Events

Public Programs in Depth Psychology 2012

Bill Plotkin, Ph.D. Nature-based Soul Encounter: A Day with Bill Plotkin

Sunday Feb 12, 2012, 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. This workshop is being held at Oceansong, 19100 Coleman Valley Rd. in Occidental Map Driving Directions Leave 1 hour driving time from SSU. If you'd like to attend please email Laurel McCabe at laurel.mccabe@sonoma.edu for pre-registration as attendance is limited. Donations (checks made out to Sonoma State University | Memo line: Depth Psychology) enable us to continue to offer inspiring programs such as this ($30 fee for 3 hours CE for therapists (BBSE); registration at the door the morning of the event) Doors open at 9:30 a.m.

What do we mean by "soul" and "underworld," by "nature," by "Spirit" or "Mystery" (or even "God")? What's the relationship between all of these? What does it mean to be an initiated human adult, how do we become one, why are there so few in the Western world, and what does this have to do with our current urgent need for cultural transformation? What's the difference between psychological healing, psychological wholing, and the initiatory journey to soul? We'll explore these realms and others through discussion, poetry, and experiential practices on the land.

Bill Plotkin, Ph.D., is a depth psychologist, wilderness guide, and agent of cultural transformation. As founder of western Colorado's Animas Valley Institute in 1981, he has guided thousands of women and men through nature-based initiatory passages, including a contemporary, Western adaptation of the pan-cultural vision quest. Previously, he has been a research psychologist (studying non-ordinary states of consciousness), professor of psychology, psychotherapist, rock musician, and whitewater river guide. In 1979, on a solo winter ascent of an Adirondack peak, Bill experienced a "call to adventure," leading him to abandon academia in search of his true calling. Bill is the author of Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche (an experiential guidebook) and Nature and the Human Soul: Cultivating Wholeness and Community in a Fragmented World (a nature-based stage model of human development through the entire lifespan).

Kate Donohue, PhD, REAT, Death Dances Around My Bed: Frida Kahlo and the Archetype of Death

Saturday March 17, 2012, 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. Stevenson 1002, Sonoma State University Donations (checks made out to Sonoma State University | Memo line: Depth Psychology) enable us to continue to offer inspiring programs such as this ($30 fee for 3 hours CE for therapists (BBSE); registration at the door the morning of the event) Doors open at 9:30 a.m. Free parking in Lots A, J, E, F (download campus map)

"Death dances around my bed."

Frida Kahlo's words about her death dance became a vivid portrait of how our unwanted agonies can be our greatest teachers. This presentation uses a Jungian expressive arts therapy lens to explore the intimate relationship between Frida Kahlo's art and the Archetypal Death, as Kahlo's paintings illuminate her life story and illustrate how her artistic images were her psyche's voice.

Frida Kahlo suffered from childhood polio and was gravely injured at the age of 18 in a bus accident which confined her to her bed for a year. Kahlo's life was marked by numerous surgeries, infertility, partner infidelity, and she turned from a medical career to art. For Kahlo, life and death existed simultaneously from her birth till her death, a paradox that compelled her to create images of her bloody and golden body. She boldly painted her reality with its pain, losses, and betrayals: the shadow usually hidden was revealed; and in her later years a metamorphosis took place on her canvas.

Frida imagined herself wearing a Mexican death mask, a symbol of being born of a dead (depressed) mother. Her death mask became a symbol of all her family complexes. Through a deep appreciation of her Mexican and Aztec motherculture, Frida felt connected to Coatlique, the Aztec goddess of death, destruction, dismemberment and life. Her intense relationship with her husband Diego Rivera, the Mexican muralist, intensified her bond with her motherculture, which opened her to more archetypal images in her art. Kahlo's later paintings and self-portraits changed dramatically as life started to leave her body. In her later art we may see the ego and archetype and manifestations of the self and Self.

Participants will be invited to express their experience through inner-directed somatic, visual and poetic active imagination processes. We will close with a group discussion.

Kate Donohue, Ph.D., R.E.A.T. is a founding faculty member of the Expressive Arts Therapy program at the California Institute of Integral Studies, coordinates the expressive Arts Therapy group supervision there, and is a founding member of the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association board and a Professional Standards Board Member. Kate conducts supervision workshops and Jungian oriented expressive arts consultation groups. Dance and painting inform all her expressive arts therapy and supervision.

Tina Stromsted, PhD, MFT, BC-DTR,. Awakening Soul's Body: The Dance of Three

Saturday April 14, 2011, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. Ives 80, Sonoma State University Pre-registration is required as attendance is limited To register email laurel.mccabe@sonoma.edu Donations (checks made out to Sonoma State University) enable us to continue to offer inspiring programs such as this ($60 fee for 6 hours CE for therapists (BBSE); pre-registration required) Doors open at 9:30 a.m. Free parking in Lots E and F (download campus map)

This workshop invites participants to explore the nonverbal underpinnings of psychotherapy through direct experience of bodily-felt sensations, imagination, emotions, and physical action. Authentic movement, an embodied form of C.G. Jung's active imagination method, provides a simple, yet powerful, vehicle for self-knowing, bridging body and psyche through expressive movement.

"The Dance of Three" is a further application of Authentic Movement developed by Marion Woodman in her BodySoul Rhythms approach. It involves a primary mover, an engaged responder, and a reflective witness, each exploring the dynamics of their relationship. This approach can enhance the ability to be present, with oneself and with another, in a more vital, increasingly conscious relationship, inviting a level of perception of self and other that evokes deep respect and empathy.

Recent advances in developmental neuroscience point to the right brain's receptivity to nonverbal elements such as facial expression, voice tone, movement, affect, music, imagery and the play of symbols in dreams and poetry. From our earliest beginnings, empathic relating by the other is an essential component in the formation of the self. Affective mirroring and embodied presence provide a foundation for the development of consciousness in the cells, and a sense of well being and belonging in the world. Sensitivity to the body can allow therapists to attend to this language as it arises in our clients, and in ourselves, hearing the soul's call and working with the obstacles to its fulfillment.

This didactic and experiential workshop will provide a temenos for attending to gestures that arise from the depths of the body, expressing the soul. Through respectful inner listening, moving, witnessing, drawing and writing we will support the unfolding of a source that informs the self, relationship, and the natural world. No experience in dance is necessary, only curiosity and a bit of courage to open to the unknown.

The day's schedule is as follows:

10 am - 1 pm: Brief lecture followed by a warmup and introduction to the experiential work.

1 - 2 pm: Brown bag lunch, beautiful outdoor spaces on campus for relaxation.

2 - 5 pm: Movement exploration.

While we do not charge for our Public Programs, donations (checks made out to Sonoma State University) enable us to continue to offer inspiring programs such as these.

Tina Stromsted, Ph.D., M.F.T., BC-DTR, is a Jungian analyst, somatic psychotherapist, and Board-certified dance therapist with a private practice in San Francisco. Past co-founder and faculty of the Authentic Movement Institute in Berkeley and a founding member of the Women's Spirituality program at CIIS, she teaches at the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, in the Depth Psychology/Somatics Doctoral program at Pacifica Graduate Institute, with Marion Woodman and her team in BodySoul Rhythms Leadership Intensives, and at other universities and healing centers internationally. With roots in theater and dance, and thirty-five years of clinical experience, her publications explore the integration of body, mind, psyche and soul in healing and transformation. www.AuthenticMovement-BodySoul.com .