this workshop, Fariba Bogzaran will focus on the historical, scientific, and phenomenological research on lucid dreaming. She will explore the topic in the context of spiritual experiences, creative inspirations, problem solving, and nightmares, and will discuss lucid dreaming as a practice to prepare for dying. Through innovative methods developed by Bogzaran, participants will learn awareness techniques in waking and dreaming and acquire practical and creative tools with which to view their dreams.

Dancing Voice, Singing Body
Meredith Monk

Voice, the original human instrument, is an eloquent language of the heart that delineates energy for which we don’t have words. This workshop offers a place where voice, movement, and image intersect to create a unique opportunity for participants to discover their own personal inner richness.

After beginning with breathing techniques and a detailed vocal and movement warm-up, we work with the voice and body as instruments for exploring range, timbre, gesture, resonance, character, landscape, and rhythm to uncover fundamentals of performance as a way of connecting to our world.

Shamanic Extraction Healing Training
Michael and Sandra Harner
Susan Mokelke

Advanced Workshop
Participants will be initiated into the extraction method of healing, including how to see, sense, and remove localized spiritual illness and pain. They will also learn a classic method of awakening their own spirits and discovering their power songs and dances.

The Extraction Healing Training workshop is designed exclusively for people who want to bring shamanic healing work into their practice with others. The training is not designed for people looking for personal healing.

Before enrolling in this workshop, please make sure that you have been having success in contacting your power animals and/or teachers on your own and that you feel confident about your journey skills.

Prerequisite: The Way of the Shaman: The Basic Workshop with the Harners or other authorized Foundation for Shamanic Studies faculty members.

View Basic Workshop

The Art of Indian Ragas & Rasas
Transformation & Transcendence Through Melody and Chant
Silvia Nakkach

Module 2
Through the inscrutable power of the ragas and the ten rasas of Indian art—love, peace, joy, fear, devotion, wonder, aversion, heroism, compassion and detachment—we will examine the potential of melody and music to connect with archetypal consciousness and our emotional nature, and to stimulate brain and memory, intuition and magic. In its subtlest sense, rasa signifies a state of heightened delight, the kind of bliss (ananda) that can be experienced only by the spirit. Thus, aesthetic experience is a transformation not merely of feeling, but equally of cognition.

Through the traditional practice of call-and-response, we will improve vocal technique tone and memory, and engage the therapeutic quality of breath and sound. We will explore the raga’s variations of melody and microtonal movement in combination with subtle body movements and gestures (mudras) and experience how they affect consciousness and spirit. Students will take home a repertoire of raga-based vocal meditation exercises and Sanskrit mantras that can be used for sound healing, yoga, meditation, and chanting circles. Although students may take these classes independently, attendance to both modules is encouraged to promote progressive learning. No previous musical experience is required.

View Workshop Module 1

Being a Compassionate Companion for the Dying
Frank Ostaseski

Caring for people who are dying can be an intense, intimate, and deeply alive experience. It often challenges our most basic beliefs. It is a journey of continuous discovery, requiring courage and flexibility. We learn to open, take risks, and forgive constantly.

This workshop will present a mindful and compassionate approach to the practical, emotional, and spiritual issues inherent in this unique relationship. Through Buddhist mindfulness practice, experiential exercises and discussion we will explore our relationship to dying, We will develop our capacity for balance, empathy, and fearless receptivity as well as the skillful means necessary to accompany those facing death with openness and love.

This program is open to all and may be of particular interest to professionals or those who anticipate caring for family members or friends facing life-threatening illness.

The Expressive Body In Life, Art, and Therapy
Daria Halprin

Embodiment through the arts is an experience in creativity itself. Since ancient times and across all cultures, dance and the expressive arts have provided individuals and communities with a source of creativity, healing, and spiritual connection. In what ways might we be sustained and transformed by creativity through the arts, to meet the challenges of our modern lives? In this workshop participants will be introduced to the first movement-based expressive arts approaches to shape the field of expressive arts therapy, dance/movement therapy, postmodern performance, and the healing arts.

We will bring body and imagination into creative dialogue using movement, drawing, poetic writing, reflective questions, improvisation, and performance rituals. The metaphors of art practice and art work will generate and inspire metaphors relevant to the narratives, challenges, and burning questions of peoples' daily lives. This workshop is appropriate for anyone wishing to deepen his/her awareness of and relationship to the body.

The Relevance of the Body in Accessing the Unconscious: Rosen Method Bodywork
Marion Rosen and Sara Webb

Marion Rosen has a unique ability to decipher body language to see through the outer layers of a person into the innermost working of the human heart. In this workshop, participants will learn to interpret muscle tension and to support the release of this tension through gentle touch.

Students will explore how muscle tension, breath, and body postures interface with emotion. Participants will also develop greater sensitivity in their touch and increase their ability to see subtle changes in the breath that indicate a person is speaking the truth or having a long- forgotten memory well up from the past.

The spiritual and emotional dimensions of the breath will be clarified, as well as the physiological foundations of breathing and the connection of breath to the unconscious.

Music, Healthcare, and Consciousness
Don Campbell

Modern healthcare facilities are beginning to recognize the importance of sound in promoting the well-being of staff, visitors, and patients through innovations in acoustic and visual design, which refresh and restore calmness on all levels of care. Being conscious of the sounds around us is essential to good health. In this class, we will look at ways music can assist creative caregiving by exploring the architecture of sound that serves as an essential tool for time-space perception. From jazz to ambient, from filtered sounds to classical orchestrations, music serves as a vital bridge to bring harmony and health to hospitals, homes, vehicles, and classrooms.

In this interactive “ears-on” workshop, Don Campbell will take participants on an auditory journey through deep process and cutting-edge techniques for using music, sound, and imagery for healing. Utilizing rhythm, tone, and harmonics, he will demonstrate practical and useful ways to connect to heightened states of consciousness through music. Tracing this information from transcendent spiritual states to neurological responses in the brain, participants will see how music serves to stimulate and reorchestrate neuropathways for better health, transforming the chaos and dissonance of modern living into the music of life.