The Instantaneous Power of Choice:

Snapping out of Negativity, Tapping into Possibility

 

 

A Winter Wonderland Retreat

with

Breeze Harper, Carl Silver, Ivan Ussach and Keith Harmon Snow

 

at Woolman Hill Retreat Center

www.woolmanhill.org

107 Keets Road, South Deerfield, MA

 

 

Friday, December 1 to Sunday, December 3, 2006

(Starts at 6 PM Friday, ends at 4 PM Sunday)

 

 

 

Curiosity may have killed the catÉbut the cat had nine lives! How many "lives" do you have? Are you resilient? Curious? Do you often feel cornered or defensive? Are your ideas and efforts easily realized or easily defeated? What inner programs rule your conscious life? Are you aware of these programs? How do you meet the obstacles that challenge you in life? Are you on a path of self-discovery or self-defeat? Does the path you are on lead to the slow, quiet, surrendering of your most cherished hopes and dreams? Is enlightenment yours for the taking? Is it—as with everything—only a matter of choice?

 

RETREAT! Withdraw from our fast-paced, results-oriented, competitive society and join a powerful, quiet weekend where you can step back and gain a good, solid, alternative perspective on BEING human at this auspicious time and place in the universe. Led by a strong facilitation team, consider joining others remarkably like you—and those unlike you—with the intention of gaining new insights and tools that will enable you to more clearly and effortlessly negotiate the harshness and insensitivity world you were born into. Learn techniques to help you hold your center even in the midst of the chaos and instability that increasingly surround us.

 

The Instantaneous Power of Choice is a weekend designed to offer you the chance to glimpse and experience an enlightened awareness and expanded consciousness. It is also a chance to explore the internal landscape and engage your inner healer. The journey into YOU is a voyage of self-discovery that relatively few people chance to travel. The workshop will share tools and explore options for dealing with negativity—disillusion, depression, discouragement—and offer the means to transform negativity into positivity, hope, creativity, confidence and inner peace. This workshop is a mutual exploration, where the guides are participants (not a platform for self-important experts to pontificate), and you too will be expected to be teacher and participant, bringing to the workshop your unique talents, insights and visions.

 

Working with our team of guides (see self-descriptions below) and nourished by fresh organic vegetarian/vegan meals and the delicious peace and quiet of Woolman Hill, this workshop will involve participants in group and individual processes chosen from the following possibilities: Deep Sharing Circles, Authentic Movement, Transformational Breathwork; Improvisation & Theatre; Fire, Music & Drum Circle; and Outdoor Experience. We anticipate that the weekend will reward you with:

 

 

To decide at any time that you cannot achieve success, health, happiness, and peace of mind, is to make an erroneous choice—failure, illness, unhappiness, and confusion will be yours. Why prolong your suffering, particularly when it is unnecessary? Choose otherwise.

 

Notably, the workshop will also offer you a sacred space to prepare for the Holiday Season and the New Year, a chance to find solitude and gratitude, and to resume your journey refreshed and invigorated.

 

 

Costs:

Sliding Scale: $110-$325; 15% discount for registrations received before November 15. We ask people to look inside themselves and contribute what they can afford, without resentment or hardship; we also hope to offer at least one scholarship to a disadvantaged youth. Some work exchange available (inquiry early).

 

 

Meals & Lodging:

Vegetarian community meals and Woolman Hill lodging included. Woolman Hill is a 19th century farmhouse located in South Deerfield less than 30 minutes from Greenfield and Northampton, Massachusetts. The Woolman Hill retreat center is nestled into the forested hills of Western Mass, surrounded by 100 acres of meadows and forests.

 

 

Registration:

 

Registration is limited to 25 and your registration will be confirmed upon receipt of deposit or full payment. Register by sending email notification and 50% deposit to:

 

keith harmon snow (lilyfairies@hotmail.com )

84 Goshen Road, Williamsburg, MA 01096

cell: 413-626-3800

 

Or go to www.allthingspass.com and make your registration payment through one of the many PAYPAL links on that web site. (If using this PAYPAL option and paying by credit card, please add an additional 3% to your payment amount to cover the PAYPAL handling fees.)

 

 

Facilitation Team:

 

Carl Silver is a psychologist in private practice. He is a former consultant to VA Medical Center Northampton and former staff member at Holyoke Hospital; and was former ly an adjunct professor at Antioch Graduate School in Keene NH, where he created a teaching course: Some Comparisons Between Psychotherapy and Spiritual Practice. Carl has extensive experience as an encounter group facilitator at various growth centers in New England. He began meditation in 1973, and was trained in Bio-Energetic Analysis by Alexander Lowen—the top student of Wilhelm Reich—and he gained advance certification in a form of energy psychology called Emotional Freedom Technique. He is also trained in Gestalt Therapy and is published in Journal of Regression Therapy.

 

Breeze Harper is a Black feminist and holistic health activist with a deep passion for social and ecological justice. She is the creator of the upcoming anthology, Sistah Vegan, which looks at how black females practice plant-based diets to fight against Systemic Whiteness and Legacies of Slavery—realities that manifest as health disparities in the Black community, degrade the ecology, and harm all GaiaÕs inhabitants. This research passion encompasses a holistic approach to physical, spiritual, emotional and psychological well-being through non-traditional methods such as narrative research, expressive therapies, Ethical Eating Philosophy, research in perceptions of White Privilege, American Privilege Studies, research in Speciesism, and theories of alternative holistic health practices. A Masters student at Harvard University, Breeze is researching how cyberspace can be used to advocate and teach women of color how to resist institutionalized oppression through mindfully practiced plant-based diets. Her work, "Shrapnel in My Womb: Black Female Vegans and the [In]visible War," was presented at the Graduate Consortium of WomenÕs Studies Conference at M.I.T. (2006).  She received a B.A. from Dartmouth College in Feminist Geography. See: http://breezeharper.tripod.com/research/

 

Ivan Ussach has been drumming and exploring lifeÕs rhythms since an early age. He grew up in and around New York City, receiving a Public Health degree from Columbia University and working for municipal environmental agencies before confounding the Rainforest Alliance and developing the Smart Wood Program. In his mid-thirties his concern for personal balance led him to rural community life and certification as a practitioner of yoga, transformational breathwork and Reiki. With his partner, a journalist-turned-organic farmer, Ivan currently caretakes a historic cabin and surrounding forest and pond in Petersham, MA. Ivan is active locally and regionally in watershed protection, environmental education, community development and town government. He also explores and promotes music, theater and healing work. He continues to promote practical means of achieving personal and global balance, including ecological foot-printing and the eco-spiritual work of the Sacred Earth Network, on whose board he has served since 1990.

 

Keith Harmon Snow is human rights investigator and independent journalist working on the front lines. A former Aerospace and Defense professional employed in classified programs, he has studied indigenous spirituality and systems of knowledge, and his work exposes systems of exploitation, structural violence, and the WestÕs responsibility in perpetuating poverty, war and genocide against non-white peoples and nations. He has studied Eastern philosophies, spirituality and religion, with direct experience gained through cultural immersion. keith began this work at Earthlands (www.earthlands.org) where he was lodge caretaker and a member of the community in 1995, and his path to self-realization has involved psychotherapy, meditation, dance, yoga, breathwork, and other dynamic experiential group processes. He has recently begun exploring holotropic breathwork and transpersonal psychology through the Grof Transpersonal Training. He sometimes works as an organic farmer on the Wildcat Garden for Peace and Re-Education, in Williamsburg, Massachusetts. His token animal is a big cat, and he has at least four of his nine lives left to play with.