Deep Ecology of Sexuality: Embodying the Sacred Feminine

Course Description:

We are disconnected from our wildness and estranged from the earth. As a human culture, we have moved in the last four millennia, from seeing ourselves as a part of the natural world to imagining that we are above it or that we control it. The feminine, the earth, and the body have all been relegated to the “unholy”, and this has led to imbalance on every level of life. In this course, the student will explore how re-claiming the feminine as sacred in our sexual lives is a direct route back to remembering our intimate affair with the earth. She will ground her study in the disciplines of Deep Ecology and indigenous traditions of honoring the Sacred Feminine. Through texts and gathering stories of intimate experience, the student will explore the current culture of sex, and through empirical explorations and embodied practice, she will explore her own healing in context of this larger cultural understanding.

Objectives:

-To understand and identify in a replicable way how my own sexual journey and healing mirrors our cultural journey, and on a larger scale, the journey of the more than human world

-To increase my knowledge about how others have described and honored the Sacred Feminine, and to discover how She emerges in my experience through my own body and the earth; in particular in sexuality

-To understand and be able to frame my exploration in the context of Deep Ecology as defined by Arne Naess and Susan Griffin

-To develop my vocabulary and comfort in talking with others and creating containers within self and community in which sexual healing can happen and the deep ecology of our sexuality can thrive

- To become more embodied in my own sexual life, as in to awaken more of my physical sensitivity, to understand the anatomy of pleasure and be able to ask for what I want, and to engage in practices that awaken greater sexual energy.

Activities:

Personal Practice

- Go through the Embodiment and Sexuality Practices in “The Intimate Couple” (20 hrs)

- Keep a journal about specific areas of exploration and questions about what my authentic sexual expression requires to thrive (10 hrs)

- Spend time out in nature every week, exploring how the Sacred Feminine and the Sacred Masculine interact in the Natural World. Report in journal about this (10hrs)

- Explore sensuous dancing, and practices that honor the embodiment of the Sacred Feminine through movement. Take a Burlesque class, a bellydancing class, or a classical Indian Dance class. Create a performance or presentation. (15 hrs)

Research

- Review Three Books and Videos and write Responses to them. (25 hrs)

One book should focus on Deep Ecology, another the Sacred Feminine, and the third, Sexuality. Through this, define a thesis for drawing together an understanding of a “Deep Ecology of Feminine Sexuality”

- Read articles that illuminate a shadow aspect of sexuality, something coming out of an unexpressed yearning and cultural wounding. ie. pornography, fear of breastfeeding, the pathologizing of the birth process, sexual violence in war. Try to identify what the yearning is, what is unexpressed and wanting to be expressed. Write short synopsis’ of these. (10 hrs)

- Interview at least 5 people about their sexuality. Create interview questions and a consent form. Use this material towards writing a final paper (13 hrs)

Offerings/Integration

- Assist in starting a Sexuality group for couples, in which there is space to share and witness one another in deepening intimacy, trust, and embodiment (10 hrs)

- Host a “Truthtelling” circle with Sacred Sexuality as a theme (3 hrs)

- Create the workshop/practice group “Contact for Couples” about deepening intimacy and connection through Contact Improvisation. Tie this into other themes being explored. (12 hrs.)

- Write an 8-10 page Research Paper on “Deep Ecology of Feminine Sexuality” (10 hrs)

- Volunteer to lead an activity/workshop/sharing at The Red Tent, an afterschool program focused on empowering girls. (2 hrs)

+30 hours of meetings with mentor/10 curriculum planning hours

Materials:

- The Intimate Couple. Rosenburg, Jack Lee, Katean-Morris, Beverly.

- Aphrodite’s Daughters

- Song of Songs

- Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure. Winston, Sheri.

- Video Clips from Center for Intimate Arts Website

- Love Poems to God.

- Women and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her. Griffin, Susan.

- The Ecology of Wisdom: Writings of Arne Naess

- Sacred Pleasures Eisler, Riane.

- Chalice and The Blade. Eisler, Riane

- Woman, an Intimate Geography. Angier, Natalie

- Sexual Health & Erotic Freedom. Barnaby Barratt.

- Listening to the Land. Derrick Jensen.

- Fire in the Belly. Sam Keen

- Deep Ecology Movement: An Introductory Anthology. Drengson, Alan & Inoue, Yuichi.

- The Yoni: Ancient Symbol of Feminine Power

- Metaformia: A Journal of Menstruation and Culture. Grahn, Judy.

- The Erotic Impulse. Steinburg, David.

