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”
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