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.