- New View of Woman’s Body. Federation of Feminist Healthcare Collectives.

- Promiscuities. Wolf, Naomi.

Evaluation:

- Oral review of Learning Objectives

- Write-ups/Synopsis of my interview questions and interviews

- 3 Book Reviews (1-2 pages)

- Weekly Review of Journal; including creating focus questions to explore to track my own embodied experience, awareness, learning, integration

- Planning Documents for Community Offerings as well as written and oral feedback from participants

- A final performance/presentation of a Sensual Movement Discipline. May also bring in some text or story

- An 8-10 page final paper “Deep Ecology of Feminine Sexuality”

Awakening the Sensitive Body: Touch and Energy

Awakening the Sensitive Body: Touch and Energy

Course Description: Beginning with the premise that energy or life force can be felt and worked with directly, the student will explore practices that increase and encourage a direct experience of energy and presence both in herself, in others, and in the natural world. If given the opportunity, energy will re-align to create healing in mind, body, and spirit. Many traditions have understood how to work with it. In this class, the student will ground her knowledge in Cranial Sacral Therapy, Chi Kung, and Chi Nei Tsang with the intention of developing her own language of touch and intuition.

Objectives:

-To embrace my sensitivity to energy and learn to work with it more intentionally in my own body, with others, and with the earth

-To work with intention and meditation as sources of personal and global healing

-To expand my knowledge of human anatomy through text, direct experience, and meditation

-To develop grounding and presence through personal energy practices and Chi Gong

-To ground my personal and direct experience in the work of healers who practice Cranial Sacral, Chi Nei Tsang, and Chi Gong

-To discover my own path of healing and feel confident in my intuition

Activities:

Personal Practice

-Create a journal to track the evolution of my experiences and awareness (10 hrs)

-Create a Daily Practice that includes self energy work, meditation, and movement (30 hrs)

-Give and receive weekly sessions and do practice with Christel (20 hrs)

-Do meditations once a week that connect to the land and natural elements and journal responses (15 hrs)

Research

-Study anatomy texts and do weekly embodied explorations of anatomy (15 hrs)

-Read two texts or portions of texts and video of different modalities of Energetic Healing and write 1-2 page reviews of these texts. Some possibilities are The Heart of Listening, Hands of Light, and Taoist Ways... (30 hrs)

-Receive three sessions with different kinds of Energy Workers, report on my experiences, and talk to them about their work. Write up a short synopsis of each. (10 hrs)

-Specifically explore how to use this work with women; opening the pelvix, freeing sexual energy, and how that energy can be used in healing. Look at passages from Healing Love through the Tao, Luna Yoga, and Christel’s friends thesis about Sacred Prostitution. Create a thesis for a piece of research about “Freeing Sexual Energy for Healing” based on practice, observations, and research (10 hrs)

Integration/Offerings

-Give 5 Energy Sessions with Christel, and share experiences and insights (10 hrs)

-Give 5 Energy Sessions on my own, and write about each. Create a form to record observations and a consent form (10 hrs)

-Create 3 movement explorations to bring to Contact Lab. Report on these experiences in my journal (5 hrs)

-Create a short offering for women about “Freeing Sexual Energy for Healing”. (5 hrs)

Plus 10 hours spent planning the course.

Materials:

- The second brain. Gershon, Michael

- Between Heaven and Earth. Beinfield, Harriet, Korngold, Efrem.

- The heart of listening. Hugh Milne

- Healing Love through the Tao: Cultivating Female Sexual Energy. Chia, Mantak

- Taoist Ways to Transform Stress into Vitality: The Inner Smile * Six Healing Sounds Mantak Chia

- The magic anatomy book. Conner, Carol

- Craniosacral biodynamics, volume 2. Sills, Franklyn

- Tao Te Ching - Lao Tsu

- Anatomical atlas of the temporomandibular joint . Ide, Y.

- Emotional anatomy. Kelleman, Stanley.

- Atlas of human anatomy - Netter, Frank H.

- Luna Yoga. Ohlig, Adelheid. Ashtree Publishing.

- Touching: The Human Significance of the Skin. Montague, Ashley.

