PROGRAM DESCRIPTIONS FOR SPRING CAMP 2024 coming soon …
Meanwhile check out the program for Spring Camp 2022: Bodies – An Exploration
We’ll have a lot of similar activities!
*Orientation & Getting Connected – Sarah Taub – Friday 8:30-9pm
Orientation: We’ll learn essential details about our schedule, spaces, and guidelines.
Getting Connected: In this lively and experiential session, we’ll start getting to know each other. We’ll play interactive games that help us get curious about each other and share how we relate to our bodies. There will be a mix of paired, small-group, and whole-group activities. Everyone is welcome to participate in the way that works for them, either by joining in or by observing.
*Opening Circle / Theme and Intentions / Pod Creation – Sarah – Saturday 9:30-11:15am
Opening Circle / Theme and Intentions: We’ll have our first body contemplation, continue the culture-creation process, and begin diving into our theme: exploring what it is like to live in a body. In particular, we’ll start looking both at our ideas/concepts/stories about our bodies, and at our direct experience of our bodies.
Pod Creation: Pods are groups of 5 or so people who meet daily during the event for supportive sharing and listening. We’ll create our pods and have the first pod meeting.
*Consent Culture: Finding the Sweet Spot – Emma Daley & Fuzzy Konner – Saturday 11:30am-1pm
Description TBA
*Sensual Space Orientation – Emma & Fuzzy – Saturday 2:45-3:20pm
The Sensual Space is a warm and inviting space to explore connection and intimacy by engaging all of the senses. This is a space to lounge together after spending the day learning communication and intimacy tools – the perfect place to practice communication and share affection in a relaxed and sex positive atmosphere. This short session will introduce the space and its etiquette.
*ZEGG Forum – Sarah & Forum Team – Saturday 3:30-5pm and daily at various times thereafter
The ZEGG Forum process is a transformational container created by free-love radical communitarians and tuned for bringing up what’s under the surface in COMMUNITY. When undertaken with a group of sovereign beings who are dedicated to individual and collective transformation, it provides a cauldron for personal growth and community resilience unlike any other.
The goal of Forum is to reveal what is alive but not known to all. The community sits in a circle, forming a stage for one person at a time to stand and show what is true for them. Facilitators may assist the person (or “presenter”) to reveal themselves more deeply. Afterward, community members may offer reflections, or “mirrors,” on what they saw.
Especially when interpersonal conflicts and polarizing issues arise, each person shares from the heart and is facilitated to go to the root of their truth, not just their superficial egoic needs.
When we “get” each other, we go the extra mile to figure things out. Empathy motivates the group to find a collective solution, while understanding gives the raw material needed for the solution.
Osho Active Meditations – Premin – Saturday 5:15-6:30pm, Sunday and Tuesday 4:45-6pm
Many of the traditional meditative techniques require one to sit still in order to be silent. Firstly, it is an inner stillness that is valuable, and the outer stillness is only in support of that inner stillness. And secondly, for most of us, the accumulated stress in our bodymind makes inner or outer stillness very difficult.
That’s why a set of Active Meditations have been scientifically designed by the spiritual teacher Osho, over a long period of experimentation. They enable us to consciously express, experience, and release repressed feelings and emotions and to bring the body back to a relaxed harmony – and then the journey inwards can begin.
Each day, Premin will present a specific Active Meditation that supports the unfolding of the group’s process.
More information at https://www.osho.com/meditation/osho-active-meditations/introduction
Awakening Pleasure in Touch – Harold Kornylak – Saturday 8-9:15pm
In our modern world, so many of us live in our minds and disconnect from our bodies. In this session, Harold will guide us to find pleasure in direct experience of touch. Through solo and partnered exercises, we’ll open up our sense of touch both in the active mode – reaching out and exploring sensation – and the passive mode – experiencing the sensations caused by another’s actions. Participants are at choice to decide how they engage and what sort of touch works for them.
Sensual Space Opening – Emma & Fuzzy – Saturday 9:30-10pm
Immediately after the previous session, those who wish will proceed to the Sensual Space for its official opening. All are invited to explore the Sensual Space – the opening activities will be sensual but nonsexual, and the Sensual Space Team will create a clear transition when the space becomes open for sexual connection.
Body Contemplations – Sarah – Sunday 9:30-10am and Monday 10-10:30am, and sprinkled into other sessions
Body contemplations are short guided meditations or explorations that invite us to inquire deeper into some aspect of how we experience our bodies. You can choose to follow the guidance or to do your own meditative exploration. Each contemplation will be followed by an opportunity to share about and discuss what it was like.
Morning Circle – Organizer Team – Sunday 10-10:45am, Monday and Tuesday 10:30-11:15am
The camp community comes together for appreciations, announcements, and other sharings. Please attend if you can – new information and conversations about arising issues happen here!
