ShadowPlay: Conversations with the Body
“When I am laid low by misery or depression, symptoms and cravings, I meet the irrefutable evidence of the independence of psychic forces. Something lives in me beyond my own doing. This demon that speaks in passions and dreams and pains will not let go, and I am forced to give recognition to its value for deepening me beyond my usual notion of myself as ego and bringing to my mind a sense of soul and death. So to take sickness into life means to take soul wherever one goes and to react to life in terms of soul.” James Hillman
It is natural and human to want to control the raw, messy and non-rational forces of nature. Particularly those personal urges, needs or desires that are not acceptable to ego consciousness and to others. However, every part of us that remains unloved, cut off, medicated or ignored will regress and become more primitive. As long as we remain unconscious, these parts play out in the shadows of our lives in destructive and pathological ways.
This workshop explores our personal demons and the ways through which they disturb, possess, interrupt, guide and sometimes bring pleasure into our lives. The word pathology and passion share the same etymological root. Both are their own types of suffering. By giving body to the failures and fears and fixations that shadow us, we get closer to the daemon soul that drives our fantasies, forms and fate. It is a matter of knowing how to look.
Working with Japanese mythology, shadowplay and consciousbody practices, we develop skills to bridge the suffering of our demons and the passionate images of the daemonic gods. Applying energy healing practices, we are taught how to listen to the body as vibration. When we learn to hold and harmonise these patterns, defences and stuck emotions dissolve and we can enter into the imaginal.
ShadowPlay Workshop: Conversations with the Body. Weekend non-residential or three-day residential foundation workshop. Homework.