Workshops + Retreats
Beauty and your Beast
This online series has been postponed, rescheduling date TBD.
Join our next Biography and Social Art workshop! In this series we will be using the age-old tale, Beauty and the Beast to explore the light and dark aspects of our own nature. As we recognize aspects of ourselves in each of the characters, we are called to look at moments in our own biography, both past and current situations when we did or did not act out of our highest self.
The Beauty of your soul faces darkness in small and large Beasts every day. It is with courage and love that we are able to see our light and dark aspects more clearly, making way for the opportunity to release ourselves from the enchantment of our own story and reconnect with our authentic self… our Beauty and our Beast.
Once you register, we will send you a PDF of the original story of Beauty and the Beast written by French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, this version was published in 1740 and was for adults.
We ask that you read the story before our first meeting. What speaks to you most from the story? Do you see aspects of yourself in the characters? As you read, does any part of the story inspire a recall of specific moments from your own life?
Each of the three sessions builds on the last and after each meeting you will be given a task that will help you continue researching your life during the month between sessions.
Past Workshops + Retreats
LIFE CYCLES: Online Series
Sundays May 15th, June 19th + July 17th | 10AM – 12:30PM EST
Join us for a deep dive into Biography and Social Art as we explore the nine life cycles as they are expressed in life through the body, soul and spirit. The workshop is divided into three Sundays. We will begin by looking at the years from birth -21, these are the incarnating years, during which time we grow our bodies and are informed and shaped by our environment, parents, teachers, and friends. The second session will explore the years between 21-42, when the world offers us opportunities to experience understand and become conscious of our individuality and soul life. The last session will address the years from 42-63, the spirit years, when we offer our gifts to the world and develop wisdom and love for humanity.
Each session will include a presentation about the unique approach to understanding one’s life story through Biography and Social Art. There will also be artistic prompts and breakout sessions where the participants will have the opportunity to share experiences from their personal life story in pairs or small groups. This workshop offers a new perspective on the past, enlivens the present and prepares you to meet your future creatively.
We encourage people of all ages even younger than 42 because we’ve all experienced people of all ages and will understand them better and get a sense for what lies ahead.
LOOKING BACK TO LOOK FORWARD
Online Workshop | Sunday, January 30th | 3PM – 5PM EST
January is named after the Roman god Janus, the god with two heads looking in opposite directions. He was the god of beginnings, initiations and transitions. In this coming workshop we will discover how looking at our past with a new perspective helps us to understand the present and look to the future from our best self.
To prepare for the workshop I invite you to look back over the past year at several outstanding happenings in your life. You may also find it helpful to review what is occurring in this January. The workshop is open to those new to Biography and Social Art as well as those who have taken a previous workshop.
Tools for Self-Discovery
What do I need to know about my life right now? What areas of my life are calling for my attention?
Online Workshop facilitated by Susan West Kurz and Stephanie Turner. The exercises we will do together evoke memories that we can then map across the phases of life. By taking a deeper look into these memories and sharing them in real time, we can find the answers to some of the most fundamental questions about life and its purpose.
Following the Thread of Your Life
Moving with the Art and Practice of Biography guided by Paula Sager & Susan Kurz
“There is a profoundly wise activity present within us…”
~Rudolph Steiner
Welcome to an immersive, day long retreat designed to explore and discover the wisdom and unfolding nature of your own life! Weaving together their respective practices of embodied awareness and biography, Paula and Susan offer a creative space to enter your own experience from new and deeper perspectives, gaining insight into your own destiny and life choices.
Susan will introduce the practice of Biography and Social Art as a way of exploring patterns and relationships through the unfolding thread of your life story. In sharing small offerings of your story and listening to the story of others, magic happens. There is alchemy in deep listening and in being heard. The art and practice of biography can be likened to yoga for the memory body. As we practice creative and contemplative exercises to enter our life story, our souls become more supple and resilient.
Paula will introduce a practice of embodied listening and awareness. In turning attention to inner impulse, not knowing what will unfold, we develop trust in our knowing of what’s right in any given moment. The Discipline of Authentic Movement supports inner growth, insight, and self-compassion through the experience of your physical self moving and your witnessing self being present—a sense of coming home in yourself.
Join us for a nourishing day of reflection and inquiry, an opportunity to follow the thread of your own life and discover what impulse is ready to move and emerge more fully in your own becoming.
We will enjoy a family style meal together. Beverages will be included.
Paula Sager teaches the Discipline of Authentic Movement in individual sessions and small groups at Voice Body Mind Healing Collaborative in Providence and at Three Stone Studio in Tiverton. She is on the faculty of Circles of Four (www.disciplineofauthenticmovement.com), a post-graduate program designed to prepare teachers of the discipline. She is a certified teacher of the Alexander Technique and since 1994 has studied and worked with Janet Adler, who has led the development of the Discipline of AM as a practice of witness consciousness since the 1970s.
Susan Kurz is a graduate of the Center for Biography and Social Art (www.biographysocialart.org) and offers workshops and private sessions in the art and practice of Biography. She served on the national board of the Biodynamic Gardening and Farming Association from 2012 – 2017. As co-chair of the Outloud Committee at the Jamestown Art Center from 2014-2017, Susan helped initiate events for writers and poets of national and international renown. She is the author of Awakening Beauty the Dr. Hauschka Way and in 2012, published the graphic novel, Beecoming Sophie, to help children find ways to help save honeybees (www.beeconscious.com).
The Starflower Retreat provides a beautiful + nurturing setting for cleansing the body as we re-member and digest events in our lives. As we release toxins and un-needed baggage, physically it is a natural segue to reflect on life and purify the emotional body. By letting go of old patterns, we discover new realities that are available to us.
Last year, Susan Kurz came to Florida and led a biography workshop for a small group of us here. I experienced firsthand the transformative potential that this work holds. Thus, the inspiration to invite Susan to the retreat and combine cleansing + remembering in a peaceful, conducive environment where one encourages the other.
Biography work embraces an experiential approach to understanding human development. It’s a practice in reading into our life stories, coupled with the opportunity to listen to the journeys of others. Through fairy tales, biography exercises, artistic activities and nature observation, we will go on a learning journey and discover the wisdom inherent in our life writing, our bio…graphy.
We will learn about the life phases and how they relate to body, soul and spirit. When we map our biographies across these phases through themes such as – places we have lived, people who have influenced us, illnesses, the role food has played in our lives, the work we have chosen and the talents we’ve developed often from our challenges – we discover that there’s more to our story than we think.
The Triptychon is another powerful instrument in the world of biographical coaching. It’s a special way of making contact with your life, a life-event, or with important moments. You will learn to make use of three simple self-made drawings and question the pictures in a biographical way. The Triptychon and Life Phases are tools to use for self-development alone or with friends and family.