- Sheng Zhen Wuji Yuan Gong

- The Way of Qi Gong Cohen, Kenneth

Evaluation

- Weekly sessions and feedback with Christel

- Write-ups of Sessions that I do on my own, as well as creation of a form for writing about sessions and a consent form

- Weekly check-in around journal entries and evolving points of inquiry

- Two response papers to Texts

-Three Synopsis’ of my sessions and meetings with healers in different modalities

-A thesis paragraph about “Freeing Sexual Energy for Healing”

- Oral review of objectives at the end of the course

Un-Schooling #1

"It's not that you have to create something new. What you are doing human beings have been doing since the beginning of time." A friend of mine who I met with this morning unschooled herself at 13. She said that it was one of the most difficult and most incredible experiences of her life. She was telling, or warning me, that I might come across doubt about myself (or doubt from others) as I endeavor to do something that is quite different from the way I and most of us have been conditioned. But they are just beliefs created relatively recently in the scope of human history.

I found myself asking, ok, what happens when you take education out of the classroom, or put it in one. Most of us were at desks by the time we were 5 years old learning our A, B's, and C's. How many parents have you heard proudly proclaim that their 2 or 3 year old was already reading? When did education become about chalkboards, thick textbooks, and our minds figuring things out as opposed to experiencing them first hand. And I'm saying this as someone who excelled in school, straight A's all the way through.

One of the things that happened when education entered the classroom, was that much of our sense of belonging to a place and a community was disrupted. The natural cycles of listening to the land and each other, of honoring the organic processes of receiving, listening, integrating, and silence were replaced by the impetus to "do, do, do" regardless of day or time or intuition. Of course, this consciousness did not start or end there, but it certainly has impacted our human sense of what has value and importance. Schools place the importance on meeting standards, meeting a status quo, instead what each human being has to offer uniquely in that moment. I'm interested that even now, as Western Culture spreads across the world, there is no question of whether building schools in under-developed cultures is a worthwhile thing to do. It is so woven into our belief system that it is hard to see anything else.

What I'm discovering thus far in my one week of unschooling is that my learning is arising organically. Chances are if I ask a question and go looking, the answer or the journey to get there is very close at hand. That learning is embodied and holistic. Direct Experience is my greatest teacher and guide in discovering my questions. Articulation comes later. That learning is community and each person who shows up is the right person. Realizing this is mutually beneficial for everyone, and reminds me of how much we need one another. The hard lines between teacher and student become fuzzier, and there is a pursuit of process rather than a pursuit of answers. Listening is more important than understanding.

On a slightly different note, this weekend, we watched "Orgasmic Birth". Ina May, a midwife who transformed birth in the US and who has a 3% Cesarean rate as opposed to the national rate which is hovering above 30%, talked about what happened when we took birth out of the bedroom and put it into hospitals. It's interesting to me how quickly a new set of beliefs can emerge. "No, birth has nothing to do with sexuality." It's only recently that research is catching up to what our bodies knew all along. Birth has everything to do with sexuality, and the more we remember this, the more we can follow and listen to the wisdom of our bodies.

As I write this, I realize it may sound like I'm poo-pooing any kind of institutionalized reality. Mostly, I am, but for those of you who might take offense, or ask if I'm just proposing anarchy, I would say that I'm curious about what it means to be awake and I have questions about whether or not institutions can hold waking up as a primary intention. And if they can , what that looks like. It's a question that I carry on this journey with me.

First Day of Orientation

I just finished my first day of orientation at Prescott. Exciting. Lots of ideas. Lots of logistics. I feel compelled to share this because this is all about creating community based learning, and YOU are my community. And then I had a thought about creating a blog. So here it is!

The teacher who is teaching my interdisciplinary studies class spoke about how Prescott was founded to offer students support in working out their own visions in the world and in their communities, not the other way around, students fitting into a program already created. That resonated with me. That is why I'm here. I also resonated with the stages of entering into independent learning: elation, disappointment, integration, and arriving. I'm still in the "wow", but feeling the "whoa". I feel like I'm creating a universe. I get to design 3 courses per Semester. I get to reach out to my community and beyond and "say, hey I love what you are doing in the world. What do you think about collaborating for a semester to create something really cool and new??"

For those of you who might be my mentors, it might be helpful to have a look at the mentors page on the Prescott College website (www.prescott.edu). It has a lot of details about the process of becoming a mentor. I'm also really interested in creating opportunities for collaboration even beyond my mentorships, so if you are interested in anything I'm doing, please let me know. For instance, for one of my classes (probably this summer), I'm interested in starting a group to explore a workbook called "body and earth", which is an experiential text that involves BMC, authentic movement, and being out in the natural world---connecting embodiment with living on the planet (pretty obvious connection eh?). I'm also interested in starting a salon/discussion group, offering community presentations of my work, having "shadow days", etc, etc (that's the whoa).

More soon.