"The body of meaningful experience, of significant intelligence, informed about itself and its environment is also a body influenced by its own sensitivity and embodied awareness." - Dr. George Solomon

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Contact Jamie for information on this course.

This workshop will explore the uses of somatic awareness, expressive movement, and imagery in the healing process. Ordinarily, we see our immune systems as a scientific construct that cannot be sensed and is distant from our experience. In this workshop you will experience the immune system as something tangible, alive, and available to your influence. We will explore the Hindu archetypes of Creator, Destroyer and Protector through a somatic expressive arts approach that includes:

Somatic Meditations - Expressive Movement - Drawing - Writing

Breath - Vocalization- Dialogue - Group Interaction

You will visualize, draw, embody, and dialogue with your personal images of the immune system, and investigate how these images are reflections of psychological states and metaphors for behavior. The physical embodiment and enactment of the images will create new pathways for understanding the interaction between belief and behavior, and another medium for self-observation and health enhancement.

I began this inquiry in 1991 in a movement therapy group for women with cancer. In 1995, I co-led this workshop as a 5-day retreat with Dr. George Solomon at Esalen Institute. Solomon (1931-2001) was considered a father of psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), the study of the interaction between psychological processes and the body’s nervous and immune systems.

Since that time, I have adapted this approach to different audiences, from laypeople to healthcare professionals, in Europe and the United States.

Jamie McHugh