*Emotions and the Body / Exploring Body Concepts – Sarah & Harold – Sunday 11am-1pm
Emotions and the Body: Emotions are a core part of being human for most. From deep pleasure, to deep pain, all emotions can bring rich color to our lives. But what ARE they, really? And how can we best relate to them? In this session, we’ll look at how emotions arise from and are held in the body. We’ll practice practical tools to work WITH our big emotions and channel them for self intimacy, healing and growth.
Exploring Body Concepts: When you turn your attention to your body, what images, thoughts, feelings come into your awareness? So many of us have received complicated messages about what our bodies should be capable of or look like. We’ll use self-inquiry and group work to feel into the layers of our stories around our bodies and see what wants our loving attention.
Pods – Daily, various times (including as part of Opening and Closing Circles)
Pods are groups of 5 or so people who meet daily during the event for supportive sharing and listening.
Body Speaking and Body Honoring – Harold & Sarah – Sunday 8-9:30pm
Our bodies have their own authentic needs, desires, and voices that often go unheard. So much pain, pleasure, and wisdom can be locked away from our conscious experience and held in the body. In small groups, we’ll be guided to create a safe and reverential space where parts of our body that are longing to be heard can speak and be honored. This workshop honors all genders, all experiences, all body types – you are welcome to choose the depth of sharing that feels right to you.
Contact Improv – Fuzzy – Monday 3-4:30pm
Contact improvisation is a freeform dance and movement practice based on exploring moving points of contact between people, weight sharing, and embodied awareness. Learn to give and receive weight safely, to fall, and to land with grace. All levels of experience welcome.
NONVERBAL SPACE – Monday 5:30pm – Tuesday 9:30am
Words shape our experience of the world. They bring in memories, plans, judgments, and their associated emotions of regret, nostalgia, worry, and longing. For sixteen hours, the camp community is invited to let go of words and drop into nonverbal direct experience of the present moment. Communication using sounds and gestures is welcome. Play, both silly and profound, is likely to burst forth spontaneously. Join us for a wordless adventure!
*Entry into Nonverbal Space – Sarah – Monday 4:45-5:30pm
This session will define the nature of this nonverbal experiment. We’ll go over tips for communicating about consent without words, and discuss when and where to use words (for example, on kitchen work shifts or in other essential situations). Then we’ll ceremonially launch the nonverbal space together.
Ecstatic Dance – Aerun – Monday 8-9:30pm
“Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion.” ― Martha Graham.
Whether you’ve danced all your life or never set foot on a dance floor– come express yourself with radically accepting, loving community! In this space, all forms of expression are welcome– from yoga, to laughter, to shaking, to rest. All bodies, movements, emotions, and sounds are welcome… in this nonverbal Ecstatic Dance.
Verbal Re-Entry – Sarah – Tuesday 10-10:30am
The community gathers to ritually conclude the wordless space, and to share our experiences.
Finding Your Voice – Sea Rios – Tuesday 3-4:30pm
All humans are musical. Song and dance evolved as a means of regulating our nervous systems individually and collectively. It’s a medicine all humans enjoyed regularly, but now very few make time for. When we don’t consciously choose expression, it has a funny way of coming out sideways as chronic pain and illness, emotional outbursts, and/or an ambiguous discomfort that we numb with dopamine boosts from substances, binge watching, social media, codependency etc. But what we’re really wanting deep down is sustainable, healing connection and meaning. Come find it here!
We’ll start with a series of activities that help people feel safe in their bodies and in the space together. Depending on how folx are feeling we may incorporate a tapping session to release any feelings of overwhelm, and then transmute our emotions into raw expression, giving our bodies permission to express themselves through movement and body percussion, to eventually include the voice. The goal is to release stagnancy, activate the creative parts of the brain, and in the process experience the healing power of ritual expression and community witnessing together. Our bodies hold a lot of wisdom, and without much prompting, we will experience inter-brain synchronizations that we do naturally. From that connected place we will be able to create beautiful music together as it is our human nature – and we’ll close out with a musical jam session. Expect to feel release, joy, and connection.
No experience required! Come as you are — open or closed, insecure or confident, emotional or numb. This is all fuel for the radiant fire! The music our inner children make will be recorded anonymously and turned into a blissful souvenir that we will be able to enjoy for years to come.
Love Ceremony: Pleasing the Senses – Sarah & Harold – Tuesday 8-9:30pm
A Love Ceremony is a series of partnered and group interactions that invite appreciation, amazement, and reverence toward your fellow participants and your own self. This love ceremony will focus on honoring our embodied selves by delighting our senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. All participants are always “at choice” to modify the interactions so that they are comfortable with them, or simply to witness.
Please bring a blindfold and if you like, sensory objects to delight the senses of sight, hearing, and touch – we have taste and smell covered! Bring objects that you are ok with sharing.
– Bells or other sound-makers
– Fur, feathers, satin, other textural objects
– Small visually beautiful items such as crystals
Closing Circle – Organizer Team – Wednesday 11:30am-1pm
Honoring the experience of the past seven days, we will connect, reflect, and bid farewell to this incarnation of our community.