“I have decided, after all my years of doing individual and group work, that it is more important that my presence be felt than my interventions be correct.

 

It is now clear to me that entering into novel encounters that generate the possibility of aliveness, and entering into them fully with those I enter deep processes with, is what matters most.”

 

– Michael Mervosh

Re-Vitalization Is What The Winter Intensive Is About

“There is a kind of change can happen that is immediate, daring, intensive, and, most importantly, logically incomprehensible and interaction-dependent.”   – Boaz Shalgi

This journey intensive will explore engaging in vitalizing encounters – with the HJF facilitation team and with fellow journeyers –  that are enriching and transformative in their shared and lived experience.  We do this instead of simply reflecting on our own process in the presence of others.

A person’s confidence and ability to bring forth their own embodied and vitalized presence depends on participating in driven, spontaneous, and viscerally felt emotionally substantive encounters with one another.

We must be capable of setting aside being helpful in order to be available to real change within ourselves.

We all work with ‘active witnessing‘ by entering fully into the shared, lived experiences with one another.  We then digest & reflect back to these fresh experiences and novel encounters in ways that can deeply recognize someone.  This process empowers them, and moves their lives forward in new ways, thus becoming better able to enter the fullness of living.

This is such challenging and rewarding depth work – supporting each person’s emerging ability to grow by facing paradox and dilemmas, by tolerating uncertainty and entering complexity, and ultimately, surrendering deeply into, and accepting – ‘what is’.

Potential Content To Explore

• UNDERSTANDING OUR UNCONSCIOUS FORCES
• EXPERIENCING OURSELVES AS ‘GENERATIVE’
• ENGAGING WITH OUR OWN EROTIC ALIVENESS
• WORKING WITH OUR DESIRE, AGGRESSION & PASSION
• UNDOING OUR ALLEGIANCES TO ABSENCE & DEADNESS
• UNDERSTANDING AND TOLERATING OUR OWN SHAME
• ACTIVATING A SENSE OF SPONTANEOUS ALIVENESS
• WORKING WITH WAKING DREAMS & REVERIES
• LEARNING TO SEE THE GROUP AS A RESOURCE.

If we are to transform what is foreign, alienating or unreal in us into something real and personal, into something we can feel, sense for ourselves as a real and essential part of our lives, it is crucial that we speak – and are spoken to – in ways that are tangible, respectful and dignifed.  This will pull us all into a kind of reality we can actually face and live with.

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening,
that is translated through you into action,
and because there is only one of you in all of time,
this expression is unique.
And if you block it,
it will never exist through any other medium, and be lost.
The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is,
nor how valuable,
nor how it compares with other expressions.
It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly,
to keep the channel open.
You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work.
You have to keep open and aware directly
to the urges that motivate you.

Keep the channel open.

– Martha Graham