Experience the genius of embodied thinking based on Philip Shepherd's book New Self, New World

Part 1 - Saturday, January 15 from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

We are all limited by the story our culture teaches us about what it means to be human. The problem is that we grow up with that story from childhood, so it remains almost invisible to us -- and what we can't see, we can't question. Our particular story tells us in a million ways that it is normal to live in our heads -- and that creates a gap between our thinking and our being. So deeply are we affected that we consider it a great virtue to "listen to the body."

In fact, that phrase conjures an image of the body and the self in adjoining rooms, with the self listening to what's happening next door. By emphasizing the separateness of self and body, the phrase "listen to the body" actually reinforces the gap between them.

This workshop addresses the gap itself. It begins by helping participants to recognize how our patterns of breathing, moving, thinking and behaving tacitly reinforce and maintain the gap within us. As soon as we start to feel the presence of that division within us clearly, we acquire choice in the matter.

The workshop then introduces participants to a series of exercises that liberate us into our imaginations, our physical presence, our sensitivity, our ease and our spontaneity, so that we transcend the identification of the self with the wrinkled grey matter sealed in our heads, and start to experience the thinking and the harmony of the self as a whole.

Part 2 - Sunday, January 16 from 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.

The second day of the workshop picks up where the first left off, but with a new focus: it addresses the gap we have created between the thinking of the self and the mindful present. We have been taught for too long to see the world in starkly material terms, so that we label its parts and grow oblivious to the seamless energy of the whole.

Once we open to the body's subtle intelligence and feel the thinking of the whole self, though, we can begin to feel the present as a whole, and open our hearts to it, and find bottomless guidance there. A series of gentle exercises takes us beyond our ideas of the world, which bind up its energy, and help us to come to rest in the energy itself. To feel the present as a whole is to discover its companionship, which whispers to us as intimately as a mother to her child.

This workshop gives participants the understanding and the tools to do just that: to heal the gap between self and world, and discover the world to be an illumination of the resonant, personal path that waits for each one of us.

Philip Shepherd's workshop is based on his book, New Self, New World.

$180 for both days with pay what you can option

Sorry, not wheelchair accessible .

Tasty refreshments (non-alcoholic) and snacks with Zatoun olive oil  and za'atar dipping.