The Embodiment Forum ~ Through an Expressive Arts Therapy Lens

The Embodiment Forum Through an Expressive Arts Therapy Lens This Taster-Workshop is an opportunity to try out this powerful community practice... ...Because we will be offering a series of 6 sessions beginning mid-April for those who want to continue to meet and deepen together in this container over time. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ What happens when we trust that our individual experiences and stories are not separate, but living fractals of a larger collective story? What is waiting in each of us—quiet, unseen, or unexpressed—longing to be held in the clear, still water of our collective attention? The Embodiment Forum is a transformative community ritual practice where we gather to sense into what is alive in us now and offer it to be held in the circle of community. We are invited to bring forward embodied offerings—through voice, movement, metaphor, sound, silence, and presence—of what is seeking expression through us. In turn, we offer embodied mirrors to one another as empathetic reflections, meeting whatever arises with a spirit of curiosity, resonance, care and serious play. Here, our individual stories are welcomed not as isolated narratives, but as rippling fragments of a shared mythos. Each expression becomes a mirror, each reflection a thread, weaving together a living tapestry of experience. As these parts are seen, felt, and integrated, our relationship with ourselves and with one another deepens. Simultaneously, the collective begins to recognize and feel its own intrinsic wholeness—revealed through this kaleidoscope of sharing and reflection. The Embodiment Forum was developed by and with Solomon Krueger on Authentic Relating Go! and inspired by the ZEGG Forum developed by a large intentional community in Germany as a way for the community to see itself and make decisions together. When we look through an Expressive Arts Therapy Lens we see what ancient cultures have long known, and contemporary neuroscience confirms, that deep learning, healing, and insight emerge through creative relational play and right-brain-to-right-brain attunement. When what remains unexpressed is given a safe place to move, sound, and be witnessed, it no longer needs to run amok in the shadows of our bodies and relationships. Instead, it can be welcomed as part of the whole. Together, we hold the guiding question: What is alive now in the depths of the collective pool of our experience that wants to be expressed, reflected, and integrated? You do not need prior experience to participate. There will be structures to guide you through the process and you are invited to engage at the level that feels most authentic and supportive for you. This is an invitation to be seen, to see others, and to step more fully into connection, authenticity, and belonging. *When: Friday March 13th, 7:00-9:30 PM *Where: LAMA: Laurier Academy of Music & Arts, 119 Lester St., Waterloo, ON (Side door off the parking lot on the south side or right side of the building) *Suggested Contribution to cover our costs: $15-25 *Bring: yourself & your water bottle. *Contact & RSVP: [email protected] *Parking: 3 Options: 1) Park in the “Early Childhood Music” spots in the south lot (by the door closest to the recital hall), there is no early childhood music class happening during that time. Other spots in that lot may risk a ticket. 2)There is also free parking at the University Stadium (just across Seagram Dr) after 4:30pm every day, it is a little walk but not far. 3)We will also have a QR code that allows people to register their car for parking, it is one-day only, and only in lot 31A (on the north side – opposite end of the building from the recital hall). Typically they only give these codes for LAMA events, but it should be quiet this evening so they will allow it this time only. Facilitated by Avi Finegold, Tanya Williams & Nathan Cartwright Avi Finegold: Avi is a teacher, facilitator, poet, dancer and relational experimenter devoted to the art of listening — to the body, to the room, and to the subtle field that moves between us. Trained originally in linguistics and shaped by nearly two decades of teaching English as a foreign language, he developed a deep respect for how language both reveals and conceals our experience. His work lives at the intersection of somatics, ritual play, and collective inquiry. In the Embodiment Forum, he is especially interested in how play disarms shame, how witnessing reorganizes isolation, and how the intelligence of the group reveals patterns no individual could see alone. His facilitation is informed by training in systemic constellations, altered-state and depth-oriented space-holding, clowning, and somatic & presencing practices. He approaches this work as an ongoing apprenticeship to uncertainty, grounded in consent, humility, and respect for capacity. Tanya Williams: Tanya is a “context artist” with a passion for dancing with the inter-weaving of community, land, and body. Inspired by her lived experience of shifting chronic pain through embodied awareness and growing a capacity for creativity, co-intelligence and flow through presence, play and connection, she was drawn to person-centred facilitation and community animation with people navigating diverse challenges and is now studying psychotherapy at the Create Institute for Expressive Arts Therapy in Toronto. Tanya has been facilitating individual and collective creation, learning and performance in the arts for over 35 years, through practices such as movement improvisation and contact dance, devised interactive physical theatre, clown, Internal Family Systems, Dynamic & Structural Integration bodywork, Alexander Technique movement education, Collective Presencing, graphic facilitation, visual arts, and puppetry. She has worked with MTSpace, Kaleidoscope Theatre Collective, Portal Dance Projects, The WARMER Project, Everybody's Theatre Company, and is co-founder of the Ontario Regional Contact Jam, Friends of the Floor Dance-Theatre, KW Contact Jam, Pollinate, and The Liminal SPace Agency & Meta-Monastery 24/7 learning community exploring what it means to embody a collaborative systems understanding in everyday life and delight in our collective learning to move wisely together on earth. Nathan Cartwright: Nathan is a pre-licensed psychotherapist-in-training, accessible yoga teacher, and founder of Ecstatic Dance KW, an alcohol-free community dance and wellness project. His approach is grounded and embodied, guided by the belief that our deepest aspects of Self speak through sensation. The arts offer a liminal space, a 'time out of time,' where we can attune to the insights of creativity, wonder, and curiosity, facilitating profound self-understanding, healing, and wholeness. He is currently studying Expressive Arts Therapy and Person-Centred Psychotherapy at The CREATE Institute, in Toronto, ON.