Early bird: £80 (pay before 30th Nov)
Full price: £95
Package for both workshops: £130 early bird / £155 full price.

Payment: Paypal blackman.r@gmail.com

Photo by Vladislav Muslakov

 

REST DIGEST RESTORE: Bringing the Self to Quiet.  

5th – 7th April 2019 Brighton

 

This weekend workshop is a chance to explore, in a relaxed and encouraging environment, how we might better support ourselves to recover, integrate and repair.

 

Dates

5th – 7th April 2019

blackman.r (at) gmail.com

+44(0)7899952999

20 people max 

About 

Many of us have heard about Fight or Flight. Maybe even Freeze, Collapse – the instinctive ways in which our organism reacts to stress. But fewer know about Rest, Digest, Repair. This function is biology’s natural antidote to the stress response. But few of us know much about it. Or we don’t allow ourselves to hang out in it long enough to get practiced at it. The parasympathetic nervous system – when it is working well – is our ‘off line’ mode, our repair function and our natural antidote to the hyper stimulation of the stress response. So how do we encourage it to do its thing more happily and effectively?

From childhood, a lot of attention is placed on how much or how well we are achieving. In an adrenalised, ambitious state, we are goal-focused and achievement-oriented. We are in an alert, problem solving state of consciousness; focused on a specific deadline, a destination, a punch line, getting ahead, getting high etc etc. This isn’t inherently bad, but it isn’t sustainable. Our culture rewards an adrenalised, sympathetic nervous system state of operating, but it is only half the picture. Biologically, this function is designed for short bursts of intense activity, not for sustained periods of endurance. Yet somehow we expect ourselves to carry on and carry on indefinitely. 

Collapse isn’t the answer, completing a task isn’t the answer, nor is catharsis. A glass of wine at the end of the day, temporarily depresses the whole nervous system, so we feel a numbing of symptoms, but nothing is repaired and we feel low and foggy the next day. So how do we develop better habits around resting, repairing and integration? 

This weekend, we will dive deeply into some processes that encourage our parasympathetic nervous systems to come alive. There will be opportunities to share our experiences, learn from each other and at the end of the weekend, you’ll have some practices you can take into your life to help you more effectively and profoundly, chill out.

We begin on the Friday evening with Emma Roberts’ Sole Prayers 5 Rhythms Class at The Studio. 5 Rhythms is an opportunity to follow the body and let go of language for a few hours. As an entry point to our weekend, it is a chance to notice how we are and unravel from our working week.

On Saturday and Sunday we will explore:
•  softening the gaze and field vision – a forgotten tool
•  breath – belly breathing – the anatomy of breath
•  embodied voice and voice as medicine
•  letting go of having to hold ourselves up – befriending the floor
•  movement as meditation
•  contact and touch as a listening tool – how do we invite contact that is in support?
•  how do we add resonance, depth and breadth to sensory information and feeling?
•  imagination and play – wonder as a healing tool
•  experiencing an ending – the space at the end of the exhale.

For further reading on this phenomenon, check out this great article on Harvard Business Review about how properly recharging is more important than endurance.

Please note that this work is therapeutic, but not therapy itself. Our work is trauma sensitive, however this workshop is not a replacement for trauma therapy. If you have any concerns about whether you may be suitable for this work, or if you are working with a diagnosis of (C)PTSD of any kind, please get in touch for recommendations.

About the Facilitators

Rachel Blackman (Saturday and Sunday workshop)
Rachel works with the body as a theatre maker, creative consultant, somatic educator and therapist. She has facilitated groups in a therapeutic, creative and transformational context for many years.

She runs a thriving body work practice, from her clinic in Brighton helping people towards wellness and self healing through massage, coaching and developing Somatic awareness. She is the creator of Applying The Skills of the Actor, a body of work offering tools for visibility and presence to people for use in public and private life. She works nationally and internationally as a Somatic Educator and is co-lead trainer for the Embodied Facilitator Course run by Integration Training. Rachel is currently completing her Feldenkrais Practitioner training at the FITC in Lewes. She is passionate about offering people tools to bring them home to their bodies and into full expression.

