Two Workshops to Enliven your Holidays!
Banish the winter blues and light up your creativity in an intimate Parisian setting.
To live is to sift through information. Just to start your day, you must deal with the information contained in your clothes closet and your kitchen cabinet, the information in your email inbox, and the weather forecast. More broadly, the information you must sift through includes pretty much everything in your hours, days, and weeks: what people say and do (and don’t say and don’t do!), what your body and your memory communicate to you, and the messages contained in every sight, sound, smell, letter, number, shape, or form that enters your awareness.
In these two workshops we’ll make friends with information and its power to guide us toward our goals. We’ll ponder the difference among data, information, knowledge, and wisdom; we’ll learn how to absorb useful information quickly and thoroughly; and we’ll play with ways of receiving and imparting information. Expect to make drawings, tell stories, and laugh a lot.
For more details of each workshop’s themes and techniques, visit their dedicated pages.
Although their themes are related, each workshop can be taken on its own. Sign up for one or for both, as you wish.
When: December 27 & 28, December 29 &30
“From Data to Wisdom” Saturday & Sunday, December 27 & 28. Saturday from 3 to 9 PM, Sunday from 10 AM to 4 PM (with a one-hour break).
“Sharing is Learning” Monday & Tuesday, December 29 & 30. Both days from 10 AM to 4 PM (with a one-hour break).
Where? Studio Le Regard du Cygne, 210 rue de Belleville, 75020 Paris. Métro: Télégraphe. Many shops and restaurants nearby.
For Whom: Anyone interested in skills of observation, creativity, mindfulness, and adaptability. Limited to 8 participants. Past participants have included artists, musicians, writers, health professionals, public speakers, and creative individuals.
How Much: One workshop, €300 euros; two workshops, €550 euros.
Email me if you'd like to register or to ask me questions.
Saturday: Back & Shoulders, Back & Pelvis
1. Back & Shoulders. We’ll practice The Plunge, an exercise that highlights the connection between the back and the shoulders while giving you a sense of the whole body in movement and in reaction to a situation with multiple dimensions. (Like all good exercises the Plunge is a portal to the awareness of the whole dynamic self.) And we’ll start our exploration of Object Wisdom. Carrying a large package up two flights of stairs, you soon conclude that there are some objects that definitely invite you to misuse your body. By the same token, however, there are plenty of objects that help your coordination, if only you attune yourself to their basic properties. In Object Wisdom we take a fresh look at ordinary household objects—cell phones, brooms, brushes, soccer balls, elastic bands, water bottles, and anything else around the room—and see what lessons the objects can teach us about perception, conception, reaction, and movement.
2. Back & Pelvis. We’ll model the pelvis—that is, gather practical information about it that allows you to visualize, feel, and control your pelvis with ease. We’ll practice a profoundly effective exercise for the connection between the back and pelvis. The Möbius Strip is a simple posture you can learn in a minute. Strangely and wonderfully, the posture seems to create an infinite circuit of connections from head to toe, back and front, up and down, inside and out. When you establish these connections, energy flows unimpeded through you, and also to you and from you. We’ll learn the posture, use it for speech and for locomotion, and also for studying the connection between the back and pelvis and the separation between the hips and the legs. And we’ll learn two other exercises to heighten your awareness of the pelvis: a sequence of moves inspired from aikido, and a simple movement and posture from daily life.
Sunday: Arms, Legs, Hands, Fingers.
3. Arms & Legs. We’ll learn the basics of pronation and supination (the rotations of your arms in movement and at rest). We’ll study several exercises based on Quadrilateral Transfer—that is, the dialogue between the arms and the legs. Some of the exercises are static or “positional,” others are dynamic and “relational.” Learn both dimensions, and you’ll be whole and balanced. We’ll learn the Invisible Samba, an exercise that integrates the freedom and stability of the pelvis with locomotion, the use of the arms, rhythm, and language.
4. Hands & Fingers. We'll explore an interesting dynamic arrangement called Elbows Out, Wrists In, which helps you free your arms and become dexterous in daily life. We'll learn The Looping Circuit, a simple exercise that allows your fingers to become rather intelligent. And we'll practice Five Healing Exercises to make your hands and fingers the softest, warmest, sweetest bearers of good energy.
