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Retreat Workshop Descriptions
Moving from within: Crossing Focusing, Somatics and Authentic Movement
Workshop Teacher: PUPA Trainer Marg Peck
Date and Time: Friday, January 15th, 6:30-8:30 pm Eastern Time (see your local time)
An invitation to slow down, listen inwardly and explore the intelligence of the moving body. Through Authentic Movement practices and Focusing, we will explore what emerges when we give our bodily experience space, attention and curiosity. This two-hour introductory workshop offers a taste of an embodied practice that can deepen our relationship with ourselves, our movement and the subtle ways the body communicates what is not yet known.
The workshop will also introduce a possible further four-week exploration of Somatics, Authentic Movement, embodied consciousness crossing with Focusing (coming soon).
An Embodiment Journey: Crossing Focusing and Qi Gong
Workshop Teacher: PUPA Trainer Anne-Marie Jourdenais
Date and Time: Saturday, January 16th, 9:30-11:30 am Eastern Time (see your local time)
During the course of our lives, through events and experiments, some regions of our bodies and some fundamental abilities sometimes become less accessible. This workshop was imagined to gently rebuild those “lost connections”. It will invite us to focus on our belly, pelvis, legs and feet and our ability to ground.
Qi Gong—pronounced “chi kong”—is an ancient art rooted in traditional Chinese medicine that could be described as wellness training or meditation in motion. Through gentle, slow movements (“gong”), we learn to listen to our body and our vital energy (“qi”) to ensure its healthy flow throughout the body. We will use Qi Gong movements, postures and massages to get in touch with our center and its connection to the ground and, from there, use Focusing exercises and practices to deepen the connection and let the body tell us what it wants us to know. At the end, we will take a time of relaxation to integrate the new information and the new possibilities.
This workshop offers a first experience of the practice and an invitation to deepen the exploration through the 5-week Focusing and Qi Gong course using PUPA Focusing Process (coming soon).
Butoh Dance and Focusing : Following The Inner Thread
Workshop Teacher: PUPA Focusing Trainee Vanessa
Date and Time: Saturday, January 16th, 1:30-3:30 pm Eastern Time (see your local time)
This workshop will cross Butoh and Focusing. Butoh is a style of dance which carries an emphasis on slow micro movements which allows the body to access universal expression. Using this technique we will be exploring the body in a more subtle and intimate way while also inviting new imagery to emerge. With this more subtle expression, we will experiment by allowing the body to take on new forms and shapes while continuing our focus on internal shifts during movement.
Contemplative Focusing: Stillness and Movement
Workshop Teacher: PUPA Focusing Trainee Jane Cecilia
Date and Time: Saturday, January 16th, 6:30-8:30 pm Eastern Time (see your local time)
In this experiential workshop, you’ll have the chance to discover in your own body how stillness and movement can support deeper Focusing practice and insights. With a compassionate and open approach, we will combine micromovements with contemplative practice, and share Focusing in pairs or triads. The exercises will invite you home to your own body through gentle movement, suitable and adaptable for everyone, and will offer guidance to open to a more contemplative awareness. Some Focusing or contemplative experience is beneficial, and absolute beginners are welcome.
Focusing Rhythm Flow
Workshop Teacher: PUPA Focusing Trainee Iren Merdinyan
Date and Time: Sunday, January 17th, 9:30-11:30 am Eastern Time (see your local time)
felt sense movement as a pathway towards a deeper connection with the true self
This experiential workshop offers an exploration of Focusing Rhythm Flow, a practice that brings together Focusing, Embodied Awareness, and Intuitive Movement. We will explore what happens when a Felt Sense is allowed to unfold through gesture, movement, rhythm, and flow.
Working with archetypes patterns, we will sense and embody their qualities as pathways to transformation. Through guided explorations and paired work, you’ll experiment with following the Felt Sense of a pattern in movement: sensing what resonates, allowing movement to emerge, staying with subtle shifts, and using movement itself as a way of asking questions and discovering what comes next. The focus is on direct experience—exploring your own body and its unique way of knowing.
We’ll experience stillness with guided practices and pauses for integration.
The workshop offers a first experience of the practice and an invitation to deepen the exploration through the 5-week Focusing Rhythm Flow course, using the PUPA Focusing Process (coming soon).
Focusing Through Movement & Voice
Workshop Teacher: PUPA Focusing Trainee Maya Libermann
Date and Time: Sunday, January 17th, 1:30-3:30 pm Eastern Time (see your local time)
translating formless inner sensations into shape, sound, and aliveness
Focusing Through Movement & Voice is a two-hour sanctuary for our souls to reconnect with their inner knowing. Rooted in Focusing, this trauma-informed workshop invites you to listen deeply to the living landscapes you carry inside.
We begin by anchoring into our physical shapes through a body scan in a safe, supportive circle. From there, we tenderly explore elements of Focusing's classic six-step lineage, translating formless sensations into organic movement signals, spontaneous gestures, pre-verbal sounds, and descriptive words. Through gentle teacher guidance, live demos, and partner practices - with the option throughout to keep your camera off for all movement and voice elements, we will resource from our body's wisdom while experiencing attuned mirroring.
Please bring a few pieces of paper and your favorite colored markers or drawing tools. We close with an integration flow and collective mark-making, leaving you whole and anchored in mind-body aliveness.
Making a True Move: Crossing Focusing and Social Presencing Theatre
Workshop Teacher: PUPA Focusing Founder and Coordinator Annette Dubreuil
Date and Time: Sunday, January 17th, 6:30-8:30 pm Eastern Time (see your local time)
Arawana Hayashi’s Social Presencing Theatre (SPT) is a beautiful body of work that creates the pause, the ma, for a meaningful “movement phrase” to emerge: this is done non-verbally. From here, a phrase, word or other way of articulating meaning can come. In this two-hour workshop, we’ll get a taste of SPT with movement on our own and in groups. In so doing, our bodies are invited to make a true move, to express itself quite precisely via movement. The group exercise will invite our bodies to sense into the social field—which includes the visible social body (the people we are practicing with) and the invisible social soil (the quality of the relationships between the people)—and .
The workshop offers a first experience of the practice and an invitation to deepen the exploration through the 5-week Focusing & Social Presencing Theatre course using PUPA Focusing Process (coming soon).
