Classes — Labs of Awareness

For Adults

Humans are relational to the core of their being. Through our relationship with others, we get to know how we relate to ourselves. Relational work is tightly intertwined with the practice of mindfulness. Luckily for us, interpersonal space doesn't leave us even for a moment. First, what we have long forgotten how to do for ourselves we are still ready to do for another. Second, the world is still there to teach us. In the words of Pema Chodron, "hard feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back". Nonverbal medium of communication is considered an excellent gateway to getting to know our weaknesses and insecurities. Where one partner is able to compensate for those weaknesses, another partner makes them even more visible. In this class we will explore the invisible forces that pull our strings in communication with ourselves and others. We will work towards not needing words.

Embodiment in Relating

Humans are relational to the core of their being. Through our relationship with others, we get to know how we relate to ourselves. Relational work is tightly intertwined with the practice of mindfulness. Luckily for us, interpersonal space doesn't leave us even for a moment. First, what we have long forgotten how to do for ourselves we are still ready to do for another. Second, the world is still there to teach us. In the words of Pema Chodron, "hard feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back". Nonverbal medium of communication is considered an excellent gateway to getting to know our weaknesses and insecurities. Where one partner is able to compensate for those weaknesses, another partner makes them even more visible. In this class we will explore the invisible forces that pull our strings in communication with ourselves and others. We will work towards not needing words.

"Journelling" and Memory Integration Practice

This class is for people who love to travel. "Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step". In this workshop we will decipher the meaning of the above quote from Lao Tsu. The participants will ask questions like: "Why do I want to go on a journey?"; "What is it that I am seeking"? "How can I find what I need at this very moment, right now?"; "Who do I want to invite to share this moment with?"; "What story is being told right now?"; "What intention do I want to bring to this journey?". We will practice going on short, minutes-long journeys, together and separately, depending on the intention and the number of people. Even though these journeys may seem too short in terms of how much feed-back they can generate, we will be taking them as seriously or jokingly as we can only "take ourselves" with all of our life journeys included.

Learning and Memory Practice for Better Focus

Have you ever wished to remember things better? Have you wished to remember, but were not sure what you wanted to remember? Remember days when your school buddies contributed to your class preparation by helping you to focus and commit things to memory? If you are among those insatiable people, who love to challenge themselves cognitively in a circle of like-minded (and not so like-minded) people, you may enjoy this old fashioned gathering, where people make lists, leaf through encyclopedias, scribble visually indigestible schemas and examine each other serving as each others' "sticky notes". There will be no gooey, emotionally-charged material to be aware of in this class, only your regular home-work style tasks you are already familiar with since first grade. Bring things you always wanted to commit to memory, and we will help you to do just that.

Story-Telling

In this class we explore the anatomy of story-telling. It is important to keep in mind that what we want to create in this class can only be born in labor. This is not a place for casual story-telling. Each person offers an experience, a memory, a question, or a wish. This wish serves as a starting point in a story, a quest to be realized later in the game. Like in every traditional storytelling, there is no opportunity to reverse the unfolding of the plot, only move forward, with the purpose to experience and to make mistakes - no going back in time is allowed. The protagonist of the story has the agency of starting a story and the agency of responding to other group members' prompts. Group members are the ones to make sure the story is engaging, vivid, interesting and kind. Their primary responsibility however is to support the protagonist emotionally. They follow the unfolding of events with their open hearts and stay aware of the mutual impulse to complicate the story beyond the complexity that the protagonist of the story is capable of enjoying.

Integration of Events

An event is better integrated if one shares it with other people. Integration sessions are designed to help you tell the story of your journey, job-trip, date, museum-visit, movie, class, anything that wants to be re-experienced through the medium of a personal interview. Hopefully, we can ask you questions you wouldn't have asked yourself otherwise and direct your memory in directions that you have not been aware of before. Integration sessions are sometimes more conducive to effective memory retrieval than psychotherapy. (This is because the unassuming impersonal character of an interviewer-interviewee relationship renders memory retrieval keys to be effective in helping the person to stay "objective")

Create and Share a Ritual