Rachel trained as an actor and improviser and produces original physical theatre works as Stillpoint. These include the multi award winning collection of solo performances, Tryptich: Three Attempts at Love (2011) and Moon Project (2013). All featuring Emma Roberts as movement director.
Rachel’s most recent piece, The Sparkling Darkness (2018), is a collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Foz Foster and explores our relationship to deep water.

www.stillpointtheatre.co.uk
www.vibrantbody.co.uk

Emma Roberts and Shaping The Invisible (5 Rhythms class on Friday night)

Emma is a 5 Rhythms teacher, theatre maker, movement and drama therapist and deep enquirer into life’s ever unfolding mysteries. Emma’s facilitation style draws on years of experience as a movement therapist, artist and 5 Rhythms teacher, working internationally. Her work is primarily focused on allowing you to enter more deeply into your own unfolding embodied experience.

Rachel and Emma have collaborated on many projects for over a decade and share a deep understanding and trust in each other’s work. They have been developing a practice exploring the relationship between supportive touch and free moment, with Alexander Teacher Korina Biggs for nearly three years.
For more info Emma Roberts and her work, please visit

www.shapingtheinvisible.co.uk

photo credit:
leopard in a tree – singapore.
by wildlife photographer Suhir Shivaram

                                     ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ >>> <<< ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞

Past and archived workshops – 

TOUCH EMBODIMENT & SENSUAL WELLNESS

A workshop for bringing women home to their own wise bodies.

Medicine for objectification culture, exploring womb, gut and sensory health as keys to self care, libido and wellness.

This workshop will focus on the body as THE primary source of information for us about our wellness and vitality as well as our primary source of clues about our bliss. How to listen to it as a guide and own our own experience of libido, life force and creative expression.

Libido in its deepest and broadest sense is a great teacher. It lets us know when we are depleted and over extended. It tells us when we are being nurtured and when we are not. It connects us to the earth, fire, water, air and spirit inside each of us and is an instant baromometre of preference: revealing like, dislike, disgust, yearning, indifference and bliss.

Getting women in touch with womb, gut and sensory wellness, dissolving body shame and welcoming in self / body value, is key to healing much of what is out of balance in our culture at the moment.

There will be breath-based and somatic meditation practices, including a guided self-mentoring exercise, free and assisted movement, physical games, group, partner and solo work, creative / expressive response time and lots of space for sharing. There will be lots of take home materials that help you come home to (and love) your body as well as helping you grow a healthy relationship with your own sexuality.

We will explore your subjective experience of touch, including learning to feel what you do and don’t want and finding language to express your own personal experience. We will explore touch as a tool for expanding postural and emotional range and freedom of physical expression. This workshop offers a whole weekend of practically exploring these, through movement, meditation and touch therapy.

Rachel Blackman is a massage therapist and teacher of somatic wellness. She is also trained as an actor and works as a theatre-maker. She has a special interestest in the body as an intelligent instrument – the transmitter and receiver of all lived experience. She runs a thriving body-work practice in Brighton UK where her focus is on guiding clients towards their own self healing path. She has been working with a group of bodywork and movement professionals researching touch as a tool for catalysing movement for wellness since 2014 and has been facilitating groups for over 10 years.

Rachel will be joined by Alexander Technique teacher and somatic wellness coach Korina Biggs.

In her own journey towards embodiment and self-value, Rachel has worked through anorexia, bulimia, sexual abuse, body dismorphia, self hatred, chronic injury as a result of classical ballet training from the age of 4 – 18 and the inability to orgasm.
The healing quest continues…

BODY INTELLIGENCE

BODY INTELLIGENCE is a body of work bringing people home to the body as a wise instrument.

Draw awareness to physical blocks and investigate choices around them. Wake up the spine, ground through the floor, open up the feeling centres and the subtle body. Learn practical techniques to ground the self in the body, develop your kineasthetic sense and free the body to play. Discover how your body communicates and how other people read you. Includes one on one diagnositic work with Rachel on your unique physicality, investigating new possibilities for being in your body. This work is fascinating, powerfully transformative, relaxing and enjoyable.

This is a movement meditation and movement therapy workshop. It is not a performance workshop, though it greatly benefits performers and anyone else with a body!
This workshop runs over a weekend or over six evenings.

‘Thanks for the body intelligence. I’m a different person at work and people have noticed. I would love to do more!’ Steve Chapman

‘Time spent with Rachel is enlightening, healing and fun, I would recommend her workshops to anyone and everyone’ Harry Puckering

‘I couldnt beleive the instant, drastic change. It was phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal’
Jinni Lyons

image – Sacred Body by Robbie Firestone