Embodying Stories:
A FREE monthly workshop series on Zoom
Stories are interwoven into our experience of life: they are how we come to know ourselves and to know others, and they are also how others come to know us in turn. Joan Didion said: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
We also tell ourselves stories in order to express what needs to be shared. Rather than suppressing, bypassing or turning away from what is real and present, our emotions, thoughts and values are a part of what it means to be human. Only in allowing ourselves to hold all of these and connect them in our bodies can we become free to express all of ourselves with new stories that move us into a future we want to belong to.
SELF-LOVE
February is a time for love, celebration, intimacy and connection with others, but most importantly, with ourselves. It can bring up a lot of feelings for people in relationships and without. My take on it is to embrace love in all of its forms, especially SELF-LOVE. It provides an opportunity to explore our values and beliefs about love, self-worth and romance in order to create and deepen our interconnectedness with all things: the self, others, nature and our social world.
POWER
Like anger, POWER is a concept that has a lot of charge and edge around it. It can mean many different things, and the way we respond to it can take many different shapes. In this workshop, we’ll explore the connection between power and recognition. What expressions do various dialogues between these bring up for you? What does leadership mean to you and how can you bring it into more embodiment? If you know you can step into more power within your own leadership style, you won’t want to miss this!
PEACE
If you don’t observe Easter Sunday, or want a creative way to celebrate it, join me for my Easter Sunday exploration of inner and outer PEACE. In this workshop, I’ll guide you inwards to allow your inner sanctuary to reveal its shapes, size and colors to you. We’ll bring this inner sanctuary into expression through visualization, drawing and writing and give time to just be with what arises silently and in circle together. This will be time to slow down and connect with your inner self.
PATIENCE
Do you allow yourself time to breathe and to bring compassion and presence into your daily life? Building off the peace we cultivated last month, we’ll be exploring patience to help you stay present in the moment with grace and empathy rather than flying through your life without paying attention to what is right in front of you or getting carried away by anxious thoughts. Take a moment to slow down and allow yourself the gift of expanding into patience.
STRENGTH
On Father’s Day, if you are unable to celebrate with your father, come remember and reconnect to the strength, solidarity and solace a light masculine energy can offer. What are your stories of strength? How do you define solidarity? Can you create solace within yourself and provide it for others? In this workshop, we’ll build on the wisdom in our inner shapes of strength to provide a place of refuge for ourselves that we can offer out in the world.
RESILIENCE
Our times call for resilience, resolve and renewal. At the peak of summer in the Northern hemisphere, things are being scorched to rise anew from the ashes. What are you committed to bringing into the world now? Are you committed to nurturing resilience within yourself? Do you have the adaptability to ride the waves of transformation? Do you have the resolve to take action on what you’re committed to? This workshop will use the arts to anchor and enact a new vision or growth you want to navigate with resilience.
WONDER
Have you lost a sense of wonder or that playful curiosity and exploration that came so naturally when you were young? If you feel that youthful creative energy and freedom to experiment without judgment, or express yourself fully has become closed or prone to evaluation and critique over time, come have fun in this workshop! We will hold space to remember our beginnings, recapture that beginner’s mind and play with the stories of our lives.
HARVESTS
On the first day of Fall, we’ll explore your stories of harvesting. What is being harvested within, and also around, you? Bountiful transformations, abundance of resources, the fruits of your hard work are coming home to you as we move into a new season. What sacred stories of new growth have been created this year? In what ways are you reaping rewards and celebrating all that you’ve tended to in 2025? What would you like to plant in this final season of the year? Let’s share our stories of harvesting, transformation and growth in shapes, gestures and movements.
SHADOWS
Are you ready to confront and move your shadows? We all have inner fears, blocks and sometimes conflicting voices or parts within that need to be released, integrated or completed. In this workshop, we’ll choose one shadow to confront, release and change through movement, writing and drawing. Using the waning crescent leading up to the New Moon, we’ll bravely encounter what is coming up to be faced within us.
GRIEF
The first workshop in the Embodying Stories series will be focused on giving shapes to GRIEF. If you are experiencing the loss of a loved one, precious animal companion, or grief over the current state of our world, this workshop is for you. I will offer some tools to help you hold and express your grief, so that you can become more fierce in who you are and what you stand for in the world.
ANGER
ANGER will be explored in a brave container to share experiences of this strong emotion. I’ll offer some tools to help hold and express your anger, so that you can become more clear and heartfelt in the way you relate to your anger. We’ll focus on how anger shows up in our hearts and our hands, as well as how stories of anger can be enlivening and create solidarity, show us when to move in other directions, or when to tear down or deconstruct what’s no longer serving us.
HOPE
As we begin a new year, the holiday celebrations wind down, and the gray winter sets in, HOPE can be something that is harder to find. In this workshop, we’ll be exploring mindset shifts with intention. I’ll guide you in creating your own inner compass to carry you forward. We’ll also be re-looking at our values and beliefs to begin embodying more wholeness, fullness and hopefulness for the coming year.